Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘So you people would, what, get a lump of bronze, and just sort of
force
it into looking like a knifeblade?’ she asked him, sounding utterly disbelieving.
‘Well, heat it up and beat it flat, over and over . . .’
And I’ve seen not a single fire, not a naked flame, and what on earth would they burn here, unless they can ‘
accreate’
coal or something. The cells weren’t warm, but they weren’t cold either, they don’t have much need of clothing other than for a minimal modesty . . . they can’t make fire. They make things without fire.
‘And you . . . don’t do that?’
Her face was doing something strained, and he realized she was not-quite-laughing at him. ‘Beat it flat? Like with a rock or something? Over and over . . . ?’ She lost the battle and a delighted crow of derision erupted from her. Stripped of her customary ill humour she looked even more like a discoloured Beetle-kinden from some far-off city.
‘Very funny,’ Laszlo snapped angrily. ‘And you do better, do you?’
She gave him a pitying look. ‘Man in the Hot Stations made this for me. They’re good with metal there. I told him what I wanted, and he set out a tank, and I came back three days later and he’d got the blade formed. I did the hilt myself. I make most of the fittings round here.’ She took up the knife, and Stenwold saw that the blade was plain, but the grip was lightly incised with intricate, geometrical patterns that were picked out with verdigris as neatly as though jade had been inlaid.
Which she made by this accreation
, he realized.
Not cut, not carved, but simply laid in as part of her plan, as she sieved the materials from the seawater.
He recalled all that fantastically intricate jewellery he had seen in Hermatyre.
So they can just grasp gold from the sea, and shape it how they will without need of the whitesmith’s art. I wonder if they realize they could just
buy themselves
a chunk of the land, no need for invasion?
And what are the limits of this Art of theirs?
The question inevitably followed on from his previous thoughts.
What could they not make?
Phylles was still smirking at him, but there was a degree of uncertainty behind her expression, that had perhaps underlain her earlier hostility as well.
She’s scared of us
, Stenwold saw.
We are land-kinden, and we are strange to her.
‘Do you believe that my ancestors drove yours off of the dry land?’ he asked her. ‘Do you dream of going back?’
‘I saw the land once,’ she told him flatly, raising her belligerence like a shield. ‘Up on the surface, while cack-handed Lej was getting this thing moving again. Dry and barren, it was, and I could feel my skin cracking just being up there, out of the water. You’re welcome to it, land-kinden. Just don’t you lot try coming down here.’
She stormed off again, heading up the slope where their engineer had appeared from. Stenwold smiled slightly after her. She might be a sea-kinden of some unspecified type, but he had met a lot of other people like her, as easily offended and overly defensive. He decided he knew how to handle Phylles, whatever she was.
‘Right,’ he said vaguely, glancing up at the bald Mantis-cousin, Fel. Throughout the conversation the man had not offered a single contribution, just standing there with his arms hanging loose by his sides, as though he would be fighting at any moment.
Very like a Mantis.
‘No chance of anything to eat, I suppose?’ he asked. ‘Anything that’s not fish, ideally, although I accept there’s small chance of that.’
For a moment Fel just looked at him, with the spikes on his fists flexing slightly, but then he stepped sideways and started rummaging one-handed in one of the cargo nets.
‘Do you feel able to answer more questions?’ Stenwold asked Paladrya. ‘It sounds as though whoever hired these mercenaries isn’t going to kill you out of hand at any rate.’
She was still pressed against him, held in the embrace of one arm. She had stopped shaking, but he had the sense of keeping stable some very precious, fragile thing. ‘Ask,’ she said quietly. ‘I cursed you to this, by my interference, so I will make amends any way I can.’
‘Well, then . . .’ For a second Stenwold floundered in the ocean of his own ignorance. ‘This Hermatyre that the Edmir rules . . . there are other colonies, there must be . . . ?’
‘There are,’ she agreed. ‘There is Deep Seep, down in the dark and the cold. There is Grande Atoll, I have heard, beyond even that . . . and the Pelagists tell of colonies further still.’
‘And Hermatyre’s relations with them? Might there be allies against Claeon? He doesn’t sound the diplomatic type,’ Stenwold mused. Paladrya was already giving him what had become her usual look, when he said something that puzzled her.
‘Relations?’ she asked. ‘Well, there is some trade. The Benthist trains call at those places, sometimes, and there are the Pelagists . . .’
‘But surely they care, if their neighbour is taken over by a tyrant?’ Stenwold pressed.
‘Why?’ she said simply.
‘Well . . . what if Claeon decided to take over this Deep Seep, as well, and sent an army over?’
‘This happens on land?’
‘It happened to my home city – colony – very recently.’
She flinched at the thought. ‘It takes the Benthist trains many moons to travel between colonies, even if they follow direct paths, and usually their chief interests are in scavenging the depths. The Pelagists are swifter, but even they . . . they are so thinly scattered that to see five of them in one place is cause for surprise. How should such a thing be accomplished?’
‘A desert,’ interjected Laszlo soberly. He was obviously quicker to grasp the idea than Stenwold. ‘The sea floor is a desert. These Benthists are like nomad tribes – like the Scorpions in the Dryclaw, say. You exchange a few messages, a little trade, some raiding probably, but each colony’s got to shift for itself alone, I reckon. Which means that each colony’s also its own worst enemy, come to that. Which gives us this mess we’ve run into. Lady, tell us something we need to know, will you?’
‘Speak,’ Paladrya invited. Fel was back with them then, no doubt disappointed that they had not tried to take advantage of his being distracted. He handed them strips of something tough and stringy. Stenwold tried it cautiously, and found it infinitely welcome, just like dried beetle jerky and, best of all, only tasting very slightly of fish.
I suppose a lobster is just an aquatic beetle, when it comes down to it.
‘Tell us about your kinden, your sea-kinden,’ Laszlo continued, and in the Fly’s face was the avid look of a traveller learning something that nobody else of his country has ever known. ‘These families of yours . . . ?’
‘The Seven Families, yes,’ Paladrya echoed, ‘although that’s just tradition. There are always rumours of other families, other kinden within the families we know . . . in the deep places, in the far places, other colonies . . .’
‘Hold.’ Stenwold put a hand up, glancing at their guard. ‘No chance of something to write with, and write on? I should be making notes, at least.’
Fel looked as though he had been asked for the moon on a stick, but after a moment he brought over a rounded sheet of thin, leathery cloth, and a thin seashell that had been capped with something like horn. There was ink inside it that wrote somewhat messily, as though Stenwold was scribing on blotting paper, but it was not so different from the reservoir pen sitting on his desk back in Collegium. The letters he formed, though, were obviously unfamiliar to his hosts.
Well, I suppose that, whenever they were exiled down here, it must have occurred before literacy was well established.
‘The Seven Families,’ Paladrya repeated, and Stenwold remembered that she had been a tutor, once. ‘First of the Seven is the Kerebroi, who rule the colony of Hermatyre and all its farms and land,’ she recited as if by rote. ‘Of the Kerebroi, we Krakind are the mightiest, but those who are Dart-, or Sepia-, or Wayfarer-kinden are our cousins, and ought not to be slighted that they lack our skill at governance.’
There was a snort from Phylles, who had come back down to hear the lesson. She obviously had other ideas about the predilections of the Krakind.
‘Hold on,’ Laszlo said, holding a hand up just like a schoolboy. ‘Krakind, you said, as in “kraken”?’
‘What’s kraken?’ Stenwold asked him.
‘Well, Mar’Maker, that beast that hauled our arses down here would be a kraken to most mariners, and no mistake. You hear stories, you know? Like how they’re supposed to be really smart, rescue drowning sailors and all that . . . Guess that’s a load of rot, then.’ He raised his eyebrows at Paladrya. ‘So you’re one of them, are you? Octopus-kinden?’
She nodded. ‘As is Claeon, as is Aradocles, and their royal line which has governed Hermatyre for eleven generations.’
‘Go on, though,’ Stenwold prompted. ‘The Seven Families?’
‘Next is the Onychoi, the people of the claw,’ she told them. ‘Some live within the colonies, but most are Benthists, travelling the ocean floor. Many live in the Hot Stations now, I’m told. You have met Rosander, and Wys, and Fel here. They are all Onychoi of one kind or another.’
That’s a lot of variety to fit in just one kinden
, Stenwold thought, contrasting Wys and Rosander.
Or, no, they’re not
kinden
, but several kinden all within the one family: crabs and shrimp and whatever Fel happens to take after, I suppose, but they’re all kin. I suppose that means they’re the closest kin to us, as well, of all the sea-kinden.
‘Next come the Archetoi, who build the colonies and allow us to live within them,’ Paladrya went on, her voice acquiring a sing-song pattern, a rhyme for children. ‘They are the Builders, and worthy of honour, and none who relies on the colonies should offend them or stand in their way, for we survive by their grace. After the two great families and the Builders, there are also the lesser kinden,’ Here Paladrya threw a very pointed look at Phylles. The dark-skinned woman scowled but said nothing, as Paladrya went on, ‘There are four of them, and usually the Polypoi are counted first of these.’
‘You leave me out of this,’ Phylles said gruffly. ‘I don’t want any part of your stupid Obligist hierarchies.’
‘The Polypoi are lonely and self-reliant,’ Paladrya went on, and then Phylles broke in with, ‘Loners.
Loners
, not lonely. We do just fine on our own.’
‘Perhaps you can set the record straight after we’re done,’ Stenwold suggested, which drew her frown on to him.
‘No skin off my nose whether you get a proper education,’ she told him, and made a great show of stomping off again.
Paladrya took a deep breath. ‘Well, the Polypoi live beside the colonies, mostly, in outlying farms and homesteads, or just on their own like hermits. Or sometimes there are Onychoi hermits, and the Polypoi live near them. We claim that they are lonely, or why else would they stay just outside, rather than simply going on their own ways?’
There was a sound of derision from elsewhere in the vessel, but Stenwold gestured for Paladrya to continue.
‘Then there are the Medusoi, who constantly travel the oceans, and have little to do with the colonies at all. They are the greatest of the Pelagists, meaning those who swim freely, although there are Kerebroi and Onychoi who also feel no ties to a colony or train. The Medusoi are strange and dangerous. Sixth of the Seven Families are the Gastroi, the lowly. The Gastroi live mostly outside the colonies, but they keep the farms and herds that feed us. They are quiet and uncomplaining and dutiful, and in turn we must protect them from the dangers of the sea. They are also skilled at accreating, and at working the shells and stones that the sea leaves us with.’
She appeared to have finished there, so Stenwold indicated on his fingers that even land-kinden could count to seven. She had become something brighter for a brief moment, given the chance to teach, but now she retreated into herself again.
‘The Seventh family is . . . different. Those I have told you about, they are part of our society, even peripherally. Even the Medusoi recognize where they fit in and, although they are dangerous if crossed, they will not seek out danger. The Echinoi are different, however. The Echinoi have no laws. We do not even know if they have language. They are . . . something other than human, it is said. Some claim they resided within the sea long before the other families came, and resent us for our intrusion. Certainly they, of us all, have no need of air. How their children manage, we cannot guess. The Echinoi are the spine-kinden, and they roam the vastness of the seabed. When their bands find victims – a farm, a train, even a whole colony – they attack without mercy. They are the enemies of us all. Hope that you never see them, land-kinden. They would not care who or what you were. They would feast on your bones.’
‘Lovely,’ Laszlo muttered darkly. ‘Just when you thought you were surrounded by thoroughly unpleasant people, there’s worse.’
Fel had remained blank throughout Paladrya’s lecture but, at that, he smiled, showing neat, predatory-looking teeth.
‘How does it go?’ Stenwold asked. He had left Paladrya asleep, and Laszlo picking over the vessel’s cargo nets, while he clambered and slithered until he could get within sight of what he took to be the engine room. It was tucked into the innermost coiling of the vessel’s shell, and Wys’s engineer seemed barely able to fit there. It was the first time Stenwold had seen one of the big Onychoi unarmoured, and the man still looked very broad at the shoulders. He was probably a full foot taller than Rosander, too, and would have given a Mole Cricket-kinden a fair run in a wrestling match. One careless backhand would have sent Stenwold himself rattling all the way back along to the vessel’s entrance hatch, and probably worse, too, because there was a great serrated claw curving from the back of each hand. The spiked gauntlets of Rosander’s banner-men had obviously sheathed Art-grown weapons like these. The man’s name was Lej, Stenwold recalled, or possibly Spillage.