The Sea Watch (69 page)

‘I will do what I can to smooth this crossing for you,’ he told them, laying down food and drink. ‘But it won’t be easy.’

‘If
you
can do it, we can,’ Wys told him. Of all of them she was taking it best.

Stenwold nodded. ‘Of course
you
’ – he gestured to Paladrya – ‘have at least been on land before.’

‘Once. So briefly,’ she replied, almost in a whisper.

‘So tell me. Tell me everything you can about how and where Aradocles left the sea.’

She nodded wearily, taking a moment to gather her strength, while casting her mind back over the years.

‘I was Claeon’s lover, as you know,’ she started.

‘We don’t know
why
,’ Wys interrupted, almost immediately.

Paladrya looked sad. ‘He was . . . different before. While his brother was still well, before Claeon began thinking of the Edmiracy. It was ambition for power that poisoned him. But he always talked with me. With whoever he happens to lie with, I think. When the old Edmir fell ill, I knew – from hearing what he did not say, reading the gaps he left – that he would have Aradocles killed. A few years later and the heir would be of age, and everything would have happened differently . . . the temptation would not have been there. But the boy was still young, and Claeon saw that he himself might become great. And I saw where his thoughts were leading. I had taught Aradocles for many years and I loved him as a son. I knew that I had to save him.’

‘And I’ve seen for myself that it’s hard to escape Claeon’s agents,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘Even so, to the
land
? Considering the way your people seem to see us, how did that idea ever come to you?’

‘There were very few I could trust, but Aradocles had some house guards who were loyal only to him. I consulted with them. One was a Dart-kinden of strange family – an old family that had lived up against the Edge for many generations. They do things differently there, and the writ of Hermatyre – of anywhere – runs thin. Santiren, she was called. She told me of the ancient customs, rites and rituals of her people, which had been dying out for ever but still clung on. Rites and pacts with the land. It was her words that made my mind up. Left beneath the sea, Claeon would see Aradocles dead before he became of age. But Santiren believed that she could broker some contract with the land, just to keep him safe.’

‘Old ways,’ murmured Stenwold thoughtfully. ‘We ourselves are not so long established here, my people – not under our own governance. We were slaves once, and our rulers were wise and secretive. Who knows what deals they may have made, and with what powers? Anything is possible, back in the Bad Old Days. Perhaps the masters of Pathis-that-was knew more about your people than they ever bothered to tell us, their underlings.’ Stenwold saw that they were not following him, save perhaps for Laszlo, and gestured for Paladrya to continue.

‘There is little else to say,’ she stated. ‘I took with us two of the house guards, both Dart-kinden, Santiren and another. We rode on the Darts’ beasts, myself seated behind Santiren, and Aradocles behind . . . Marcantor, his name was. Santiren led the way, and she took us swift and sure, over the Edge, through the shallows, travelling by night, hiding always from the light. Then it was night again and . . . the waters above us became less and less, until we came up into the air.’

‘But where?’ Stenwold asked her. Abruptly he stood up, rifling across shelves until he found a curled map of the Lowlands.

‘I do not know the name of the place. I don’t think Santiren did either. It was a forest, like our weed plantations, but instead of the tall weeds there were . . . only crooked, twisted plants. And it was cold, and there was the sky, the moon . . .’ She looked up fearfully, as though that great expanse of the heavens still oppressed her even through the ceiling.

‘Trees,’ Stenwold noted. ‘Many of them?’

‘There was nothing else visible of the land except the forest,’ she said. ‘And I bade Aradocles goodbye and returned, and for two years Claeon could not quite believe I had betrayed him, and he hunted everywhere for the boy. Then his suspicion won over his pride, and I became a prisoner, as you found me.’

And you do not mention the tortures he must have put you through
, Stenwold thought. Her quiet strength impressed him more, the more she spoke.
If only all your kinden had your selflessness
, he considered.
And what manner of man has Aradocles grown into, if he still lives? In your absence, whose hand may have guided him?

‘Trees,’ he muttered again. ‘Tell me, there was a beach first, perhaps? You scaled a cliff?’

‘No, your “trees” extended into the water, so that there was nowhere one could say, this is the land, or this is now the sea. It was an unnatural place, but Santiren swore she had met someone there that still honoured the old compacts.’

Stenwold looked straight into her face – so like a Spider-kinden’s, just as Aradocles must surely have seemed a Spider youth – and his heart sank.

‘Only one place, that can be,’ he declared. They looked encouraged, but he was already shaking his head.

‘The Felyal,’ Laszlo supplied.

‘The Felyal,’ Stenwold echoed. His personal feelings for the Mantis-kinden were decidedly mixed, just now, but their feelings for Spider-kind were quite clear and pointed.
Oh he’s dead, he’s dead, for sure.

But Stenwold had unfinished business with the Mantids, those refugees of the Felyal that now called Collegium their home. He might as well drag this, the final fate of Aradocles, into the bargain. What did he have to lose?

Two streets away from Maker’s house, Cardless put his back to a wall and tried to think.

His world was falling away from him, leaving him with no visible means of support. How could this have happened? He’d had his life made out, surely? It couldn’t all evaporate, as simply as that?

He could go back to Stenwold tomorrow, make it out as a misunderstanding. He had been misled. He had been held hostage. It wasn’t his fault.

But then he remembered the grim look of the people Stenwold had brought home with him, the sort of people Cardless would never have thought an Assembler, a College Master, would even know. Killers, mercenaries and pirates, the lot of them. It brought back to Cardless the odd rumours about Maker, his early career, his precise role in fighting the Vekken and the Empire.
Blood on his hands, they say, and not just from the war.

He could not go back there. He had made too free with Stenwold’s possessions. Yet everyone had known the man was dead. Helmess Broiler had been exultant about it. Spider-kinden assassins or something. Everyone knew it, though no two voices agreed just how. He had died out on the water, doing who could know what? His woman, Arianna, had died with him; some even said they had killed each other. The point was that they were
dead
, and the niece was missing, and the rest of the Maker family were so entrenched in internecine feuds that nobody had come to claim the house, the cellar, the larder, the cashbox. That left only Cardless, alone, in that big house, so who wouldn’t have started to see it as his own?

Then a written message had come, just days ago, from Broiler’s people:
Look out for Stenwold Maker. He may return any day.
Cardless had burned it and laughed. Maker was dead. The sea had swallowed him. No man came back from that – not even Stenwold Maker.

Yet that same old Beetle had stood in the doorway, his face strangely bloodless and grey like a man long without the sun, wearing clothes ragged and stained, and Cardless had almost expected to see barnacles and shells clinging to his skin, seawater pooling at his feet. Stenwold Maker was back from his watery grave.

And now Cardless was out of a job. No money. No job. No
money
. Up until now he had been taking liberties with Maker’s credit, and his gambling friends had been happy to take his marker, once he had exhausted Stenwold’s stash of ready coin. Now, he
owed
, and some of the people he owed to would not take kindly to being put off. Not now that Cardless had nothing to fall back on.

His mind, still fuddled from drink, at last lit on the only solution: Helmess Broiler. Helmess had told him to watch out for Maker’s return. Well, now he was returned, and Broiler would want to know of it. He would pay for that, surely. Perhaps he could find Cardless a new position. It wouldn’t have to be working for an Assembler: any decent household would do. Perhaps Broiler had contacts in Helleron. A span of time out of the city wouldn’t go amiss, right now.

Yes, that’s it.
Cardless caught his breath raggedly and nodded to himself. Helmess Broiler would want to know that Maker had returned, and then Helmess Broiler would make everything all right again. He was a proper magnate of Collegium, a good Assembler. He would be duly grateful for Cardless’s honest service.

Muttering to himself, the dismissed manservant hurried off through Collegium’s dark streets.

Helmess was inconveniently asleep when Cardless came calling. The wait in Broiler’s antechamber was sobering, and it gave the manservant a chance to put his thoughts in order, to straighten his stained tunic and run a hand through his dishevelled hair. Nonetheless, when he was finally ushered into Helmess Broiler’s presence, he was taken aback by the audience present: not only the Beetle magnate and his sultry Spider mistress, plus the pleasant-spoken servant Forman Sands, whom Cardless hoped he could count upon as a brother-in-craft, but there was another Spider-kinden in attendance as well. He was a dark, lean-faced man, slightly bearded, and in clothes that were surely Helmess’s own cast-offs and therefore nothing a Spider would normally be seen in. Not this man especially, for Cardless reckoned he could detect an Aristoi when he saw one . . . in fact, now he thought about it, the newcomer’s face was decidedly familiar. Behind him stood a ferocious-looking Dragonfly man, all tattoos and scars and a long-hafted sword slung over one shoulder.

Helmess was making impatient gestures to him, so he turned from eyeing the newcomer and got out his story in reasonable order, leaving out any inconvenient details about the precise circumstances that Maker had discovered on his long-delayed return home. He saw the significant looks pass between Broiler and the Spider-kinden man, and allowed himself an eager little smile. Just as he had hoped, his news was obviously valuable, worthy of reward, not only to Helmess but to . . . Teornis?

Cardless felt a little skip of unease within him. Surely this was Teornis of the Aldanrael, who some said had killed Stenwold, and others claimed had been Maker’s last victim. This was a night for dead men, it seemed. Moreover, there was a fair consensus that Teornis was behind the armada even now expected to sail from Seldis and Everis, to bring another war upon poor, battered Collegium. So what was the man doing
here
?

There were rumours, of course, about Helmess Broiler, but then they circulated about any Beetle who ran for Speaker, mostly spread by his opponents. Still, the rumours about Broiler had suggested he was a deal too close to the Empire . . . and now Cardless found himself wondering whether Broiler wasn’t a deal too close to some other enemies of Collegium, for here he was sitting right next to one.

He did his best to keep any of the suspicions off his face. He was supposed to be good at that. He just watched as Broiler leant across to the Spider, speaking in hushed tones.

‘Well?’ Helmess whispered so that this travesty of a manservant before them would catch none of it. ‘I assume you’ll have your assassins deal with this.’

‘By no means,’ Teornis replied softly. ‘I would never dream of doing anything so base. Master Maker continues to win my admiration.’

‘We have to put him away, now,’ Helmess insisted. ‘Surely you can see that?’

‘That is not how it is done,’ was Teornis’s light response. ‘Nor would it be so easy.’ His thought went unsaid, but distinctly understood, that, if there was a choice, to kill Stenwold or kill Broiler, he would not hesitate to cut his host’s throat himself. ‘Can we dispense with this creature?’ He waved a bored hand at Cardless.

‘Ah, yes.’ Helmess nodded. Then, in louder tones, he said, ‘I suppose we’ve heard enough.’

‘Please, Master Broiler,’ Cardless said, half obsequious, half desperate. ‘I was hoping that I should have some recompense for bringing you this. And . . . I have nowhere to go. Perhaps you have some position . . . or know of one . . . ?’

‘Yes, tiresome that you’re no longer in Maker’s household,’ said Helmess. ‘Ah well, so much for that. Sands, would you be so kind as to give our friend Cardless his final payment. Be sure he wants for nothing.’

‘I would be delighted, Master Broiler,’ replied Sands, giving Cardless his best smile and taking him by the elbow. Cardless’s backward glance was only one of thankfulness.

Helmess waited until he was gone before adding, ‘That is, assuming you’re happy for me to dispose of at least
this
irritation?’

‘Oh, kill him,’ Teornis said dismissively. ‘It would be only a day at most before he thought to sell some piece of information back to Stenwold Maker, therefore he’s best in the earth. Maker is back, though, and with sea-kinden dancing attendance, no less. He did better than I, for he got out of the water a free man.’

‘Sea-kinden?’ Helmess was frowning, perhaps thinking of such specimens as Rosander in full armour. ‘You’re sure?’