The Sea Watch

Fifteen

The sea was choppy and the Tidenfree’s hull jolted and bounced as it cut across the waves towards its goal. Stenwold stood at the bow and brooded, with Laszlo perched on the rail beside him to keep him company.

Someone had found a suitable ship for his meeting with Teornis, and if he did not personally find it fitting, there was no point in saying so. The broad, flat barge that they had moored out here, beyond sight of Collegium harbour, was already known to him. It had been one of the Vekken supply vessels during the late siege, the last survivor of the flotilla of great flat-bottomed vessels that the Vekken sailors had navigated along the coast as part of their invasion force. Somehow it had avoided being burned, sunk or sailed away from the city by those that captured it, and now here it was, serving this peculiar duty.

It did not escape Stenwold’s recollection that the sailing ships that had taken those barges, smashed the Vekken warships and raised the siege had been under the command of Teornis of the Aldanrael. How glad Stenwold had been to see the man then, how the Spider had been the hero of the hour, most popular man in Collegium. And now…

How did we let it come to this? How did he let it come to this? Why, for the world’s sake?

‘Is something wrong, Ma’rMaker?’ Laszlo asked him.

Many, many things are very wrong indeed. ‘No, just thinking,’ he replied, not entirely convincingly. ‘Tell me, is there some significance to where you moored her?’

‘Edge of the shelf, Ma’rMaker,’ Laszlo said, and noticed that this had failed to edify. ‘What I mean is, the sea’s not the same all the way across. It gets deeper some, as you go on.’

‘I think I knew that,’ Stenwold told him, shrugging his shoulders to settle his artificer’s leathers more comfortably.

‘Well, of course – but it’s not like a wine bowl or anything. It gets deeper all of a sudden and a lot deeper in one go. Any further out than that girl is and you’d never be able to drop anchor, not with all the length of chain you could carry. That’s where the real deep sea starts, and where ships don’t go beyond. Unless they’re us, of course. If we get some urgent running away to do, I reckon the chief’ll just turn us for open water, see if them Spiders will follow us and risk the Lash and the weed seas. I’d lay odds they won’t.’

‘Let us hope it won’t come to that,’ Stenwold told him. He glanced back along the deck of the Tidenfree, which was busy today. There could be seen Elder Padstock and a dozen of her company, clad in helm and breastplate, and with snapbows newly signed out from the city armouries. Beyond them, scattered about the deck with no apparent order or plan to them, was a score of Mantis-kinden. Danaen might only be bringing a brace of them to the negotiating table, but if things went wrong, the Tidenfree would bring a whole world of trouble as fast as her sails could propel her. Stenwold was sure that someone on Teornis’s ship would have a telescope, and the Aptitude to use it, and he wanted his Mantis marines in plain view and obviously spoiling for a fight. Just for a little insurance.

‘There’s our man,’ Laszlo pointed, and Stenwold followed his finger to see a pale sail coursing in at an angle to their own line of approach. Unfolding his own glass, Stenwold made the best examination he could. Teornis’s transport was similar in shape to the ill-fated Very Blade, albeit smaller and swifter. It was still almost as long again as the Tidenfree, and he saw that Teornis had also cluttered the decks with reinforcements, although it was too far to see what calibre of swords he had brought with him.

‘We’re faster,’ said Laszlo, obviously attempting to read his mind. ‘If it comes to it, we’ll sail rings around them. We’ve taken larger ships than that, and carrying less muscle than we are now, too.’

‘Good to hear it,’ said Stenwold weakly, wondering whether those ‘larger ships’ had been peaceful merchantmen in desperate flight from the notorious pirate Bloodfly. ‘Who’s going over to check out the ground?’

‘Me and Solli and Fernaea,’ Laszlo said. ‘And I’ll be one of your eight when you go over yourself, if you don’t mind. After all, come trouble, I’m your best bet for getting word back to the Tidenfree without getting shot into the water.’

‘Fast, are you?’

‘Could have been a messenger, me,’ Laszlo confirmed.

They were making good speed towards the barge, and so was Teornis. Stenwold took another peer through his glass, noticing the burnished armour of Kessen mercenaries at the rails of his adversary’s ship, and others less recognizable but sporting longbows. Then his view wheeled wildly, and he took the telescope from his eye to see the Spider ship coming to, and lowering sail.

‘Time to earn my keep,’ Laszlo said, and kicked off from the rail, casting himself across the deck to come down near the mainmast. Two of the Tidenfree crew were waiting for him there, and one handed him a shortbow and a quiver of arrows. He waved to Stenwold and grinned broadly, but his accomplices looked more serious.

And rightly so, since we don’t know what they might find. He did not reckon that Teornis would have hidden men aboard the barge: Fly-kinden had keen eyes, and the Tidenfree would easily outdistance the Spider vessel in a race back to Collegium harbour, or into the wilds of the open sea. Still, if Teornis was just a little too overconfident, or uncharacteristically unsubtle in his methods, then Laszlo and his friends might flush out more trouble than they could handle. Stenwold remembered the Art that had allowed Danaen to blend in with her surroundings, to let the eyes of others pass over her. Spiders knew that Art, too, Stenwold was well aware, But I do not think that Teornis would risk an assassin being discovered. Such Arts are not certain, and Flies are notoriously inquisitive. Yet he felt a lurch in his stomach as the three intrepid scouts lifted off from the Tidenfree’s deck and veered over the dancing waves towards the barge.

They were specks only as they dipped and dropped on to the deck, and through his glass Stenwold saw them pause for a moment, bowstrings drawn back. Then they were quartering the deck, swiftly and professionally. A moment later they had gone below.

It was a long, anxious wait. Stenwold meanwhile fidgeted with his telescope and shuffled his feet, intensely aware of a boatload of Mantis-kinden at his back, who wanted any excuse for a fight. Pray we do not give them one.

A movement at his elbow resolved itself into Tomasso. The bearded Fly had spent the journey so far beside Gude at the helm. Now he unlimbered his own telescope, not Stenwold’s pocketable one but a proper seagoing piece, extending to half as long as the Fly was tall.

‘You should know,’ he grunted, making a great show of examining the instrument, ‘I’m now the fourth Bloodfly – as of the early hours of this morning.’

It took Stenwold a moment to disentangle that one, but then he understood. ‘My condolences,’ he said, thinking of that old, old Fly-kinden man he had seen just once, aboard Isseleema’s Floating Game, who had been a notorious pirate, from a line of notorious pirates, in his prime.

Tomasso nodded shortly. ‘It doesn’t change our bargain, Master Maker. It only makes me want to remind you of it, because it’s time for my family to try out respectability, for a generation or two.’

‘I hope you know me well enough by now to trust my word,’ Stenwold remarked.

‘I think I do, at that,’ allowed Tomasso. ‘Mind you, you’re a man who seems to be trying to arrange his own death at any given moment.’

‘Well, as to that,’ Stenwold said, with a strained smile, ‘I went over the disposition of my affairs recently, and I’ve left what assistance I can to you, should this venture go wrong. Believe me, you and your people have been more help than I could have asked for.’

‘Looking after our investment, nothing more,’ Tomasso said gruffly. ‘Ah, and here come our intrepid explorers.’ He fixed the glass he carried to his eye, and Stenwold followed suit. Laszlo and his fellows had come up on deck again, tiny figures even through the lenses. Laszlo himself hopped up and stood on the barge’s rail, where he waved a white cloth theatrically at the Spider vessel, finishing with a flourishing bow. Stenwold heard Tomasso snort.

‘Boy’s going to get himself killed one of these days,’ observed the Tidenfree’s master, ‘while baring his arse at a Spider lord, probably.’

Laszlo and the other two remained standing at the barge’s rail, waiting. Stenwold turned his magnified gaze towards the other ship and saw a trio of figures lift off from it, with the barge clearly as their destination. The whole process, search above and below decks, was now to be repeated by Teornis’s people. The Vekken shipwrights themselves would never have gone over the craft in such fine detail.

‘Oh, there’s nasty,’ Tomasso murmured.

Teornis’s auditors were not Fly-kinden, as Stenwold had expected. A closer examination showed that they were Dragonflies, wearing light armour of chitin and wood, and carrying fantastically carved longbows. They were not the civilized and elegant Commonwealers that Stenwold had guardedly dealt with during the war, but the denizens of some Spider satrapy, gone half savage. Stenwold was vaguely aware that, back in the Days of Lore, at some point long before the Collegiate revolution, the Commonweal had suffered some kind of great exodus: malcontent nobles and their followers being forcibly ejected into the wider world. Dragonfly soldiers had supported Teornis when he raised the Vekken siege, and there was a city of piratical Dragon-flies on the Exalsee to trouble Solarno’s shipping, and who could know where else they had found safe havens?

Stenwold could wish that Teornis had not been so wise in choosing his soldiers. Tomasso’s present discomfort was well-founded, for Dragonflies were as nimble as his own kinden in the air, whilst being almost as swift and deadly as Mantids when it came to a fight.

‘There are so many things that could go wrong with this,’ the bearded Fly muttered, ‘and if it goes bad, it’ll go stinking rotten and all at once.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Stenwold agreed. He searched for his own feelings on this and found not fear, but a flutter of excitement. It’s like shipping out with these Flies in the first place. I used to live like this once, before I got respectable. Being finally seen to be right about the Empire has nearly blunted me. He felt an odd, lost yearning again for those fast-and-loose days before he had shouldered the burden of being a war hero and a statesman to whom people listened. Oh, Tisamon, what I wouldn’t give to have you here right now.

He had to hope that Danaen would prove to be the next-best thing.

There was a footstep on the deck behind him, and he turned to see Arianna. She had come attired for battle, wearing a leather cuirass, and with a strung shortbow holstered across her back. It was what she had worn, close enough, when she had come to fight at his side against the Vekken, and he found himself smiling at her wanly.

‘The boat’s ready,’ she told him, ‘for when they are.’

‘They’re coming up already,’ Tomasso remarked. Indeed, the Dragonfly-kinden were back on deck, all three of them, their search having obviously been cursory. Is this Teornis telling me something? Stenwold wondered. Has he told them to be brief to show he trusts me? Or are they just better at killing than at diligence?

The Dragonflies were now airborne, heading back towards Teornis’s vessel, and a moment later Laszlo and his comrades were winging back towards the Tidenfree as well. Stenwold took a deep breath and headed amidships for the boat. It was a narrow launch hung out over the Tidenfree’s side, ready to be winched down by two of the more Apt members of the crew. His boarding party were standing ready: Elder Padstock and two of her people, with snapbows at the ready; Danaen and two of hers, with swords and bows, arm-spikes and Mantis bloody-mindedness.

Stenwold joined them, with Arianna at his back, and a moment later Laszlo dropped down in their midst, making the Mantis-kinden twitch and scowl.

‘You know what we’re about,’ he addressed them. ‘Keep your eyes open, shout out if you see something out of place. We’re taking no chances. Do not act, unless they act first, or unless I order it. If we see violence today, I do not want my party to be the instigator.’

‘Very good, War Master,’ Padstock assured him.

‘Then let us be about it,’ he said, and carefully stepped down into the rocking boat. They joined him one by one, with Danaen’s warriors taking the oars. Last down was Laszlo, who perched himself at the bow as the boat was winched into the water. He had his bow ready, an arrow to hand, a small but martial figurehead.

As the Mantis-kinden hauled on the oars, Stenwold took his glass out again and tracked down the other ship’s launch. It was a grander, broader affair, and four of Teor-nis’s eight were rowing, and making no greater headway. The Spider lord himself could be clearly seen, reclining in the stern. Assuming it is him and not some lookalike relative, the unpleasant thought came to Stenwold. At this distance, though, he could not bring that face into sharp focus no matter how he adjusted the lenses.

At least we can be glad of one thing regarding his Dragon-flies, another idea struck. If they had been some Apt kinden, Flies even, then perhaps they could have set some incendiaries or explosives within the ship. Be thankful for Inapt enemies.

They were nearing the barge, a low-sided craft, cumbrous and bulky in the water. The Vekken had been no great shipwrights, and what skill they possessed they had reserved for their warships. The barge seemed so close to the water that any large wave would swamp the rails. Hammer and tongs, if the weather grows poor she may founder and sink out here, and would that not be an irony? Teornis and myself clinging to the same plank.

Laszlo’s wings hauled him into the air before the prow of the launch nudged the barge’s side. He had tugged a rope ladder with him, and after a moment’s securing he let it down. Danaen stood in the launch, shifting her balance in perfect time with the waves, and let her own wings bring her up to the barge’s deck, and her people followed suit as Stenwold tied off the launch. A wise precaution, bringing Mantis-kinden who can fly. He was uncomfortably aware of his own shortcomings in that regard, and how much of a trap this ship could become, and beneath it all, of the appalling depth of water below, which could swallow all the schemes that he and Teornis together might hatch until the end of time.

He put such thoughts out of his mind and began climbing.

Of the two launches, he had arrived first, and he chose the stern as his standpoint. Padstock and the two from the Maker’s Own company fanned out behind him, snap-bows cradled in their arms. Stenwold watched as the three Mantis-kinden took their stand to one side, further forward than he would have liked. Danaen’s hands were seldom far from her sword hilts.

There was a light touch on his shoulder, and he took Arianna’s hand briefly. She looked serious, nervous even, but he supposed that was only natural. Teornis is one of the Aristoi, after all, and it must take a lot for Arianna to set herself against him.

Laszlo had fluttered over to look over the far rail, and now he was on his way back. ‘Guests are here,’ he said shortly as he looked upwards, and Stenwold guessed he was missing a handy spread of rigging to find a seat in. The Vekken barge was moved by steam-engine, though, and not sail.

A moment later, a pair of Teornis’s Dragonflies dropped on to the deck, barely twenty feet away. The violence nearly started then and there, with weapons springing into the hands of the Mantids and the Dragonflies responding with half-drawn bowstrings. The moment passed, though, and a few moments later the man himself appeared.

The Spider Aristos looked like a tragic hero from some high-class play. No, Stenwold corrected his first impression, he looks like the man those actors are trying to resemble. He wore a long jacket of black silk, glittering with complex traceries of silver thread that were thickest at the cuffs of his full sleeves. Over this he had donned a cuirass of chainmail worked fantastically fine, looking lighter and easier to move in than Stenwold’s leather and canvas. I’ll bet he can swim in that, if need be, and then, Fine mail over silk, maybe enough to slow a snapbow bolt?

The headband that Teornis wore was plain gold, setting off the darkness of his hair and narrow, pointed beard. At his belt he had a rapier with an elaborately twisted guard, while on his left hand he wore a heavy glove of embroidered leather, a duellist’s parrying tool. He even had a knife hilt visible in the top of one of his high boots.

His followers had filed up after him: two more Dragon-flies, and a quartet of the Kessen Ant-kinden with their large shields and shortswords. But not snapbows, Stenwold noted. We have that advantage yet. He was uncomfortably aware that, by bringing Laszlo as messenger and Arianna as adviser, he was putting himself at a disadvantage if it came to brute force.

‘Lord Teornis,’ he said, letting his voice ring out as though he was in the Amphiophos.

‘Master Maker,’ the Spider allowed.

Stenwold stepped forward until he was at least level with Danaen. ‘I thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’

‘Why should I not meet with my old friend, Stenwold Maker?’ Teornis answered. ‘Albeit he has levelled some hurtful accusations at my own family recently.’

‘We will talk frankly, or there is no point to this,’ Stenwold told him. ‘We are here without witnesses other than these, who are sworn to each of us. If we cannot speak openly of what we know, what’s the point of any of it?’

For a moment Teornis’s expression admitted nothing, but then he smiled readily. ‘Well then, speak.’

‘Pirates under orders from your family have been preying on Collegiate shipping,’ Stenwold started. He stopped when Teornis raised a hand. ‘If you’ll deny that, then-’

‘When pirates take orders, Master Maker, they are privateers, and that is a different game entirely,’ Teornis corrected him. ‘Do proceed.’

‘Why? Why give such orders?’

‘I am not obliged to lay out the plans of the Aldanrael to you, if you cannot fathom them for yourself,’ Teornis replied evenly.

‘And now? Will you declare war before the Assembly? Or will I have to make public the papers we took from the captain of the Very Blade?’

‘After her death,’ Teornis put in coldly.

Stenwold stared at him. ‘Do you claim that she was none of yours?’

‘Oh, she was mine, Maker. She was my cousin, Elleria of the Aldanrael. She always was too bold and incautious in her dealings, poor creature, impatient of the proper precautions when dealing with codes and letters. She was, in short, a fool, and doubly a fool for being willing to play pirate captain rather than practise prudence on land. But she was family, and your minions killed her.’ His eye took in the three Mantis-kinden with barely disguised loathing.

‘She was leading an assault on Collegium’s citizens,’ Stenwold pointed out, angry at being put so spuriously on the defensive. ‘Do you call her death an injustice?’

Teornis’s smile had an edge on it that would put Danaen’s blades to shame. ‘No, Maker, I do not. It was just, because she was killed in due reprisal for her actions. It was just, because she was killed by her own recklessness. However, she was family, a true member of the Aldanrael’s female line, and her death has set in motion events that care nothing for Beetle justice. Your people speak at endless length about rights, Stenwold. They bleat on about humanity’s mutual regard, and who can do what to whom. There are no rights. You are entitled to only what you can cut or charm out of life. If our armada does bring its full force to bear on your city, and breaks your defences, and kills your soldiers, and enslaves your people, then, yes, that will be unjust, but the world will not care. Justice is like some unnatural hybrid flower you people have bred. It will not live long unless you keep it sheltered and warm.’

‘And is that what you want? Collegium in chains?’ Stenwold asked him, privately considering that Sarn and the Ancient League and, yes, perhaps even Vek might have something to say should those ships arrive.

‘No, of course not,’ Teornis said, seeming genuinely angry, frustrated even, ‘but you are binding my hands, Maker. My family will not be easily pacified now. I advise you to find a means of mollifying them, for if the armada sets sail, then nothing in the world will stop it, and it will make the fleet I led against the Vekken seem like nothing. And we both know what will happen while we are at each other’s throats. The Black and Gold will be at Sarn’s doorstep before we’re done, and probably Seldis’s as well.’

‘So you propose,’ Stenwold laid out slowly, ‘that in return for your family plundering half of the eastbound cargoes Collegium has sent out over the last six months, killing our mariners and practising this deceit on us – in return for all of this we should offer some grand gift and beg your forgiveness for having offended you?’

‘As I say, manifestly unjust, but then consider your alternatives,’ Teornis told him.

A new voice spoke up, ‘I have an alternative.’ It was Danaen.

Stenwold frowned at her uncertainly for a moment, but decided to follow her lead. ‘My Mantis-kinden would have me give the order to kill you,’ he said. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘Are you suggesting that would solve anything?’ Teornis asked him.

‘It would solve my immediate problem. Perhaps it would send the right kind of message to the Aldanrael. But, no, it is not a course of action I am eager to try. I remember when you and I stood on the same side, Teornis. I never looked for anything but your friendship, but neither can I stand by and let my city fall victim to… pointless acts of brigandage. So what am I to do?’

‘Let me kill him,’ Danaen said promptly.

Teornis curled his lip. ‘Your Mantis makes great presumptions about her capabilities.’

‘This is not helping,’ Stenwold stated. ‘We came to talk, not to fight.’

Danaen spat. ‘I’ve told you, Maker, there’s only one way to deal with Spiders. If you won’t take that step, I will.’

‘You will not!’ Stenwold snapped in return.

Her eyes blazed rebelliously. The Dragonfly-kinden that Teornis had brought were reaching for arrows.

‘Felyen! To me!’ Danaen yelled out. There was a moment’s startled pause and then a half-dozen Mantis-kinden were clambering over the sides of the barge, dripping wet but armed to the teeth. The Dragonflies had their bows bent instantly, and Teornis’s Ants formed up around him, with shields raised.

‘Why, Maker? Why use Mantis-kinden?’ Teornis cried out. ‘Any other race might possibly exercise some self-control, some rational restraint, but Mantis-kinden? You might as well have cut the throat of any chance for peace between us.’

Stenwold was barely listening to him. ‘Danaen, what is this?’ he demanded, aware that Padstock’s people had brought their snapbows up.

‘You do not need to ask, Beetle,’ the Mantis leader told him. Her reinforcements had now spread out across the deck in a loose crescent, ready to descend on Teornis’s guards.

And on Teornis’s ship someone will be watching the sky to ensure nobody comes flying to our aid, Stenwold thought wildly, but they will not be watching the sea. Who would think that they could just swim over?

‘What of Mantis honour,’ he demanded, ‘that commodity you speak so highly of? The Mantis-kinden I have known would not betray me so!’

The look Danaen turned on him was of pure scorn. ‘The Mantis you knew was a blood traitor, a breeder of abomination,’ she hissed at him. ‘Do not think you know us, Beetle. Do not think you know us, at all.’

Stenwold must have missed a signal then: not from the Mantids but from Teornis himself. The next thing he knew was the cold line of a dagger against his throat, and someone holding him tightly from behind. His first thought was that it was one of the Mantids, but then he heard Arianna’s voice whisper, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Everyone still now,’ Teornis commanded. ‘Mantis swords back in Mantis sheaths, and you Beetles can aim those bows down at the floor. If you’re talking about justice, Maker, your people have a poor way of showing it.’

Stenwold stared only at him, because to twist his head to look at Arianna would hurt too much, above and beyond the knife. He expected to see contempt in his opponent’s face, that a man who set himself up as a follower of the Dance should fall for such a transparent trick, but instead he surprised a pinprick of sympathy in the man’s expression.

‘Now, we will talk,’ Teornis declared.

‘You mistake us, Spider,’ Danaen said, with evident relish. ‘Have your traitor gut the fat old man if you wish. What is he to me?’

Teornis’s reserve held. ‘He is the spokesman of your new adopted city, or would you betray that as well?’ he demanded archly.

She sneered. ‘In even considering dealing with the likes of you, he has betrayed all right-thinking people. Kill him, or I shall kill him. I care not which.’

Teornis’s eyes found Stenwold’s gaze again, and his expression seemed to carry the accusation: Your death be on your own head, since you chose to deal with these fanatics.

And it’s true, Stenwold thought, but the Mantis meant nothing to him just then. It was another betrayal that had cut him deeper.

The four Kessen Ants grouped tighter about Teornis, each sharing thoughts with the next, ready to fend off the sudden Mantis strike that must be only seconds away. Stenwold could imagine Padstock and her people on the very edge of doing something unwise to Arianna, whose knife edge was like a razor at his throat. He could hear her ragged breathing and her arm about his neck was trembling slightly. Her regrets are going to kill me at any second, but at least she has them. The Dragonflies had bowstrings drawn back.

‘Any bloodshed here and my ship will move in and rid the world of all of you,’ Teornis declared flatly, ‘Mantis bravado or not, you gain nothing here. The armada will still sail, and if you shed a drop of my blood my kin will… a-’ He stopped speaking, mouth still open, his eyes fixed entirely elsewhere. A ripple of uncertainty ran through the cordon of Mantis-kinden, staying their hands for a precious second or two.

‘Arianna…’ Stenwold got out.

‘Just stay still,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Sten. I really don’t want to hurt you. Please, please call them off.’

‘I don’t think I can…’ he started to say, and she screamed and pushed him away from her.

He assumed she had been shot, but there had been no sudden crack of a snapbow. Then he thought she had sliced him, for pain lashed across his neck, but it was nothing but a shallow nick left by the sudden withdrawal of her knife. Then chaos and devastation were let loose, for Arianna’s scream had set the Mantids in motion.

They made no subtleties about it, simply charging the Ants with savage speed in an attempt to overrun them. They clashed, with the Kessen trusting to their mail and shields, and their constant watch over each other, to turn the many swords away. One of the four Ants went down, Danaen’s narrow blade curving over his shield’s rim to pierce the armour at his throat. Another Mantis was felled and writhing, pinned to the deck by a long arrow, and one more had his face gashed by a Kessen shortsword. Stenwold tugged at his own blade, turning to see To see what Teornis and Arianna had seen, and it stopped him in his tracks, too. It was an eye.

It jutted out from the waves, set into a pointed crest of rubbery flesh tall enough to overlook the barge’s low side: a mottled-yellow eye with a broad slash of black for a pupil, and measuring larger across than a man’s torso.

All around him they were fighting, Teornis’s people and his own. He heard the explosive snap of Padstock’s bow, and her voice calling out, ‘Through the Gate!’ which must have bewildered everyone there save for her own followers. The Dragonflies were aloft, sending down shaft after shaft at any Mantis that offered a clear target.

Teornis went down without warning. Stenwold thought he had been shot, then that a Mantis had got him, for his Kessen bodyguards were being overwhelmed, though they put up a stubborn and furious fight. Then Stenwold saw, and the sight made his stomach lurch.

Something had grabbed Teornis by the leg. Something like a leathery cable had snagged his ankle and was hauling him towards the rail. He had his rapier out, but its narrow blade was ill-suited to cutting, and his people were too busy fighting to hear his cries for aid. The sight was so horrible that Stenwold himself made a move towards him, with no other aim in mind but the rescue of his enemy.

In a flurry of wings, Laszlo landed beside him. ‘I’ll head for the Tidenfree!’ the Fly called out.

‘Laszlo, look!’ But, when Stenwold pointed, the terrible eye was gone. The Fly skipped into the air a moment later, eager to be away, and an arrow zipped past close to where he’d been.

Stenwold turned to find himself not five feet away from Arianna, with his sword to hand. Her knife was still out, his blood decorating the edge. Their eyes met.

Something slapped at his leg and, assuming it was an arrow, he dropped into a crouch, one hand raised uselessly to ward off the next. A moment later he was sprawled on his back, the breath exploding from his body. He kicked out desperately, feeling a tightness about his calf, almost losing hold of his sword.

A sudden contraction hauled him two feet along the deck towards the railing and he realized that it had him.

Stenwold jackknifed up, crying out as he saw the thick tentacle that had snaked across the deck to encircle his leg. He lashed at it with his blade, just as a new convulsion rippled down the length of it, and he was dragged another half-body length towards the sea.

His nerve broke. The thought of that eye, belonging to some unspeakable sea-thing lurking just beyond the barge’s rail, the thought of all that water, that all-consuming depth just yards away, was too much. Stenwold screamed in revulsion and fear, and hacked wildly at the grasping tentacle. His first blow glanced off its thick, oozing hide, while his second merely gashed open his own thigh. Another tug hauled him inexorably closer to the edge. He cast about wildly, still shouting for aid. He saw one of Padstock’s company go down, spitted by an arrow. The Mantids were finishing off the Ants, and some were sending arrows up at the circling Dragonflies.

Teornis With a snarl of pure futile savagery, Teornis vanished over the barge’s side, his rapier spinning from his hand. A moment later Stenwold’s free foot kicked against the wooden rail.

He tried to brace himself against it, feeling the appalling strength as the monster’s muscles seethed and pulsed. He hacked again, barely penetrating the creature’s thick skin.

‘Ma’rMaker!’ Laszlo was beside him in an instant. The Fly’s expression showed that, life of piracy or no, he had never encountered anything such as this before. His dagger was out in an instant, though, and he laid hands on the coils wrapped around Stenwold’s leg and began cutting. He should have been halfway to the Tidenfree by now, but Stenwold had never been so glad to have his orders disobeyed.

Another surge of strength sent agony tearing through his leg and made the railing creak and splinter. Laszlo was using both hands to drive the dagger deeper, now, heedless of whether it skewered Stenwold as well.

‘One moment, Ma’rMaker,’ the Fly hissed between his teeth. ‘Just one moment…’

His eyes met Stenwold’s, and there was a moment of shared horror between them as another leathery whip crawled over the side and lashed itself about his chest. Laszlo opened his mouth to yell, but in the next second he was airborne, not by his own wings but whipped from the deck in a single convulsive spasm, and a second later the sea had claimed him.

Stenwold struck the limb that held him a solid blow, aiming for where the Fly’s knife had scored its skin. It tugged yet again, and this time the railing half gave way. He had no wits left now for tactics or clear thinking; the sword was forgotten. Stenwold was clawing at the deck with both hands, a pointless struggle to stay clear of the dark and hungry ocean. He began howling something, some desperate plea. There was nothing left of War Master Maker but a sheer dread of the deep.

A hand grasped his wrist and hauled on it. He looked up into the fear-twisted face of Arianna.

‘I have you!’ she shouted.

‘Don’t let go!’ He was weeping, trying to kick out with his snared leg, trying to dig his nails into the wood, all craft and Art lost to him.

‘I have you, Sten!’ she cried again, dragging at him, stealing back precious inches from the sea. ‘I’m sorry, Sten,’ she was saying. ‘I’m so sorry!’

Stenwold saw the sword’s point leap from her chest before he realized what it was. For a moment it was simply an image he could not make sense of, just as that great yellow eye had been. Then Arianna arched back, blood exploding from her lips, her grip gone from his wrist. As she fell, she revealed Danaen behind her, grinning like a madwoman, arms bloody to the elbows. She spared a moment to catch Stenwold’s gaze, and her expression was pure triumph.

He screamed in grief and rage and terror at her, and then the tentacle hauled once again, and he slid past the broken rail and into the sea.