The Sea Watch Read online

  ‘We require another favour, Master Broiler,’ Bellowern had told him, predictably enough. ‘We’d like you to fan the flames, if you would. Rattle some swords towards the Spiderlands. Go shake Stenwold Maker’s hand and call him a true patriot.’

  Helmess’s sour smile had not needed much feigning. ‘I’ve started on the path.’

  ‘Your initiative has been noted,’ had come Bellowern’s patronizing response. ‘I’ve not had orders back, of course, but I anticipate that, once the sails are in sight of the harbour, there will be an army ready to march to repatriate Myna and the other so-called Alliance cities back into the Empire. The bleeding hearts of Collegium will be too busy fighting for their much-vaunted freedom to object. After that, Helleron, then the Lowlands, frankly. By year’s end we’ll be investing Sarn with a couple of full armies, and you and I will be dining in the Amphiophos, under the black and gold. How’s that sound to you?’

  Helmess’s smile had been broad and genuine, though the thought behind it had been, Oh you have no idea just how many players there are in this game, Master Bellowern. The black and gold might receive a little surprise, if it comes down the coast again. ‘Just let me know what you wish me to do,’ he had invited, before setting off home to meet his next unwitting tool.

  Danaen strode into Helmess’s parlour displaying all the confidence in the world, but these Mantis-kinden were not as inscrutable as they thought they were. If she had been a Spider or a Moth, then Helmess would have had no window onto her soul. In her expression, though, he registered naked curiosity. She would not be well educated about Collegiate politics, but no doubt she had heard that Helmess and Stenwold were not best of friends.

  He had sent Elytrya away, during this interview, since it would not do to be seen with anything resembling a Spider-kinden at his side.

  Danaen folded her arms, looking contemptuous, and Helmess thought, Five centuries ago, and your kind might have been justified in that expression. Nowadays you’re just a joke in bad taste, but perhaps I will get the chance to laugh at you, after all.

  ‘I asked to see you because I know you have the ear of Master Stenwold Maker, and he so seldom listens to me,’ Helmess began mildly. The Mantis woman just stared back at him impudently, but he assumed the demeanour of a concerned, perhaps slightly ineffectual Beetle statesman, as he knew she must view him, and continued. ‘We were all extremely surprised when he told us about the Spider situation,’ he continued. ‘After all, it was his people who brought Teornis and the Aldanrael family into the war with the Vekken, and with the Empire too.’ He watched her carefully, from behind his avuncular exterior. There was no suggestion that she had heard the rumours – in fact the extremely accurate rumours – that he had been collaborating with Imperial agents. But, of course, Mantis-kinden wouldn’t deign to listen to Beetle gossip, and how I shall now exploit that. ‘A lot of us are worried about how Master Maker will handle this.’

  Her scowl of derision deepened: no doubt she took him for the peace-making kind. Helmess let her believe so for a moment, then said, ‘Many of us in the Assembly fear that after all this, after the blood that has already been shed, Maker will simply roll over and get back into bed with the Spiders as though nothing has ever happened.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘That makes no sense. Why would he even tell you, then? Would any of you fat Beetles even have known, had he not opened your eyes?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not.’ Helmess picked his words with care. ‘But, then, Master Maker has achieved his current rank amongst us by taking us into wars. That has been the subject of our many disagreements, and I am less certain about his means of taking us out of them. He has become known as a . . . compromising man. You know of the Vekken siege a few years back, yes?’

  He received a curt nod.

  ‘Well, you must know that Maker is even cosying up to the Vekken these days.’

  And she did know – he saw it in her eyes – and he had planted his seed of doubt. She said nothing, but her posture was now different, less stand-offish, more receptive.

  ‘So, he’s got us into another fight. Well, if what he says about the Spiders is true, then perhaps that’s fair enough. What I’m worried about, what many of us are worried about, is that now he’s made himself the centre of attention all over again, he’ll just make some deal with Teornis and then hush the whole thing up.’ Helmess steepled his plump fingers. ‘And what will that solve? Really, I mean, what? Will it stop them taking advantage of us? I really rather doubt it. I’m not too proud to admit that the Spiders are a clever lot. I’d not want to talk terms with one of them. You never know what you might be agreeing to.’

  She nodded, just a little, and he thought, Prejudice is such a wonderful thing.

  ‘Your people, of course, you know the Spiders. When I heard that you and yours were involved, well, that offered a spark of hope, I can tell you. I was hoping that Maker would just put your talents to their best use: a strong, solid strike against the Spider-kinden, to show them we’re not to be toyed with. Nothing seems to have happened, though, since Maker made his big announcement. Some of us are getting worried that he’s going to go soft on us again.’

  She cocked her head to one side, watching him narrowly. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Would you kill the Spider lord, if you had the chance?’

  ‘Of course.’ She did not pause for a moment.

  ‘But I’d guess Maker doesn’t want that, or he’d have given you the order already. After all, Teornis is right here in the city.’ And how that must gall her. She must almost be able to smell him from twenty streets away. Yes, look, there go her hands to her weapon hilts, just at the thought . . .

  ‘He’s . . . thinking,’ was all Danaen’s voice said, though her body language betrayed a great deal more.

  ‘Oh, well, thinking is always a wise precaution.’ Helmess made a great show of holding his hands up in despair. ‘Tell me, please, are my fears justified? Is he going to meet with them?’

  ‘He might. That’s what he’s thinking about,’ said the Mantis. She had come here wearing a full suit of distrust, but he was easing her out of it piece by piece. ‘But he has found no meeting place he can be sure of.’ Her expression shifted to a sneer. ‘If not for that, no doubt he’d be meeting with them already.’

  ‘Then perhaps that’s what he should do,’ Helmess said frankly. Danaen was frowning, caught off guard, but he pressed on. ‘If he and the Spider meet somewhere secluded, somewhere private, then who knows what might happen?’

  She merely stared at him, and he saw he would have to elaborate.

  ‘Some isolated spot free from interference,’ he went on. ‘Where the Spider’s agents and creatures would not be able to intervene, let us say. If, at that meeting, the city’s interests were not being upheld – if they were being sold to the Spiderlands through craven negotiating, perhaps – then a bold sword stroke could accomplish a great deal.’

  She did not seem to realize that he was trying to lead her into iniquity, or perhaps he was only giving voice to thoughts that had been running through her head already. He had no doubt that she saw no betrayal in all this, for to her, as to so many of the old-style Felyal Mantids, hatred of the Spider-kinden was a great and noble cause, and anything that furthered it could not be considered bad. He watched her closely, trying to interpret her thoughts from her expression. In the end she said, ‘Perhaps, but it will not happen. There is no such place.’

  And my work is almost done. ‘And if I have already thought of such a place?’

  He now had her utter, focused attention, and it was a frightening thing. Her victims must feel as he felt then, he realized. Her unsheathed concentration had razor edges.

  ‘Where?’ she asked, and he told her – and was treated to a genuine Mantis smile.

  Stenwold mulled the proposal over slowly, trying to see it from all angles. He had with him only his most able people, now. He had not summoned Elder Padstock, because he did not want to sully her loyalt
y by revealing the inner workings of diplomacy. He had not called Jodry Drillen, because he knew the man was already under pressure from the Assembly. Stenwold still respected his opinion, but now, when Jodry spoke, Stenwold could hear the voices of a great many other Assemblers behind him.

  Arianna and Tomasso, he had therefore boiled his council down to. Arianna and Tomasso and Stenwold himself, gathered here in Stenwold’s study to hear Danaen out.

  ‘A ship?’ Stenwold pondered. ‘Your advice is a ship?’

  ‘My advice is: let me kill these Spiders. Do not meet with them,’ Danaen replied firmly. ‘If you must, meet them somewhere away from this clutter of stone. Meet them where they can arrange no ambushes, no surprises. Have a ship, a big flat trader-ship, towed out to the open sea. We come to it by sea and so do they. We send some over, perhaps your little Fly-kinden, to search for hidden knives. When we are sure there are none, then we row you there by boat – you and just so many others. Meet the Spider there, talk if you must. Or let me kill him.’

  Stenwold glanced at Arianna. ‘Your thoughts?’

  She took her time answering, which reassured him. It was always good to have another well-thought-out viewpoint.

  ‘I think it might serve,’ she said at last. ‘I’d guess that Teornis would accept it. Given what you’re fighting over, he would find it appropriate, I think.’

  Stenwold’s gaze turned to Tomasso.

  The Fly-kinden was already nodding. ‘It’s cursed hard to sneak up on someone on the open sea in broad daylight,’ he remarked. ‘You’d see a sail miles off, and even an engined vessel without the high profile of a mast would be spotted in time to take action. The Tidenfree will be your transport, Master Maker, since you know yourself there’s precious little that can outpace or outmanoeuvre her. If the Spider lord does try to bring in more force, we’ll spot them and get you out before they arrive.’

  ‘Then we’ll do it,’ Stenwold declared, and he found himself immensely relieved that he would at last get to wrestle with Teornis directly. I have known the man long enough, and yet I cannot see why he has jeopardized so much for so little. I must first understand. Then perhaps I can solve this business without another pointless conflict.

  ‘I shall provide your escort,’ Danaen declared.

  Stenwold frowned, thinking of short Mantis tempers and mocking Spider words. ‘Perhaps just you and a couple of your people. I’ll recruit a few of Padstock’s company, as well. Myself and eight others, say, that should be manageable, and Teornis to bring along the same, and have the same chance to check over the ship as we have. I can’t think of anything fairer than that.’

  Danaen looked disgruntled, but made no complaint. In an ideal world, Stenwold would have preferred to go without any Mantis at his back – and that was a strange thought to have, given his history – but if there was a trap, if negotiations broke down beyond recovery, then he knew that he could rely on nobody as much as on Danaen’s people. They would be prepared to die, not for him but for their age-old hatred of the Spider-kinden.

  ‘A messenger,’ he decided. ‘I’ll pass our proposal to the Aldanrael, and let us hope they accept it.’

  ‘I cannot think that they will not,’ Arianna predicted, but any subtleties in her tone passed him by.

  Fifteen

  The sea was choppy and the Tidenfree’s hull jolted and bounced as it cut across the waves towards its goal. Stenwold stood at the bow and brooded, with Laszlo perched on the rail beside him to keep him company.

  Someone had found a suitable ship for his meeting with Teornis, and if he did not personally find it fitting, there was no point in saying so. The broad, flat barge that they had moored out here, beyond sight of Collegium harbour, was already known to him. It had been one of the Vekken supply vessels during the late siege, the last survivor of the flotilla of great flat-bottomed vessels that the Vekken sailors had navigated along the coast as part of their invasion force. Somehow it had avoided being burned, sunk or sailed away from the city by those that captured it, and now here it was, serving this peculiar duty.

  It did not escape Stenwold’s recollection that the sailing ships that had taken those barges, smashed the Vekken warships and raised the siege had been under the command of Teornis of the Aldanrael. How glad Stenwold had been to see the man then, how the Spider had been the hero of the hour, most popular man in Collegium. And now . . .

  How did we let it come to this? How did he let it come to this? Why, for the world’s sake?

  ‘Is something wrong, Ma’rMaker?’ Laszlo asked him.

  Many, many things are very wrong indeed. ‘No, just thinking,’ he replied, not entirely convincingly. ‘Tell me, is there some significance to where you moored her?’

  ‘Edge of the shelf, Ma’rMaker,’ Laszlo said, and noticed that this had failed to edify. ‘What I mean is, the sea’s not the same all the way across. It gets deeper some, as you go on.’

  ‘I think I knew that,’ Stenwold told him, shrugging his shoulders to settle his artificer’s leathers more comfortably.

  ‘Well, of course – but it’s not like a wine bowl or anything. It gets deeper all of a sudden and a lot deeper in one go. Any further out than that girl is and you’d never be able to drop anchor, not with all the length of chain you could carry. That’s where the real deep sea starts, and where ships don’t go beyond. Unless they’re us, of course. If we get some urgent running away to do, I reckon the chief’ll just turn us for open water, see if them Spiders will follow us and risk the Lash and the weed seas. I’d lay odds they won’t.’

  ‘Let us hope it won’t come to that,’ Stenwold told him. He glanced back along the deck of the Tidenfree, which was busy today. There could be seen Elder Padstock and a dozen of her company, clad in helm and breastplate, and with snapbows newly signed out from the city armouries. Beyond them, scattered about the deck with no apparent order or plan to them, was a score of Mantis-kinden. Danaen might only be bringing a brace of them to the negotiating table, but if things went wrong, the Tidenfree would bring a whole world of trouble as fast as her sails could propel her. Stenwold was sure that someone on Teornis’s ship would have a telescope, and the Aptitude to use it, and he wanted his Mantis marines in plain view and obviously spoiling for a fight. Just for a little insurance.

  ‘There’s our man,’ Laszlo pointed, and Stenwold followed his finger to see a pale sail coursing in at an angle to their own line of approach. Unfolding his own glass, Stenwold made the best examination he could. Teornis’s transport was similar in shape to the ill-fated Very Blade, albeit smaller and swifter. It was still almost as long again as the Tidenfree, and he saw that Teornis had also cluttered the decks with reinforcements, although it was too far to see what calibre of swords he had brought with him.

  ‘We’re faster,’ said Laszlo, obviously attempting to read his mind. ‘If it comes to it, we’ll sail rings around them. We’ve taken larger ships than that, and carrying less muscle than we are now, too.’

  ‘Good to hear it,’ said Stenwold weakly, wondering whether those ‘larger ships’ had been peaceful merchantmen in desperate flight from the notorious pirate Bloodfly. ‘Who’s going over to check out the ground?’

  ‘Me and Solli and Fernaea,’ Laszlo said. ‘And I’ll be one of your eight when you go over yourself, if you don’t mind. After all, come trouble, I’m your best bet for getting word back to the Tidenfree without getting shot into the water.’

  ‘Fast, are you?’

  ‘Could have been a messenger, me,’ Laszlo confirmed.

  They were making good speed towards the barge, and so was Teornis. Stenwold took another peer through his glass, noticing the burnished armour of Kessen mercenaries at the rails of his adversary’s ship, and others less recognizable but sporting longbows. Then his view wheeled wildly, and he took the telescope from his eye to see the Spider ship coming to, and lowering sail.

  ‘Time to earn my keep,’ Laszlo said, and kicked off from the rail, casting himself across the deck to co
me down near the mainmast. Two of the Tidenfree crew were waiting for him there, and one handed him a shortbow and a quiver of arrows. He waved to Stenwold and grinned broadly, but his accomplices looked more serious.

  And rightly so, since we don’t know what they might find. He did not reckon that Teornis would have hidden men aboard the barge: Fly-kinden had keen eyes, and the Tidenfree would easily outdistance the Spider vessel in a race back to Collegium harbour, or into the wilds of the open sea. Still, if Teornis was just a little too overconfident, or uncharacteristically unsubtle in his methods, then Laszlo and his friends might flush out more trouble than they could handle. Stenwold remembered the Art that had allowed Danaen to blend in with her surroundings, to let the eyes of others pass over her. Spiders knew that Art, too, Stenwold was well aware, But I do not think that Teornis would risk an assassin being discovered. Such Arts are not certain, and Flies are notoriously inquisitive. Yet he felt a lurch in his stomach as the three intrepid scouts lifted off from the Tidenfree’s deck and veered over the dancing waves towards the barge.

  They were specks only as they dipped and dropped on to the deck, and through his glass Stenwold saw them pause for a moment, bowstrings drawn back. Then they were quartering the deck, swiftly and professionally. A moment later they had gone below.

  It was a long, anxious wait. Stenwold meanwhile fidgeted with his telescope and shuffled his feet, intensely aware of a boatload of Mantis-kinden at his back, who wanted any excuse for a fight. Pray we do not give them one.

  A movement at his elbow resolved itself into Tomasso. The bearded Fly had spent the journey so far beside Gude at the helm. Now he unlimbered his own telescope, not Stenwold’s pocketable one but a proper seagoing piece, extending to half as long as the Fly was tall.

  ‘You should know,’ he grunted, making a great show of examining the instrument, ‘I’m now the fourth Bloodfly – as of the early hours of this morning.’