The Sea Watch

Eleven

He paused in the doorway of the Merraian Taverna, and a moment of bittersweet nostalgia caught him, seeing its familiar interior. The place had been a landmark of his intelligencing work since long before the war. The owner knew him well – and his money – but it was something more than that…

How long has it been? Three years and more since he had sent them off. It had been the end of innocence for his niece and his ward and two of his students. Except Tynisa had already killed a man the night before, and Salma had known more of loss and death than any youth of his age should do.

Standing there, in the doorway of the little Fly-kinden establishment, he felt such a fierce stab of loss that instead of heading on to the back room he sat down, dropping to the floor beside one of the low tables, overwhelmed by his memories. I’ve lost them all. Hammer and tongs, but I’ve lost them all. Tynisa had fled who knows where, and Totho was now a deserter from the Imperial army, become some kind of artificer-prince off the Exalsee. Che was running wild with Thalric – Thalric! – as her only companion, and Salma… well, the war had claimed him, dying with sword in hand at the place that they were now calling Malkan’s Folly or Malkan’s Stand, depending on whose side you had fought.

Add them all to the list. The Moth, Achaeos, had died of his wounds in Tharn, and Scuto during the Vekken siege. Tisamon, Nero, Marius lanced by a crossbow bolt in Myna so long ago, Atryssa in childbirth. I’m running out of friends.

The obvious question loomed: Who will be next? Will my games get Jodry killed perhaps, or Arianna? Maybe I’ll cut a swathe through the Tidenfree crew. He felt sick with it, but forced himself to stand, nodding to the owner as he ducked into the back room.

They had been waiting for him: Tomasso and Laszlo were already sharing a jug of light Fly beer under the dim light of a guttering gas lamp.

‘Master Maker,’ the bearded man said, as Stenwold settled down opposite from them. ‘You’ve spent the meantime wisely, I hope?’

‘I have.’ In the three days since he had stepped off the Tidenfree, Stenwold had been receiving reports from the docks, perusing manifests, asking questions.

‘You look troubled,’ Tomasso put in.

‘Nothing relevant to our business.’ Or I hope so, at any rate. ‘You’re docked…?’

‘Beyond the wall again,’ Tomasso replied. ‘There’s no harsh weather expected, and we’ll attract less notice there.’

‘How?’ Stenwold pressed. ‘How is it that the port authorities don’t run you off, or drop rocks on you?’

‘Because the Collegium harbour has a long history of corruptibility that probably goes back to before the Revolution, for all I know,’ Tomasso explained. ‘Besides, there’s nothing in your laws that says which side of the wall a ship must moor. Believe me, I’ve looked. A few coins here and there makes sure it isn’t publicized. It’s only a secret because so few ever go out onto the wall and look over, and because the goings-on at the docks seldom reach eminent people like yourself, Master Maker.’

Stenwold nodded, wondering whether he should feel moved to do something about this little pocket of lawlessness he had uncovered, but finding no motivation whatsoever. ‘How is…?’

‘Himself? No better, but breathing still, thank you for asking.’ Tomasso drained his bowl and had Laszlo refill it. ‘Business, then?’

‘We’re not complete yet,’ Stenwold noted. ‘I was hoping for-’

Laszlo coughed pointedly, and Stenwold went still. The back room was not large, nor yet cluttered, but he saw now how the two Flies were sitting oddly close to each other, for men with all the intervening space to choose from. He closed his eyes for a moment, listening hard, scenting the air, because he needed to re-experience the room, re-evaluate it and take it all in this time, without being fooled. What he guessed at now was an Art that he had known Tisamon use, sometimes, but not as skilfully as this.

She was there when he reopened his eyes: not invisible, not shading into the background, but keeping so very still that she had slipped by him, his eyes flicking over her towards the Flies, without registering. She was kneeling before the table, close enough to have already stabbed him: a Mantis-kinden woman with dark hair cut close and a pointed face. She would have looked young, even pretty, without the scars, for a jagged blade wound stretched from her chin to the mess it had left of her left ear, now long healed over. One of her hands was shiny with burn marks that he recognized as Wasp-sting, although she moved the fingers easily enough as she took the beer jug off Laszlo. She wore a leather cuirass studded with chips of chitin, and bracers of bronze-inlaid wood cut to let her arm-spines stand free. To one side of her belt were two short blades, narrow as rapiers but no longer than shortswords. They had guards that hooked back down their hilts in a clutch of jagged spurs.

Stenwold produced the brief note he had received from the messengers. ‘Yours?’ he asked.

Her eyes barely glanced at it. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

‘And you are…?’

‘Danaen,’ she said. He knew her by reputation, by notoriety. It was what he had been looking for. The Mantids of Felyal had not been good neighbours always. The Collegium-spawned logging towns at the edge of the Felyal had been profitable, but they had sent tales back with the lumber: fights, people disappearing. Every so often some pedlar would go into the woods and not come back, or a merchant who assumed too much would be found with his throat cut. Sometimes, once every decade perhaps, things would go bad and the Felyen would close their borders for a month or so. It was part of the trade.

That was the least of it, of course. Longships from Felyal plied the waves between their own treeline and the isle of Parosyal, and they were jealous of their seas. Every so often they would come out in force, and then the ships of Kes or Collegium would have to take care, and keep some goods back ready to appease them. Of course the Mantids’ real targets had been Spider-kinden merchantmen. Whenever the raiding days came upon them, brought on by some irregular and inscrutable calendar all their own, no Spider-kinden was safe on the seas.

That was all in the history books now, even if the ink was still not dry. Felyal was no more, and the rebuilding was like to take generations the way the Mantis-kinden went about things. The Imperial Second Army had scythed down the flower of the Felyen warriors, burned out their holds, and driven them like chaff until many of the survivors came to Collegium. They had fought the Wasps with a will, loosing their long arrows from the walls and killing the Imperial soldiers in the air, but now that it was peace they were a mutinous and violent minority kicking their heels in the poorer areas of the city, always on the point of drawing a blade.

Danaen had been a longship captain, back in the day. She had done some little trading down the coast, but her name was spoken of as a raider – another kind of pirate. I am in good company here today. Most importantly, a woman like Danaen could be trusted in one thing: she would be no friend to the Spider-kinden or to the Aldanrael. They had not bought her, could not buy her: rich as they were, they had not the currency. She was just what Stenwold needed but, looking on her ravaged features, he found he feared her. Mantis-kinden were unpredictable, quick to take offence and just as quick to kill over it. She is not Tisamon, I must remember.

‘To business, then,’ he said. He met Danaen’s cool, slightly contemptuous gaze. ‘How many followers do you have who would sail with you?’

She shrugged. ‘Who can say? It has been too long since they were called upon, perhaps – too long since the black-and-gold burned our ships. Some have taken the coin of your merchants. Some have gone to the Ant city, to be their scouts for when the Empire comes again. The old ways are dead, Beetle.’

Perhaps we can breathe life into them yet. Stenwold did not say it, though. He felt profoundly uncomfortable at using one such as Danaen. It was not that he did not like the Mantis-kinden, but they understood their honour far more than they would ever understand such things as diplomacy or necessity. ‘You’ll not need your own ship for this,’ he said. ‘I want Collegiate ships protected from piracy. Particular Collegiate ships.’

Her lip curled into a sneer. ‘So, you are just one more merchant offering your gold.’ Still, she made no move to go.

‘No.’ He gathered himself. ‘I do not want you striding about deck, waving flags and frightening them off. I will have your people below decks and hidden. Only when the ship is boarded, if it is, will you make yourselves known.’

Something had come alive in her expression. ‘And fall upon them?’

‘Take their ship, if you can. Force a surrender – a surrender – if possible. Find proof as to who gave them the orders, whose is the ship. You understand me?’

‘We fight,’ she said.

‘You will be under the command of Tomasso here or whoever he designates,’ Stenwold told her sternly. ‘This is not blood for blood’s sake. I must know the truth.’ And I will not mention the Spiders, not yet. I don’t want your people believing they have my licence to gut every Spider-kinden in Collegium. ‘Answer me, Danaen.’

He could almost feel her will bucking against him, but he held her gaze placidly. It was she, in the end, who glanced away. ‘I will obey the Fly-kinden, if that is your wish. If our enemies throw down their arms, we will spare them.’

‘Whoever they are?’

She looked at him again, lips twisted. ‘Do you wish me to sign one of your papers? Which ship are we to sail on?’

‘Ah well, there’s the question.’ Stenwold’s time had so far been spent in drawing up a mental picture of the vessels that had been the pirates’ prey: a picture based on cargo, on ownership, on the make-up of the merchants and investors behind the voyage. He had isolated a few vessels sailing within the tenday which would make a tempting target. And, yet, it’s plain that whoever is behind this, the Aldanrael or not, will be keeping their eyes on the docks. They are well-informed, as Failwright’s figures show. So, then, will they not notice a score of Mantis marines embarking, and will they not then mark that ship down as one to avoid?

‘You will board Tomasso’s Tidenfree,’ Stenwold instructed. ‘Tomasso will then rendezvous with the vessel I nominate. The captain of that ship will receive a sealed letter from me, explaining that I have paid for some added security for his trip. Believe me, every shipping magnate and consortium is very aware of the dangers, and I hope that my name will be sufficient to convince them to take you. From then… well, it’s always possible you’ll get a very pleasant voyage to Kes and back, but if not, you’ll be ready.’

‘We will,’ she agreed. In her mind she was sharpening her swords already.

‘Three Centrals a man for the voyage. Five Centrals bonus each if the ship’s attacked. Another five each if I get the proof I want.’

Mantis-kinden did not haggle, nor were they much for the value of money. She nodded without comment.

‘We’ll get ready to sail, then,’ Tomasso stated, standing. Danaen was abruptly on her feet as well.

‘I shall gather my warriors,’ she declared. ‘It will be good to smell blood and the sea again.’

She left through the fallback hatch in the ceiling, a flutter of wings and then a slam of wood. What price incorruptibility? Stenwold asked himself, and not for the first time.

There was a bright summer sun in the gardens of the Amphiophos. A Beetle woman in Assembler’s robes was entertaining a youth half her age, waited on by a pair of servants with wine and figs imported from the Silk Road cities. Arianna watched them sourly, sitting on her own in the greenery. The Beetles were not great gardeners, she decided. When they had set out to make this city theirs, those centuries ago after the revolution, they had been concerned with more practical matters. The Amphiophos, like some parts of the College and a few other buildings, was left over from the city’s former masters, though, and the Moths had possessed an eye for beauty. Even though the place was more ordered now, and though there was a mechanical sundial that chimed the hour, and some fountains recently put in, to the Inapt mind the gardens were still a restful place. Except that she could not relax.

I did everything I could to arouse his suspicions, she thought. Everything but actually tell him. When Stenwold had come back from his voyage, from wherever it had taken him, Arianna had been nervous, unsure of herself and of their continuing closeness. When he had lain with her, she had clutched at him like a desperate woman, as she had when they had first come together. Surely he had seen the parallel: the way she had been when she was a Rekef deserter who lived only by his graces, and fought the Vekken alongside him because her life was inextricably reliant on his own. But, no, there had been no hint of suspicion in his eyes.

I asked almost nothing. Surely he was suspicious that I did not even ask where he had been. She had been denying herself temptation. If she had heard something of any significance, then it would have dragged her down – down towards the next betrayal in a life that was a string of them, like pearls in a necklace. She had passed over the subject of his absence as though he had simply stepped out to order wine and victuals. Stenwold the Spymaster, surely that omission spoke to you?

And it had not. If anything, Stenwold had simply been grateful not to have to explain himself, and that was all. He bumbled on his way, like a Beetle did, engrossed only in his own business while a world of meaning and subtlety passed by above his head. How can he not see where I am? That I am on the brink? Does he want me to betray him? Does he not care?

Their few years together had been a union born in the fires of one siege, tempered in the next, but now peace had come, and he was a different man – or she was a different woman. I preferred it when we were fighting. Now she had everything she could want, or at least everything that this Beetle city could give her, and it would have been enough had Teornis not spoken to her, had he not made her the offer. She had not realized what she was missing until his sly words drew it out of her.

Stenwold takes me for granted, she thought, and then knew it for the truth. Stenwold cast no suspicious eye over her because she was his now, and the thought that his possession of her might only be a temporary matter, like a phase of the moon, had never occurred to him. Beetles were used to building in stone. What they put in place stayed there, generations on. Spiders built in silk that could be taken down and respun each morning.

If she was adopted into the Aldanrael, even as their most junior tyro cousin, she would want for nothing. More than that, though, she would have to be on her guard every moment. She would inherit their feuds and their alliances: she would learn the steps to their dances. Her life would never be as secure as this again, never more lived between stone walls. Trapped. I am trapped in Beetle society as though it was amber. It is very pretty, very comfortable, but there is no fire to it. The fire between Stenwold and me was the war, the Empire, the thought that we could lose. It was gone, now, that fire: leaving only the smoke rising from the candles of the Empire’s defeats: Myna, Szar, Solarno, Malkan’s Stand.

I would have continued living as Stenwold’s mistress for a long time indeed, had Teornis never come to me and opened my eyes. She did not feel grateful for the revelation, rather she hated the man for it. Still, she could not undo the knowledge he had given her. She could not crawl back into that comforting shell.

And, after all, it is as Teornis said, she considered. He and Stenwold are friends, or almost. There is no reason why I should have to choose between them. I can play a double game as long as I need.

She leant back. ‘Tell your master I agree,’ she whispered, and heard the scuffle as the unseen auditor drew away, then crept off to find Teornis of the Aldanrael.

The tiring rooms of the Amphiophos had been the traditional scene of last-minute politicking for centuries. Generations of Collegium Assemblers had suffered crises of conscience, double-crossed their allies and rediscovered their principles here, within a short stone’s throw of the debating chamber itself. The walls were hung with white drapes, which would originally have been the robes of the Assemblers, before it became custom for them to possess their own. Now these little rooms did nothing but provide a place of conspiracy.

Jodry beckoned Stenwold in as soon as he put his head round the door. ‘You cut it fine sometimes, Maker,’ he observed, rubbing his hands. Jodry always experienced a bout of nerves at the last moment before addressing the Assembly, yet when he actually stepped out before them, he would be steady as iron. ‘You know Master Outwright, of course,’ he added.

‘Who doesn’t?’ Stenwold remarked wryly. Janos Outwright had been a persistent annoyance to the Assembly at large for over ten years, occasionally even overtaking Stenwold himself as the man whose speeches were most dreaded. He was a bald, stout and extremely short statesman who had cultivated a bushy moustache. He had clung to his seat in the Assembly by stunts and exhibitionism, rallying the mob for some pointless cause for just long enough to win some votes, before abandoning them for some other piece of business. Stenwold hoped that his involvement in the Merchant Companies was not another such brief-lived scheme.

‘Master Maker, delighted.’ Outwright clasped hands with Stenwold in what he believed was a warrior’s grip. Over his Assembler’s robes he wore a blue-enamelled gorget and breastplate, the latter etched, in silver, with a wheel of pikes and snapbows and the words Outright Victory or Death.

Stenwold nodded to him politely, feeling a little diplomacy was wise. What clowns we end up standing beside, he thought but, as of recent developments, he knew that the longevity of the Companies had become a matter of some import.

‘And this is Elder Padstock, Chief Officer of… well…’ Jodry could not suppress a pointed smile.

‘Of Maker’s Own,’ Stenwold finished for him. Padstock was a stocky, heavy-set woman, her greying hair tied back. She had come in one of the knee-length coats of buff hide that many of Collegium’s defenders had taken to, little more than an artificer’s work coat. Her breastplate was plain, but she wore a red sash over it, with a golden sword-and-book stamp and the words Through the Gate.

‘I knew you would not abandon us, Master Maker.’ She clasped his hand firmly, and held it a moment. Stenwold searched her face for clues. I cannot recall ever seeing this woman before. But then the men and women who had insisted on accompanying him from the city had been helmed, anonymous. He had assumed he was going to his death, and would have preferred to do so without their company. It was the merest chance of timing – and an Imperial general’s sense of honour – that had made them heroes and not corpses.

She was trembling slightly, he noticed, and there was the faintest glint of tears in her eyes. That moment, that suicidal moment, was still with her, no doubt the greatest day of her life, forever being told and retold. The naked adoration in her gaze made him profoundly uncomfortable but he clasped her hand again and thanked her.

‘No sign of the Coldstone boys yet,’ Jodry said.

‘Perhaps that’s just as well,’ Stenwold considered. ‘Jodry… at least tell me their livery doesn’t show a mound of dead Vekken or something. Working with Vek isn’t exactly easy going at the best of times.’

Jodry gave a snort of amusement. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Then his expression soured. ‘They use a white helm in profile as their device. The motto is, In Our Enemies’ Robes. You understand that?’

Stenwold nodded grimly. By the time the Vekken had been turned back, it was said that there was not a resident of Coldstone Street left living that did not own an Ant-made hauberk, sword and shield. He was willing to bet that a fair number still had Wasp-crafted kit stowed in the cellar or the attic, as well.

‘Well,’ Jodry declared, ‘let’s go face the people.’ He stretched his arms, waggling his fingers to release the tension. The door opened even as he reached for the handle. Revealed beyond was an Ant-kinden man, some renegade Tarkesh with waxy-white skin and steel-grey hair. He wore a tunic of grey-blue and a cloak a little darker, and he had come armed: a shortsword sat at his hip with what they called a knuckle-shield, a little wood-and-leather buckler with metal studs in its face. The promised white helm and motto were absent, along with any other decoration.

Jodry said, ‘Coldstone?’ and the Ant nodded.

‘Officer Marteus,’ he introduced himself, nodding to Padstock.

‘Well then, we are all met,’ Jodry concluded, although it was clear he would have been happier without this disreputable-looking figure standing beside them. The three Merchant Company officers regarded him distrustfully, as well they might. ‘Let us understand entirely what I am offering you, before we go in,’ he informed them sternly. ‘You know how many of the Assembly are calling for the Companies to be disbanded. Private armies are all very well in Helleron, they say, and I agree. However, I have found one other way out and, with Master Maker’s blessing, there should be sufficient voices to carry the motion. I won’t disband the Companies. I’ll legitimize them. Your three surviving forces will be recognized by the city.’

They nodded soberly, and Jodry went on, ‘I’ve had my secretary prepare some regulations: how many to be permitted in the complement, how often they must train, arrangements to borrow snapbows from the armouries, and the like. There will be a stipend, recognition, but only if you keep to the rules. This way the city will feel safe with you, you keep your pride and… well, I don’t need to tell you the third advantage.’

‘Collegium has an army,’ Stenwold concluded.

‘An army of shopkeepers,’ Jodry agreed, ‘and reason help us all. Let’s go and establish our military dictatorship, shall we? They were foreclosing on an orphanage this morning, so it’s all good works today.’

‘The future of the Companies is the future of Collegium,’ Elder Padstock declared, with utter conviction. ‘The Empire shall come again, won’t it, Master Maker?’

‘Without doubt,’ Stenwold agreed. But I fear we shall have need of you sooner than that – sooner than any of you know…