Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
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.’
‘I’m going on a journey,’ Stenwold explained. Arianna regarded him for a while before trusting herself to comment.
‘This is the Failwright business still, is it?’
‘And if it is?’
‘Don’t you think you’re treating it all a little too seriously?’ she asked him.
‘Arianna, it’s been a tenday now since anyone saw Rones Failwright,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘Since
we
saw him, as we appear to be the last people to have done so. If Helmess Broiler hadn’t lost in the Lots then I’d probably be up for his murder by now.’
‘Fine.’ She folded her arms. ‘When do we leave?’
‘Not you,’ he told her firmly. He guessed that Tomasso would not accept a second passenger. His arrangement with the Fly-kinden family was tenuous enough already. ‘It’ll be dangerous,’ he added.
‘So I’d be watching your back. It’ll be just like the war.’
‘I need someone to keep an eye on things here while I’m away.’
‘So get Jodry Drillen to do that,’ she said stubbornly. He saw in her mind then the time he had left her behind for his futile journey to the Commonweal, before the Wasp siege of Collegium.
‘I don’t
trust
Drillen, not enough to act as my eyes,’ Stenwold told her. ‘Would you?’
‘So,’ she said. She was angry with him, still looking for a way to crack his resolve. ‘Where now, Stenwold?’
He was intending to stay silent, but he saw her tensing up. ‘If I told you that a pack of Fly-kinden was going to show me where the pirates are, would you believe me?’
‘What have you got yourself into?’ Her face was closed tight now. For a moment he was going to relent.
I’ll talk the
Tidenfree
crew into it somehow, why not? Why not bring her along?
He was on the brink.
‘I’ll be fine.’ His words came out automatically. That old reassuring tone that had ceased to work on Cheerwell by the time she was fifteen, let alone on a Spider-kinden.
I don’t want you to get hurt
, he thought, but he knew from experience this was an argument that carried no weight with her.
His conversation of last night recurred to him, seeming dreamlike now, with a grinning Tomasso hearing him voice his doubts:
And I’m supposed to believe that the moment I go hunting pirates, I should find pirates already hunting me?
‘Oh no, Master Maker,’ Tomasso had said to him. ‘We’ve had our eyes on three or four of your Assemblers for days now. My Laszlo’s been watching your home. You were just the first that came to the negotiating table, as it were.’
Stenwold then wondered:
Did they kill Failwright?
But if so, they were playing more double games than he could interpret. His instincts had told him that these friendly, open, heavily armed folk were being straight with him, solely because they were admitting to so much.
‘And what do you mean by
respectability
?’ he had asked them. ‘Quantify it, Master Tomasso. Has the bottom fallen out of the pirate way of life? My sources say not.’
The bearded Fly had glanced about at his family. ‘A life of iniquity is all very well, Master Maker. We’ve taken ships off the Atoll coast and the Silk Road and the Bay of the Mark and not three leagues from where we sit, but there’s no future in it and there never will be. We live well day to day, but no better generation to generation, and one day our luck will run out and we’ll either sink or swing. When Himself here breathes his last, it’s down to me to lead the family, and I want to lead them somewhere else than out to sea. You’re a big man in Collegium, Maker. Don’t tell me that you can’t buy us some respectability.’
‘In exchange for what?’ Stenwold had asked. ‘What do you have for me?’
‘Come with us to where the pirates drop their anchors, Master Maker,’ Tomasso had said. ‘I mean the real pirates, the free thieves of the sea that you won’t find drinking in a Collegium taverna. If the answers to all your questions are to be found anywhere, we can find the people who know them for you.’ He had smiled again, broad and villainous and honest as a knife. ‘Pay us for value received, Master Maker.’ With the unspoken words,
and if you don’t pay up, we have ways of making you.
‘Stay here,’ Stenwold told Arianna. ‘Stay and keep watch for me. If you want to watch my back, watch it here where I know I have enemies.’
‘I’m going on a journey,’ Stenwold explained. The alarm in Jodry Drillen’s eyes was gratifying.
‘Going where? For how long?’
Stenwold shrugged. ‘Two tendays perhaps, three. A sea voyage.’
‘A what? Why?’ Stenwold had caught Jodry in the Speaker’s office, where the man was no doubt deciding on the colour of the new furnishings. Now the fat Assembler looked abruptly like the boy caught trying out his father’s outsized sword. ‘Stenwold . . . a sea voyage?’
‘For my health,’ replied Stenwold implacably. It was unfair of him, he knew. He was taking out on Jodry his own guilt over leaving Arianna.
Jodry Drillen, new Speaker for the Assembly. He’s earned a little unfairness.
‘This isn’t Failwright’s lunacy is it?’
‘Why? Is it catching?’
‘Stenwold, stop
doing
that!’ Jodry snapped. ‘You can’t go. I need you here.’