The Sea Watch Read online

  ‘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.’

  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 crimin
als 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.