The Sea Watch

Six

It was true, the sea-trade of Collegium had never been much since the revolution. The wealth of the Spiderlands – the art, the silk, the jewellery – travelled north up the silk road to Helleron, then by rail or air to Sarn and Collegium. There were few who would brave the short side of the triangle by sending a boat to hug the coast eastwards to Seldis and Siennis. In the Collegium harbour today there were twelve ships of any reasonable size, six of them boasting Spiderlands sails. The sea was an uncertain partner when it came to trading ventures, so the Beetle-kinden had turned their backs on it.

Normally vice would follow the money, but there was a certain kind of shadowy endeavour that thrived in places overlooked and left behind. There might be only two dozen large vessels here at the best of times, but there was a steady trickle of other boats in and out: fishers, small traders, venturers: smugglers, spies and malcontents. There were inevitably a few drinking dens near the docks where the flotsam of the coast could gather without official eyes upon them.

Despite the solid Beetle architecture of the exterior, this was a Spider-kinden dive that Stenwold had chosen. He had the impression it belonged far more to the average Spider-kinden than did all Teornis’s silks and fine wines. The room was dim, the windows shutting out the daylight, and the ceiling and walls were draped with folds of cloth that distorted the shapes of the three or four rooms inside. Men and women sat about on a cushion-strewn floor, conversing in low voices. Two serious Fly-kinden moved pieces about on a dark wooden board, playing some game that Stenwold could not identify in the poor light. Somewhere in the gloomy depths of the place, perhaps even in some cellar below, a musician was playing intricate strings.

He had not come here as Stenwold the Assembler, of course, so he was dressed in hard-wearing canvas and leather, a tramp artificer’s battered garments. A reinforced cap balanced on his head, complete with a scarf he could draw across his nose and mouth to ward off fumes, or to hide his face. He carried a sword at his belt, a burden he had not realized how much he missed. People did not normally go armed in Collegium and, now the war was done, the city guard paid close attention to those that did. Yet still, even Stenwold’s eyes could see that almost everyone here had a weapon close at hand.

Evil men and women, he thought, undermining the rule of law and civilization for mere profit. The scum of the Lowlands and beyond. He could not stave off a childish sense of excitement. He was not behind his desk or before the Assembly. He was doing his own work. He was investigating again. It was like old times.

He could have sent someone else to ask his questions for him. Ah, but who could I trust? In truth he meant, I am not so old yet that I cannot shift for myself once in a while.

The Spider-kinden proprietress was an old woman still clutching tenuously to the natural grace of her people. For a single bit, she passed Stenwold a bowl of something acrid and mostly clear.

‘New in, master? What’s your ship?’ she asked him.

‘I’m in the market,’ Stenwold replied carefully.

‘Buying or selling?’

‘Speculating, just now. If you’ve a patron interested in talking, I have an hour or so to spare without pressing obligations.’

She nodded. ‘Take yourself a seat, Master Speculator, and perhaps you’ll hear something to your advantage.’

Over the next hour Stenwold learned more than he could use of the petty doings of the docks. Had he been looking to invest in some unlicensed trade, he would have been doing very well indeed, but nothing shed light on Failwright’s notes, still less his disappearance. Once or twice he had the impression that, if he cast aside his feigned disinterest and asked a direct question, he might startle something useful from an informant, but he was keenly aware that he was feeling out an unfamiliar place blind. It was imperative that he did not send advance warning to those he was trying to uncover.

After that he tried a narrow room that lay practically on the waterfront, open to the sea, the interior a forest of columns. Here the Mantis-kinden refugees and expatriates came to talk and drink. They would sit with their backs to the wooden pillars, and plot the downfall of their enemies or tell each other stories of their great days, whilst a young man sang something low and mournful in the shadows towards the back. Stenwold spent an awkward time here, constantly feeling that blades were being unsheathed around the bulk of the column he had set his back to, and he learned very little.

He next tried a Fly-kinden taverna, where the front room was the only space he could physically fit into. The Flies were suspicious of him. Many of them came forward with information, but much of it was patently made up on the spot. They were a clannish lot and, as he left there, he had the sense of being followed. By this time it was getting dark, and he knew he should return home, but he was feeling out of sorts and frustrated by now, awash in a sea of useless information.

He proceeded on to a gambling den set up in what had once been part of the port offices. The Vekken fleet had burned the place out, the Port Authority had relocated, and nothing official had since been found to fill the gap. Now the rotten tooth of the building’s shell had been fitted out with tables and chairs, where men and women of many kinden were talking and dicing with one another. Stenwold made himself known to the proprietor, a slab-faced Beetle woman, then elbowed his way to a small table to see what his nets might bring in.

There were two petty smugglers whose boat had been sunk by a rival band, and who were obviously hoping Stenwold would invest in their meagre skills. There was a drunken old man whose rambling lies swooped between versions of events like the moths that skittered between the den’s three hanging lamps. Stenwold eventually disposed of the ancient opportunist by giving him some coins for another drink, then sank back into his chair, feeling disgusted with himself.

If this was Helleron, he thought, I’d know what I wanted by now. Of course, Helleron had no port, no piracy, no tradition of the romantic freebooter that had been fashionable in Stenwold’s youth. He remembered stories, songs, even plays. The pirate as anti-hero had enjoyed a brief vogue then amongst Collegium’s wealthy middle classes even as some five or six notorious corsairs, and perhaps a dozen anonymous ones, had savaged the previous generation’s coastal trade, turning from criminals to posthumous heroes in fifteen years. There had been a Mantis captain known as Arthemae with her scarred face; the ruthless Bloodfly who would slay every crewman left on his prize if one but lifted a knife against him; the Beetle Gavriel Knowless with his ship the Ironcoat…

A shadow fell over Stenwold, eclipsing the guttering light and cutting loose his reverie. He looked up to see a stout Beetle man leaning over his table.

‘Yes?’

‘Laem said you’re asking questions,’ the big Beetle said.

Stenwold shrugged. ‘And?’ He had already caught the tone: whatever his questions, this man was not here to answer them.

‘And you got money,’ the man said, reminding Stenwold briefly and inappropriately of a student trying to solve a logic problem. He readied himself.

‘Rich men shouldn’t come down here. About time you headed home, rich man. But leave your purse.’ The big Beetle put his hands on the table and loomed over Stenwold, who sighed.

A moment later he had grabbed his end of the table and whipped it upwards, as hard as he could. The other man lurched forward as his support was yanked away, and his face met the tabletop as it came up, with the crunching sound of a broken nose and dislodged teeth. Stenwold was up in a moment, giving himself space as everyone else in the den started and stared, some reaching for weapons, others just making sure they were well out of the way.

The big Beetle did not stir, so Stenwold guessed he had been knocked cold. Despite his station in life and his pretence at dignity, he could not help but feel a spark of pride.

A moment later two other men were moving towards him, another Beetle and a Kessen Ant-kinden, and they both had drawn swords. His pride evaporated swiftly. Even thugs have friends. He had his own blade out, waiting for them, his other hand reaching into his tunic. I feel I’m about to attract a little too much attention. His hand inside his coat touched the butt of his other weapon.

He almost missed the little clack of the crossbow, but one of the men was abruptly down on one knee, swearing and tugging at the bolt through his thigh. The Ant whirled, looking for the archer, and a brief shape flitted past his head with a sound like a slap, leaving him reeling drunkenly. His attacker was a young Fly-kinden man, who touched down on a table almost within arm’s reach of him. He had a cudgel in one hand and a knife in the other.

‘It’s chucking-out time,’ the Fly announced. The Kessen stared at him, one hand to his head, sword weighing in his hand. Another Fly, a woman, stepped out from around the table with a little under-and-over crossbow. It would not have done much against a suit of armour, but the Ant-kinden wore nothing but a leather jerkin and breeches.

‘Take him,’ the Fly woman ordered, ‘and clear off.’

The Ant came to the right decision, hauling up his protesting friend and dragging him, limping, out the door. The Fly man hopped to the ground, inspecting the man that Stenwold had knocked out.

‘Backswimmer’s lads,’ he said.

‘He always did hire idiots,’ added the woman. She sounded a little better educated than her companion, or than most of the people Stenwold had been speaking to all day.

The Fly man stepped close to Stenwold, who regarding him cautiously, sword still in hand. ‘Perhaps you should come with us,’ the little man said.

‘And why would I want to do that?’ Stenwold asked. The woman was meanwhile keeping an eye on the den’s other patrons, who were making a grand show of ignoring everything. Her crossbow was not pointed at Stenwold, which was a good sign at least.

‘You have questions, don’t you? Or is this just a way for you to spend an idle afternoon?’ the Fly man inquired, adding, with just a touch too much drama, ‘Master Maker?’

It was said quietly enough not to carry, but Stenwold twitched on hearing it. So, I don’t play the old game as well as I used to, then. And am I surprised, here in my own town? Even in this dive I’m a public figure.

‘I’ll keep my sword,’ he said heavily.

The Fly shrugged. ‘However you like. But Backswim-mer’ll send a few lads out here as soon as he hears, just to hammer out the dent in his pride. So perhaps we should taste our legs, now, Master.’

He gave a grin and then sauntered away, with Stenwold following uncertainly in tow. The woman rested the crossbow on her shoulder, the great huntress in miniature, and then followed them outside.

In the old days, the sea had meant rather more to Collegium, not merely for trade but for the mysterious rituals and mummery that the city founders had placed such reliance on. The Moth-kinden had built this city and named it Pathis, or rather they had ordered their slaves the Beetle-kinden to lay stone on stone, according to their plan, but all their precognition had not foreseen the revolution of the Apt, which had cast them down from their power and preeminence, and sent them to live like hermits in their distant mountain retreats.

They had chosen well when siting their city, though. Where Collegium stood, the land fell shallowly down towards the sea, where the waters then possessed draft enough for merchantmen to dock. Down the coast from Collegium, the borders between land and sea became starker. There was no good shoreline anchorage for any ship of size, but the coast offered up a warren of little coves, inaccessible beaches, caves, a patchwork of cliffs and shallow bays most of the way to Kes.

This was one such meagre anchorage, a mere half-mile east of Collegium: a crescent of gravel and sand sheltered by the tall, uneven walls of rock that the sea ate away in slow bites at its leisure. The rock was layered in slightly slanted bands: pale, dark red, pink, pale, black, each stripe taller than a man. Helmess Broiler had read a theory once, about a great disaster which had happened an unthinkably long time ago, in which the Lowlands had slumped away from what was now the Commonweal, and where a great wedge of land had simply disappeared into the sea, shearing across the layers of bedrock to leave strata like this exposed forever more. He did not have an opinion on this notion. Events that had happened so very long ago seemed unlikely to encroach on his life, one way or another.

Elytrya clung to his arm, for it was cold tonight: the wind off the sea having nowhere to go save to prowl backwards and forwards about the cove. She did not like the chill, he knew, and even in Collegium’s mild winters she complained about it, dressing up in as many layers as she could wear. Now she had two woollen cloaks on, and still she shivered. Nonetheless, she had insisted on coming here. She had ordered the boatman to return for them in three hours, and stay out of sight until that time, on pain of forfeiting payment. The man had given Helmess a knowing leer as he resumed his rowing. A liaison, the old Assembler and his young Spider mistress? In truth it was a forbidding place for a tryst, but then Elytrya had business, not pleasure, in mind.

‘What are we waiting for?’ he asked. There was half a moon in the sky, and he saw no ships, lit or otherwise, casting shadows on the water. The air was clear of fliers, and he heard no engines.

‘Wait, dear one,’ she said, snuggling closer. Despite her shivering he could see her smiling. She had been planning this for a long time, he knew. He was to meet her allies at last. A moment later he felt her tense in his arms. Of course, her eyes were better in the dark than his. Or they would be if she were a Spider, which she’s not

…

‘Pass me the lamp,’ she said. He had to light it for her, for even the single steel igniter was beyond her, but when she had it in her hand she paced to within a few feet of the water’s edge, holding it before her.

And still no ships. Helmess listened for the slap of oars, the snap of a billowing sail. There was nothing to be heard.

Elytrya was retreating from the water. Where the lamplight caught her face, it showed her triumphant. But no one is coming, my dear, no one…

He thought he saw, in that same moment, a light within the ocean that was no reflection of the moon’s. As Elytrya backed towards him, he felt something jump inside him.

Ten feet out from where the waves lapped the shingle, shapes were breaking through the water. Helmess felt a lurch in his stomach, for all that he had halfway been expecting something like this. The seas broke, lapped back, broke again and fell away. A great carapace gleamed under moonlight, huge as a man, legs working nimbly beneath it to skitter up onto the strand. Helmess saw its raised eyes glitter above a flurry of mouthparts, and it raised to the sky a pair of pincers that could have torn steel.

Cinders and ashes, Helmess thought numbly, we’re about to be invaded sideways.

More shapes were following to left and right, as the great crab settled down on its underbelly, claws drawn in like a pugilist’s fists. He took them for yet more crustaceans, at first, but they were men. As massive as the crab, more so, but these walked ponderously on two legs, hulking shapes in all-encompassing plates of armour. Helmess sought for any sign of familiarity in them, and found none: in their slab-like mail they were as broad as they were tall, plodding out of the waves with a dreadful inexorability. Whatever they wore was not metal, he realized. The moonlight glinted on something more like the crab’s armour, but moulded to them in a way that mere reworked shell could not even approximate. One of them wore something paler, rougher and, as he approached, the others fell into a slow formation behind him, Helmess could hear the plates of his mail scratching together as he walked.

It can’t be, was all he thought. It’s impossible. How strong would a man have to be to…?

Elytrya stepped forward as the giant approached, and Helmess sensed a slight tremor within her. So this is her employer, is it? But Helmess could tell there was something more to it than that. A lifetime of unravelling other people’s connections told him that there was no leader here, just two lieutenants whose precise positioning was still in flux.

‘Rosander,’ she said, giving the middle syllable all the weight.

The helmed head nodded, seeming tiny between the great, mounded pauldrons. The man’s gauntlets were carved into forward-curving hooks reaching over his hands, and when he raised them, Helmess flinched back, though Elytrya stood her ground. She seemed like just a child, a toy, against the vast canvas of Rosander’s armoured breadth.

With surprising delicacy, the hands hidden under those claws pulled free the helmet. Revealed was a narrow, bald head, the skull ridged and braced beneath the skin as though to support the weight of the helm. The man was of no kinden Helmess had ever seen, his face utterly alien in its combination of high cheekbones, small eyes, wispy eyebrows and narrow mouth. The half-dozen men behind him remained faceless, only a narrow slit giving onto the dark beach. Water streamed off them, or seeped out from between the sections of their armour. There were few weapons to be seen aside from the monstrous claws of their gauntlets, that echoed those of what was surely their kinden animal squatting behind them. One held a sword fashioned of some dull metal, its thick blade curving forward to a square-sectioned point. Helmess doubted that he himself could have lifted the weapon even in both hands.

‘Report.’ Rosander’s voice was small and bleak.

‘Here’s my report.’ Elytrya held up a small package sealed with oilcloth against the wet. ‘For the Edmir’s eyes only.’

Rosander regarded her without love. ‘Indeed.’ He reached towards her, the tip of his claw narrowly missing her shoulder. Within the cup of the hooked gauntlet his hand was still huge. Elytria carefully placed her package in his palm.

‘I see you’ve brought the heavy stuff,’ she said, fingers lightly skimming the coarse surface of his armour. ‘A glutton for punishment, then?’

‘When we come here in earnest,’ Rosander pronounced, ‘we shall bring all our might. So we must accustom ourselves.’ His accent was slow and strange, the vowels twitched all out of shape. He took another step forward, the sections of his mail grating softly.

It is. Helmess abandoned any self-deception. It’s stone. He has a suit of stone armour, yet he’s standing right there, holding it up. Oh, it must be lighter in the water, but he won’t let that deter him, that much is obvious. Who are these crab-kinden? What do they want of Collegium? A moment later he caught his breath, for those dark little eyes had flicked towards him. In two stomping strides the huge sea-kinden had eclipsed Helmess’s view of sky and sea.

‘Nauarch Rosander,’ Elytrya kept pace, ‘meet Master Helmess Broiler, our man in the city.’

‘Land-kinden,’ Rosander addressed him, and Helmess managed a small obeisance. The bony, narrow face looked contemptuous. ‘Doesn’t look like much. You fight, land-kinden?’

So close, feeling the presence of the man pressing on all sides, Helmess managed a brief shake of his head. Rosander made an amused sound, although no humour showed in his expression. Aside from the narrow lips and tiny eyes, his entire head could have been carved from dun wood.

‘Chenni!’ the huge figure snapped out, and a smaller one stepped out from behind one of his cohorts. Helmess saw a hunchbacked little woman with spindly arms and legs, no bigger than a Fly-kinden. She was as bald as Rosander and, despite her utter disparity in stature, there was a commonality about their closed, taut-skinned faces. She positioned herself a few feet away, further from the giant than Helmess was. With a sudden stab of amusement Helmess realized that by approaching any closer she would have been blocked from the big man’s view by the bulk of his own armour.

‘How’s it coming?’ Rosander growled at the diminutive newcomer. His gaze, by Helmess’s judgement, was not fierce but fond, however.

‘See for yourself, chief,’ she told him. ‘Going to be a bit of a test. Not sure if it’ll hold under the weight.’

‘Bring it up,’ Rosander instructed her, then swivelled his head back to eye Elytrya. To Helmess’s alarm, she clearly did not know what was going on.

‘I called you here to take charge of my report for the Edmir, nothing more,’ she said, her voice low and dangerous.

‘You called?’ Rosander’s lips retracted, showing small, dark teeth. ‘You’ve been away from the colony too long. Things are changing now. I’m not here for you. I’m here for… what’s your word?’

‘An experiment, Nauarch,’ said Chenni, her eyes focused on the sea. She spoke faster than him, but with the same accent. ‘The machinists back home will be in knots, waiting to hear from us.’

‘Rosander…’ Elytrya started, but he held a clawed gauntlet up to her face, the movement effortlessly swift. At the shoreline, Helmess saw the great crab scuttle sideways in an intricate dance of legs. Behind it something else, something much larger, was dragging itself from the sea.

It had a great rounded front that curved up into little horns on either side. In a wash of water and weed, its snub-nosed leading edge surged forward onto the beach, allowing only the slightest glimpse of the powering legs hidden beneath its over-arching shell. Helmess would have taken it for some other kind of sea-monster were it not for the sounds from within it, the ratcheting and grind and click that told him that gears and springs drove those pistoning legs in place of blood and muscle.

As the sea drained off from it he heard it creak as it supported its own weight. Chenni went tense: the sight was so familiar – an artificer willing her creation to work – that he had to fight down an inappropriate smile.

It held firm, nothing cracked. The hulking sea-automotive lurked on the beach like a house-sized boulder. The little woman made a satisfied noise.

The sounds of its workings intensified, until Helmess feared that some keen ear in Collegium might hear. The automotive lurched forward, clawing its way further across the shingle. Abruptly it began making less healthy sounds, grinding and crunching, and then the unmistakable noise of a stripped gear spinning. Chenni dashed over to the struggling machine.

‘Most impressive,’ Elytrya declared, but Helmess detected a slight quiver in her voice.

‘For a prototype,’ Rosander agreed, implacable. ‘When we come to seize back the land, we will use every weapon available. You have such things, land-kinden?’

‘We do,’ Helmess admitted hoarsely. He was thinking of an army of massively armoured men and beasts and machines, sitting invisibly beneath the water, swarming into Collegium from the river and the docks by moonlight, unheralded and unguessed at. ‘It is impressive.. . Nauarch,’ he said, understanding the unfamiliar word as a title. Walls staved in, claws rending flesh, seaweed and blood tracked into the halls of the Amphiophos. An enemy that we never even knew we had. And after that night, after the blood-tide has receded, who shall pick up the pieces? Not the Empire… and not Maker, either.

He was unsure exactly when he had lost his last vestige of loyalty to Collegium. Through his dealings as a statesman and magnate, there was no hard line between working for the city and working the city for his own ends. It had been a long time now since he had crossed over into the realms of the parasite.

Let Jodry Drillen enjoy his term as Speaker, Helmess thought, for it may turn out to be the shortest one in history. If the people of Collegium will not give me power, and if the Empire will try to leash me like a beast, then I will seek my allies where I can find them.

‘Gear train slipped,’ Chenni reported, arriving back from inspecting the machine. ‘Should have seen that coming. Out in the open air there’s no water to keep them at their proper pace, so they ran riot. We’ll sort it out.’

‘Get it back in the water,’ Rosander ordered, and his bodyguards turned ponderously and went over to the machine, easing it back into the sea with no obvious effort.

‘Remember me, land-kinden,’ came Rosander’s voice, and Helmess’s eyes snapped back to him. That narrow, ridged head was thrust forward between the massive shoulders. ‘If you betray us, these hands shall crush you,’ the giant threatened.

‘And if I do not?’ Helmess whispered.

‘I’m sure Elytrya has promised you much,’ replied Rosander with a sneer. ‘Still, the Edmir rewards those that serve him well, as do I.’

‘You will need someone governing in your name, who understands the

… land-kinden.’

‘No doubt,’ Rosander agreed but, under his bleak stare, Helmess had the uncomfortable feeling of being judged.

The two Fly-kinden had led Stenwold all the way to the curving sea wall before he decided enough was enough. Perhaps it was the sight of the tower and the sea defences, still bearing their scars from the Vekken siege, that prompted him. The Flies were already setting foot on the wall’s landward stonework, and he could not see anywhere they might be heading except away from any chance of his calling for help.

‘So where are we going?’ he asked sharply, and something in his tone brought them up short. The two of them eyed him thoughtfully.

‘Now what would that be, Master?’ asked the Fly man, looking at the stubby device now gripped in Stenwold’s hand.

‘A gift from an old student of mine,’ Stenwold told them. The little, cut-down, double-barrelled snapbow was surprisingly heavy, and he knew it was barely accurate beyond ten yards, but it was a beautiful piece of engineering, nonetheless. Stenwold remembered the card that had come with it, printed immaculately to resemble elegant handwriting: Because I owe a great deal to my education. ‘I’ll go no further without some answers. Where are you leading me?’

The two Flies exchanged glances. ‘Why, Master, you’ve been all day at asking questions,’ the man said. ‘So won’t you want to go where you’ll get answers?’

‘And where’s that?’ Stenwold’s gesture encompassed the barren sea wall.

‘Look down,’ said the woman, jerking her head to indicate the wall’s edge. Keeping the snapbow trained, Stenwold cast a careful look over it at the choppy sea. To his surprise there were a few boats moored there, on the wrong side of the wall. He had no idea if this was usual or not – it was not something he had ever thought about asking. One of the vessels was large enough to dwarf the others.

‘Isseleema’s Floating Game,’ the Fly man volunteered. ‘Scourge of every gambler from Tsen to Seldis, just put in this last tenday to mine the pockets of Collegium. You want answers, Master Maker? We’ll take you to where you can find them.’

There was a fair number of people on the deck of the larger ship, and many of them were armed, in a fairly casual fashion.

This is a very bad idea.

‘Some of us can’t fly,’ he pointed out. ‘Or am I supposed to jump in the water and get hauled out like a barrel?’

‘For that purpose we have invented the rope ladder,’ the woman told him shortly, obviously someone of less patience than her companion. ‘You’re a Beetle, therefore you’ll work out the basic principles eventually.’

I could just walk away.

But then I’d never know. And even if I came back here with a detachment of the guard, and searched every boat outside the wall, what would I be looking for? What might I have passed up on?

‘I keep this – and my sword,’ he said, jerking the snap-bow.

‘You can keep anything except standing there,’ the woman said. Her wings flashed into life, and she stepped off the wall and floated downwards with enviable ease. Her companion gave Stenwold a slightly embarrassed look.

‘That’s Despard for you,’ he said. ‘A short fuse with regard to everything except explosives. Master Maker, my name is Laszlo. I’m first factor of the Tidenfree, which you see there on the other side of Isseleema’s barge. My people and I want to help you, because we want your help in return. It’s simple as that, really.’

‘You know what’s happening to Collegium’s shipping?’ Stenwold said, which was more than he intended to.

Laszlo just grinned. ‘Oh, Master Maker, we know all about shipping. After all, we’re pirates.’

After that he could hardly turn them down, so he went hand over hand down the rope ladder on to the barge’s deck, where the two Flies had already cleared his credentials with the guards. They led him below, towards a wash of boisterous shouting and cheer and the delights of Isseleema’s Floating Game.

This deck of the barge had been turned into one large, low-ceilinged room, well lit by lanterns, the curving walls draped with silks in the Spider fashion. Across a dozen tables, a mismatch of patrons were throwing their money away on cards, dice, sticks, even a tiny gladiatorial duel between a pair of hand-sized scorpions. About half the gamblers looked like Beetle-kinden locals, and not always shabbily dressed. Several even looked as though the money they were losing came from a respectable merchant’s trade. The balance was comprised of Flies, Spiders and a scattering of other kinden, their differences forgotten in the shifting tides of win and lose. Midway down the long room there was a dais backing against one wall. The only word Stenwold could muster for the Spider-kinden woman there was enthroned. She was old – old enough that no trick of Spider-kinden manner or cosmetics could disguise it. Given the difference in their life expectancies, Stenwold guessed she had probably been past her prime before he was even born. She had the look of a woman clinging with clawed hands to the fading remnants of her empire.

Towards the bows, where the room narrowed dramatically, were a series of curtained booths, and Laszlo and Despard were taking him there, pausing impatiently when he could not slip through the crowd as easily as they could, or when some peculiar assemblage of guests caught his eye. Laszlo had to tug at his sleeve as he watched a lean Mantis-kinden woman betting fiercely with three Spiders, without a trace of the murderous loathing her kinden normally felt towards them.

Then it was Despard’s turn, as Stenwold stopped to stare at a trio of Ant-kinden women with bluish-white skin. They were not seated at the tables, seeming as much out-of-place observers as he was. They wore dark cloaks and corselets of steel scales, and they stood close enough to Isseleema’s throne that his instincts suggested bodyguards first, and then, reconsidering, ambassadors? That skin tone indicated Tsen, the odd little Ant city-state on the far western coast, beyond even Vek. So why are they here? Renegades perhaps? Some private contract? But there was nothing of the mercenary about the three of them. Ant-kinden that had turned their back on their own cities had a certain look to them – of guilt and regret – and these three did not possess it.

Then Despard retrieved him and guided him over to a booth where the curtain was now drawn back. There were half a dozen Fly-kinden sitting there, and Laszlo had given up pride of place, deferring to a balding man with a huge black beard, quite the most imposing Fly that Stenwold had ever laid eyes on.

‘They tell me you’re Stenwold Maker, and that it means something,’ the bearded Fly addressed him.

‘As for the first, I am. As for the second, that depends who you are and what you’re looking for,’ Stenwold told him. The Fly’s head barely came up to his chest, but the smaller man had the solid, calm presence of a general or a Mantis warrior, and there was the same kind of danger about him.

‘Laszlo tells me you’re looking to find out something maritime, Master Maker,’ the man continued. ‘Tell me, you’re on the Collegiate Assembly, are you not?’

‘I am.’ To hear this rogue pronounce those words was jarring. The response brought smiles all round, though, and if some of those smiles revealed the odd tooth missing or replaced with gold, Stenwold was prepared to overlook it.

‘Call me Tomasso,’ the bearded Fly said. ‘Master Maker, won’t you do me the favour of coming down to our cabin and hearing a proposition to your advantage?’

‘Your cabin, is it?’ Is this to be something as mundane as a kidnapping, after all this? Stenwold had replaced his snap-bow in his belt, but put a hand upon it. Such precautions seemed the norm at the Floating Game. Laszlo’s throw-away comment about piracy had seemed disarming in its candour, but there were levels and levels of bluff, after all.

‘A little privacy never harmed anyone,’ observed the bearded Fly. ‘And, besides, there’s someone there who needs to be present before any deals are made.’

‘Well, you have an advantage over me, Master Tomasso,’ Stenwold replied. He felt a precarious balance here, and he looked from face to face, for the menials might well show what their master could hide. There was no sense of impending foul play amongst the other Flies, but a certain excitement. They want something from me, certainly. ‘I suppose that means you must take me there.’

Tomasso nodded, and his gang of Flies were instantly in motion, passing through the crowd to the point of the bow where stairs led down to a lower deck. Stenwold, though not an overly tall man, had to stoop there, shuffling along the dim, door-lined corridor that presented itself. The Fly-kinden had no difficulties, fluttering down the stairs with a flick of wings, walking down the passageway as though it were the spacious hallway of a palace. When Stenwold encountered another Beetle-kinden coming the other way, he had to force himself into the lee of a door to let the man past.

Laszlo was now holding a door open and steady against the faint pitch of the water outside, and Stenwold followed the Flies into a cabin that was larger than he had expected. There were bunk beds against the far wall, and a low table on the floor surrounded by shabby-looking cushions. A Fly-woman in a grey robe was sitting there by the lower bunk and, after a moment, Stenwold realized that it was because someone was occupying it. He had a glimpse of a lined and weathered face, topped by thinning grey hair.

‘Have a seat.’ Tomasso reclaimed his attention, taking his own place at the far end of the table. His fellows arrayed themselves on either side of him, like an attentive family. Which of course they are. It was a belated realization but, now Stenwold thought about it, if Laszlo were to grow the beard and age two decades then he would be a fair likeness for Tomasso, and a couple of the others, a man and a woman, bore a good resemblance as well. They all had the same sharp nose, deep eyes, dark hair and skin tanned brown. Despard was quite different, darker and with sandy brown hair, and the girl beside the bed was greyish-skinned, seeming almost a Moth in miniature.

Stenwold sat across from them, feeling keenly the snap-bow digging into his paunch as he lowered himself on to the floor. Tomasso had a wide-bladed knife thrust unscabbarded through his belt, and Despard was only now untensioning the arms of her crossbow. Another woman present had a bandolier of throwing blades strapped across her chest. For all their size they looked a tough enough crew.

‘Now, what would an Assembler of Collegium be doing trawling the dockside dens and making inquiries after the shipping?’ Tomasso asked, putting his hands together. ‘Be up front with us, Master Maker, is this some private profiteering you’re after, or perhaps you’ve lost a boat at sea, or what is it?’

A fair question, after all. And maybe if I had been straighter to begin with I’d probably have my answers already without having to come here. ‘Your factor said you were pirates,’ Stenwold answered with a nod at Laszlo.

‘Did he indeed?’ Tomasso said, with a sharp look. ‘Well then, perhaps my factor forgets the bounds of polite conversation sometimes.’

‘I could have a use for pirates, or those that are familiar with the breed,’ Stenwold said flatly, watching his words break across them. To his credit, Tomasso kept any surprise well hidden.

‘It’s true that, in times past, we might have turned a little piracy in these waters, but that was a very long time ago,’ said the bearded Fly, watching him intently. ‘Back then we weren’t sailing aboard the Tidenfree, of course, but a man of your age might just have known us by another name.’

Stenwold felt a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t spin that line to me, Master Tomasso, for I do remember a certain Fly-kinden pirate from my father’s day, but you’re no older than me. You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to think you crewed the Bloodfly.’

‘Will I, now?’ Tomasso brought out a long-stemmed blackwood pipe, and Despard lit it for him in a flash of sparks from a little steel-lighter. ‘Is Himself sleeping?’

‘He is,’ said the girl in the Moth-kinden robes. ‘Peaceful enough.’

Tomasso jerked his head back to indicate the old man in the bunk. ‘He is the third man to bear the name of Bloodfly, and when he closes his eyes for the last time, as he must soon, I shall become the fourth. You have to understand that, amongst our people, business is a family concern.’

I don’t believe it. But there was not a hint of guile or mockery on Tomasso’s face, and the rest of them were as solemn as statues. Stenwold looked from Laszlo to Despard, across the others, and back to Tomasso. In his mind were all the stories and ballads of his youth, celebrating the scourge of last generation’s pirates, now that they were safely dead or gone.

Or perhaps only biding their time… ‘If he’s the Bloodfly, where has he been?’

‘Where business was better. Collegium became poor pickings for pirates since they built the rails to Sarn and Helleron. We’ve travelled, Master Maker.’ Tomasso pulled on the pipe reflectively. ‘Up and down the Spiderlands coast, we’ve travelled. Taking our chances where the winds took us, following the money. Until, at long last, we find ourselves back here, and with Himself in such a way that it seems to me that I should start making plans.’

‘And what do you want with me?’ Stenwold asked him, ‘that you should be willing to help me? I’m no wealthy magnate. What have I got that you could want?’

Tomasso smiled, the smile of man whose carefully baited trap has finally snapped shut. ‘Respectability, Master Maker,’ he said. ‘And you have that by the barrelfull.’