The Sea Watch

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Your spy’s here,’ a sardonic voice observed from by his elbow. Chenni was pointing up the beach to where the cliffs began. Teornis’s eyes picked out a couple of figures making their careful way down by some narrow path: a Beetle man and a Spider woman . . . No, a Kerebroi woman, although he might have taken her for a Spider at a passing glance, had he not known. Here was Pellectes’s agent, the worm in the timbers of Collegium.

  As for the man . . . Teornis found himself smiling as he placed the face. Oh, now that’s interesting. How many masters may a man actually have?

  He now strode forward, every inch the confident Aristos, showing no hint of being a prisoner, of being kept for tendays away from the light and air.

  ‘Why, Master Broiler, as I live and breathe, how splendid!’

  Helmess Broiler evidently did not find it so – which argued for wisdom. Matters were out of his hands as of now, though, Teornis decided. He bowed low before the woman. ‘Madam, you have had word of me, I hope?’

  ‘Some word,’ she agreed, regarding him with narrowed eyes. She was a reasonably comely piece of work, he decided, although close-up she did not compare to one of true Spider blood. Still, a Beetle could do worse, no doubt.

  ‘Lady, I am Teornis of the Aldanrael, former Lord-Martial of the Grand Army of the Spiderlands, and implacable enemy of Collegium. You, I take it, are of Pellectes’s party, one of the Littoralists?’

  The hastily hidden bafflement on Helmess’s face was a joy to see. So I know more than you already, Master Beetle. Therefore beware.

  ‘Elytrya,’ the woman named herself. ‘I was told you would be of use to the cause. Is that so?’

  ‘Why else would I be here?’ Teornis assured her. ‘I bring some lackeys also, for your use, but we must have them properly disguised. It would not do for them to enter Collegium too openly, either as sea-kinden or Spiders.’

  ‘We have clothes, cloaks,’ she told him, still distrusting. ‘There is a carriage waiting, but these will not all fit in it.’

  ‘They’ll have to jog alongside, like servants,’ Teornis decided. ‘We’ll tell them it’s a landsman custom. The exercise will do them good, since I daresay Claeon doesn’t exercise them enough.’ He was watching carefully, and he noticed the slight crease of humour appear in her face. Oh Claeon, you are held in such low esteem even by your own allies. ‘Shall we go now?’ he offered, and she nodded curtly.

  Behind them the Onychoi were fussing over the trial machine, but happily in so far as he could judge. Ahead, just a climb up the cliffs and a carriage-ride away, lay the civilized, land-bound comforts of Collegium. Even Beetle hospitality would serve, after what he had been through.

  And there would be eyes watching for his return. Teornis had grown tired of dancing to another’s tune. It was time to make the melody himself.

  The Collegium watch knew Helmess Broiler, that was clear, and were obviously used to his nocturnal perambulations. Teornis wondered if the man had publicly cultivated a hobby such as star-gazing, or collecting moths, to justify his habits, or whether he simply relied on his status as an Assembler to deflect rumour. Considering what he knew of him, Teornis suspected the former, and also guessed that the Beetle had arranged for this particular watch officer to have this particular shift, with open hand and blind eye to the ready. Helmess, he assessed, was a workmanlike intelligencer, and one who had kept a great secret for some time. So when did I hear that Broiler had got himself a Spider mistress? It had not seemed important at the time, and it had been quite the fashion after Maker took in Arianna. Waifs, strays and exiles from all across the Spiderlands had ended up as paramours and escorts to the Beetle-kinden men and women of consequence thanks to Stenwold’s proclivities. Teornis had seen no reason to have a spy in Helmess’s parlour, since he had always suspected Helmess was the Empire’s man, and the Aldanrael maintained a spy at the Imperial embassy. So why waste effort on one more old Beetle?

  Oh, what we might have learned, had I done so. However, no regrets now. Time to weep for the past when my enemies are dead, as the poet said.

  Teornis had made sure that, as Broiler’s four-beetle carriage was forced to halt at the gates to the city, he stepped just out to stretch his legs. Claeon’s people, looking like shabby peasants of no fixed kinden, clustered together behind the carriage, plainly shocked and horrified by Collegium even at night-time. Teornis had laid a reassuring hand on Geontes’s shoulder. I shall spare you too much further discomfort, he promised inwardly. He grinned up at the stars out of genuine pleasure at remaking their acquaintance, and because there would be those looking out for his face, should he ever re-enter the city.

  Then they were rattling through the sleeping streets, the Kerebroi shambling along behind again, and only Teornis spared a moment to look again towards the skies. Certainly the sea-kinden would not think to, and Beetles are so earth-bound. His keen eyes caught the shudder of wings up there, and an excitement that had been distant till now began abruptly welling up. I am back in the Dance.

  They encamped at Broiler’s townhouse, the Beetle magnate now looking harried, and with good cause. Claeon’s men he had already been expecting, and no doubt he felt confident of handling the bewildered, land-lost Kerebroi, but Teornis provided a rogue factor, an element that his planning had not taken into account. The game had changed.

  And yet Teornis made sure to appear meekness personified. Though their conversation had been slight, he had shown himself, on the journey, to be Claeon’s man, relieved only to be out of the depths. ‘Oh you cannot imagine,’ he had whispered to Helmess Broiler, ‘the darkness, down there, the sense of weight. It is no place for us landsmen, no place at all.’ Even so, the Beetle had not seemed convinced.

  Geontes and his fellows ended up squatting about Hel-mess’s parlour, their shabby cloaks over their Hermatyre riches giving them the look of larcenous tramps. Helmess’s servants were mostly absent, no doubt promptly sent away to avoid telling tales of these remarkable strangers. There was only one on hand to serve some drinks, a stocky man with a cultured air who Teornis tentatively identified as a halfbreed, albeit a very subtle one. Spider blood, so worth watching.

  ‘Sands,’ Helmess said when asked about him. ‘Forman Sands, my man of all work.’ He wore a steely little smile as he said it. Teornis knew the expression from his dealings in Helleron long ago. It was polite Beetle parlance for someone that removed obstacles in business and personal life, by whatever means.

  ‘He seems a handy fellow to have around,’ Teornis remarked.

  ‘Oh, he’ll do,’ Helmess agreed, the implicit threat hovering. The Spider only smiled politely.

  While the Kerebroi were being served bowls of wine, most of which ended up slopped on the floor, Teornis went to the window and leant out, taking in a deep breath of cool air. Sensing Helmess at his shoulder, he said, ‘I am not quite used yet to having a sky up there,’ which was true. He smiled back at his host whilst, at the windowsill, his fingers busily spun glinting strands. ‘Tell me, Master Broiler, what do you yourself seek from all of this?’

  ‘Why?’ Helmess asked him, eyes narrowed. He was suspicious, yes, but suspicious only of the question. The instructions that Teornis’s hands were sketching went unseen, save by the eyes outside the house that they were meant for. It was not just the sea-kinden that possessed a silent finger-language.

  ‘Have they promised you a governorship? What on earth does Rosander intend to do with the place, once he has it?’

  ‘I doubt he’s thought it through,’ said Helmess, drawn into speaking, despite himself. ‘And so he will need someone to think for him. I fancy that Elytrya and I shall be appointed king and consort of the city. Surely, Rosander has no clue how to govern the place, and after sufficient raids from the sea he will wish for something more permanent. I will be waiting, and of proven loyalty.’

  I cannot think of any phrase less fitting for you. ‘As you know, my own people will descend on this place soon enough,’ Teornis told him, wondering absently
if the ships had even left harbour yet. ‘Once the back of the Assembly is broken, by whatever means, the picture you sketch may be attractive. An ostensibly independent Collegium will look better to us, and I am sure you will be happy to let our ships ply the sea trade on your behalf. It was all we ever wanted, after all. Such a great fuss over a few coins here or there in a merchant’s purse.’ He brushed off his hands, their work done, strands of glittering thread ghosting away into the night air.

  He turned away from the window, smiling at Helmess, and placed his back to the wall. The Kerebroi sat sullenly as Elytrya spoke to them about the great things that the Littoralists would accomplish, once their long-lost land had been reclaimed. Helmess drank sparingly and remained suspicious.

  His man of all work stayed close to his elbow. It was impossible to tell from his face just how far into this conspiracy Sands was. Has potential, that one, Teornis noted. Just how much potential, we’ll see in a moment.

  Perhaps half an hour later his people came bursting through every available window.

  They were his Dragonfly-kinden, and so had been able to go to ground in Collegium with ease. To the Beetles, Dragonflies meant the Commonweal, who were enemies of the Wasps and therefore nominal friends of the city. Most Beetles had very little idea what a Commonweal Dragonfly should look like and so these men and women, lean and hard in their armour of chitin and hide and with their personal histories written on their skins with scars and tattoos, easily passed muster. The Commonweal was known to be a strange and backward place, after all.

  They fell upon the Kerebroi with a will, without hesitation. Geontes was among the first to die. A few of the others had knives out, but tangled in their unfamiliar clothing, before the Dragonflies butchered them. Other intruders had arrows poised on the string, directed at Sands, at Helmess, at Elytrya. Teornis’s instructions had been necessarily crude – kill all Spider-kinden save the Arista and myself – because the Art-web language was difficult for non-Spiders to follow, and he had not dared to be more specific. Forman Sands, caught at arrow-point standing creditably in front of his employer, owed his life merely to Teornis’s need for a simple message, and it was lucky that Teor-nis’s followers had identified Elytrya as the ‘Arista’ or she would have died too.

  It was over so swiftly, with a minimum of fuss. Of the three Dragonfly principalities in exile within the Spider-lands, the warrior-folk of Solorn were those most divorced from their heritage. They had long turned their back on the peace and philosophy of the Commonweal, scratching out a harsh livelihood on their rocky peninsula, bandits, raiders and mercenaries like their cousins in Princep Exilla. Teornis had employed them in his personal house guard and cadre for years.

  ‘Varante,’ he greeted their leader. The tall, cord-muscled man bowed in a quick, jerky movement. He was automatically cleaning the blade of his punch-sword with a torn swatch of cloth taken from the cloak of one of the dead. He had served the Aldanrael for twenty years, had Varante, and grown grey and leathery in their service. But not old, never old.

  ‘Lord-Martial,’ the Dragonfly addressed him, ‘honoured to serve. The bodies in the bay?’

  Teornis gave him a wide and genuine smile. His depth of feeling surprised him: how glad he was to see this familiar face, this old retainer who had now restored him to power. ‘Not in the bay, no,’ he considered. ‘That would send entirely the wrong message. Have them taken out and dumped somewhere inland. The further inland the better. Let them become food for ants and worms, but not for fish.’ He turned to Helmess and Elytrya, all smiles now. ‘You may be feeling some anxiety as to where this is going,’ he told them, as though there were not eight corpses being stripped of their valuables and manhandled out of the window one by one. They stared at him, shocked into paralysis. Only Sands seemed able to react, and he was keeping carefully quiet, understanding that he had just become the most expendable person in the room. I wonder if he would contemplate a change of employer?

  ‘You’ – Teornis pointed at the Kerebroi woman – ‘will achieve your conquest of the land. Bring Rosander and his host to Collegium, and that will serve. All I said before remains just as true. And you,’ his finger flicked towards Helmess, ‘can be governor or king or grand high sealord of this place after we’re done, for all I care. Everything goes ahead just as you want.’ Teornis’s smile was iron. ‘But we do it my way. So now let’s talk about Aradocles.’

  Thirty-One

  ‘Do you suppose the Spider fleet has reached Collegium yet?’ Stenwold asked. The paper swam before his eyes, covered with a scrawl of lines and angles. He was trying to anatomize the snapbow in such a way as to baffle Mandir’s engineers without betraying his word, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that they were better artificers than he gave them credit for. The leathery, unpleasant parchment and the awkward excuse for a reservoir pen that Tseitus had been able to construct did not help matters. Though sleep weighed heavily on him, he was reluctant to give in to it. He had been waking each morning with a pounding head and a sense of loss and despair, as though, wherever his dreams took him, it was a place that would not easily let him go.

  ‘Depends,’ Laszlo said philosophically, picking at his nails with the point of a knife that he had somehow got hold of. ‘If it’s a fleet, then yes, but whether it’ll do any good’s another question. What I heard, though, was “armada”, and that means something different, over Spiderlands way. That means more than one of their great houses pitching in, and in my experience that sort of thing can take a long time to get organized. If it’s an armada proper, if they’re serious about this sea-war business, then it’s still in harbour like as not, while four overseers and fifty mercenary skippers are arguing about money.’

  ‘I suppose I should take hope from that,’ Stenwold said weakly. He looked up as Laszlo padded over. The Fly’s expression showed concern.

  ‘We are getting out, Mar’Maker. No doubts. Soon, too, if Wys and Nemmo can be believed. Any day now, they say. Something’s coming. Last I went out, everyone seemed tense, but nobody was talking about it. There’s trouble, Mar’Maker, and where there’s trouble, there’s opportunity.’

  ‘The watchword of the Tidenfree, I suppose?’ Stenwold mustered a smile.

  ‘And of the Bloodfly before her,’ Laszlo agreed. ‘And the other half of that is, if you can’t find trouble, make it.’

  ‘Does Tseitus know that you have such plans?’

  Laszlo screwed his face up. ‘Not as such, not quite. Not even sure what way that one will jump. I’ll tell him when it happens. He can nail his colours then. Until then, well . . . I don’t want our sour-faced Ant deciding he prefers it here.’

  ‘Seems hardly likely.’

  Laszlo shrugged. ‘Who can know what an Ant’s thinking, save for another Ant?’ He swiped the sheet of paper that Stenwold was working on and frowned at it.

  ‘You have a criticism of my draughtsmanship?’ Stenwold asked him archly.

  ‘Is that what you call it? You’ll not show this to Mandir, will you?’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘He might wonder whether your real talents lie elsewhere.’ Laszlo reversed the sheet, showing the fruits of Stenwold’s labour back to their creator. The tangle of shakily drawn technical plans had trailed off, and instead the pen lines had taken on a woman’s likeness. It was rough work, for Stenwold was no artist, but perhaps he had picked up more from his lost friend Nero than he knew. Certainly Stenwold recognized the woman’s face.

  ‘I have no recollection of drawing that,’ he said hollowly.

  ‘You know,’ Laszlo observed, obviously picking his way around a delicate subject, ‘Mandir would get a woman in here for you, if you wanted one. He’s the soul of generosity sometimes, I’ve heard.’

  ‘No!’ Stenwold said, after a moment of gaping. ‘Absolutely not.’ The thought of some fearful Onychoi or Gastroi maid being shoved into his chamber was too much. Besides, my traitor hand has shown to where my mind drifts, and Mandir cannot bring her here – and
woe betide him if he tried it.

  Laszlo’s next shrug eloquently asserted that there were worse bedfellows than sea-kinden, and Stenwold wondered if it was Wys he had lain with, but guessed not. Whenever Laszlo spoke of the submersible captain, the impression left was that their only partnership involved business.

  The Fly shook his head. ‘Go and sleep, Mar’Maker. You look like one of those big Onychoi lads punched you in both eyes.’

  To sleep, to dream. Stenwold shook himself in despair. I have no rest, not anymore. Still, he dragged himself off to the pallet the sea-kinden had brought for him, which had the same unpleasant texture as their paper, only hoping that he was tired enough to escape whatever waited for him.

  He woke because Laszlo was shaking him. He had no idea how much time had passed, as the Stations experienced neither day or night. His mind was still awhirl with images: coiling hair, luminescent limbs.

  ‘What . . . ?’ he got out.

  ‘Up, Mar’Maker, up!’ Laszlo urged him. ‘It’s time!’

  ‘Hm?’ Stenwold blinked, and then let out a strangled cry and leapt to his feet. ‘Time for . . . ?’

  ‘The Stations are under attack,’ the Fly told him gravely.

  Stenwold stared. ‘Attack by Claeon?’

  ‘Just get yourself dressed and ready to run.’

  ‘Or . . . Nemoctes is attacking?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not him. They’d not be scared of him. But they’re scared now, all right. Every able sea-kinden has a weapon to hand and is waiting to beat them off. Just get dressed!’

  Then Laszlo was gone, flitting out of the room in a blur of wings. Stenwold stumbled into his clothing, the same torn and grimy canvas and leathers he had met Teornis in, with a cloak and tunic of clammy material drawn over that. No boots. He sometimes missed footwear almost as much as sun and air.