The Sea Watch

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Actually . . .’ Stenwold frowned, ‘that was Danaen also.’

  Teornis left a pause before answering. ‘I don’t quite know what to make of that.’

  ‘Those Felyal Mantids, Ma’rMaker, they’re all sorts of boatmen,’ Laszlo said slowly. ‘Those longships of theirs turn up all over. Maybe . . .’

  ‘Maybe they sold us to the sea-people,’ Stenwold finished. ‘I find it hard to credit, but . . .’

  ‘But here we are now,’ Teornis finished for him. ‘Perhaps it was just too much temptation after I trusted my life to their forbearance. Ah, well, a lesson learned, although it’s hard to see what use one might make of such a lesson now.’

  Stenwold grasped at the intervening bars, feeling the texture of the ridged stone smooth beneath his hands. ‘Honest and frank, Teornis? You’re still willing to talk?’

  ‘Talk all you wish, Master Maker.’

  ‘Then tell me why.’ When Teornis did not immediately reply he pushed further. ‘Were the Aldanrael so disillusioned by our trade agreements and treaties that they had to push us into war?’

  ‘Ah, that,’ said the Spider, as though it was nothing, merely some child’s game from long ago. ‘Master Maker, I do regret it. I even spoke up against it, but when the matriarchs of the Aldanrael command, I must obey. I’m surprised you haven’t fathomed it yet. Trade, Stenwold – it’s as tawdry as that. Collegium relies heavily on trade coming through Helleron, both by rail and air. Even when the Empire had taken the place, there was still a surprising traffic continuing between your kinden’s cities. However, during that occupation the sea trade increased in leaps and bounds. Your man Failwright and his people did well then, as did many of my own people. It’s clear as glass that Helleron will surrender again, the moment the Empire so much as looks west. All we wanted, once that moment came, was to be in a position to profit from having an absolute control of the sea lanes – nothing more sinister, more dramatic, or more worthy than that. As I say, I myself felt it was beneath us and that there were better ways of exploiting our relationship with Collegium, but my damn-fool cousins decided they wanted to play pirate. Frank and honest enough for you?’

  ‘And Arianna?’ The words came out before Stenwold could stop them. ‘Why . . . ?’ But he let the sentence tail off and die, not wanting to hear his own voice tremble.

  ‘Because I offered her the chance to live as a Spider should, and not as some surrogate Beetle-kinden,’ Teornis explained. ‘If it is any consolation to you, I was never sure truly whether I had her. I don’t think she was sure, either.’

  ‘It’s no consolation.’

  ‘Still, there may be grounds there for some reconciliation, in the unlikely event that we ourselves ever see land or daylight again. After all, our current circumstances surely put such matters into perspective.’

  ‘She’s dead. Danaen killed her.’

  Teornis allowed a respectful interval to pass by before he responded to that. His eventual comment was, ‘Well, I suppose I can claim my share of blame in that. I put her there, with a blade in her hand.’

  Stenwold had no response to that, and an uncomfortable silence fell. In the end it was Laszlo who took up the slack.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma’rMaker. I had an arrow ready for her myself, when she put her knife to you, but I held off. I didn’t think you’d want . . .’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Stenwold emptily. ‘But I suppose Teornis is right. In the face of this’ – he made a gesture that their eyes would pick out better than his own – ‘it all of it seems a little pointless.’

  ‘Sea-kinden . . .’ Teornis pronounced. ‘Well, my excuse is that it is hard to account in one’s plans for the formerly mythological.’

  Laszlo laughed bitterly. ‘All those old maps,’ he said. ‘Sailors’ stories. The sea-kinden – they say you could hear them singing out of the weed forests or from old rocks, to lure ships to their doom, you know? The maps, sometimes they would have them drawn on the empty spaces: beautiful girls down to the waist but, like, lobsters or something underneath. Bit daft, if you ask me.’

  ‘Abominations, they would call those,’ Teornis clarified, ‘and merely an artistic convention. But these sea-kinden here are real enough, and human enough. Your people have no records of such, Stenwold?’

  ‘Not that I’ve ever heard. Possibly our mariners have stories, as Laszlo says, but none that came to me.’

  ‘And so we go on pushing at the borders of the world, until we wish we’d left them well alone,’ the Spider intoned softly, obviously quoting from some source Stenwold was unfamiliar with. ‘Did you ever hear of the City of Bones, either of you?’

  Laszlo anwered no, and Stenwold shook his head, trusting to the Spider’s eyes to catch the gesture. His own vision was slowly adjusting to the pallor of the lamps, not to the gloom, so much, but the strange tricks they played with shape and shadow.

  ‘It is an excavation, past the desert margin beyond Irroven. Scholars from our academies have been digging there nigh on ten years now. Nobody’s ever seen anything quite like it.’

  Stenwold frowned, not perceiving anywhere relevant this was taking them, but he let the man speak. In truth, Teornis’s calm, conversational tones were helping a lot to ease his own disturbed mind, and perhaps the Spider knew it.

  ‘There was a city there once, how long ago I cannot say, save that no Spider histories record it. No modern-day city is nearby, and the region has a poor reputation, for the sensitive. In uncovering the streets of this old ruin, our academics found something appalling, fascinating – a massacre.’

  ‘No need to go digging for that. I could point you to plenty in our lifetimes,’ Stenwold remarked sourly.

  ‘It looked as though some invading force had overrun the walls, killed every living thing and then left the place to the desert. But the true surprise was in the nature of the bones unearthed. Bones of people, certainly, but bones of animals as well. Horses and goats and sheep, but also . . . other kinds of animals. Dozens of kinds of animals, freakish and unheard-of creatures. I have seen some of the pictures the scholars drew, to represent what they believed these dead beasts looked like. The world is best off without them: monsters such as you cannot imagine, horned and tusked and fanged. But dead, all dead, their bones lying where they fell, in the centre of a city lost to all maps. Their last stand, perhaps – but against who?’

  Stenwold shivered, throwing the unpleasant images off. ‘What’s your point?’ he asked.

  ‘My point is that the world holds stranger things in it than we know. Even these sea-kinden are closer kin to us than whatever race lived in that dead city. Our chiefest captors here were enough like me that I must even accept them as some lost offshoot of my people. So, let us inventory what we know of them, and a plan may then suggest itself.’

  ‘We know precious little,’ Stenwold complained. ‘Not least, we know no reason why they should wish us any harm – we who have not so much as looked at them before.’

  ‘Start smaller,’ Teornis suggested. ‘Let us look at our current lodgings. What does this place suggest, to you?’

  Stenwold frowned again, putting a hand to the nearest column of his cell. He felt the smooth, rounded, stone, formed as though it had once flowed like water and then set. ‘No seams,’ he said. ‘This is all of a piece.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a Mole Cricket sculpture?’ Teornis put in. ‘They could build this, I think, with their Art.’

  ‘Caves,’ Laszlo said unexpectedly. When they prompted him, he elaborated, ‘There are sea caves I’ve seen, like this. I don’t know how it works, but it’s like the stone’s dripping from the ceilings. You get spines and pillars, and all sorts, just like it was all frozen in mid-thaw. Only, I’d not put money on getting a lot of close-together little cells like this formed out of it.’

  ‘Sea caves . . .’ Stenwold felt a sudden irrational twitch of hope. ‘Could we be . . . there’s a lot of coast lies east and west from Collegium. There must be a lot of caves that nobody’s ever
gone to.’ His mind was recalling to him that arched space that their captors had let them gaze out on, surely too great to be some little cave tucked into a cliff, but he overrode the thought. ‘Perhaps we’re even in easy march of Collegium, if only we could break out and—’

  ‘You are not near your home.’ The unfamiliar voice startled all three of them to silence. It was a woman’s voice, accented like their captors’, save that it was not coming from above, but from down there amongst the cells.

  Stenwold scanned the dim vaults uselessly, seeing the dark shapes of Teornis and Laszlo, but no other. A moment later, Teornis’s voice snapped out, ‘Show yourself, if you please.’

  Stenwold saw nothing immediate, but he caught Laszlo’s sudden intake of breath.

  ‘You are land-kinden? Truly?’ the woman’s voice resumed.

  ‘My lady, we are,’ Teornis confirmed, with some noticeable respect. ‘I am the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael, and this is War Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium. His comrade is not known to me.’

  ‘Laszlo, off the Tidenfree,’ the Fly piped up, not to be outdone. ‘Pleased to meet you, Ladyship.’

  Stenwold caught a glimpse of movement, and located a shadow that must be her: the tenant of another cell of this stone honeycomb. ‘Then I am Paladrya,’ she told them simply, ‘and whatever ranks or titles I once had, I am shorn of them now, and I can offer you only my apologies, my most sincere apologies, for the harm that I have done you.’

  ‘What harm might that be, Bella Paladrya?’ Teornis asked her softly.

  ‘It is my doing you are here,’ she told them. ‘It is my doing that your people are in danger. All that now befalls you is my fault.’

  Eighteen

  When he had taken hold of this colony of Hermatyre, after the troubles had been put down, he had asked the builders if they would open out a section of this antechamber of his so that he could see the waters.

  With their skill and their Art, they had bidden the substance of Hermatyre retreat, and in its place they left the transparency of membrane, so that he who claimed, at least, to be their lord and master could view this broad slice of his domain. In truth, of course, the builders had no masters, no lords, save perhaps the unknown plan or design that induced them to tolerate all the trespassers – the Obligists – who dwelt here under the roofs that they created. On those few occasions in Hermatyre’s history when an Edmir had displeased the builders, his reign had ended then and there, and it did not help that none could say for sure just what their errors had been. The Edmir Claeon, as with all those before him, therefore trod a careful path that he would never know the precise boundaries of.

  But I pushed far to claim this throne, he considered, and every day I must push further to hold it. The name ‘Rosander’ came to him and he scowled. If only things were otherwise I’d leave that tiny bald head of his out for the fish to clean. But Rosander was a necessary evil, one it seemed that, each day, a little more time and effort went into handling. But now we have the land-kinden, and everything will change. Rosander will have his war and then be out of my way.

  The view through his transparency was of the mottled sea floor, some distance below him, and stretching away until even Claeon’s eyes could see no more. It was far from featureless because, beyond the boundaries that the builders had set on Hermatyre, there were outposts, weed farms, lobster runs, all the complex play of labour that furnished the people of Hermatyre with what they needed to survive. Save for the builders, of course, for the builders lived by their own graces, and cared nothing for those that eked out a living within their creations. So why do they tolerate us, if they do not need us? It was the question preoccupying every Edmir since the first, and Claeon would not be the one to answer it.

  Something monstrous and vast moved across his field of vision, blotting out the rounded shells of farms and the coloured sparks of the limn-lights. Claeon watched as the great coiled length coursed across his view, waiting again until the great leviathan had bunched itself together in a vast knot of limbs and baggy, creased flesh, and then drifted back to press a broad, yellowish eye to his window. This view, this transparent membrane, was one of Claeon’s private pleasures. His people were not permitted to swim up to ogle their ruler, and there were guards outside to enforce his whims. Some creatures of Hermatyre did not consider themselves bound by such laws, however. Just now, Arkeuthys was letting Claeon know of his desire for a conversation.

  Claeon had heard of how it was, for other kinden, when they used the Speech-Art. Their charges were dumb brutes with simple desires, and they were easily instructed, chided and controlled. Claeon’s people had always suffered a more challenging relationship with their own beasts, for the great octopuses of the reef had minds that could reason like a man’s, and as for Arkeuthys . . . Arkeuthys was well over a century old, the largest, wisest and most ancient of his kind, and the undisputed ruler of all his people. Arkeuthys was another necessary evil without whom Claeon would not stand where he now stood.

  You play a dangerous game.

  In Claeon’s head, the voice of the octopus-king was like stones grinding and rattling in the far, cold depths. Normally it was the human mind that opened the channels of Art-Speech, but Arkeuthys had seen human generations come and go, and understood their minds better than they did themselves.

  ‘Because I must,’ Claeon whispered, knowing that Arkeuthys would feel his thoughts, read his lips, draw his meaning out despite membrane and water.

  These prisoners . . .

  ‘Are safe.’

  Are you not concerned that you have gone too far?

  ‘I got where I am by taking risks. You know that.’

  Word about the land-kinden is across the city already.

  Claeon frowned. ‘How is that possible? I took every precaution—’

  You left your own men and the Nauarch’s men alive as witnesses, and you humans do love to talk. Probably there is not one of you who does not now speculate about the Edmir’s new prisoners. You had best make quick use of them.

  Claeon nodded. ‘You were absolutely sure of your prey, were you?’

  Two of them were leaders, the third merely an annoyance.

  The Edmir stared into the horizontal slash that was Arkeuthys’s pupil. ‘And how would you know a land-kinden leader?’

  I can tell a leader of men by the way that he stands, the leaden voice of the octopus ground out the words.

  Claeon’s expression soured a little, wondering if some criticism was meant there. Did he, Claeon, stand like a leader of men? Arkeuthys was silent on that point, and to ask would be to show weakness. ‘We shall see what we can squeeze from them that I can then feed to Rosander.’ He grinned suddenly, teeth glinting amid his dark beard. ‘What of you? Do you, too, not speculate about the fabled land-kinden?’

  What are they to me, or to my kind? Less than nothing, came Arkeuthys’s reply. The huge body bunched itself about the frame of Claeon’s window. There is trouble coming, Edmir. I sense the currents shift. Do not be unready.

  Then the enormous length of the great octopus was spiralling away, surging off into the open water, casting a many-limbed blot over the peaceful and pastoral seascape.

  One of his people came to him shortly after, bowing low and waiting to be acknowledged. She was Sepia-kinden, her pale skin currently set with a spray of red-brown freckles that pulsed slightly as she breathed. Claeon regarded her proprietorially: one of his more decorative servants, and possessing a keen mind for her kind – or at least keen enough to want to keep her master happy.

  ‘What do you bring me?’ He stood with the great sea-window at his back, and beyond it the midnight reaches of his domain.

  ‘An envoy from the Littoralists awaits your pleasure. It is Pellectes, Your Eminence,’ she announced, keeping her eyes modestly lowered. Like all the Sepia-kinden she was slight of build, her body rounded and soft, her nature, he supposed, as passionate and expressive as they were claimed to be. He could not immediately recall h
er name, but that was surely secondary, as was the fact that she had proved herself a fair majordomo since he appointed her three moons ago. She had lasted longer than all of the last three officials put together. Mind you, Claeon had been going through an impatient phase, just before her appointment, and he was a man intolerant of small failures. After all, why spend so much in gaining the Edmiracy, to let fools balk me still?

  And speaking of fools . . . ‘The Littoralists can wait until the coral grows over them,’ he snapped, seeing her skin flush in points and swirls of blue and green at his sharp tone. Pellectes would want the land-kinden handed directly over to him, of course, but Claeon did not need the Littoralists as much as he once did. One necessary evil that is now losing its necessity. And he had only one response to unnecessary evils.

  ‘Send some of my guards to fetch me a spokesman from the prisoners. I will see how these creatures dance,’ he directed his majordomo. Haelyn was her name, he now recalled. He would have to detain her, after she had passed on his orders. It would not be the first time, and she would be glad of it, or at least wise enough not to show any different. It would set him in the right frame of mind for torturing a land-kinden.

  ‘Your fault?’ Stenwold asked, trying to discern more of the woman Paladrya in this poor light.

  ‘I am in no position to make amends,’ she said, her voice halting, tentative. ‘Grant me one wish, though, land-kinden. Tell me, is he well?’

  This was so unexpected that not even Teornis had an answer for her. When the silence stretched out, she begged them, ‘Please, tell me, is he hurt? He . . . he cannot be dead, surely?’ There was a ragged edge to her tone now.

  ‘Lady, we do not know of whom you speak,’ Teornis told her gently.

  ‘But surely he must have sent you . . . ?’ She trailed off. ‘If you do not follow Aradocles then why are you here?’