The Sea Watch

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Stenwold sat back, unexpectedly sobered by the cold logic of it. ‘Perhaps, in time, your people shall see this as less of a poisoned chalice, Mistress Kratia,’ he murmured. ‘The Sarnesh, at least, have voiced no regrets.’

  ‘Because your people have tamed them like pets,’ she replied, contemptuously.

  Stenwold shrugged, feeling too weary with the whole business to answer. At least we have them, for now, and Vek also. Two years’ hard diplomacy have borne fruit at long last. Strange how the solution to the Vekken problem turned out to involve more Ants, not fewer.

  ‘Master Maker,’ said Gainer from beside him. ‘More friends of yours?’

  ‘Hmm?’ Stenwold peered ahead. The darkness of the waters seemed near-total to him, now, and he saw only the lights of Wys’s barque ahead.

  ‘Another craft just passed between us and them, or something did,’ Gainer informed him.

  ‘Probably Nemoctes,’ Stenwold decided. ‘He’s supposed to be somewhere about . . .’

  Even as he said it, a shape flashed across their view, pale against the black. It was slim and streamlined, with streamers of tentacles billowing behind it, and there was a brief glimpse of a slender rider couching a lance, leaning forward right above the beast’s huge round eye.

  It was gone at once, leaving Stenwold with a moment of confusion: Heiracles or Claeon? ‘Get closer to Wys,’ he ordered. His instincts said trouble, sure enough. He could only hope that Wys knew better what was going on.

  The dark water was suddenly full of movement. The Dart-kinden riders came sleeting from the abyss all around them, slicing into momentary sight as the lamplight of the Tseitan’s ports caught them, before wheeling and vanishing in close formation. He spotted them again, as shadows against the glare of the other submersible, saw them break aside every which way without striking, flurrying back into the dark. It was an attack, beyond question, but one that some trick contrived by Wys had turned aside.

  ‘They’ve found us,’ Stenwold said, feeling a cold hand clench inside him. So close, so close. Surely they cannot drag me back now. He felt bitterly the lack of any way of speaking to Wys. Right now, the Pelagists’ Far-speech Art would have been invaluable.

  The riders were soon back. One made a run straight towards the Tseitan’s nose, but turned aside at the very last minute, close enough, as she hauled her beast off, that they could see her narrow, wide-eyed face clearly. Stenwold guessed that the alien nature of the Collegium submersible must be giving them pause, but such hesitation would last only so long. They were getting close to Wys’s barque now, Gainer steering the Tseitan until they could even distinguish figures within the ornate window set in the vessel’s bows. The small figure of Wys was signalling to them, pointing at something, making urgent, exaggerated gestures.

  Something pale and shapeless passed in a flurry beyond the far side of Wys’s submersible, lit momentarily by the vessel’s limn-lights. Stenwold had a brief glimpse of the bar-shaped pupil of a great mottled eye, an eye he had seen before.

  ‘Arkeuthys,’ he murmured. The agent of his capture had returned to prevent his escape.

  Then the Tseitan jerked and shuddered, resounding under the crack of an impact. ‘Are we shot?’ Despard demanded, eyes wide.

  Gainer was wrestling with the controls, trying to keep the vehicle on a level course. A moment later there was a second knock, throwing them to one side, and Stenwold understood: the Dart-kinden were lancing towards them, making swift dives and then breaking their spears against the Tseitan’s shell.

  ‘Gainer, what’s the hull made of?’ he demanded.

  Their pilot bared his teeth. ‘Magnaferrite over pumice-steel,’ he snarled out, all of which material was after Sten-wold’s day, as far as artificing went.

  ‘That’s strong? They’re sticking spears into us.’

  ‘Spears?’ Gainer let out a strained laugh. ‘Let them jab at the body all they want, just please let them steer clear of the legs.’

  The thought sent a chill through Stenwold. Damage a few of the Tseitan’s six paddles and the ship would become helpless prey for Arkeuthys, or it would drift and sink, becoming nothing but an elaborate tomb.

  ‘Gain height,’ he suggested. ‘They may not like the sun.’

  ‘It’s nighttime,’ Despard interrupted, and Stenwold blinked in genuine surprise. It had been a long time since he had needed to know.

  Another impact came, sounding from right beside the portholes and sending them lurching downwards for a moment, before Gainer could correct them. ‘No worries about the glass,’ the artificer said, without having to be asked. ‘Thick enough that a snapbow couldn’t break it, and I know that ’cos I tested it with one.’

  They had a mad, wheeling view of Wys’s barque, almost on its side but making steady progress, dancing through the water with its pumps rippling in a blur. The Dart-kinden cavalry were pale streamered arrows dashing past it, always breaking away just before striking, their mounts bucking angrily.

  Their world, their view, was suddenly blotted from sight. The coiled ridges of a shell surged in front of them, and Gainer cried out and hauled at the sticks to steer them away. They were nearly upside down as they wheeled past the monster’s head, itself almost the size of their vessel, with a squid trapped and thrashing within the beast’s net of slender arms. Then the giant creature had coursed away, slipping backwards and downwards through the water, and dragging its prey with it.

  ‘What . . . what was that?’ Despard squeaked.

  ‘Nemoctes,’ Stenwold told her, ‘and be glad he’s ours.’ And let’s hope he’s already put the call out to any other Pelagists in the area, because we need all the help we can get.

  Another dart flashed past their ports, its rider yanking it around even as it passed, too close for a spear charge.

  ‘Pull away!’ Stenwold said automatically, but Gainer pulled the wrong way, and something heavy and soft impacted with them: the rider’s mount itself.

  Abruptly they were diving, dragged initially by the creature’s weight, then by its own efforts as it tugged at them. There was a hideous screeching, scratching sound from all about them, like nails on glass, as the creature’s tentacles took hold. Two or three unrolled across the viewports, their undersides lined not with suckers but with barbed hooks, like little claws, that scratched white lines down the glass as they writhed for purchase. Somewhere around the middle of the ship, above them, came a hollow boom, and then the sound of something strong and savage scoring and gnawing at the metal.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Despard yelled at Gainer.

  ‘I’m done! It’s ready!’ he shouted back. ‘Arms in, everyone, arms in!’

  ‘What?’ Stenwold goggled at him.

  ‘Don’t touch the walls, Master Maker!’

  Stenwold pulled his elbows in, still insisting he be told what was going on, and then Gainer hollered, ‘Now!’ Despard, behind them, slammed down the lever she had been poised beside, and for a second every inch of the Tseitan’s interior was lit by an uncompromising white radiance.

  Stenwold cried out, sure that something had exploded inside the engine. His eyes momentarily blazed with reversed images, then he saw, through the ports, that the tentacles were gone, A moment later a long, bleached form could be seen drifting away, down and away, its tentacles a peeled-back mess, with a separate, smaller body falling beside it.

  ‘What just happened?’ he asked, almost reverently, as Gainer dragged them up out of their dive.

  ‘It’s a kind of side effect of the engine, which we discovered when we built her,’ the pilot said, almost cheerily. ‘The engine has a lot of magnets in her, so if you’re not careful, you can build up quite a charge differential between the nose and the tail. One of Master Tseitus’s apprentices was almost killed, you know, when we discovered that from the original.’

  ‘Are you telling me that . . . ?’

  ‘For a bit of a second the hull was working like a lightning engine,’ Gainer confirmed. ‘It’s a d
esign flaw, but I reckoned it might come in useful some day.’

  ‘Master Tseitus would be proud of you,’ Stenwold said. It probably wasn’t true, as Tseitus had reserved his pride for his personal consumption. Still, the lad deserved it, and Tseitus deserved to be remembered fondly. The old man’s antisocial and cantankerous side could be lost to history.

  ‘I hope so,’ Gainer said, and then exclaimed, ‘Hammer and tongs, what’s that?’

  They were in sight of Wys’s ship again, but something was dreadfully wrong. For a moment Stenwold thought it had somehow become malformed, but then he realized the truth, and his heart lurched. Curled about the contours of the submersible were the many arms of Arkeuthys. The great octopus held the ship helpless in its grip, and no doubt that great shearing beak was already trying to crack its way in to reach the morsels inside.

  ‘That’s . . .’ Stenwold ran out of words.

  ‘That looks mighty like what got you into all this in the first place,’ Despard filled in for him. ‘I got one quick look at it, up top. Didn’t want another, to be honest.’

  ‘Do we need them?’ Kratia asked coolly.

  ‘Yes!’ Stenwold roared at her, and Despard snapped ‘Laszlo’s in there!’ little fists bunched as though she was going to attack the Ant there and then.

  ‘Ram it,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘Can we ram it?’

  ‘Be like a flea up against that thing,’ Gainer said, but his expression was solid determination. ‘But we’ve been saving a little something, haven’t we?’ He had already set a course towards the stricken submersible.

  ‘Are you telling me this ship’s armed?’ Stenwold asked him. ‘Did we authorize that, back at the College?’

  ‘Master Maker, you were grabbed by an arse-bastarding sea monster,’ Despard reminded him. ‘You think we’d come out here without something?’

  Their view of the leviathan and the submersible wheeled and circled as Gainer fought to keep the Tseitan on a straight course. ‘Just like a snapbow,’ the pilot murmured between clenched teeth. ‘Like a real big snapbow with a point on it that you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘Don’t hole their ship, then,’ Stenwold cautioned. ‘Why are we twisting around so much?’

  Gainer was backing the Tseitan now, the paddles reversing their sweep, then pushing forward again, jockeying the vessel in the water as more Dart-kinden flashed past. ‘To aim the bolt,’ the Beetle youth explained, ‘have to aim the whole ship.’

  The piercing eye of Arkeuthys was staring straight at them, as Gainer tugged and cajoled the Tseitan into line. Stenwold gazed at it, seeing, in that orb bigger than his own body, the creature’s icy concentration – even as its many arms twined and snaked for better purchase, over the shell of Wys’s submersible.

  ‘You’re there now,’ Despard insisted. ‘Right there. Just shoot the cursed thing!’

  Gainer made a noncommittal grunt, but he was reaching up for a lever above his head. Stenwold glanced back, seeing the Fly’s agony of worry for Laszlo, as against Kratia’s bland indifference.

  Gainer made a tiny adjustment to their heading with his off hand. Stenwold, peering ahead again, saw the enormous eye narrow, and abruptly Arkeuthys had abandoned its victim, casting the submersible end over end, away from it. Somehow it had guessed what even the human sea-kinden had not: the threat that the land-kinden could muster at range.

  Gainer shouted ‘No!’ and hauled down on the lever. The Tseitan bucked with the force as a silvery missile flashed in the dim light, leaping like a living thing towards the retreating octopus.

  It struck. It must have struck. Suddenly the sea was boiling black. Blood! Stenwold thought at first, but it was ink, of course. First to emerge from that angry cloud was Wys’s ship, canted to one side but with its siphons pulsing constantly, limping through the water but still intact. A stream of gleaming bubbles from its side looked like little enough, and Stenwold knew that Wys would have all hands to the pumps to keep the seawater where it belonged.

  Then, behind it, Arkeuthys broke from its own screen of ink like a many-armed and angry god, its flowing form vast and all-encompassing. One tentacle was wrapped about the shaft of Gainer’s bolt, which it must have hauled out from its flesh, from wherever it had struck.

  ‘Time for your second shot,’ Stenwold said tensely.

  ‘There is no second shot,’ Gainer stated.

  ‘I don’t suppose that you have any suggestions, from your city’s long experience?’ Stenwold put to Kratia.

  ‘Don’t start sea wars with the sea-kinden.’ She seemed utterly composed, hands clasped on her knees, resigned to their collective fate.

  For a time, an unknown time, they all hung there: the Tseitan seemingly motionless despite Maxel Gainer back-paddling as fast as he could, Wys’s injured submersible, and the great dark-flushed tangle of Arkeuthys looking like some indecipherable glyph in a lost language.

  Then the great octopus was retreating, rippling and rolling backwards, away from them, and there was light, a pale, pure light all around.

  I am here.

  Stenwold jumped and stared at the others, looking for some evidence of those words in their faces. I cannot have heard that. I cannot . . . there is no way.

  As the first streamers of glittering lace brushed past the carapace of the Tseitan, he heard Kratia – Kratia of all of them – utter an oath almost reverently. Then Lyess’s lambent, pulsing companion dragged a stinging curtain between them and the roiling form of Arkeuthys.

  Stenwold assumed the monster would flee, as it had done after the death of Gribbern, but this time the octopus just hung there in the water, glaring balefully as the last shreds of its ink cleared. Wys’s barque remained stationary too, its lamps still blazing brightly, while Stenwold thought he saw a moving shadow at the fading perimeter of the light that was Nemoctes’s home turning restlessly in the water.

  If we move from her shadow, we expose ourselves, Stenwold thought. Unless . . . He wondered just how far Arkeuthys’s understanding went. How human was its mind, of what breadth of vision?

  Then the great sea monster was on the move, surging and rippling its way up through the water. Instantly Lyess’s glowing companion began ascending, as slow and graceful as an airship lifting off. Arkeuthys was close, moving faster, hovering immediately above. Stenwold saw Lyess’s light flash on something bright.

  The octopus struck almost gingerly, extending to the very limit of its reach so as to be sure that none of that stinging veil so much as touched it. The tentacles were no longer simply lashing whips: gripped in one of them was the Tseitan’s harpoon, while another held a Dart-kinden lance. Stenwold saw them dig in, carve through the soft flesh of Lyess’s companion, hesitant jabs and slices as the octopus manhandled the unfamiliar implements. He remembered the Menfish, how they had struck and struck from above, aiming at the jellyfish’s blind spot.

  ‘Gainer, bring us up, point us at the monster,’ he ordered. ‘Bring us so we’re looking to pin it between us and her.’

  ‘Us and . . . ?’ Gainer began to ask, but Stenwold snapped at him, ‘Just bring us up!’ The pilot quickly tugged at the sticks, sending the Tseitan climbing up the ladder of lights that formed Lyess’s long train.

  The jellyfish was already shuddering. Arkeuthys could not risk getting close enough for a decisive strike, but it was gaining in dexterity, carving its way in minute portions towards the woman hiding within. Stenwold gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes fixed on the carnage. We are ascending too slowly. He stared into the gleaming flesh of the quivering creature, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lyess.

  Then a blunt, heavy shape jetted swiftly across the flailing, translucent bell. There was no art to Nemoctes’s attack. His creature was no match for Arkeuthys. Still, it was large, and it was armoured, and he directed it straight at the octopus with all the speed its siphon could give it. Arkeuthys recoiled, attack momentarily forgotten. Arms lashed out, briefly wrapping about the ridged, coiled shell, and then casting Nemoctes aside with a si
ngle muscular convulsion, sending the ponderous creature end over end away from them, no doubt making a chaos of all Nemoc-tes’s carefully hoarded history.

  Then the octopus returned to its task, but now found the Tseitan waiting for it.

  ‘Master Maker, there’s nothing!’ Gainer was saying. ‘No second bolt, and we’ve not the charge for another magnetic shock.’

  ‘Aim us, level us at it like a crossbow,’ Stenwold insisted. ‘Just as if we had another harpoon to take it between the eyes. Get us as steady as you can.’

  ‘That makes us an easy target,’ Kratia warned.

  ‘Do you think it would have any difficulty snatching us from the water when it decides to?’ Stenwold asked her.

  ‘That is true.’

  The narrowed eye of Arkeuthys bored into them, its twin scalpels poised at arms’ ends. Gainer fidgeted and twitched at the controls, until they were absolutely centred on that alien gaze.

  With a spasm of rage that seemed all too human, the octopus was abruptly streaming away in, a flurry of tentacles. Then it was gone, lost to the black abyss.

  Stenwold settled back, feeling a great wave of relief wash over him. He could not tell if it was for himself, his return to the land now secured, or if it was because Lyess and her companion still lived.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said softly. ‘Only home.’

  And in the depths of his mind he heard her soft voice. You shall come back to me, come back to me, some day.

  Part Three

  Footprints in the Sand

  Thirty-Four

  Using compass and clock and all the tricks that the Tidenfree crew had perfected over the years, Despard guided them home. After they had passed the reach of the Shelf, which the sea-kinden had called the Edge, they led rather than followed, with Gainer steering the Tseitan in slow, paddling circles from time to time to check that the bobbing shell of Wys’s submersible was still behind them. The journey was long, and they had come to the surface several times to take in fresh air, the Tseitan lying like a basking thing in the swelling water, whilst the other vessel listed alarmingly beside it, never intended to be brought up to the air. Still, Wys’s crew was able to provide food and freshly accreated water, for the Tseitan had little room for provisions, what with Stenwold’s bulk added to its complement.