The Sea Watch

Thirty-Nine

‘This is a gold Central, from the Helleron mints,’ Stenwold explained patiently. ‘That’s the price of a sword, traditionally. These in silver are Standards, ten to a Central. This,’ he held up a disc of clay divided into segments, ‘is a wheel of bits. You can break it into pieces, and there are,’ he squinted at it, ‘fifty bits to a Standard here. They fire these wheels locally. They’re no good outside the city they’re made in.’ He laid the coins down at the outdoor table he and Paladrya had commandeered earlier for their breakfast.

At first he thought that Wys was finding all this difficult to take in. Then he realized she was just having trouble believing it.

‘This… this is money?’ she asked him, holding up a Central. ‘But it’s gold!’

‘Probably no more than half gold,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘We don’t use paper for money, up here.’

‘I’m not surprised, since I’ve seen your paper. Spit on it and it turns to mush,’ she said derisively. She stuck out a thin arm, displaying a bracelet of finely interwoven golden threads. ‘This is money, then?’

‘It’s worth money,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘I couldn’t say how much. There’s not much weight of gold to it, but the workmanship is fine.’

‘It is? Why, thank you.’ She grinned at what had apparently been a compliment. ‘Everything’s backwards here, but I think I like it. Despite how pissing hot and cold and fussy your air gets.’ Her pale skin was roasted pink in places, and she had secured from some vendor a Spider-style parasol to keep off the sun. Fel and Phylles had been driven into the shade before noon, but Wys could not get enough of the land-kinden and their buying and selling.

‘Can I keep these?’ she asked, of the coins Stenwold had been making his demonstration with.

‘Consider them a downpayment,’ he told her, and she fairly scampered off towards the nearest peddlers. Stenwold met Paladrya’s eyes and saw her smiling.

‘The Smallclaw were always the most enterprising amongst us,’ she said. ‘Hence the Hot Stations, I suppose. Even Claeon has had to make adjustments for them. They will lead the way to our future. I don’t imagine they really care who holds the Edmiracy of Hermatyre, in the long run.’

‘But you do,’ Stenwold told her, ‘and I find I do too.’ He was waiting now, either for Laszlo to return with something, or for some news from the local messengers he had sent out. It was frustrating to know that Teornis was ahead of him but, lacking a contact in the city due to Balkus’s ill-timed absence, there was little he could do. ‘What was your plan?’ he asked Paladrya. ‘Originally, when Claeon took power, what did you foresee?’

‘It would have been a grand thing to have had a plan, back then,’ she replied, still smiling at him. ‘It was all I could do to make that decision: to betray Claeon, save the boy. I thought Claeon would find me out sooner, and kill me in the heat of his rage. Until I met you, I had considered myself unlucky that I had been able to hide my crime from him for long enough for him to wish to keep me alive in order to punish me, rather than destroy me outright.’

There was just a twitch, at her eyes and the corner of her mouth, to hint at the force of Claeon’s displeasure. Stenwold covered her hand with his own, trying to find words of sympathy. A moment later a shadow fell over them, and a stout Beetle stood there: a moustached, balding man some years Stenwold’s senior, and wearing the working leathers of an artificer. Without introduction he sat down across from them at the crude table, staring narrowly at Paladrya.

‘Can we help you?’ Stenwold enquired, one hand finding the butt of the snapbow.

‘You’re the fellow that’s been asking questions?’ The accent was pure Collegium.

‘Some questions, possibly. Are you the man who has the answers?’ Stenwold pressed him.

The other Beetle looked from Stenwold back to the sea-kinden woman, who had withdrawn deeper into her cowl, plainly discomfited by him. ‘It’s a Spider lad you’re looking for. Curly hair, barely more than a child. Came in with the Prince’s lot.’

‘With Salma’s people, yes,’ Stenwold confirmed. Seeing the flicker of surprise in the man’s eyes, he added, ‘I knew Prince Salme Dien at Collegium.’ And let that fact carry some weight here, surely?

‘Is that so?’ was all the other man would say, then, ‘What might you want this lad for?’

Stenwold frowned, wondering if this character was a slaver, perhaps, hoping to offload some random Spider-kinden criminals or debtors. ‘To reunite him with his family, Master…?’

‘Penhold, Ordley Penhold,’ the Beetle told him, but something had set in his face, at Stenwold’s words. ‘Well, good luck in your search, friend. I hope you find what you’re after.’ Ordley Penhold stood up, his expression decidedly unfriendly, and stomped off, leaving Stenwold none the wiser.

There were two other enquiries after that: a starved-looking Fly-kinden who almost certainly was a slaver’s agent, and a Roach woman who tried to get money out of Stenwold by dropping vague hints about the youth he was looking for. The morning was wearing on, and their chances were looking grim, when the halfbreed turned up.

At first Stenwold assumed he was another Beetle, perhaps an associate of the departed Ordley Penhold, but there was a cast to his features that spoke of some mingling of bloods. In truth, Stenwold had already seen many such in Princep Salmae, and he supposed that this new city’s unjudging ideology made the place even more attractive than the somewhat forced tolerance of Collegium.

He was a big man, this halfbreed, and well dressed and, when he spoke, his voice was as cultured as a Collegium scholar’s. ‘Word has come you’re looking for a youth that looks Spider-kinden.’

Stenwold sighed tiredly, working up towards yet another wasted conversation, but Paladrya caught his arm.

‘Yes,’ she agreed carefully, ‘he looks Spider-kinden.’ She eyed the newcomer levelly. ‘You have seen such a youth?’ The description she had provided was detailed, especially as very few Spiders possessed the curly hair common amongst the Kerebroi. Stenwold felt a slight lift of excitement within him.

‘Then you are not the only people searching for him,’ the halfbreed murmured. ‘He is… anxious.’ He cast a hurried look about. ‘We should go somewhere more private. You have a room nearby?’

Stenwold shook his head. Last night they had slept within the now departed Windlass, and he had given precious little thought to tonight’s lodgings.

The newcomer grimaced, stepping back from the table. ‘Follow me,’ he said softly, beckoning them. Without looking back, he headed into a narrow alley between two of the more finished structures, a pair of tall, windowless warehouses.

Stenwold stepped into the buildings’ shadow, following the burly halfbreed away from the haphazard bustle of the airfield. Instinctively, once the walls were around him, he glanced back the way they had come, watching for any who might be watching him. Paladrya was behind him, of course, and he saw a moment’s alarm in her widening eyes, her mouth opening to shout a warning.

He turned back to meet the assault, his instincts sending his hand not for the snapbow within his tunic but for the sword at his side, dragging it out of its scabbard, but the halfbreed was swifter than he was, lashing out with both fists. Stenwold felt twin lines of pain rake across his face, not the solid impact of knuckles, but the searing lash of claws. He swung his sword towards the big man’s midriff and then tried for a lunge, but his arm was growing leaden, his joints abruptly stiff. The weapon tumbled out of suddenly distant-seeming fingers and, the next thing he knew, he was on his knees.

With an expression on his face of quiet amusement, his attacker dragged a long-bladed knife from his belt, while Stenwold fought desperately to regain control of his body, hurling all his kinden’s Art against the poison seeping inside him. With swift professionalism, the halfbreed drew his blade back for the kill.

Paladrya pushed past Stenwold, knocking him sideways, and for a horrified moment he thought she would take the blade in her stomach, but she seized hold of the attacker’s knife-wrist with one hand, hurling all her weight against it. He whipped her back and forth, trying to loosen her grip, but she had put her own Art into it, and held his knife back no matter how fiercely he tried to wrench it away from, her. Then he struck her hard, smashing his other palm across her face with all his strength, and finally he was rid of her. The incredulous howl that followed was not hers but his, though, for it was not her Art that had given way. The outline of her grasp was written on him still, in raw, flayed flesh where she had stripped his skin.

With a wordless cry of pain and fury he took the knife in his other hand and moved to stand over Paladrya where she lay. Stenwold saw her glare up at him and spit defiance to the last. He tried to rush forward to intervene, but could manage just a sluggish shuffle.

A moment later, the halfbreed had been shot, or at least he was off his feet so fast that Stenwold’s mind reconstructed it so – the poison addling him to such an extent that he could not piece together what he had seen. Only after the killer was floored did he recognize Laszlo rolling off the big man, one arm clutched to his chest, his face twisted and pale with pain.

Wys and the others arrived shortly after, to discover three invalids and a corpse. Paladrya was the best off, though her pale skin was now bruised all the colours of stormclouds and puffed up enough to half close one eye and slur her words. Stenwold was just starting to regain control of his limbs by then. Having experienced the effects of Spider-kinden poison before, he knew how it was soon overcome by a healthy man, especially one with a robust Beetle constitution.

Laszlo was in the worst shape. Seeing Stenwold and Paladrya at the mercy of a man several times his own size, he had used the only equalizer that a Fly-kinden possessed. He had taken his knife in hand, and driven it straight into the man with all the hurtling speed his wings could give him. The weapon had all but vanished under the half-breed’s ribs, but Laszlo had broken his arm and several fingers. Even so, he grinned at Stenwold while blinking away the pain.

‘I wasn’t bringing you through all that sea stuff just to end up like that,’ he hissed. Wys was fussing over him instantly, cursing that she had no salt water at hand to accreate a cast. By then a couple of Roach-kinden had turned up, attracted by the noise, who seemed to be something like the city guard. They leant on their staves and heard Stenwold and Paladrya talk, and they saw that the dead man looked as though he had been able to defend himself, and they sent for someone to have a look at the body, but otherwise seemed to have no interest in arresting or detaining anyone. Stenwold and his company helped Laszlo in the direction of a doctor that the Roach-kinden recommended, who turned out to be a brisk, businesslike Sarnesh surgeon who splinted Laszlo’s arm and gave him a concoction to sip at to deaden the pain. The Fly would drink none, though, until he had spoken to Stenwold, so the doctor left them to it, willing to abandon his treatment room to them in exchange for a delicate gold arm-ring that Wys paid him off with.

‘Mar’Maker,’ Laszlo insisted, ‘I heard them. I know where he is.’

For a moment Stenwold thought he meant Teornis, but Paladrya interrupted with, ‘Aradocles?’ somewhat indistinctly, and Laszlo nodded eagerly.

‘They said the palace,’ he got out, hunching forward in his haste to tell them, before collapsing back on to the doctor’s couch with a groan. ‘The Spider’s man, that one that went for you, he tried to get inside, but they said their chief here’s seeing nobody, not even Aristoi… So they’re going to sneak in tonight… Aradocles is in Princep’s palace somewhere, they’re sure of it.’

Stenwold glanced from him to Paladrya, and then towards Wys and her crew. ‘Then we have to get into the palace, no two ways about it,’ he said flatly. ‘And if they won’t let us, then we’ll have to beat Teornis at the sneaking game and get to the boy first.’

Stenwold tried to do it the official way first. He presented himself at the complex that here in Princep they called the Monarch’s Palace. It was half-built, but it was large and much of it was composed of stone, so it was clear that the erratic architects of the new city had been putting a great deal of effort into it nonetheless. The approach of the various carpenters and masons and tilers was piecemeal to say the most. The foundations were all marked out, but walls had gone up here and there without any concerted plan, with some parts roofed over and others open to the sky, so that what was probably intended to be a series of interlocking quadrangles currently looked like a complex maze of cane scaffolding, stone and wood. There were gardens cleared around it too, that had been planted the year before with green and were now flourishing. Walking up to the palace doors Stenwold saw a dozen Bee-kinden gardeners, no doubt fugitives or deserters from the Empire, tending shrubs and bushes and transplanted trees with patient, loving care.

This complex was clearly the heart of Princep Salmae – or would be when there was enough of either city or palace to warrant it. The planners had set aside a lot of space for it and given the layout considerable thought. Paths of woodchips meandered through the green, and Stenwold was reminded of his sole visit to the Commonweal, and the ascetic simplicity that dominated everything they built there.

Also a reminder of the Commonweal were the armed men and women whom he took to be the palace guard: Dragonfly-kinden in leather and chitin armour, leaning on spears or strung longbows. But of course, Princep’s Monarch was born there, he considered. The presence of such guards suggested that Princep Salmae had not been slow in establishing diplomatic relations with its namesake’s homeland.

He spent a vexing half-hour talking to a lean old Roach-kinden man called Sfayot. Polite and white-bearded, the Roach explained to him that the Monarch saw nobody.

‘You should tell her,’ Stenwold stressed, playing his only good card, ‘that I was a friend of Prince Salme Dien. I knew him well.’

‘Indeed,’ said Sfayot gravely, ‘Master Maker, do not think your name is unknown to us.’

That brought Stenwold up short. ‘But, then, if you knew…’

The Roach set off through the gardens, beckoning him to follow, Sfayot walked with a staff, but he trusted little weight to it, and Stenwold guessed that as the habit of a man who had needed to defend himself in places where he could not openly carry a weapon.

‘You are indeed known to her, War Master Stenwold Maker,’ the Roach said tiredly. ‘She keeps herself aloof from the greater Lowlands, but there are certain names she knows. A few, a very few, she will meet with, should they come to her.’ He fixed Stenwold with a sharp, pale gaze. ‘There is another list of those that she does not wish to meet.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Stenwold said, at a loss. ‘I was his friend, the man this city is named after.’

Sfayot walked on in silence for some time, Stenwold dogging his footsteps anxiously, but at last the Roach paused before a flowering bush of some variety Stenwold had never seen before.

‘Do your people appreciate flowers, Master Maker? Of Beetle cities I have seen only Helleron, and I saw little sign of them there.’

‘We can do,’ Stenwold said, mystified. ‘As tokens of affection, sometimes, or to ornament a room. Yes, we like flowers, I suppose.’

‘And once you have used these flowers that you favour…?’ Sfayot said, almost too low to hear.

Stenwold was bewildered and weary, and still feeling odd twinges of pain from the halfbreed’s poison, so his voice was testy when he replied, ‘They die, I suppose. What of it?’

Sfayot nodded mournfully. ‘She will not see you, War Master,’ he stated, with finality.

Stenwold glared at him. He was on the point of insisting that something must be done, because a Spider Aristos and his Dragonfly-kinden killers were going to mount a kidnapping that very night. It would have been the right thing to do, to give the warning and move on, but Stenwold needed Aradocles for himself, not just to keep the boy out of Teornis’s hands. Any warning he gave might make his own job that much more difficult.

Instead he simply shrugged, as though he was taking the rejection with good grace and intended thereafter to leave, and would trouble Princep Salmae no more. He walked away, but he was looking about him, seeing where the half-constructed palace might best be entered, wondering where any sentries might be stationed after dark. When he glanced back for Sfayot, he thought he spotted the old Roach at the palace doors again, talking to a Beetle-kinden man. He frowned, for the man in question might have been Ordley Penhold, who had spoken so mysteriously earlier that day, but at this distance it was impossible to be sure.

So he returned to his allies, to await nightfall.