The Sea Watch

Thirty-Six

It was the same Mantis dive that he had once gone fishing for pirates in, without success. He could only hope to have more luck this time, since the stakes were a whole lot higher.

He ducked beneath the lintel, into a waft of fire-warmed air, out of the night’s cool. He would have preferred to visit here by daylight, but had not managed to track down his target until after dusk. Laszlo had trailed dutifully after him all around the city, as he spoke to his informants or avoided people wanting to question him about his absence. Now he gestured for the Fly to stay back. If things went badly, he needed Laszlo to be able to make an escape and tell the story.

It was just as he remembered inside: a forest of wooden pillars cluttering the harbour-front tavern. The Mantids sat with their backs to the virtual trees, talking in low voices, eyes glittering red in the firelight. Winding pipe music came from somewhere, the voices of two instruments entwined, quavering some strange and sad melody.

Stenwold paused just within the doorway, and felt for his courage. There were a good twenty-five or so Mantis-kinden present, of whom he could name only one – and that one was no friend of his, not any more. He called on his memories of Tisamon, but then Tisamon had never been the most typical of his kind. Stenwold hoped that, in this most important thing, he had judged matters right.

He drew his sword. The whisper of steel on leather was barely audible even to himself, but it silenced them all, even the musicians. He felt their eyes settle on him, not with fear or alarm but with a crawling eagerness. Without any transition, weapons were in every hand: rapiers, long knives, spears. A few were even buckling on clawed gauntlets like the one that Tisamon used to wear.

One stood up, a hard-faced woman with a slender blade held loose in her left hand. ‘You have walked through the wrong doorway, Beetle,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps you should go elsewhere with your little sword.’

Stenwold reminded himself bleakly that offering him this chance to withdraw amounted to their most diplomatic level of politeness.

‘I’m afraid I know exactly what I am about. My name is Stenwold Maker.’

‘What’s that to me?’ the Mantis woman demanded. There was no sign of any recognition whatsoever in her face.

‘You speak for all here? Do you have no name?’ Names were important, Stenwold knew, for the Inapt set great store by them.

‘Akkestrae, they call me,’ she told him. ‘Now take your sword and go, Stenwold Maker the Beetle. You are not welcome.’

‘I am here to defend Mantis honour.’ Those were words that Tisamon had once used, or so Stenwold hoped, relying on a years-old memory. They had their effect anyway. He saw a reaction – an emotion for which the Beetle-kinden had no name – lash across all their faces. He guessed that their offer to let him duck back out and leave had just been withdrawn.

‘Hard words for such a soft, fat man to say,’ Akkestrae rebuked him. The angle of her rapier had changed even as he spoke, from idle to ready, just a twitch away from running him through. ‘Do you think you are the first of your kind to mock us, in your ignorance? The sea lies at your back, Beetle. It can take a good many more corpses yet before it is full.’

‘Do not lecture me on what the sea can hold,’ snapped Stenwold, with enough fire that she blinked and frowned at him. ‘I am here to defend Mantis honour,’ he repeated. ‘For it appears nobody else will.’

‘And who assaults it?’ she asked him contemptuously. ‘If you know of what you speak, then you must give us a name.’

‘Danaen,’ Stenwold replied. ‘Come forward, Danaen, and defend yourself if you can.’

There was quite a pause, and a murmur of Mantis voices in hissed outrage, before she stepped forward – Danaen, with her scarred face twisted in a look of arrogant disdain. It came to him, then, that the same expression had always been there whenever he met her, but he had previously chosen to interpret it as simple Mantis reserve.

‘I hear you are recently back from the dead, Beetle,’ she said in almost a whisper, save that the strange acoustics of the place carried it to all ears. ‘You must be eager to return there, that you call me out so.’

‘Call you out?’ Stenwold reproached her, keeping both hands steady on his courage. ‘I am here to right your wrong – and a wrong against all your kinden.’

With a tiny movement, so slight he might almost have missed it, her short, slender blades were both in her hands. ‘If your life wearies you so much, then I shall cut it from you,’ she snarled, her eyes cold.

‘Say what you must, Beetle,’ said Akkestrae, now sounding bored. ‘Speak and then have the grace to die cleanly – if your kind even know how.’

‘I have had Mantis allies before,’ Stenwold informed them, ‘and when I walked in the shadow of a Mantis, I had no fear of failure or betrayal. I knew that, once his oath was given, even Tisamon’s death would hardly prevent him carrying out his word.’

‘Tisamon!’ someone spat derisively from amongst them, and Akkestrae said, ‘That is no name to conjure with here, for we know his failings.’

‘As did he,’ Stenwold replied sombrely. ‘Yet he wore the Weaponsmaster’s badge, and he earned it. Who denies it?’

Akkestrae watched him as though he was prey that had just offered a certain extra enjoyment in its hunting, but no voice rose to question Tisamon’s standing now. It had been Stenwold’s main concern that his dead friend’s reputation would prove too corroded to bear the reliance he must place on it.

‘Tisamon taught me to put faith in the Mantis-kinden.’ He addressed the whole room whilst locking eyes with Danaen. ‘In the end, whatever his failings, it was his sword that cut the throat of the Wasp Emperor – his sacrifice that took the Wasp armies from our gates. Who denies it?’

‘What of it?’ Danaen spat, and several voices joined hers.

‘So when I sought help once more against a common foe, it was to the Mantis-kinden I turned – and I was betrayed.’

The silence that followed was the most dangerous yet, but before he could break it, Danaen herself did so.

‘You went to talk with the Spider-kinden scum!’ she yelled at him. ‘When you found yourself at war with them, you would not fight. Like any Beetle, you would only talk. I knew my duty.’

‘Did you so?’ Stenwold asked. ‘Perhaps you refer to drawing blade against the Spider-kinden during our truce, whilst we talked peace?’

‘Who faults me on that?’ Danaen demanded, and it was clear that few there would.

‘Or perhaps you speak of your greater betrayal?’ Stenwold pressed on, and the silence was back, with reinforcements. He waited, but Danaen did not interrupt again. Her eyes had abruptly become hooded.

‘We met out on the water, aboard a barge towed to a precise point. Who made the arrangements? Whose idea was that? And how was it, then, that the barge was attacked, that I and my follower were dragged into the water by new enemies? A trap. It was a trap I stepped into, but none of the Spiders’ doing, for they walked into it as well. It was a trap set by those I relied on. The honour of the Mantis-kinden was turned into a trap to exploit my trust.’

Danaen’s hands were now white-knuckled around the hilts of her blades. ‘And would your city be better off had you sold them to the Spider with your words?’ she snapped. ‘One Beetle or another, why should I take orders from any? If Maker says one thing and Broiler says another, what of it? Why should I not follow the orders that help kill more Spiders?’

Broiler? Stenwold’s insides lurched. Helmess bloody Broiler? Was selling us to the Wasps not enough, that he has somehow become Claeon’s man now?

‘Broiler, you say?’

She glowered at him, but there was something guarded in her eyes, something defensive all of a sudden, and in his mind he had beaten past her guard, his words gathered for a sudden lunge.

‘Do any here know what is said of Helmess Broiler?’ Stenwold demanded. To his surprise, there was a look of recognition on a few of their faces, a few dark glances, curt nods. ‘They say that Helmess Broiler would have sold this city to the Empire, if he had his way. The same Empire that drove you from your homes in the Felyal! And that is who Danaen would serve rather than me?’

‘Enough of this,’ Danaen snapped. ‘It is time for me to shed your blood, fat Beetle.’

Stenwold had not entirely thought this moment through, before, but mention of the name Broiler, the man who had been a thorn in his side for so many years, had fired his blood. ‘Come on then,’ he challenged her, and levelled his shortsword.

Danaen went for him, in a movement faster than he could follow. His parry came in far too late, of course, but the Mantis had pulled back, jerking away from him. Akkes-trae’s sword was between them.

‘What?’ Danaen hissed. ‘Will you let him speak so lightly of Mantis honour? You heard his words.’

‘I heard many words,’ the other woman replied flatly, ‘and I heard the name of honour in an unfit mouth – but it was not his. You have condemned yourself.’

Danaen sneered at her, looking about at her fellows. ‘This is pitiful,’ she told them. ‘This is what comes of living in this soft city. It has poisoned you.’

They regarded her solemnly, not one of them standing forward to take her part.

‘Against the Spider-kinden,’ she insisted. ‘Which one of you would not have struck a blow against the Spider-kinden?’

‘I was made a slave,’ Stenwold said, softly but with feeling. ‘Your allies made a slave of me.’ The Mantis-kinden, he knew, had strong feelings about slavers. It was one trade they loathed above all others, one fragile piece of common ground they had with Collegium.

‘How can you listen to him?’ Danaen shrieked at her kinsfolk, and Akkestrae said simply, ‘We need only listen to you.’

Stenwold turned away towards the open doorway, lowering his sword. A moment later he heard a sudden flurry of blows, as swift as the rattling of chains, and then a brief cry of pain. When he turned back, Danaen lay on the ground, her body bloody and pierced in many places. Akkestrae was cleaning the long blade of her rapier in minute detail, without even looking at him.

He gave a long sigh of relief and sheathed his sword, knowing that, waiting outside, Laszlo would note the signal. Two Mantis men took up Danaen’s body and dragged it out to the sea’s edge, while Stenwold stepped fully inside and went to sit with his back resting against a pillar, pointedly facing into the room. He had to wait a few minutes, as they tried their best to ignore him, but eventually Akkestrae came over to speak.

‘What do you want?’ she asked him. ‘Do not assume we are your friends here, because of this.’

He faced her levelly. ‘Oh, no. Just because I am the War Master of Collegium, and have fought our common enemies, because my city has taken you in when your home was burned, or because I have detected the Spider-kinden engaging in their hidden war on my city, and have myself been betrayed into darkness and slavery by your own people, of course I can have no claim on you.’

Her face twisted, her hand hovering at her rapier’s hilt, but he felt on more secure ground now. ‘What do you want?’ she repeated. ‘Do you think we fear that you will expel us?’

He saw, although perhaps she did not quite know it herself, that they did indeed fear it. The Mantis-kinden living beneath borrowed roofs in this city of the Apt, without function and without history, were waiting to outstay their welcome. They were baffled, unsure, belligerent, angry at being so useless. They see no point in themselves. They cannot understand why we keep them here. Perhaps they expect to go down in some grand final stand when we decide to throw them out.

He sighed, trying to sympathize with them, knowing how he needed their cooperation. ‘I value the Mantis-kinden, for no man had a truer friend than Tisamon. There are dark times coming to Collegium: perhaps the Spiders shall bring them, or else the Empire again. We shall be glad of the Mantids then, I’m sure.’

She seemed reassured, if only slightly. ‘And yet you want something of us.’

He nodded heavily. ‘I am told that there are some from the Felyal who live close to the sea. I am told of pacts, of rituals, and I must speak with one such. It is very important.’

The surprise was evident in her face that a mere Beetle should know anything of that. ‘It is a… strange old custom, even to us. Few there are who held to it even before the Empire arrived.’

‘Is there anybody…’ Stenwold started, and she interrupted, ‘But there is one.’

‘Here?’

‘The Sea Watch… that kind have always walked their own path,’ Akkestrae told him. ‘But now… There is one in the city. She is bitter, and angry, and she walks that path no more. There is a pier, narrow and in need of repair, lying closest to the easternmost sea wall. Most nights you will find her there. Her name is Cynthaen.’

The pier Akkestrae meant was old, too narrow for merchantmen, too high for smaller boats. Had Collegium’s sea trade been of more import, then no doubt it would have been torn down long ago for something better. As it was, the rickety construction had been left to rot.

It was past midnight now, for Stenwold had returned home to collect Paladrya, in the hope that she might help win the confidence of this Cynthaen through recounting what details she knew of Aradocles’s advent on to the land. He had collected another fistful of bolts for his cut-down snapbow too, for when he had left the waterfront tavern, Laszlo had cautioned him.

‘I’ve not been alone out here, Mar’Maker,’ the Fly had said in a low voice. ‘The night air’s been busy. Nothing so clumsy that I caught a proper glimpse, but… they’re out there.’

With that warning, Stenwold had requisitioned Fel as well, and the four of them had travelled the long way back to the quays, and located Akkestrae’s pier. Paladrya kept herself shrouded in her cloak, for she had quickly understood that her kinden’s resemblance to the Spiders might cause her problems. Fel, on the other hand, went in his mail, his vest and bracers of shell over something that was leathery without being leather, and wore his helm with the swept-back crest, as though he was some exotic Mantis prizefighter. Cloaks, Stenwold soon understood, were tangling and unfamiliar to the Onychoi warrior, and he had developed a strong dislike for them.

It would have to do, though. Stenwold had no time to argue, nor did Fel look amenable to persuasion.

The pier was a long one, extending far out to sea on its uneven stanchions. In the waning moonlight Stenwold tried to see if there was anyone standing out there. ‘Perhaps this is one of her nights off?’ he suggested.

‘Someone is there,’ Paladrya declared, and the other two were nodding. Fly-kinden had sharp eyes and, of course, the sea-kinden were used to the gloom that was the best their limn-lights could make of the deep sea’s utter darkness.

‘Just one person?’ Stenwold asked cautiously. He saw Laszlo glance suddenly upwards, abruptly suspicious, but the two sea-kinden were again nodding.

‘Unless someone could be hiding behind that little structure there,’ Paladrya filled in. There was a boxy little shed towards the very end of the pier: a small storage hut, he guessed.

Out over the water again. Stenwold found himself remarkably unwilling to step even on to the boards of the jetty. It was not just that they were worm-eaten, and complained creakily about his weight. It was the sea itself beneath. He felt that it was waiting for him. I escaped it once, and it wants me back. And he thought: Yet do I not wish to go back? ‘Return to me’, she had said… He shook himself irritably and led the way down the pier’s uneven length.

He was more than halfway to the end before his eyes could pick out even the suggestion of shape ahead. If something went wrong out here, he would be at such a disadvantage that he might as well just throw himself into the ocean. Irritably he unlatched a lamp from his belt. He had hoped not to have to use it, as whoever was out here obviously valued their moonlit privacy. He struck the steel within, and a wan gas flame ignited, almost white and turned as low as it would go. Despite his misgivings, he felt a great deal better after it was lit.

He approached with caution, Paladrya and Fel shadowing his footsteps and Laszlo hanging slightly back. The lamp illuminated the pier’s end, flaring palely on the rotten boards of the storage shed, before touching on the back of the figure at the very end of the pier. It was indeed a Mantis woman, as far as Stenwold could tell, sitting on a barrel and staring out to sea… no, she was fishing. As he drew nearer, he spotted that she held a reel of line that was dangling into the midnight waters.

He heard her sigh, and he stopped a prudent distance away, with the shack right by his elbow.

Her voice drifted across to him, sounding weary: ‘I’m selling nothing and I’m buying nothing, and I carry no coin, strangers. You’ll get precious little from me.’

‘We don’t mean to rob you,’ Stenwold addressed her, ‘only to ask you a question, if we may.’

She had a stick in one hand, he now saw, a thick, four-foot length of wood. Without looking round, she leant on it, pushing herself off the barrel with a curiously lopsided motion, turning as she did so. He realized that she was younger than he had thought, her pale hair cut brutally short. Her face had a lot of lines on it, the evidence of pain and bitter feelings.

‘Cynthaen,’ he addressed her.

‘Most of her.’ She stepped forward, not Mantis-graceful but with a rolling lurch, and he saw, belatedly, that one leg was just a wooden stump from the knee down. When he lifted his eyes again, she met his gaze with keen cynicism, looking for the pity.

‘The Wasps?’ he asked her.

‘Gift of the Empire, yes,’ she said, ‘and of a surgeon of your own kinden. Trimmed me and seared me and told me how lucky I was, to be alive. So what do you want to ask me, Master Beetle? Have you found me a foot that needs a new owner?’ There was a humour in her voice, but it was sharp-edged.

‘I want to ask you about the sea-kinden,’ Stenwold told her. ‘Your people sent me to you.’

‘They remember me, do they?’ She lowered herself back on to the barrel, balancing herself between the stick and her sound leg. ‘Sea-kinden? Stories, Master Beetle, just stories.’

Stenwold glanced towards his companions, and Cynthaen followed his gaze. When he turned back to her, her face had become closed, resigned.

‘So,’ she said.

‘Your people, your family, made a pact, I am told,’ Stenwold explained. ‘And some years ago, that pact was called upon.’

‘Was it, now?’ she said blandly, hunching forward over her stick.

‘There was a boy brought up from the sea,’ Stenwold prompted. It was clear she knew exactly what he was talking about, but her face would admit none of it. All she would say was, ‘Was there so?’

‘He would have seemed like a Spider-kinden to you,’ the Beetle went on, a little desperately, as Cynthaen simply arched a sceptical eyebrow.

Stenwold opened his mouth, wondering what he could say next, just as Paladrya pushed past him, stepping far too close to the Mantis-kinden woman: almost within reach of the jagged spines on her forearms.

‘Please,’ the Kerebroi woman declared, simply, ‘we have come to take him home. Are there any of your people who might remember?’

Cynthaen had gone very still, and at first Stenwold thought it was because of finding a Spider-kinden woman before her, and was within an inch of striking out at her, but the expression on the Mantis’s face was not one of hatred, as he would have expected. Instead it was puzzlement slowly being replaced by something like recognition.

‘You,’ the Mantis said, and left the single word unqualified for a moment, before adding, ‘Was it you?’

Paladrya was now frowning, as the other three gathered closer, trying to work out what was happening here.

‘We were few and far between, those of us who kept the Watch, even before the Wasps came,’ murmured Cynthaen, very softly indeed. ‘Five, perhaps? Six? Dying traditions, they were: the offerings into the deep, and the harvest of the sea. As for now? I don’t know if anyone keeps the Sea Watch now. I am the only blood of my house remaining, what’s left of me. I recognize you, though. You’re of his kind, all right, and no Spider.’

Stenwold heard Paladrya’s breath catch. ‘You…?’

‘Do I remember you?’ Cynthaen frowned. ‘There in the shallows.. . not the two long bastards who came with him, but there was one other. I was watching from the trees. I remember. It could have been you, at that. It could have been. Nigh on five years ago, but I almost think it was you, after all.’

‘Do you know…’ Paladrya’s voice was shaking. ‘Do you know.. . whether he lives? My Aradocles, does he live?’

‘The Wasps came.’ Cynthaen’s voice went hard again, and she tapped her stick against her wooden leg. ‘They burned us out. Torched every logging camp and trading post along the edge of the Felyal, and then carried on till they hit Collegium’s walls.’

‘Is he here?’ Paladrya asked her. ‘Please, you must tell me, I have to know. I sent him on to the land, all those years ago, to keep him safe…’

Cynthaen gave a barking, incredulous laugh. ‘Safe? You chose the wrong place and time, woman. But your lad did fight, I give him that. Fought at the Felyal, and then with the Prince. Went and joined the Landsarmy, he did. Most of the villagers, the traders and the loggers, they couldn’t make it here. They moved too slow, had no boats, and the Wasps were already standing in the way. So they went north instead. Signed on with the Prince of the Wasteland.’ She nodded at Stenwold. ‘You know who I mean.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Stenwold breathed. ‘Yes I do.’

‘Then you’ll know where they ended up,’ Cynthaen told him. ‘In that new place of theirs. You want your lad? If he lives at all, he’s there.’

‘Princep Salmae,’ pronounced Stenwold.

‘Mar’Maker!’ Laszlo shouted an abrupt warning, and Stenwold whirled round to see a figure kick off suddenly into the air, from the roof of the storage shack. Stenwold’s hand came up automatically, tugging the little snapbow out of his coat and loosing both bolts, one after the other. One of them must have struck, through luck more than any skill, for the flying figure faltered in the air and then crashed to the pier, smashing through the old boards and vanishing almost instantly into the dark water below.

Almost immediately two others were upon them: lean, scarred men with long-hafted swords glittering, swooping down to avenge their comrade. One of them went straight for Paladrya, and the other stooped on Stenwold.

Fel got himself in the way of that second one. The sword sparked off his bracer, then he and the attacker were trading blows. Dragonfly-kinden, Stenwold saw – and not just Dragonflies but men of a look he had seen before. The swordsman had reach, and kept himself half airborne, swarming about Fel trying to find an opening. The Onychoi warrior left him no gap, pivoting and spinning to keep his opponent in sight, hands raised in a high guard, with their spikes jutting forward. Those blows he could not dodge, he took on his mail or on his Art-armoured knuckles.

Stenwold drew his own blade, turning to aid Paladrya. A second Dragonfly was already crouching low before her, sword held vertically before him. Cynthaen had come to her rescue, balanced on her good leg, both hands resting on her stick.

The Dragonfly struck a cleaving downward blow that should have lopped the Mantis’s weapon in half. Cynthaen twisted it a little as she brought it up, though, pulling it apart to reveal a ribbon of steel between a wooden hilt and scabbard. Then she had the blade fully drawn, keeping the sheath in her offhand to block with. Paladrya cowered behind her.

‘Mar’Maker, look!’ Laszlo was pointing urgently. Up on the shack’s roof there was another man, standing tall with a bow in one hand, an arrow just being put to the nock. Cursing at his own stupidity, Stenwold fumbled for more snapbow bolts.

Cynthaen was keeping up a steady defence, but she could not move fast enough to take the initiative, and slowly the Dragonfly’s relentless assault was forcing her back, her wooden foot dragging. Stenwold crouched, reloading frantically, and then, in front of him, Fel’s opponent was suddenly doubled over. A murderous barbed fist snapped out faster than Stenwold’s eyes could follow, ramming four inches of piercing bone under the man’s ribs. The bowstring thrummed and Fel was already turning towards the sound, the arrow striking into his armoured chest with enough force to send him to one knee. The mail had taken the worst of it, though, and he was already lurching back to his feet. Stenwold rushed forward, pointing the snapbow wildly in the archer’s direction, and the man lifted off, wings flickering in the lamplight before they carried him back down the length of the pier.

The conflict had stilled behind them, and Stenwold turned to see Cynthaen and Paladrya at the pier’s very edge. Their opponent lay at Cynthaen’s feet, with two deep wounds driven into his back, while Laszlo was cleaning his dagger with an unaccustomedly grim look on his face.

‘We’ve seen these lads before, Mar’Maker,’ he pointed out.

Stenwold nodded, drawn unwillingly back to the fatal fight on the barge. Teornis’s men, they had to be, which meant that either some other Aldanrael agent was on his trail, or…

Or Teornis had got to shore before him. It would surprise Stenwold not at all if that was true. He was a capable man, Teornis, and he would have found some way to manipulate Claeon into freeing him. Abruptly Stenwold felt certain that the Dragonflies had not been sent as assassins, only as spies – that their true prize, the knowledge of where Aradocles might be found, was even now winging its way back to their Aldanrael liege.

‘Fel,’ he said. ‘You’re wounded?’

The sea-kinden was staring down at the arrow, looking slightly perplexed now the fighting was done. He tugged at it experimentally and winced, but Stenwold had the impression that the shell mail had done its job and that the wound must be only shallow.

‘Never saw that before,’ the Onychoi murmured, baffled, and Stenwold was reminded that the sea-people were not well known for archery.

‘We need to get to Princep Salmae as quickly as possible,’ Stenwold decided. ‘If Aradocles is there, we have to find him before they do.’

His last glimpse of Cynthaen was to see her staring down at the dead Dragonfly in a kind of helpless frustration, as though she had been robbed by him, as though she would rather have died as a Mantis-kinden should do, than live on as she was.

Varante finished his report, looking sour and vengeful about the death of his kin. They were a proud lot, the Dragonfly-kinden of Solorn, descendants of the retinue of an exiled prince before they became the subjects of the Spider Aristoi. Teornis was only glad that his vassal had retained the self-possession to deliver his report rather than drawing a blade and wading in himself.

Ah, well, there’s no such thing as a perfect slave, as they say. ‘Do you know,’ he remarked to Helmess Broiler, ‘I have never yet had cause to visit Princep Salmae. Have they even finished it?’

‘That place never much interested me.’ The Beetle shrugged. ‘Just some band of uprooted peasants and former slaves pitching a few tents in the wilderness. Still, I understand the Sarnesh are busy cultivating them, for whatever reason.’

‘Well, now it would seem that I must make the visit. Maker will have agents there, of course.’

‘Oh, probably. The fellow it’s named after was one of his students, after all.’ Helmess smiled unpleasantly. ‘You’ll have your work cut out for you, my lord Spider. Who would talk to you there, when they’ll love and revere Maker as a war hero, a saviour? Won’t you be at something of a disadvantage?’

‘You forget, I’m also a war hero.’ Teornis’s teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Moreover, a Spider-kinden Aristos is never at a disadvantage. Stenwold may simply have countered some of my natural superiority, that’s all. Secure me a flying machine – for me and Varante and his people.’

Helmess frowned. ‘Just like that?’

‘It’s what you Beetles are good at, isn’t it? Machines, logistics? I’ll take your man Sands as well. He’s nicely inconspicuous. There may be a few too many Commonwealers about for Varante’s people to pass unnoticed. What? Don’t look so sour, man. After all, we’re on the same side, aren’t we? We want the same thing,’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Helmess heavily. His eyes flicked towards Elytrya, and Teornis smiled.

‘While you’re making the arrangements, I’ll keep your lovely mistress company, shall I, just a little insurance for your good behaviour? After all, we wouldn’t want you getting any unprofitable ideas.’