The Sea Watch

Four

When he came, he came dressed in plain colours, not in livery nor hooded like a conspirator: a middle-aged Beetle in a leather cap, such as artificers wore to keep their hair safe from sparks, or a soldier underneath his metal helm. His clothes were those of any well-to-do tradesman whose job occasionally required him to get dirty, and his frame was portly, prosperous-looking. The bodyguard was Wasp-kinden but not in uniform, all the trappings of a renegade for hire. There was barely a hint of black or yellow about either of them.

The door these two appeared at was not Helmess Broiler’s townhouse, rather a mid-town property he also owned. The line thus trodden was just sharp enough to make him sweat. Damn the fellow.

Helmess Broiler was a big man in the Assembly still, for all that Jodry Drillen had clawed himself a clear-cut lead in recent days. Popularity was like cupping water in your hands, forever seeping away. It will change. But, for now, Helmess had to accept that he had been wrongfooted. It was not a good time for this meeting, but no time would have been ideal, not after the war.

The servant who opened the door was a man who had been with the Broiler family two generations, with sharp eyes and a tight mouth. Inside, a modest table was already set. This was merely two Beetle-kinden talking business in civilized surroundings, had anyone asked.

‘Master Broiler,’ said the visitor, pushing the cap off his balding head and smiling with every appearance of cordiality, And he is enjoying himself, Broiler thought bitterly. We both took a fall, after the war, so how come he’s smiling and I’m not?

‘Master Bellowern,’ Broiler acknowledged. The bodyguard took up his place at a comfortable distance. He was not so evidently a soldier out of uniform as Broiler had feared, but that made it even worse. Paranoia duly raised the spectre of the Wasps’ hidden blade: the Rekef. Was this man a Rekef agent? Was Honory Bellowern himself a Rekef agent?

Of all the people in this city, I am one of only two who truly know to fear the Rekef, Helmess Broiler thought dourly, and the other is Stenwold Maker, who would not appreciate the joke.

And, on the heels of that: Maker, who put me in this intolerable position by having the bloody gall to be right.

Honory Bellowern had been a resident of Collegium for a few years now, neatly pre-dating the war itself. He was a model Beetle-kinden, well-mannered, genial, sophisticated and wealthy. One could forget so easily that he was no native, that he was in fact a servant of the Empire. He was not the Imperial ambassador, which role had gone, after the war, to a Wasp called Aagen. Aagen spent most of his non-ambassadorial time touring the factories and the College artificing workshops, and when he stood up to speak to the Assembly, Bellowern was always at his shoulder. Bellowern drew the charts that Ambassador Aagen steered by, and at the same time he was the acceptable face of Imperial policy, a friendly, corpulent statement that We are like you. People like Broiler already knew that the Empire was full of such people. Through their factors in Helleron there had been a fine old profit to be made, and that profit was magnified for those prepared to put themselves out a little for their trading partners.

And so it had been natural for Bellowern to have made some business contacts with certain Collegiate magnates. Bellowern had his hand in the coffers of the Consortium, which managed and massaged Imperial trade. Before the war, a lot of that trade had been flowing through Helleron and thence to Collegium, and Broiler had been one of the beneficiaries. Bellowern had not asked so very much, to secure preferential treatment. It was, after all, standard procedure within the Collegium Assembly, denied and decried and assiduously practised. If a citizen of Collegium wanted something done, then he courted those Assemblers most sympathetic. There were gifts and favours, it was how life had always worked. The Empire had become a very comfortable neighbour, and it had been no great sacrifice for Helmess to mouth their words at the Amphiophos. After all, Broiler had been speaking against Stenwold Maker’s lunacies, and Broiler had been trading affluently with the Empire, and so a closer working relationship seemed harmless enough.

And then it had all gone wrong, horribly wrong. Stenwold Maker had talked the Assembly into declaring against the Empire, and the Imperial Second Army had come ravening along the coast until it stood at the gates of Collegium itself, since Maker had talked the Assembly into committing Collegium to war.

Even then it had still looked hopeful, and more hopeful for Broiler and his peers than for any others. The Empire was a formidable military force, the Sarnesh had already been beaten once, and Collegium was still battered after the Vekken siege. An Imperial Collegium, with positions of responsibility handed to those the Empire could trust, would have worked out very nicely. And Stenwold Maker’s head on a pike.

But the Sarnesh and their Collegiate ancillaries had beaten the Empire at Malkan’s Stand, and then the Emperor had displayed the ferociously ill-timed gall to die, dragging Imperial stability with him. General Tynan’s Second Army had rushed from the gates of Collegium to secure the man’s political future, and Collegium somehow declared it a victory for the Lowlands. The Treaty of Gold was signed, and subsequently there was a peace in which the Empire was remembered as the aggressor and its friends as potential collaborators. Men like Broiler were soon busy erasing whole chapters of their own recent past.

All this could be read quite clearly in the avuncular eyes of Honory Bellowern, now sitting down to eat.

He left it until Broiler’s servants had brought out a dessert of honeyed custard, before approaching business. Honory Bellowern possessed a true Beetle appetite, ploughing with gusto through everything that was set before him. But finally he raised a hand, and Broiler’s heart sank.

‘There’s a little matter,’ Bellowern began. ‘Something that’s going to come up.’

He used very similar words each time, and Broiler watched him from across the table, devoid of appetite.

‘Within a few days our mutual friends will be the talk of the town again,’ Bellowern stated. ‘I imagine our colleague the War Master will then become quite agitated. You’d do us the favour of heading up the opposition, surely?’

‘What?’ Broiler asked flatly. ‘What’s going to happen?’

‘News from the far east, inconsequential really, but you know that Master Maker will try to talk war over it. Collegium needs a cool head in the Assembly, to lay to rest people’s fears, Helmess. You can do that, can’t you?’

Broiler looked sour. ‘And should we be fearing, just now?’

‘No, no, it’s all very, very far away. It’s just that Maker gets so very twitchy whenever the black and gold flag is raised. He’ll have our ambassador there, anyway, and we’ve got a few salvos to send over his parapets, but it would be useful to have a little local support, no?’

‘Or?’ Helmess hadn’t meant to say it, but his temper was frayed, and recent developments in his own life – the ones Bellowern was ignorant of – spurred him on.

Honory Bellowern favoured him with a kindly smile. ‘You’d rather remain a friend of the Empire, wouldn’t you?’ he asked. ‘You’ve always impressed me as a man of foresight, Helmess. Tynan’s Second nearly broke this city the last time, and it was not the staunch defenders of Collegium that turned them away. You know, we both know, that we’ll be back here in time. When the black and gold waves over the Amphiophos, we’ll know who our true friends are.’ He smiled, white teeth gleaming. ‘And, of course, in the short term you need us. You’re not the most popular man in the Assembly any more. You’re not going to be Speaker, and therefore you need us. If nothing else, you need us to keep quiet about certain aspects of the war.’

‘I could deny anything you threw at me,’ Broiler stated.

‘But who would be believed? You’re not the big noise you once were, Helmess. You still have a lot of support, but it’s the kind that would melt away like spring frost once you started to smell. You rely on our silence, if nothing else.’

Broiler kept his expression blank, but nodded resignedly. He was a politician, good at dissociating his face from his mind. Bellowern seemed satisfied, anyway. Ruin me, would you? Helmess thought. Well, perhaps I have a little support you aren’t aware of. And perhaps there are things the vaunted Imperial spies don’t know.

They concluded their meal, Broiler playing his part as bitter but defeated, and Bellowern seemed to go away satisfied. Broiler stayed by the door a long time after he had departed, considering how much longer he would have to dance to that man’s tune. Upstairs, he heard her tread. She’d kept absolute silence all through the meal, not allowing a hint to Bellowern that they had company. Now he heard her at the top of the staircase. A spark struck up in his heart – for her, and for the sheer joy of conspiracy and secret knowledge.

The fog had come as a stroke of luck, for without it the pirate would have overhauled them already. Although the Pelter – out of Collegium with a cargo of machined gems, wine and artifice – had been running its engines at top speed for an hour, the other ship’s great spread of sail had been gradually closing the distance, and there was no sign of a change in the wind that might give the Beetle engineers an advantage. The Pelter was a small ship, and its meagre crew in no position to fight off sea-brigands, so its captain had set a course away from the coast, while cursing the tight-fist-edness of the Pelter’s owners in a continuous monotone. The weather was becoming rougher further from land, which should affect the pirate more than themselves, and once the coast was out of sight, navigation grew difficult. Perhaps the pirate would turn back rather than risk getting lost.

Which will leave us lost instead, but that’s better than robbed or dead, considered Tolly Aimark. His career as a ship’s captain had seen pirates seize his last vessel, and the Pelter was likely to be his final chance to avoid an ignominious dismissal. The merchants back in Collegium would care nothing for the dangers of a seagoing life. They would see only their losses, and punish him accordingly.

Now they had hit a fog bank, which was normally a curse, but which Aimark decided was his first stroke of luck today. He toyed with signalling the helm to turn for shore again, but the pirates would surely be expecting that. If he were on their deck, he would be cutting a course that ran between the coast and the Pelter’s last bearing, in anticipation of just such a move. On the other hand…

‘Two points starboard,’ he gave the order, and the Pelter turned further from land, out towards the open ocean. Oh, there were all manner of tales about ships that braved the deep sea, but mostly that such vessels were never seen again. It was a plain fact that the weather was savage there, enough to shred sails and overturn even a little engined steamer like the Pelter, but it was now time to see how bold these pirates might be.

‘Any sight?’ he called out. The Pelter still had a mast, though Aimark had no idea when her sails had last been raised. In theory they could continue to make headway if the engine failed, but he had no idea how many of his crew knew even the basics of sailing. He would rely on his artificers to fix the problem, rather than trust to wind and weather to get them anywhere.

The word came back from a Fly-kinden shuttling between him and the lookout. Yes, even through the fog, the great pale swathe of sail could be seen.

‘Hold our course,’ Aimark ordered. He knew that the pursuers would be listening for the sound of his engines, but at the same time the fog played tricks with sound, deadened and distorted it, and there was a fair chance that, by the time the pirate realized that the Pelter had taken an unexpected course, it would be too late.

For a moment the deck shifted strangely beneath Aimark’s feet, instantly bringing him out in a cold sweat. Reefs? But there could be none here, surely, nor unexpected rocks. The sea beneath them was deeper than any sounding had detected. They were past the Shelf, and there was nothing beneath them but the sea.

The Fly-kinden alighted down beside him. ‘Master, they’re turning landwards. Hiram saw them tack, before he lost them to the fog.’

A great wave of relief swept over Tolly Aimark. ‘Continue on a mile, then we’ll plot a course that’ll bring us to the coast far from where they’re likely to be. Bring my charts up, too, and we’ll see where we might end up.’

Even as he spoke the words, something scraped along the hull, but without the solid shock of an underwater rock. Aimark and his crewmen stared at one another, and glanced down the length of the ship, so much of which had become mere shapes in the fog.

A man screamed out there somewhere, and there followed a confused babble of voices. Aimark bellowed for a report, and one of his artificers rushed out of the mist, wide-eyed. ‘Dorwell’s gone, master! Just… vanished. He was there right behind me…’

Something grated along against the underside of the hull, and the planks beneath Aimark’s feet abruptly flexed and jumped, in time with a splintering sound from below. Incredibly, the ship was still moving, dragging somewhat but not stuck on anything, nor run aground, and yet

…

There were men rushing up from belowdecks, and he heard calls to man the pumps. Aimark stood frozen, mouth open ready to issue he knew not what order.

Then he spotted the great lumpen shapes appear at the rails, hauling themselves on to deck in a clatter of claws and carapace, and the real terror began.

‘Master Sands, Filipo says your man’s coming.’

Sands glanced up from his book, noting his underling’s careful manner, the respectful style of address stolen from Collegium’s upper echelons. And yet have I not earned it? Sands believed he had, certainly. The niche for men of his stripe in law-abiding Collegium was a narrow one. The docks and the river district penned in a moderate infestation of unambitious, unprincipled men, but it took someone like Sands to make a healthy living out of doing wrong. He was a Collegiate criminal, and the College and the city had formed him just as surely as it formed the magnates and mechanics and scholars that the place was famed for.

The alley was dark, but his Spider father had contributed enough to Sands’s heritage that he could read quite comfortably by moonlight. The moon was waxing, three-quarters full and still bellying out from one night to the next. A murderer’s moon, they’d call it in Merro. The Fly-kinden had always been able to turn life’s little practicalities into poetry.

Despite his heritage he looked almost entirely Beetle, did Forman Sands. Only closer observation detected the telltale discontinuity of warring kinden in his face. It had been enough, though, between a disinherited birth and a persecuted youth, to set him on a darker path, yet he still considered himself a good citizen of Collegium. He always cast his stone in the Lots, and followed all the major speeches in the Assembly, buying a record of each as soon as the printers could turn it out. If he sired a child, then he would buy a place in the College, with money to spare. Sands had scraped his education together by his own hand, and he valued book learning above all else, not just because of the opportunities it gave but because it made sense of the world in a way that nothing else did. It assisted him as he constructed his own philosophy.

‘I still think it’d be easier if you just catch his eye, leave the rest to us. No need for it to be your hand on the knife,’ his underling said. He was a plain Beetle man, scarred about the face and missing an ear: competent enough, but with no desire to be anything more than a thug. He was exactly what Sands aspired to distance himself from, symbolically if not actually.

‘It must be me,’ Sands told him. ‘Do you think I’m not capable?’

‘No, chief, but-’

‘So no argument.’ A gesture from Sands sent the man off. He then carefully tucked the book away in the folds of his robe, after marking his page. It was difficult to exist as an intelligent man on Collegium’s underside. Collegium preached virtue, humanism, the duty of people to work for each other’s benefit, or so the College philosophers claimed. Only thus would the lot of people everywhere, of all kinden and social classes, be improved. Charity and consideration were the watchwords. Even the most grasping of Beetle magnates made a public show of open-handedness. How, in the face of that, could Sands justify himself: the robber and the killer, the agent of corruption?

He had studied long and hard, with the assistance of Spiderland philosophers who had written on the same issues a century ago. They had all manner of glib answers for the conscientious Beetle: good deeds could only exist against a background of evil, the actions of predators promoted excellence in their prey, complacency was ever the enemy of progress. Sands was all the while constructing his own philosophy of the virtue of criminality. Day by day, book by book, he was justifying his own existence.

And when I am an old man, I shall publish, he thought, but, for now, business intervenes.

His Fly-kinden scout, Filipo, dropped down nearby. ‘Coming right now,’ he reported curtly. Somehow the Fly-kinden never seemed bothered about right and wrong; Sands envied them such freedom.

‘Keep watch,’ he directed, and then stepped out into the street.

It was late. His sources had been keeping good track of his target, who was obliging enough to make appointments that continued past dusk. He was hurrying home now, and heading through a good enough area of town. Sands’s cronies were twitchy, out of place, while Sands himself was not. No watchman, seeing him there, would have cast a suspicious eye over him: a tall almost-Beetle in neatly folded robes, the very picture of a well-to-do middle merchant or scribe, or else the servant of some wealthy man.

Sands saw his assignation hurrying towards him, a thin Beetle with an agitated step, wrapped up in his own worries, clutching a satchel to his chest. Sands stepped half into his path without attracting his attention, and had to resort to calling out the man’s name.

‘Master Failwright?’

The shipping merchant stopped, snapped out of his own thoughts, peering at Sands. He saw a respectable, mild-featured Beetle, at least so far as the dusk revealed to him.

‘Do I know you?’ he asked, suspicious but not alarmed.

‘Master Failwright, I am sent from Master Mendawl.’

‘I know Master Mendawl,’ Failwright allowed.

‘Your words at the Assembly have disturbed him, Master Failwright. He was hoping to discuss them with you,’ Sands said, and saw how a spark of hope lit up in the man’s eyes.

‘Of course, of course,’ Failwright was saying. ‘I knew someone would take notice. Let Maker and Broiler and the others stew. He’ll see me tonight?’

‘He stays up for you in a hostelry near here,’ Sands confirmed. ‘I’m only glad I found you.’

Failwright nodded, a man with a mission. ‘Take me to him,’ he directed, and Sands’s hand offered the side-street to him. Sands’s accomplices had made themselves shadows, and Failwright marched along happily under his direction.

It was simple enough, for Sands had a speed that belied his size. As soon as Failwright was in the shadows, he had a hand over the man’s mouth. His other hand, the Spider-Art spines jutting from his knuckles, jabbed twice, once above each kidney, small spots of red spreading in the man’s robes. With practised smoothness, Sands spun the man about, slammed his back against a wall and rammed his claws up into Failwright’s throat.

The man’s eyes were wide, his struggles disjointed. The injuries in themselves, even the last one, were not fatal, but Sands’s claws ran with poison. He held his victim firmly while the toxin did its work, locking the man’s muscles, a joint at a time, then freezing his breath. He stuck in a few more doses, just to be sure. Beetles were a tough breed, even scrawny merchants like this one.

When Failwright had finally stopped twitching, Sands removed his hand. The man was still alive, just, but not for long. There were a few red specks on Sands’s robes, but otherwise it was a remarkably clean way to end a life. Sands’s Beetle underling approached cautiously.

‘Into the river with him,’ Sands instructed, and held out a pouch that the man gratefully accepted. Filipo landed nearby, ready for his cut. Sands left the pair to it. He had a client to see.

It is all justified, he thought. We are the surgeons hacking off the dead flesh. It was not done for a political cause, for he was no revolutionary. It was done for the sheer sake of it, the philosophical necessity of honing the blade of civilization. He tested that phrase in his mind, found it good, and continued on his way a happy man.

Helmess Broiler had a polished repertoire of smiles for all occasions, but he saved the genuine ones for moments like this.

She stepped down the stairs of his townhouse as though the simple descent was an indecent act, pausing halfway to lean on the banister and grin down at him. She loved him to be duplicitous, he knew. The fact that he had been fencing with the Imperial Bellowern, whilst all the while playing a larger game was meat and drink to her. It was one of the many ways she resembled a Spider-kinden.

It had always been thus, it was true, but formerly it had been a shady habit practised behind closed doors. Beetle men of status and of power, for all that they mostly had wives and families and the like, found in themselves a yearning to exercise their potency through other channels. Mistresses were well known, scandalous when exposed, yet ubiquitous amongst a certain class of Assembler and merchant. A clever young Spider girl or handsome youth who came to Collegium would not lack for opportunity. Oh, it was not always a Spider-kinden, but that was the archetype: beautiful and dangerous and irresistibly charming.

Then Master Stenwold Maker had come along, taking up with a girl young enough to be his daughter and parading her around as though she were one of his war honours. Where there might easily have been a tide of disapproval and horror, instead there had been a strange kind of relief. Master Maker was a war hero, the people’s darling who could, just there and then, do no wrong. Keeping a young lover must be all right, therefore. This was, Helmess reflected, the one service the wretched old warmonger had ever done for his fellows.

‘Elytrya,’ he uttered her name, as she looked fondly down on him.

‘You keep them dancing,’ she observed, and took her time coming down the rest of the steps towards him. He could watch her for ever, he decided.

It was not that she was a Spider-kinden. It was that she was not a Spider-kinden, although she resembled them enough to pass as such. That she avoided other Spiders was not unusual, for Spider-kinden were their own worst enemies, so that many ending up in the Lowlands were fugitives from one political struggle or another. If her eyes were of a strange shade and larger than usual, her hair more elaborately curled, then they just assumed that Spiders, with their cosmetics, could do a great deal with their appearance. She was the best thing in Helmess’s life, and he loved her, because he loved power, and saw in her his chance to recapture it.

Honory Bellowern had been right: Helmess was much fallen from his former heights, and in no position to withstand a rumour campaign or slanderous accusation about his association with the Empire, especially if that accusation happened to be true. Being in possession of all the facts, the Empire might believe that it owned him. However, their facts were now out of date, for Helmess Broiler had been cultivating other friendships.

He had no idea how long she had been in Collegium before approaching him, how long she had spent adjusting to the differences, understanding what must have been a bewilderingly alien way of life. She had once let slip that her people, her faction, had kept agents in this city for generations, in readiness for what was due to happen so very soon.

When she had come to him first, with her flattery and her promises, she had played at being the Spider-kinden adventuress, whilst sounding him out. Physical attraction had lured him from the start, but she had gauged him well enough, and soon enough, to know it would not hold him. Instead she had appreciated that his working with her, with her unfathomable allies, represented a return to power for him, a power untainted by the Wasp Empire. She had made him an offer too attractive to turn down, and told him a secret truth that he was still trying to digest.

She leant in towards him, wrapping herself about his arm, resting her head on his shoulder. The invisible events of her plot, their plot, were beginning to unfold, in the far, dark places. She had only told him so much, but he could guess much more. The thought that he was the sole Collegiate man to be party to such an abominable act was as sexually exciting as the feeling of her warm body now pressed against him.

There was a knock at the door, but he had already briefed his servants and they let the man straight in. Helmess Broiler’s needs for this breed of agent were scant, but a successful merchant was occasionally forced to take decisive action. Forman Sands was always his first choice: not only was the man discreet and reliable, but there was no other paid killer in Collegium who managed to look like a respectable cartel clerk and could make educated after-dinner talk like a College scholar.

‘Master Broiler,’ Sands said, with a careful nod, first to his employer, and then to his employer’s mistress.

‘Your news?’

‘It’s done.’ Sands held out Failwright’s satchel, which Broiler accepted. It was bulging with scrawled scrolls, the last symptoms of Failwright’s fatal curiosity.

‘You’re a good man, Sands,’ Helmess remarked.

‘I like to think so, Master Broiler.’ Sands took the purse from Helmess’s servant almost as an afterthought, as though this wasn’t about the money at all.

When the killer had gone, Elytrya hugged Helmess close. Failwright and his annoying questions were done with.

‘Do you mean,’ he asked her softly, ‘to silence an inconvenient question, or to raise yet more? Members of the Assembly cause ripples, when they fall.’

‘Either will serve,’ she assured him. ‘We know that either will serve.’