The Sea Watch

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  He saw Wys’s barque move off ponderously through the water, banking across the face of the weed. One of the darting squid made a pass at it, but turned abruptly as it got close, zigzagging wildly away and almost unseating its rider.

  Something caught at his sleeve and he thought instantly of clutching tendrils, and tried to kick away. His eyes found Gribbern’s long-suffering face, though, and the sea-kinden was pulling him along, not swimming but walking over the seabed in great, bounding strides. Stenwold caught his breath, such as it was, when he saw their destination: the woodlouse-thing, grazing quietly at a stand of weed, with its long antennae flicking mildly at the water.

  I’m running out of air already, Stenwold thought. I can’t just sit atop that thing while it waddles off. Gribbern’s tugging was insistent, though, and soon they found themselves in the shadow of the enormous creature. Abruptly, Stenwold was released, feeling himself begin to choke inside the caul. Gribbern had kicked off from the bottom, and vanished briefly behind the curved horn that was the near side of the monster’s head. Then he reappeared, gesturing urgently, and Stenwold made a tremendous effort, and jumped.

  He made precious little headway, but it was enough for Gribbern to catch his outflung hand and pull him effortlessly the rest of the way. There was a gap there, like a vent or gill where the beast’s head joined the first segment of its body, and it was just large enough for a man to squeeze into. Gribbern seemed intent on forcing him through there and, with no other option, Stenwold pulled and grabbed and wriggled until he was suddenly inside a small chamber beyond. A moment later, Gribbern had joined him, not without some effort, and he ended up with his knees jabbing Stenwold’s chest, and Stenwold’s elbow in his eye. The chamber shook, and the wall at Stenwold’s back parted, spilling water into a further space beyond. He fell backwards, fighting to loosen the caul, and got it off with a great whoop of breath.

  The air was stale-smelling in here, and there was only a single yellowish lamp. There was precious little for it to illuminate, either: a few seamless-looking lumps of shell that Stenwold guessed were containers, and a scattering of clothing that included another coat like Gribbern’s, a pair of thick leathery gauntlets and some long strips of cloth of uncertain function.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked. The water that had come in with him was now draining away somewhere.

  ‘Home,’ Gribbern said shortly. The entire room pitched sideways, and then righted itself, and Stenwold realized that they were inside the monster, and that the monster was under way.

  ‘You . . . live in this thing?’

  ‘Pserry and I live together.’ One of Gribbern’s hands rose to stroke the room’s side with surprising tenderness. ‘Been forty years now, for Pserry and me. We’re too old for all of this chasing about, but we were the closest, more fool us, and Nemoctes and the others couldn’t get here in time. Our bad luck, that. Yours, too, otherwise you’d have had better quarters, no doubt. Still, you’re here now, so we’ll both have to make the best of it.’

  ‘How can you . . . where are we going?’

  ‘Away,’ Gribbern told him. ‘Pserry knows: he sees, and I see what he sees, or what he feels. Most of the time, there’s no light where we roam, we Pelagists. Though technically I’m a Profundist, me. Deeper than anyone, I go. Only mistake is coming up to the shallows, like this, is the way I see it.’

  ‘The shallows?’ Stenwold could not stop himself.

  For the very first time, Gribbern smiled, but not pleasantly. ‘Oh, you’re a land-kinden, that’s right. Well, land-kinden man, there are depths and depths, and then there are the depths that we’ve seen, Pserry and me. After that it gets real deep.’

  No sooner had Laszlo been bundled aboard the shell-ship than Wys was shouting for Lej to get them moving. The previously lazy drift of the ship turned into an abrupt surge, sending Fel and Phylles clutching for the netting, and Laszlo into the air with a flick of his wings. Wys was grinning fiercely.

  ‘Heading?’ bellowed her engineer.

  ‘Go deep around the weed!’ she called back. ‘We’ve some company we need to lose.’

  ‘Are we faster?’ Laszlo asked her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how . . . ?’

  ‘We don’t get tired, and they don’t know the first thing about barques like this one. Let them break all the spears they want against our hull,’ she boasted proudly. A moment later something flashed knife-like across their view: a brief glimpse of a lean, spindly man crouching low in a high saddle, the beast beneath him just a pale blur in the shell-ship’s lamplight. The only impression Laszlo had of the steed was an enormous round eye.

  A moment later there were more of them, coursing back and forth before them, and he realized that they were fighting. They lashed through the water with astonishing swiftness, the riders leaning sideways to jab lance points into the paths of their opponents. These were warriors such as Heiracles had commanded: tall, thin men and women clad in light, sculpted armour. Their free hands mostly held additional spears and they clearly disdained shields. Although their lightning offensives seldom connected, Laszlo saw one of them run straight through by the force of a strike, the lance piercing through breastplate and torso to drive deep into the mantle of his mount. The monster instantly bucked away in a cloud of ink and blood.

  Was that one of Heiracles’s men? Or one of the Edmir’s? There was no sure way for him to tell, although the fighters themselves obviously had no difficulty in discerning. It seemed impossible, in the dim water for them to recognize the faces of their enemies, yet they wore no uniforms, carried no emblems. A thought came to Laszlo, and he asked, ‘These cavalrymen of yours . . . ?’

  ‘The Dart-kinden,’ Wys confirmed, still intently watching her ship’s course. She was close by the window now, hands poised near what might qualify as some kind of levers.

  ‘They have the Art-speech with their beasts?’

  ‘Of course,’ was her prompt reply. ‘Most people do, who can’t get better transportation.’ At which she patted the vessel’s side affectionately. Her words held the familiar contempt of the technologically superior.

  Laszlo nodded. He guessed then that the riders must be taking their cue from their mounts, who would recognize their own stablemates by scent or taste or something. Such Art-speech was something he had seen little of, back on land, but he had heard of it. It was seldom practised, there, save in a few notably backward places. The world had moved on. But obviously not down here.

  A second later Wys jumped back as one of the riders skimmed past the window, jabbing at it with his spear. Laszlo experienced a frozen moment of waiting for the membrane to tear like paper, but it held firm at the cost of an ugly white scar left in the spearpoint’s wake.

  The rider was coming back for a second pass. It was clear that he did not fancy a head-on charge, but was trying to angle himself to make the most of his mount’s speed. Wys hauled down on some device, but with no visible effect.

  Laszlo braced himself. He had the dripping caul ready to hand, still, though if the ship was breached he guessed it would be little enough use. He glanced at Fel and Phylles, and saw them calm.

  When it seemed that the rider was just about to run his mount’s pointed end right through the shell-ship’s hull, the beast twisted aside beneath him, jerking and flailing with its tentacles. It righted itself, facing clear in the opposite direction, and Laszlo had a moment of watching the rider fight furiously to turn it round before it vanished at top speed into the murk.

  ‘A little concoction from the Hot Stations,’ Wys explained, sounding very pleased with herself. ‘They don’t like the taste, you see.’

  Another couple of Dart-kinden riders appeared briefly within their view, but their animals began veering off even as they did so. Shortly thereafter, there was nothing but the submarine blackness to be seen.

  ‘And we’re clear,’ Wys announced, stepping back from the window. ‘Heiracles’s boys must have given them a fair old run, and there’s go
ing to be some heads rolling amongst the Edmir’s guard today. He’s not a man you ever want to report a failure to, I hear.’

  ‘Let’s hope it is a failure they do report,’ Laszlo pointed out.

  ‘Oh, if I’d know you were such a sour one, I’d have left you,’ she reproached him, grinning. ‘Now, listen up, you’re crew until Heiracles tells me what to do with you. That means you do what I say.’

  ‘Oh, it does, does it?’ Laszlo bristled.

  ‘Or you can swim,’ she pointed out. ‘You reckon you get to be a passenger when we all have to work? You can pay your passage, can you?’

  Laszlo opened and closed his mouth a few times, then folded his arms sulkily. ‘So what do I do?’

  ‘Oh, Phylles can start you off on something simple.’

  ‘Wys, they were talking earlier, and he can’t even accreate,’ the larger woman complained. ‘And unless you want lots of things reaching down from high places, that trick of his isn’t exactly useful for much.’

  ‘Find something suitable for him,’ Wys directed. ‘Hey, Spillage!’

  ‘What now?’ came the engineer’s voice.

  ‘Chart us a course for the Hot Stations.’

  Phylles was frowning. ‘Why?’

  Wys smiled. ‘Because we’ve worked for Heiracles enough for me to know where he prefers to do business. He’ll want these land-kinden far away from Hermatyre, and he had friends at the Stations, last I heard. Mark my words, we’ll get some grubby Pelagist turning up sooner or later to tell us just that, so we might as well anticipate him. Besides, Stations are good business.’ She grinned at Laszlo. ‘You’ll like them, land-boy. The Hot Stations are where it’s all happening.’

  Twenty-Four

  There was precious little room in the space behind Pserry’s head, which Stenwold considered was no real surprise. The space there smelt strongly of Gribbern, who must presumably spend much of his life living there. For now, Sten-wold’s reluctant rescuer was mumbling away to himself, hunched over inside his coat, while Stenwold was sitting almost back to back with him, staring at the wall and feeling the gentle rocking motion as Pserry the woodlouse, or whatever it was, clattered over the seabed.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked. Being deprived of any visual clue was maddening.

  ‘Don’t reckon that fellow rightly told me where I should be headed,’ Gribbern broke off his mutterings to answer. ‘Still, don’t see as how I much want to get collared by the Edmir’s people, for all we Pelagists are s’posed to be above all that. Or Profundists, as—’

  ‘Technically you’re a Profundist, yes,’ Stenwold finished for him. ‘Please, Master Gribbern, just tell me something of what’s going on.’

  ‘Master Gribbern,’ the sea-kinden echoed, as if tasting the title. ‘Sounds impressive. If I ever meet a Master Gribbern, I’ll give him your regards. This just-plain-Gribbern says that we’re into the weed now, where their darts won’t easily follow, and won’t follow fast even if they do. We can make good time down here on the bottom, and I always say that steady’s the best way.’

  ‘And after that?’ Stenwold prompted. ‘You have a plan?’

  ‘Don’t reckon it’s up to me to be coming up with plans. Reckon that Heiracles fellow, he’ll go speak to Nemoctes or someone else, depending on who’s closest, and the word will get passed on.’

  ‘You could always take me to the land’s edge,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘Since I’m obviously an inconvenience to you, what’s there to lose?’

  Gribbern harrumphed. ‘Besides from the fact that I don’t reckon it’s a good idea, on account of how a lot of people might get annoyed at me, Nemoctes included, Pserry couldn’t manage it. There’s the land-wall in the way: too steep to climb, and there’s no way we’re swimming it. Besides, I rightly hear that going close to the land is just inviting death. No sense in taking chances, say I.’

  ‘Landwall?’ Stenwold asked, baffled.

  ‘Surely.’ Gribbern twisted round against his back, so as to peer at him. ‘You know all this, rightly? I’m sure it pleases land-kinden to play all kinds of games with us regular folk.’

  ‘I know nothing,’ Stenwold said, with patience. ‘Please educate me.’

  ‘Well landwards of here there’s a great wall where the seabed just rises on up and up. Now Pserry can’t make it, can’t swim so well, but I hear some can swim so close to the surface that they get over it, while some of the Onychoi can go climbing it. Takes many days, they tell me. But up there the water’s shallow, shallower and shallower and not healthy to be in, and then comes the land. Dreadful place, so I’m told, nothing but the emptiness above, and it’s cold and dry and hot and dry all the time, they say.’

  Laszlo told me . . . he said, ‘the Shelf,’ Stenwold recalled abruptly. We were anchored at the edge of the shelf, where the water got deeper. A picture arose in his mind of the Barrier Ridge, the great cliffs that served as the border between the Lowlands and the Commonweal. Perhaps this land-wall, this Shelf, was another such, but wholly under the sea, forming an instinctive border to the sea-kinden world.

  Only they can swim over it . . . but then we can fly over the Barrier Ridge, but few enough do it, because the Commonweal’s strange and unwelcoming and there’s nothing we want there.

  ‘Then . . . how tall’s this weed?’ he asked, trying to assess it.

  ‘All the way to the top, or so they say,’ came the vague reply, and then Gribbern was mumbling again, holding some curious little conversation with himself. Stenwold began to wonder whether it was Pserry that he was confiding in.

  Let’s hope Laszlo got clear as well – and Paladrya. He wondered what would happen to Paladrya now. He had wanted to reassure himself that her life could only get better now that she was out of from Claeon’s clutches, but he did not trust Heiracles one inch. The man was too much like the Spider Aristos he resembled, and Stenwold had no doubt that if it became convenient to denounce Paladrya as regicide and traitress then Heiracles would do so without compunction. The thought upset him, for the Krakind woman had a rare strength in her, to have endured so much in Claeon’s dungeons.

  ‘Master land-kinden,’ Gribbern said abruptly. ‘You know anything about Littoralists?’

  ‘Only what you people have told me,’ Stenwold said, reflecting, And that’s little enough. ‘They’ve got a grudge against the land, it seems, want to go back there and wipe my people out, that kind of thing. Don’t tell me you believe that business, how we forced your ancestors into the sea?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know and don’t see that it matters these days, anyway,’ Gribbern replied. ‘Way I see it, we got ourselves the best of the bargain. Still, I hear them Littoralists got loud voices in Hermatyre these days.’

  Stenwold grunted. Why am I answering these questions about their own world?

  There was a little more murmuring and then, ‘They got people in your places, the Littoralists?’ Gribbern pressed.

  ‘How would . . .’ Stenwold frowned. ‘Yes, I’d say they must have. It wasn’t chance that saw me snatched down here. Someone tricked us into going by boat, and someone was ready for us when we did.’

  Gribbern made a mournful sound, whispering to himself again, and Stenwold was unable to stave off the impression that the other man was relaying everything he said. To his animal? Surely not. He tilted his head back, trying to pick out individual words.

  ‘It sounds as though Claeon is well established there,’ he heard, but the voice was faint and hollow, a deep-voiced man speaking from a great distance. It was not Gribbern.

  Stenwold felt his stomach twist, abruptly feeling the cramped space behind him contained more than merely Gribbern’s hunched form. ‘Who said that?’ he demanded. ‘Who’s there with you?’

  ‘Don’t see anyone here with me but you,’ Gribbern answered, maddeningly slowly. ‘But I was talking to Nemoctes.’

  ‘Who . . . how?’

  ‘Just Art, land-kinden,’ Gribbern told him, as though enlightening Stenwold was a personal tra
gedy. ‘Only Art. We spend so much of our lives alone, we Pelagists – or we Profundists, as I say. We spend our time so many leagues from one another, and you can go years in the deep places, in the far reaches of the sea, and never see a beast or barque that another human being lives in. We sit well with solitude, we do, but still we cannot pretend that we do not miss the voices of our fellows. We have an Art, is all, all of us drifting kinden. We speak to one another from time to time.’

  ‘How far?’ Stenwold asked him. Is there anything like this amongst the kinden I know? But he knew there was not. This was not the Mindlink of the Ants: the distances were too great, and Stenwold had actually heard Nemoctes’s voice. The sea-kinden had another impossible trick up their sleeves.

  ‘Oh, it varies,’ Gribbern said placidly. ‘Perhaps you should talk to Nemoctes yourself. It might be of some use. I’ll pass on what you say to him. Nemoctes, I’m letting you talk to him now.’

  The faraway voice came, from some indefinable point before Gribbern. ‘Land-kinden, do you hear me?’

  ‘My name is Stenwold Maker.’

  ‘He says his name’s Stenwold Maker,’ Gribbern murmured. ‘Sounds a strange kind of name to me. Over-fancy, I’d say. Still, what do I know?’

  ‘I am Nemoctes, Stenwold Maker,’ spoke the voice. Even tiny and echoing, it gave Stenwold the impression of a confident and powerful man.

  ‘You’re the leader of these Pelagists?’ Stenwold asked, Gribbern’s low voice shadowing his words.

  ‘There is no such thing,’ said the absent Nemoctes, sounding amused, ‘but enough of them will listen to me. I represent some of us who have come to dislike Hermatyre under its current rulership.’

  ‘Nemoctes,’ Stenwold said, with as much patience as he could muster, ‘I appreciate there’s all kinds of politics going on down here, but it’s nothing to do with me, and it’s nothing to do with my people. All I want to do is go home.’