Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
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 come 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.’
It took Stenwold a moment to disentangle that one, but then he understood. ‘My condolences,’ he said, thinking of that old, old Fly-kinden man he had seen just once, aboard
Isseleema’s Floating Game
, who had been a notorious pirate, from a line of notorious pirates, in his prime.
Tomasso nodded shortly. ‘It doesn’t change our bargain, Master Maker. It only makes me want to remind you of it, because it’s time for my family to try out respectability, for a generation or two.’
‘I hope you know me well enough by now to trust my word,’ Stenwold remarked.
‘I think I do, at that,’ allowed Tomasso. ‘Mind you, you’re a man who seems to be trying to arrange his own death at any given moment.’
‘Well, as to that,’ Stenwold said, with a strained smile, ‘I went over the disposition of my affairs recently, and I’ve left what assistance I can to you, should this venture go wrong. Believe me, you and your people have been more help than I could have asked for.’
‘Looking after our investment, nothing more,’ Tomasso said gruffly. ‘Ah, and here come our intrepid explorers.’ He fixed the glass he carried to his eye, and Stenwold followed suit. Laszlo and his fellows had come up on deck again, tiny figures even through the lenses. Laszlo himself hopped up and stood on the barge’s rail, where he waved a white cloth theatrically at the Spider vessel, finishing with a flourishing bow. Stenwold heard Tomasso snort.
‘Boy’s going to get himself killed one of these days,’ observed the
Tidenfree
’s master, ‘while baring his arse at a Spider lord, probably.’
Laszlo and the other two remained standing at the barge’s rail, waiting. Stenwold turned his magnified gaze towards the other ship and saw a trio of figures lift off from it, with the barge clearly as their destination. The whole process, search above and below decks, was now to be repeated by Teornis’s people. The Vekken shipwrights themselves would never have gone over the craft in such fine detail.
‘Oh, there’s nasty,’ Tomasso murmured.
Teornis’s auditors were not Fly-kinden, as Stenwold had expected. A closer examination showed that they were Dragonflies, wearing light armour of chitin and wood, and carrying fantastically carved longbows. They were not the civilized and elegant Commonwealers that Stenwold had guardedly dealt with during the war, but the denizens of some Spider satrapy, gone half savage. Stenwold was vaguely aware that, back in the Days of Lore, at some point long before the Collegiate revolution, the Commonweal had suffered some kind of great exodus: malcontent nobles and their followers being forcibly ejected into the wider world. Dragonfly soldiers had supported Teornis when he raised the Vekken siege, and there was a city of piratical Dragon-flies on the Exalsee to trouble Solarno’s shipping, and who could know where else they had found safe havens?
Stenwold could wish that Teornis had not been so wise in choosing his soldiers. Tomasso’s present discomfort was well-founded, for Dragonflies were as nimble as his own kinden in the air, whilst being almost as swift and deadly as Mantids when it came to a fight.
‘There are so many things that could go wrong with this,’ the bearded Fly muttered, ‘and if it goes bad, it’ll go stinking rotten and all at once.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Stenwold agreed. He searched for his own feelings on this and found not fear, but a flutter of excitement.
It’s like shipping out with these Flies in the first place. I used to live like this once, before I got respectable. Being finally seen to be right about the Empire has nearly blunted me.
He felt an odd, lost yearning again for those fast-and-loose days before he had shouldered the burden of being a war hero and a statesman to whom people listened.
Oh, Tisamon, what I wouldn’t give to have you here right now.
He had to hope that Danaen would prove to be the next-best thing.
There was a footstep on the deck behind him, and he turned to see Arianna. She had come attired for battle, wearing a leather cuirass, and with a strung shortbow holstered across her back. It was what she had worn, close enough, when she had come to fight at his side against the Vekken, and he found himself smiling at her wanly.
‘The boat’s ready,’ she told him, ‘for when they are.’
‘They’re coming up already,’ Tomasso remarked. Indeed, the Dragonfly-kinden were back on deck, all three of them, their search having obviously been cursory.
Is this Teornis telling me something?
Stenwold wondered.
Has he told them to be brief to show he trusts me? Or are they just better at killing than at diligence?
The Dragonflies were now airborne, heading back towards Teornis’s vessel, and a moment later Laszlo and his comrades were winging back towards the
Tidenfree
as well. Stenwold took a deep breath and headed amidships for the boat. It was a narrow launch hung out over the
Tidenfree
’s side, ready to be winched down by two of the more Apt members of the crew. His boarding party were standing ready: Elder Padstock and two of her people, with snapbows at the ready; Danaen and two of hers, with swords and bows, arm-spikes and Mantis bloody-mindedness.
Stenwold joined them, with Arianna at his back, and a moment later Laszlo dropped down in their midst, making the Mantis-kinden twitch and scowl.
‘You know what we’re about,’ he addressed them. ‘Keep your eyes open, shout out if you see something out of place. We’re taking no chances. Do
not
act, unless they act first, or unless I order it. If we see violence today, I do not want my party to be the instigator.’
‘Very good, War Master,’ Padstock assured him.
‘Then let us be about it,’ he said, and carefully stepped down into the rocking boat. They joined him one by one, with Danaen’s warriors taking the oars. Last down was Laszlo, who perched himself at the bow as the boat was winched into the water. He had his bow ready, an arrow to hand, a small but martial figurehead.
As the Mantis-kinden hauled on the oars, Stenwold took his glass out again and tracked down the other ship’s launch. It was a grander, broader affair, and four of Teor-nis’s eight were rowing, and making no greater headway. The Spider lord himself could be clearly seen, reclining in the stern.
Assuming it is him and not some lookalike relative
, the unpleasant thought came to Stenwold. At this distance, though, he could not bring that face into sharp focus no matter how he adjusted the lenses.
At least we can be glad of one thing regarding his Dragon-flies
, another idea struck.
If they had been some Apt kinden, Flies even, then perhaps they could have set some incendiaries or explosives within the ship. Be thankful for Inapt enemies.
They were nearing the barge, a low-sided craft, cumbrous and bulky in the water. The Vekken had been no great shipwrights, and what skill they possessed they had reserved for their warships. The barge seemed so close to the water that any large wave would swamp the rails.
Hammer and tongs, if the weather grows poor she may founder and sink out here, and would that not be an irony? Teornis and myself clinging to the same plank.
Laszlo’s wings hauled him into the air before the prow of the launch nudged the barge’s side. He had tugged a rope ladder with him, and after a moment’s securing he let it down. Danaen stood in the launch, shifting her balance in perfect time with the waves, and let her own wings bring her up to the barge’s deck, and her people followed suit as Stenwold tied off the launch.
A wise precaution, bringing Mantis-kinden who can fly.
He was uncomfortably aware of his own shortcomings in that regard, and how much of a trap this ship could become, and beneath it all, of the appalling depth of water below, which could swallow all the schemes that he and Teornis together might hatch until the end of time.