The Sea Watch

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Stenwold stared at him. Seeing his expression, Tseitus snorted with satisfied disdain. ‘You know, of course, where the name “the Atoll Coast” derives, Maker?’ Tseitus was clearly the sort of lecturer that College students loathed. ‘Why, because there are islands all along the sea’s edge, hundreds of them, and mostly windswept rocks. But yet – they are not rocks: they are coral. There are reefs and reefs, Maker, so that navigators and ships’ pilots find themselves in a sought-after and well-rewarded profession. Those reefs are not mere stone, you understand.’

  ‘Arketoi . . .’ Stenwold murmured.

  ‘The colony of Grande Atoll is some leagues outside of Seym Harbour,’ Tseitus told him. ‘They are not so shy, there. Not so very long ago, we learned that land- and sea-kinden meeting means only trouble: a war between worlds that washed earth and water both with blood. After that, over these last centuries, there has been some small contact. I will not say that land and sea go hand in hand, but we have diplomats, even a little carefully controlled trade. We have little they want, though. This’ – he waved his hand to indicate what Stenwold assumed was the Hot Stations in its entirety – ‘is different. This Aptitude, this lust for artifice, Grande Atoll would not understand. They are all Inapt there, I think, or else just ignorant.’ As he spoke, he continued sketching deftly with the strangely shaped reservoir pen the sea-kinden had made for him. ‘You don’t realize, Maker . . . you don’t realize at all.’

  Blank white eyes, and a touch like silk . . .

  Stenwold blinked at the old Ant. ‘What don’t I realize?’

  From the doorway there came a sudden bellow of laughter. Laszlo had enlisted one of the broad-shouldered guards into whatever conversation he was having there. Stenwold saw him gesturing some point and then Tseitus made a loud click of annoyance with his tongue. A moment later the little party, Laszlo included, had stepped outside, smirking.

  ‘You don’t realize how lucky we land-kinden were to have got there first. Oh, perhaps there’s something about the land that inspires progress, I won’t deny. Certainly I understand that the people of Grande Atoll consider the land a very hostile place: too hot, too cold, too barren. The sea provides them with everything they need, whereas we must struggle. But had it been any other way round . . .’

  ‘What?’ Stenwold demanded, feeling abruptly combative. ‘I’ve seen sea-kinden engineering. It’s nothing special, apprentices are set harder tasks – and that’s with you and your predecessors filling in the gaps for them, no less.’

  ‘You miss the point,’ argued Tseitus with scholarly derision. ‘I would guess that Aptitude here has been widespread for less than a century, or at least they made no use of it before then. They are behind, Maker. They are centuries behind us. No wonder their work looks clumsy. Consider their natural advantages, though, and you will see that if it were we who happened to be behind, the gap would now be that much the greater. Consider their methods of manufacture.’

  ‘This accreation business?’ Stenwold said.

  ‘You’ve seen their ornament – how very fine and delicate the work is?’ Tseitus pressed. ‘Now imagine machine parts made that way, with infinite precision and detail. All it takes is a craftsman who can envisage what he needs with enough clarity – and they already have them, only a few yet, but there will be more.’

  Stenwold’s rejoinder died on his lips. ‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘And their materials, too.’

  ‘I’ve seen mostly bronze – that and various kinds of shell and cloth, and this paper.’

  Tseitus shook his head swiftly, very much the debating academic. ‘No no, the clothes and the paper they make from seaweed, or some such. They weave and spin and pulp and stitch just as we do. The rigid materials, though, are accreated, and whilst the wider undersea may consider bronze the cutting edge of progress, here in the Stations it is different. Why do you think they go to the trouble of living here, without the Builders to shelter them? The heat: the heat and the minerals in the water allow them to accreate stronger stuffs. Their metal, Maker, they call it Benthic spring steel. I swear to you it’s a finer temper than any you’ve ever seen above water. So strong, so flexible . . . if we can somehow find out how to make it by conventional means, we could revolutionize half a dozen fields of mechanics!’

  ‘And this is what you’re after, is it?’ Stenwold asked him. ‘This is why you aid them, because, on the side, you’re trying to unravel this new metal of theirs?’

  ‘I am a scholar and an artificer, of course,’ Tseitus said, as though astonished that the question should even be posed.

  Stenwold put his head in his hands. ‘Were you aware that they intend to invade Collegium?’ he asked wearily. ‘Hermatyre has an army of restless Onychoi waiting, even now, for the word.’ He looked up at Tseitus, saw the old man caught by a sudden uncertainty.

  ‘I . . .’ the Ant muttered, ‘I would have died, in my submersible . . . or they would have starved me, killed me . . . I had no choice.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Stenwold sadly, wondering if he himself would have one either.

  Mandir’s audience chamber was as makeshift and uneven as the rest of his domain, but the Man of the Hot Stations had taken pains to impress each visitor with his importance.

  He had a throne, for one thing, or at least it was a kind of high chair built of pieces of coral and stone and metal, in a blocky, mismatched mosaic. It placed him so that any visitor would have to look up at him, and on either side of it, as evidence of his martial prowess, was displayed a fan of spears, curved swords and other oddly shaped weapons. The pair of Onychoi warriors that flanked his seat added further to such implied potency, but Stenwold’s favourite touch, viewing the man enthroned in state, was the cloak. Mandir wore a cloak that fell all the way to the floor, a garment cut long enough to fit a gangling giant, dyed in deeply vibrant purple and edged with shimmering, overlapping discs that Stenwold eventually recognized as polished fish-scales.

  ‘You’re looking peaky, landsman,’ Mandir addressed him. ‘Are you eating properly?’

  It had been two days since Stenwold had eaten. He had needed the time to work out what his moral stance was: what he was willing to compromise. In the end, he suspected, hunger had begun to wear down his finer objections. It had been a long while since he had truly been obliged to fast.

  ‘Mandir,’ Stenwold named him, wondering if there was some proper form of address. He could hardly call him just ‘Man’. The little despot looked satisfied, though, and gestured for him to speak.

  ‘I’ll work for you,’ Stenwold continued tiredly. ‘I will provide you with designs, and improve the designs your people have already.’

  ‘It’s all I ask,’ Mandir replied reasonably. ‘I’ll have my people fix you a solid meal. You look like you could use it.’

  ‘Wait,’ Stenwold told him, one hand up. The gesture caused the guards to stir, their armour scraping. ‘I have conditions,’ he said.

  Mandir’s forehead wrinkled. ‘He has conditions,’ he told the air. ‘The lord of the land is grown grand again, is he?’

  ‘You want my help,’ Stenwold pointed out.

  ‘I do, I do want it. You, on the other hand, need to eat. Be thankful we’re giving you fresh water on credit.’

  ‘It’s not a very great condition, Man of the Stations,’ Stenwold said, seeing the formality of address have a placating effect. Mandir made another laconic gesture, and Stenwold went on, ‘It concerns my companion, Laszlo.’

  Mandir grinned at that. ‘I’m hearing a lot about him. He’s turning out to be quite a favourite. Shaved his head, hasn’t he? Wants to look civilized.’

  ‘So I understand,’ Stenwold nodded. In truth, with his stubble cropped, and with the way he held his shoulders now, Laszlo looked uncannily like the small Onychoi found among Mandir’s own people. He had taken on the mantle of surrogate sea-kinden with an ease that suggested an interesting past, and Stenwold recalled how Laszlo had served the Tidenfree as its factor, t
he one they sent out to make deals.

  ‘I hear he’s quite today’s flavour.’ Mandir warmed to his subject. ‘Does jigs and dances with his Art and all that. I was going to have him to dance for me some time.’

  Dancing was perhaps not one of Laszlo’s strong points, but since he was the only person in the whole of the depths who could fly, there would be little skill needed to amaze an audience. Mandir’s people had been turning up at all hours wanting to see this prodigy from the land.

  ‘He’s no artificer, Mandir,’ Stenwold explained. ‘He’s restless and unhappy. He wants to see more of your realm here. If you let him roam a little, I’ll stand surety.’

  ‘Will you so?’ Mandir peered down at him as if suddenly regretting the distance. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s not used to being imprisoned,’ Stenwold said. ‘Because you’ve told me how we land-kinden don’t thrive down here, and maybe that’s because we’re always being penned in, never free. Think how you yourself might like it, to be barred up in some strange place, and cut off from everything you know. If he has a chance to get to know people, make some new life for himself here, well . . .’

  ‘And what of you? I’m not letting you go trawling off on your own,’ Mandir warned him.

  ‘I will at least have the satisfaction of whatever news he brings back with him and, as long as I am in your hands, you can be sure that he always will come back.’

  ‘He’ll spy for you,’ Mandir accused.

  ‘If that’s how you wish to phrase it. But if I can have eyes and ears outside, it will help me adapt, too. I admit, it seems that I’m here for the long haul, so at least give me something more than just the work.’ He was not sure how convincing he was being, but then Mandir was no expert in Beetle-kinden expressions, any more than Stenwold could reliably read the Man himself.

  ‘Well,’ the little tyrant said at last, ‘perhaps . . . Perhaps, but I have conditions too.’

  Oh, yes? ‘What conditions might those be, O Man of the Stations?’

  And Mandir reached under the folds of his over-long cloak and produced an object that was small even in his hands, which sent a jolt of recognition through Stenwold.

  ‘Where . . . ?’

  ‘Oh please, landsman, you can answer that one for yourself. From Claeon’s people, who took it from you, of course. They had no idea what it was, but my agents in Hermatyre bought it from them because it looked like something I might be interested in.’ Mandir’s eyes gleamed. ‘I am interested, too, landsman. I have studied this thing, and I don’t understand quite how it does what it does, but I can see its purpose, and it is beautiful.’ The emphasis, the sudden passion, was surprising, and Stenwold was forced to recast the little man as something more than merely a jumped-up merchant lord. An artificer, at heart, he thought: an artificer now holding a cut-down snapbow. In Mandir’s hands, the two-barrelled weapon that Totho had made for Stenwold shone malevolently in the limn-lights.

  ‘You work on this device, landsman. You plan me a simple version of this thing, that my craftsmen can copy. I’ll give your friend the freedom of the Stations in the meantime, so long as he realizes he’ll always be watched. But I want one of these. I want the Stations to have these. These,’ he announced, with a steely grin, ‘are nice.’

  Twenty-Nine

  The previous lord of the Hot Stations had not kept an audience chamber, had not used a throne, had dressed plainly and been little more than a tavern-keeper to the Benthic trains passing through. The previous lord had not received emissaries from Deep Seep and Hermatyre, bringing him word from their Edmirs as if he was an equal – at least as long as those Edmirs wanted something from him. Mandir contemplated this satisfactory state of affairs as he lounged on his high seat. Claeon had many faults, but the speed of his spies was not one of them, so his representative newly here in the Stations was very obviously sniffing after a certain pair of disappeared captives.

  By his order, she came in unarmed and unescorted. They had met before, just the once, a few years ago, but she had not been in this position of responsibility then, merely a pretty adornment belonging to the retinue of Claeon’s then-majordomo. Mandir looted his memory and reckoned recalling that the man she then followed had eventually been torn apart by crabs . . . or had he been the one dropped into the stinging coils of a sea-anenome? Mandir had no wish to visit Hermatyre, but it did sound as though the entertainment there was second to none. Claeon was mad, but his madness gave him a distinct sense of style.

  ‘Haelyn, I believe,’ he named her, leaning down from his seat. She was as he remembered her, and he remembered her quite clearly. Sepia-kinden were one of the Kerebroi family’s minor branches, but so very comely. She now stood in the centre of his audience chamber, hands folded demurely before her, and clad in a long drape of white that had been arranged to hide and suggest in carefully calculated proportions. Her skin fluttered blue and gold and red, as though she was nervous, but her eyes remained steady.

  ‘Mandir, master of the Hot Stations,’ she began, ‘I bring you greetings from your fellow sea-lord, the Edmir Claeon of Hermatyre.’

  ‘How’s the old fellow doing?’ Mandir leered. ‘Fatter in body and looser in mind? Don’t answer that. Perhaps he’s doing better after all. His choice of majordomo has certainly improved. How long now since you took that office, Haelyn?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘And what can our poor Hot Stations do for your majestic master?’

  She squared her shoulders, tilted her head back. ‘He is glad to note that you have recaptured certain renegades, and looks forward to their return to him, to face justice.’

  ‘Renegades from Hermatyre?’ Mandir put on a great show of surprise. ‘Whatever next? Why would anyone wish to flee a colony governed by a man as fair-minded as Claeon?’

  She did not rise to that. ‘Certain unusual renegades . . . you know full well I am talking of the land-kinden, Mandir.’

  ‘Land-kinden? Are there such things as land-kinden? Aren’t they all ten feet tall and able to kill with a single look?’

  Haelyn sighed, folding her arms. ‘Shall we dispense now with the formal denials?’

  ‘Consider them spoken. I’m keeping the landsmen, however. Your master can holler and huff as much as he wants. He forgets that we are the coming power now, here in this stretch of the waters.’

  ‘Hermatyre custom feeds your industry here. You are wholly dependent on the trade of others,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Hermatyre custom won’t stop because Claeon passes an edict. That’ll just bring him one step closer to being pulled from his throne and torn apart by his own subjects – may the day be soon,’ Mandir replied flatly. ‘I never liked him, even before the old Edmir’s death. We’d all be better had the boy lived. I say this even though Hermatyre exiles currently throng my streets and do my bidding. Claeon’s about mad enough to do something very foolish, so don’t think I can’t turn away Rosander’s Thousand Spines if they end up marching in my direction. You can tell him that as well.’

  She bit her lip. ‘You’re not leaving me much to say to him, that will not have me executed.’

  ‘So don’t go back, then,’ Mandir suggested. ‘We don’t get so many Sepia-kinden here. Take on with me. I liked you when I met you that time before. I like you more, seeing you again. Do you dance?’

  ‘Dance?’ she spat.

  ‘Sepia-kinden dance? Skin-dancing? Been years since I saw that. Like I say, we don’t get many of your kinden, and they don’t last here long.’

  ‘Because you kill them?’ she suggested bitterly.

  He looked at her stonily, letting seconds of silence pass. ‘Because life is hard here, and your people are not suited for the heat and the graft. I’m not Claeon. I’m trying to keep a very artificial little world together here, and be as tough as I must, confiscating landsmen included, but I’m not Claeon. I know well what his pastimes are, his hooks and lashes. I like women and good drink, and fine things, but stripping the skin off my
subjects has never appealed to me, nor would they stand for it.’

  She still glared at him, stubbornly. ‘And yet my kinden do not last here, and still you ask me to stay. What sense is there in that?’

  ‘You’ll live longer here than at Claeon’s side, nevertheless. That’s all the sense you need.’

  ‘I don’t dance.’

  ‘Shame. The offer’s still open.’

  ‘You’re serious?’ Haelyn frowned at him, incredulous. ‘Mandir, you say Claeon’s mad? Where would you be, to steal his emissaries? What do you think he might do to retaliate, if he is so very rash?’

  Mandir sat back in his seat, plucked at a fold of his long cloak and examined it minutely. ‘I don’t fear him, for if he sent a pack of Kerebroi here, he’d find half of them would switch sides as soon as they arrived, glad to be out of his shadow. As for Rosander, well, Rosander knows well what toys we have here. He has a few of them himself, and he knows we have many more. If Claeon were to send him here, I’d wager that would be the end of their friendship – which friendship I hear is tottering anyway. So, I keep the landsmen and, if you’ll agree to it, I’ll keep you too, and keep you well.’

  ‘And would taking to your bed be a condition of that offer?’ she sneered. ‘I regret that Smallclaw Onychoi have never been to my taste.’

  Mandir cocked his head to one side. ‘You should review your fancies, Haelyn. When I was a boy, we Smallclaw were always last to the table, even here. The Kerebroi ruled, the Greatclaw were strong and led the trains, the Pelagists had no time for us. We just tagged along with whoever would have us, and made things and fastened armour and tried not to get anyone angry at us. But this is now, and I rule here, and my kinden are coming into their own. We run the Hot Stations, and we’re the leading edge of all that’s new under the sea. Being half the size of you doesn’t mean we have to look up to you any more.’ He gestured expansively around at the audience chamber, the guards, the displays of arms. ‘But, no, it’s no condition. Come to us here and you’ll be safe from Claeon, no questions asked. Because I like you. And because I’m not Claeon. The landsmen, you know, they keep what they call slaves in their homes: people who are property, who work until they die, and who live and die according to some owner’s word, without even a chance to complain.’ He paused to watch her reaction. ‘That’s the land, Haelyn, not death glaring in every eye, but not a paradise either, and more fool the Littoralists for preaching otherwise. But, you know what, Claeon would fit right in. Claeon would make a good landsman, whereas I’m proud to say I wouldn’t. Now, you’d better go and work out what you can say to your lord and master that will keep your skin intact, or else work out that you’re better off staying here with us. Take your time, either way.’