Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Chief, this here’s the land-kinden’s War Maker, or that’s what it sounded like,’ Chenni announced. ‘Land-kinden, I give you Rosander, Nauarch of the Thousand Spines Train.’
Rosander stood up, and the plates of his mail grated across one another with a sound neither like metal nor shell. Stenwold stared at him in silence.
‘This all they had?’ the Nauarch grunted.
‘They had a hairy little shrimp about my size,’ Chenni told him. ‘Just him and fatty here. Fatty says he’s in charge. You know how Arkeuthys reckoned he’d grabbed their leaders.’
‘Leaders of what?’ Rosander spat contemptuously, fixing Stenwold with a doubtful gaze. ‘You look like some Gastroi weed-farmer to me, landsman.’
Stenwold glanced about. He had been left alone standing in the middle of his room, his escort having stepped away from him. He squared his shoulders. ‘I’m happy to say I don’t even know what that is.’
Unexpectedly, Rosander smiled, showing square, yellowing teeth. ‘You’re the leader of the land-kinden?’
‘We have no single leader,’ Stenwold told him.
Rosander made a face at that, the corners of his mouth turning down. ‘Well, I know what that’s like. Still, you’ll tell me about your people’s weapons, no doubt, and how many warriors they can muster. In time, you will, anyway.’
Stenwold took a step towards him, waiting for the guards to tense in readiness. They did not, and no wonder, for Rosander looked as though he could have torn the Beetle prisoner in half with his gauntleted hands. The colourless light fell on the incised planes of his armour, and Sten-wold’s impossible suspicion grew and grew.
Stone? Stone mail. How can you carve stone into a suit of armour?
‘Nauarch Rosander,’ he said, trying hard to copy Chenni’s intonation that stressed the middle syllable of the name, ‘it seems you bear my people some ill will. I am a diplomat, a statesman. We are from different worlds, worlds that have not touched until now. I cannot see what quarrel can have arisen between us.’
He tried to draw back as the Nauarch’s arm moved but, in mid-speech, he was too late to avoid the hard pinch as the forward-jutting claw of Rosander’s gauntlet snagged his arm. The big man now held one of those hooked knives in his hand, its point upwards, and the edge rested lightly against Stenwold’s wrist, his hand pincered neatly between its metal blade and the gritty hardness of the claw.
‘In the Benthic trains we have no time to be subtle,’ Rosander growled. ‘When a man insults me, or fails me, or endangers my people, I take his hand off and abandon him in the wastes. Do not tell me that we have no quarrel, landsman.’
It was very easy to imagine one twitch of Rosander’s arm crushing Stenwold’s wrist, slicing through flesh and snapping bone. He remained very still. ‘Then we do have a quarrel, it would seem,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell me how I can lay it to rest.’
Rosander’s tiny eyes frowned at him from beneath heavy brows. ‘Well he sounds like nobody I ever heard before,’ he remarked to Chenni. ‘He can only be a landsman, though he’s not what I expected. Can he be speaking the truth? Can they really have
forgotten
?’
Chenni shrugged her hunched shoulders. ‘Chief, if they take it from you,
you
remember. If you take it from them, well, maybe it doesn’t stick in your mind so much.’
‘What have we taken from you?’ Stenwold demanded, as urgently as he dared. ‘Why would you send your warriors against us?’
‘To take it back,’ Rosander replied shortly and, when Stenwold’s baffled expression remained, he went on, ‘To take it all back, the home of our ancestors, the place you drove us from – or so they tell me.’
He searched the Beetle’s face for some sign of understanding, but all Stenwold could say was, ‘When?’
‘When history began, when the Seven Families arose,’ the Nauarch said slowly, speaking words containing the rhythm of ritual. ‘We were driven into the sea, and only the beasts of the sea saved us. We found our paths. We built. We journeyed. We lived within our hosts. We dwelt in shadow. We are greater now than ever we were when your people drove us into the waves. We have never forgotten, though. Always we have the Littoralists to remind us, telling the old tales.’ The spade-toothed smile returned. ‘I wouldn’t care so much, landsman, for it’s all history to me, but my warriors are restless and the Edmir has promised me my war.’
There was movement behind them, and Stenwold felt a slight tightening of the grip on his wrist, a slight wetness of blood where the dagger’s edge dug in. He did not dare turn.
‘I bring a message from the Edmir,’ said a woman’s voice trying to sound calm.
‘And you are . . . ?’ Rosander addressed the speaker. ‘No, you must be Claeon’s latest pet.’
‘I am Haelyn, his majordomo. For now.’
That smile again. ‘Until he tires of you?’
‘Indeed, Nauarch, but until then he has asked me to enquire after an errant prisoner who may have escaped from his oubliette.’
‘Did he put it in those words, little majordomo?’
‘He left the wording to me.’
Rosander laughed at that, and when his armour rattled Stenwold saw that it was indeed stone. He recalled how fast the man had moved to seize his hand.
‘It so happens we have caught this strange creature,’ the Nauarch declared, releasing Stenwold’s wrist abruptly. Stenwold risked a glance behind, and saw what he thought might be the same woman that Rosander’s raiders had been menacing earlier.
The sea-kinden continued their careful pantomime. ‘This creature here would match the description,’ Haelyn confirmed. ‘I have men outside, waiting to escort him back.’
The man of Rosander’s kinden who had been with Chenni earlier was abruptly standing behind the newcomer, blotting out the light.
‘You’re sure the Edmir would not prefer that I keep him? It seems foolish for him to trust his prisons, if men like this can so easily walk out of them.’
Stenwold saw Haelyn’s skin flush and dance with nervous colours. ‘Alas,’ she said, keeping her chin high, looking Rosander straight in the eye, ‘I fear he would be most displeased with that.’
Displeased with me
, was the meaning obvious in her bearing.
Stenwold glanced back at the Nauarch and thought he saw some sympathy register in that narrow face.
‘You are worth more than your master,’ the big man rumbled. ‘Take your prisoner. Inform Claeon that I will speak to all his charges soon. If not, then my train may become restless yet again, and there are more ways than one to make him “most displeased”.’
‘Thank you, O Nauarch,’ Haelyn replied, and Rosander pushed Stenwold, almost gently, towards her.
‘Your Edmir had better place more guards upon his oubliettes,’ Rosander commented. ‘For if another prisoner were to escape, we might start losing confidence in him.’
Haelyn looked hard at Stenwold, obviously seeing something as strange in him as he saw in all his current surroundings. Then she was heading carefully around the hulking warrior, and Stenwold felt he had no choice but to follow.
When Stenwold was returned to the oubliette, the smashed grate had been replaced and the Edmir’s guards lowered him back in, under Haelyn’s watchful eye. Stenwold had noticed, while still up above, that their original quartet of warders had now been doubled. He wondered whether that would deter Rosander, should the man want another chat.
‘Where’s Teornis?’ was the first thing he asked.
Laszlo shook his head grimly. ‘Didn’t bring him back, not yet.’
‘They may not, ever,’ Paladrya’s ghostly voice spoke from the gloom. ‘The Edmir has certain . . . tastes. With two land-kinden in hand, he may choose to test his third one to destruction. He believes that enjoying the pain of others is a prerogative of rulers.’
She had appeared from the dark, her skin losing its stone colours. Stenwold pointed a finger at her, angry with her because he had no other target. ‘You!’ he snapped, and she flinched. ‘Start telling me something useful.’ When she just stared at him he went on, ‘To start with, tell me about this nonsense that we’re supposed to have driven you into the sea.’
‘It is nonsense,’ she agreed, which was the last thing he had expected to hear. ‘Just an old, old story, and one that nobody cares about, except the Littoralists. Nobody else believes it now.’
‘Your Rosander seemed to believe it,’ Stenwold retorted hotly but, even as he said it, he was not sure it was true. Rosander had just been passing on the myth, and Stenwold knew a hollow excuse for warfare when he heard it.
‘I could not say what the Nauarch believes,’ Paladrya said meekly. ‘In truth, I would guess that we did once live on the land, for although we have Art to breathe the water, this air is still more natural to us. Our home is here, though. It was not long ago that anyone claiming that we should go back to the land would have been laughed out of the colony, and the Littoralists were considered a bad joke. But now the Edmir humours them, and gives them power. Now people who laugh at them often meet a bad end. And then there is Rosander,’ she added. ‘Rosander has been promised his war . . .’
‘A war on my people,’ Stenwold confirmed.
‘Any war, but Claeon finds in your people an enemy fit to match Rosander’s power.’
Stenwold sought out Paladrya’s pale face, trying to maintain his ire, but his basic decency was already sapping it, telling him that this woman was not, herself, deserving of it. He sighed deeply. ‘Look, tell me some of the things that you just take for granted here, will you? What’s an Edmir. What’s a Nauarch? What’s going on between Rosander and this Claeon? How does this place
work
? Can you teach me that without just muddying the waters?’
‘I was a tutor, once,’ Paladrya said sadly.
‘And I was a student. We’re well met, therefore, so tell me.’
‘This is the colony of Hermatyre. There are other colonies, but none are close by. The sea . . . perhaps it is different on land, but the seabed is mostly barren, deserted. It is hard to live, in those great expanses, and dangerous. So, whenever the builders found a colony, there are many who come—’
‘Builders?’ Stenwold interrupted. ‘Explain builders. Who builds? Your people?’
‘The Arketoi,’ she told him. ‘They build the colonies, layer on layer. They are always building them, over and over. They are the start of it all. In the distant past they began to form Hermatyre, and then my kinden came, and all the others, the great families.’ She was scanning his face for signs of understanding. ‘Ways of life,’ she told him. ‘It is not easy to live in the open water, as I have said. Few are the kinden who can manage alone. Those who live in the colony are called Obligists.’
‘That’s a kinden?’ he asked, bewildered.
‘No, no. It is just a way of life. The Obligist path is to live within the colonies that the Archetoi build. Obligist because we are obligated to them: everything we have we owe to them.’
‘They are your masters? This Claeon . . . ?’
‘No, no,’ she repeated, clearly finding it hard to accommodate his level of ignorance. ‘They barely notice us, do not care at all for us. Certainly they do not rule us. They simply create these spaces into which we creep to live our lives, and where we hope not to offend them. When the colony is attacked, as when the Echinoi raid, then we defend our homes with our lives, and perhaps that is all the builders see in us: expendable soldiers who will die for
their
creations. Who can fathom their minds?’
‘I’m finding it increasingly difficult to fathom even your mind,’ Stenwold said acidly, and immediately regretted it as she flinched. ‘So Claeon’s not an Architect? So what is he, then? Where does he come in . . . and Rosander?’
‘Claeon is Edmir. The Edmir rules the colony, or at least the Obligist population within it, the Kerebroi and Onychoi and all the other great families.’
Stenwold just stared at her pointedly, and he had the sense that she was trying to work out where best to start. Even the youngest child she might have taught would take for granted matters that were a complete mystery to these land-kinden.
‘I am of the families of the Kerebroi. The kinden of the family of the Kerebroi are the majority here in Hermatyre. Claeon is Kerebroi, but of the royal line, and he is Edmir over the colony. Also in Hermatyre there are others. There are the kinden of the families of the Onychoi. Rosander is of the Onychoi, as were his servants that took you from Claeon’s care.’
Stenwold seized on that. ‘Rosander is Nauarch of the . . . of the something train.’
‘The Thousand Spines. Rosander and his people are Benthists. They travel the wastes, where they scavenge and trade. Normally they would arrive at a colony like this and be gone back into the darkness, but Rosander’s people have been here for five years now. Claeon brought them. Claeon keeps them here.’
‘And they’re getting restless,’ Stenwold saw. ‘Rosander has a lot of warriors, yes? His people are fighters by nature. And I’d guess yours aren’t?’
She nodded. ‘You begin to understand it, land-kinden. Claeon lets the Littoralists speak to Rosander of their ancient, stupid grievances, and then Rosander plans his conquests. He has been to the land already, so they say.’
Stenwold shivered at that.
Is this a serious threat?
He imagined Rosander’s giants ranged against snapbows. How strong was that armour?
But then they’re hardly likely to issue a formal declaration of war.
He wondered how much of the dockside and the riverfront a determined raiding party of Rosander’s creatures could strip bare before anyone could work out what was going on.
And then back into the sea before anyone understood . . . and beyond any retribution.