The Sea Watch (10 page)

Rousing cheers, the approval of comfortable merchants who were trading with the Empire even now; of scholars who cared more for who wrote what a century ago than whatever atrocities might happen next year. Stenwold let it wash over him, identifying in that burbling mass only three points of reference: Broiler, Bellowern, Aagen the Wasp. His hand curled around the pommel of the sword he was not wearing.

‘I’m sending Mistress Rakespear and that big lad of hers back off to Khanaphes by the swiftest route,’ Jodry Drillen declared. After the debate he had repaired with Stenwold to one of the private rooms within the Amphiophos.

Noting his tone, Stenwold asked, ‘Sending?’

‘Well, in the sense of “I can’t stop them going,” in that case. So I drew them up some funds double quick and got her transport, and maybe she can bring some sense to the situation. If her friend starts throwing Wasps about the place, though, it won’t be worth much.’

‘The Empire know our debating styles too well,’ Stenwold remarked. ‘They know we’re stronger in attack than defence. I wasn’t expecting them to have found out about Myna.’

Jodry grimaced. ‘I never thought that would last. Those what’s-their-names, those Rekef Outlander boys, they were just about the only thing in the Empire that came through it keener than ever. They have eyes and ears all over.’

Stenwold nodded, committing the recent debate to memory, to be pulled apart and dissected at his leisure. ‘Jodry,’ he said, and his voice made it clear this was a new topic. ‘I’ve been thinking about Rones Failwright.’

‘Now there was someone we could have done with today,’ Drillen said. ‘Just to have him piping up about his cursed shipping to put Broiler or the Wasp off his stride.’

Stenwold kept a sidelong glance fixed on the other man’s face, watching for reactions. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about the shipping trade.’

‘You’re having me on?’ Nothing but honest bewilderment. ‘Don’t tell me Failwright’s recruited you?’

‘No, no, but . . . when you do the arithmetic, a lot of Collegiate property, a lot of sailors, have been lost over this recent period. Pirate attacks, sunk ships. It’s only because of the rail and air trades owning such a loud voice that we aren’t all echoing Failwright.’

‘You’re serious.’

‘Reasonably serious. We should at least look into his complaints. What do you suggest?’

‘Me?’ Jodry rolled his eyes. ‘Get a few escorts together. Collegium’s crawling with Felyal Mantis-kinden at the moment, maybe hire a score of them and stick them on shipboard. The alternative’s to use distinctive cargoes and see where they eventually turn up. Both ways sound expensive to me. You really think there’s something in it?’

There was nothing else, nothing whatsoever – no guilt or complicity, just a man who didn’t want to be bothered by this particular problem.
Or he’s better at hiding it than I am in reading it.
But Stenwold had built a career on making this kind of judgement call.

‘I think it would be wise,’ he replied thoughtfully.
But I think we’ll find, like Failwright, that each time you offer the pirates a poisoned chalice, you’ll find they won’t drink.

‘I’ll organize something,’ Jodry said dismissively, but Stenwold was already considering his next move.

‘You’ve been keeping yourself busy, I trust?’

The suite of rooms was located in the best part of the College residences, high up and with a view of the white walls of the Amphiophos. It had been set aside for the use of special guests of the Speaker, but since the war it had become the private, rent-free property of Teornis of the Aldanrael. When the Spider-kinden lord was absent from the city, which was often, the rooms were kept superstitiously immaculate and empty.

Teornis’s expression told Stenwold that the man was keeping himself well informed of all that went on at the Assembly. Teornis was not amongst that handful of Spider-kinden Aristoi to be given posts at the Great College, and therefore a voice in Collegium’s government. He considered that the actual
work
this would entail was beneath him. For years now he had simply been Collegium’s darling, its most sought-after party guest, the leader of fashion, hero of the war and breaker of hearts.

‘Oh don’t look so downcast, Stenwold,’ he said. ‘I thought you Beetles liked all that shouting and gesturing.’ A couple of magnificently liveried Fly-kinden servants were setting out a cornucopia of finger-food on a low table, along with a carafe of wine. Stenwold wondered moodily if they were slaves or free.

‘You know . . .’ he started, but it was clear from Teor-nis’s face that the man
did
know, and was merely teasing him. They had stood together, these two very different men, after the Vekken siege had been broken. And that had been this man’s doing: for all of Teornis’s shameless capitalizing on it, it had been the Spider-kinden ships, the beachhead of their Satrapy soldiers, that had raised the siege.

‘Pick a city, any city,’ he said.

‘I’ll choose Khanaphes then.’ Teornis was smiling, probably just at the fact that Stenwold had not even had to ask him if he had heard the news. ‘Nothing unexpected there, of course.’

‘Oh, really?’ Stenwold enquired, but Teornis was gesturing for him to sit down, so they took cushions on the floor, Fly-kinden style.

‘Sten, your problem is that you’ve been fighting the Empire too long,’ the Spider declared, as one of his people poured some wine.

‘Now you’re starting to sound like an Assembler,’ Stenwold growled, prompting a delighted laugh.

‘What I mean is this: you see the Empire do a pointless, violent, cruel thing, and you mark it down as the Wasps simply doing what Wasps do. But I, being who I am, ask why.’

Stenwold frowned.
And a very good question that I should have asked myself.
‘Why Khanaphes?’

Teornis nodded. ‘I don’t know if you ever saw the place, but it’s a sandpit full of grit and peasants. Oh, certainly it has farmland, eked out along the river, but the Wasps have their grain baskets already in the East-Empire. And it has history, too, more than anybody could possibly have any use for, but I doubt that the Imperial army has gone there to write a dissertation on potsherds. So ask yourself, what in the world are they doing in Khanaphes?’

It did not take much thought. ‘You think they’re coming after
you
.’

‘We were at war with them, too, remember? We signed that treaty, just as you did. Neither of us had any illusions that the Empire would stay muzzled for long. No, I’d take this as your own excuse to relax, Sten. When the Empire decides to tear up the paperwork, I’m afraid it looks like Solarno and Seldis destined for the axe, and not Helleron and Collegium – not at first anyway.’

‘You must know that we’ll defend you.’

Teornis’s look was ancient with worldly cynicism. ‘Oh, I hope it, Sten, but I can’t
know
it and, let’s be frank, neither can you.’

Stenwold nodded, sipping his wine. It had a sharp, bitter taste that he was not expecting, enough to set his heart racing for a suspicious moment, before he placed it.

‘Mantis-kinden?’ he asked.

‘It has the twin virtues of being devilishly expensive and really quite unpleasant,’ Teornis agreed. ‘That puts it into the realm of the exclusive connoisseur. Appreciate it, Sten. That’s Felyal graft-wine, and it’s not as though there’s much more where that came from.’

After the Empire burned their vines and destroyed their holds
. Stenwold tried to savour the taste, but the wine was like the Mantis-kinden themselves, harsh and unforgiving. ‘Tell me, Teornis . . .’

‘If I can.’

‘You Spider-kinden are good sailors, yes?’

Teornis nodded, his eyes amused.

‘What do you know of piracy?’

The Spider broke out into a grin. ‘We call it a legitimate tool of statecraft, back home. Mind you, there’s little that isn’t. I heard that you were cornered over some shipping business. Has it got to you that much?’ Before Stenwold could reply, he went on: ‘Or maybe you think it’s the Empire. You realize that Khanaphes sits on another sea entirely.’

‘I know, and I don’t know about the Empire, but . . .’
But why not, after all?
‘But Collegium shipping has never suffered like this before, it’s true. If the air trade or the rail trade was taking this kind of losses, then there would be rioting in the streets.’

Teornis nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s our fault, of course – yours and mine.’

Stenwold stared at him, and the Spider waved a deprecating hand.

‘Oh not like that, but the bonds we’ve forged between Collegium and our own lands have put your city on the map, so to speak. South of Seldis, across the far side of the sea, rampant piracy is a normal way of life. There are few great houses amongst us that can’t call on a shipful of ocean raiders when needs must. There are whole ports full of scum with a ship and no conscience. They just followed us along the coast, is all, until they found those clunky little buckets your people call ships. My people are used to outrunning or outmanoeuvring pirates, while your lot . . . Sten, I don’t mean to pain you, but your people are truly awful at shiphandling. Sail or engine, if the wind’s right any pirate down from the Spiderlands would feel she was robbing children. No wonder it’s become such a popular pastime.’

Stenwold sighed. ‘When I was a child we used to know all the pirates simply by the names of their ships. There would be about a dozen at any time. They were hated and feared and we used to want to grow up like them. They were few, and more skilled at not being caught than catching other ships.’

‘Believe me, it’s different within the Satrapies,’ Teornis told him. ‘It’s just part of progress, of entering a larger world. Nothing is ever all good. My advice? Have your captains hire an escort frigate at Everis. Now we’re your friends, you may as well take advantage of us.’

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.’