Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘When we retake our ancestral home, it will become paradise again,’ Pellectes replied, with absolute conviction.
‘Whatever you say. I’ll have a message for your spy soon enough. Now get out of the palace and go back to your wretched followers.’ He waited until the Littoralist had stalked off, and then turned to Teornis. ‘You see what I must deal with? Having brutes and madmen as my allies.’
Neither of whom you make much effort to keep as allies
, Teornis considered, but he nodded sympathetically. ‘You’ll want a message from me,’ he noted.
‘As soon as we can find some way that you can write it.’ Claeon shook his head, for it had proved an unexpected barrier. The Kerebroi wrote in some incomprehensible fashion that involved setting patterns down somehow on the thick paper they processed from pressed seaweed. Furthermore, the characters they used were wholly unfamiliar to Teornis, which had quite thrown him. He had never even considered there being a different manner of writing, but the squiggles and half-pictures of the sea-kinden held no meaning for him whatsoever.
That had its advantages, of course. His own script would baffle them equally, so he need have no fear of Claeon or Pellectes deciphering his codes. His messages would reach his own people pristine, and full of hidden meaning.
‘And the other matter . . .’ Claeon said, with uncharacteristic delicacy. ‘Aside from Rosander’s war, what about the . . . lost boy?’
‘Well, I’m not sure what resources my people will have to hand, without my guidance, but I will have them start the search,’ Teornis assured him.
And they will find nothing save tantalizing hints that require a greater knowledge to pursue.
And then I shall be out of this foul, damp, barbarous place, and I shall find this prince of theirs if he is to be found, and we shall then see if I cannot make sure Claeon will live in fear for the rest of his days.
Helleron
. In this alien place, the familiar name sounded strange inside his head.
It’s Helleron-under-Sea, it really is.
The chimneys were the most obvious parallel. They were twisted columns of stone, impossibly taller than any real factory stacks could be, and what they were gouting could not, of course, be black smoke, but it looked like it, and the shimmer in the water around them was like the heat haze from a foundry or a forge. Other columns around them also mirrored the chimneys, save that they sprouted broad fans or beating arms at irregular intervals. It was a Helleron dreamscape, a nightmare reflection.
At the foot of the chimneys lay the town, and it was a
town
. Stenwold would accept no substitute, certainly not the sea-kinden word ‘colony’. This community was not grown by Archetoi, nor was it made from the scooped-out armour of sea-things. Men and women had built this. They were building it still. Even if the pieces that they were assembling it from were of shell and accreated strangeness, even if the crafts they were using would have mystified an honest Collegium carpenter, still they were assembling a kind of shanty town of interconnected hovels, and it would have sat nicely at the rear of a factory in the Helleron slums.
Scuto could have lived here
, he thought, but the idea of thorny Scuto struggling with a caul was too much.
The Hot Stations were lit like a town, too. The globes and baubles of soft light were everywhere, but not as though they had grown there. They were tacked on unevenly, or bobbed at the end of lines like luminous balloons, but the intent was plain to Stenwold: street lighting just like the gaslamps of home. The seabed all around was brightly lit, and there were other little clusters of lamps visible in the darkness beyond, perhaps mining or salvage operations, weed farms or Benthist outposts, who knew? In the ambient light, Stenwold saw other chimneys, as tall and crooked as these smokers but quite dead: hollow spires of marbled stone rising above a bare skeleton of the township, which was even now being removed piecemeal to its new location. Stenwold thought he could discern more exhausted chimneys beyond that. The Hot Stations was a movable feast, it appeared.
There was a remarkable bustle out here. Construction gangs surged between the current township and its deceased echo, bringing over everything that was worth rescuing and finding somewhere new to secure it. The workers were mostly either the diminutive Onychoi or some other kinden, big and grey and heavy-footed, who seemed to be doing most of the nailing down. The simple sight of people doing something as mundane as putting up buildings almost brought a tear to Stenwold’s eye. The waters above were not empty either, for there were plenty of swimmers, squid-riders, a half-dozen submersibles carved out of straight or spiral shells, and a broad scattering of domesticated sea life. Nothing ventured too close to the black-belching chimneys, where the water shimmered and twisted like the air above a fire. The ‘hot’ of the Hot Stations was obviously not to be taken lightly.
There were no others like Lyess and her companion, he saw, and he sensed that she was not happy to be here. He turned and found her staring at him again. There was something desperate about her, but she did not know what she wanted, only that her way of life up till now had been punctuated, mangled by the imposition of a surly, brooding land-kinden.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to her, although he was not entirely sure what for. She said nothing in return, did not stir. He sensed that she was searching for words and finding none.
That she will miss me? That she is now well rid of me? That she wishes Arkeuthys had simply eaten me, and spared her this disruption to her life?
‘I am here,’ she said at last, to his puzzlement, until a faint hollow voice answered her.
‘I shall come to you.’ Stenwold recognized Nemoctes’s vicarious tones. ‘You have done well.’
Lyess’s face developed a new expression and, as it did Stenwold realized that she had never truly shown anything of herself in her features before now. It was not pride at having served Nemoctes well, but abject misery, unfiltered and unadulterated. It washed over her and was gone in moments, leaving her face a calm mask with those intent, all-encompassing eyes, but that racked expression would stay in Stenwold’s mind for a long time.
Oh, they have made many sacrifices
, he thought in sudden understanding,
to come to an agreement with the sea monsters they live with. They can survive out in the furthest reaches of the sea, travel the darkest pits of the abyss, but they are human still, even she, and they were never meant for such privation.
Did they take this burden on willingly? Or did we drive them to it? Is it true, this story that they tell?
‘Lyess,’ he said. She simply eyed him, saying nothing, so he pressed on. ‘You spoke about memory, that your beast here has no mind, but only a kind of, what, collective memory?’
She nodded cautiously, as though regretting having mentioned it.
‘How far back does it go?’ he pressed her.
‘Far,’ she said, which was all he should have anticipated.
‘They tell it, in Hermatyre, that the reason you sea-kinden are down here at all is because you were thrown off the land. By my people, I suppose – my dim and distant predecessors. Does this memory reach that far back?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said.
‘Would you see . . . ? I have to know. If it can be known at all, I must know whether it’s true.’
Surely it can’t be guilt I feel over this? Or is it indignation at being falsely accused? Is it because I was once a historian that I can’t just dismiss it just as ‘all a very long time ago’?
‘I can listen to the echo,’ she said. ‘I may hear what you wish to know. There are no guarantees but, if we meet again, then perhaps I shall tell you.’
He nodded, dissatisfied but sensing he would get nothing more. Apparently ransacking the memories of the jellyfish nation would take some time.
By then they had a companion in the waters, some kind of squid-headed snail, and a man in armour came swimming towards them effortlessly. As a hole began to form in the floor of their chamber, Lyess knelt down calmly and waited, as though Stenwold had simply ceased to be present.
The water beyond Lyess’s sanctum was so clenchingly heavy that Stenwold could barely draw breath. Against that, it was warm, and grew warmer as they neared the Hot Stations. Nemoctes had to drag him through two inundated chambers before they found what was obviously a makeshift hatch, comprising just a hinged round plug set off-centre in an uneven wall. When it was levered outwards and open by someone within, a great deal of water cascaded through, carrying Stenwold along with it. He ended up on the floor with water draining away on all sides, at the feet of a broad Onychoi who was wrestling the hatch into a position where the sheer pressure of water would keep it secure.
It was baking hot, Stenwold noticed, and the Onychoi wore nothing but a loincloth. He wondered how Nemoctes could stand there dressed in his armour and not sweat himself to death.
Except, of course, it’s not metal armour; it’s some weird thing they extrude, or whatever the term is.
Wearily he clambered to his feet, tugging at the neck of his tunic. There were a good dozen people in immediate view, mostly attending to leaks, and they were all dressed in just enough clothing to cover their modesty, but even so Stenwold felt self-conscious. Going without shoes was bad enough. Going bare-chested would seem positively barbaric.
Nemoctes was watching him closely.
And is that all these Pelagics do?
Little had been said before – Lyess’s obstinate silence having made things awkward – but Stenwold sighed wearily and asked, ‘What now?’
‘Come with me,’ Nemoctes instructed him.
‘Will that markedly improve my situation?’ Stenwold asked him acidly.
‘Will it see you home, you mean? I hope so, but I make no promises,’ the Pelagist replied. ‘However, I can swear it will do you another form of good.’ He turned and headed past the toiling construction workers, whereupon Stenwold, as so often recently, had little enough choice but to follow him.
The chamber beyond was broad and long, though with a perilously low ceiling propped up by a dozen slanting pillars. It all looked rather slipshod and hastily built, and that very departure from the organically smooth perfection of sea-kinden design might have been welcome, save for the weight of water beyond. ‘I suppose you can’t persuade your Builder-kinden to come out this far,’ Stenwold observed.
‘One cannot get the Arketoi to go anywhere.’ Nemoctes tossed the words back over his shoulder. ‘They build where they will, and others are drawn there to live as their guests. There have always been little hand-made outposts in the depths, places at which my people gather, where the Benthists stop off to trade, where loners go who want nothing to do with any other folk. The Hot Stations are something different. New.’
Stenwold had more questions, but they had now come out into a much grander chamber, which seemed a slum and a ghetto and a market all in one. People of many kinden had gathered here, dumped a sack of goods and a tattered bundle of possessions down, and made it their home. The place boasted a mad assortment of hastily-tacked up screens of the brightly coloured cloth the sea-kinden produced, choked with the sounds and smells of what must have been two hundred people all busy at something. There was food being prepared, mostly in the nature of raw and salted fish, and people haggling over it, and over tools and clothes, leathery paper, elaborate jewelry. A thin Kerebroi woman was tattooing the expansive back of an Onychoi man with an abstract pattern of vibrant colours, using nothing but her bare hands. Another Onychoi, one of the small ones, sat cross-legged under a ragged awning with a pair of full bowls placed beside him. A faint tracery was taking shape within them as he practised his Art.
Then someone was rushing at Stenwold, pushing through the crowd at waist level, and for a moment he was instinctively reaching for the sword he had not worn in many days.
‘Mar’Maker!’
The Fly-kinden was grinning at him like fury, standing before Stenwold with his hands on his hips, as proud as if he was the new master of all they surveyed.
The Beetle smiled down at him wanly. ‘I hope you’ve had a smoother journey than I did, Laszlo.’
‘Oh, more than that, far more than that,’ the Fly promised him, and then cast a look up at Nemoctes. ‘You go in front, shelly. Master Maker and I need to catch up.’
Nemoctes merely looked amused at this, and obligingly led the way, several steps in advance. Stenwold leant down to catch Laszlo’s following words.
‘You see,’ the little man was saying. ‘You recall Wys, right? Her that sprung us from Hermatyre?’
‘The mercenary,’ Stenwold confirmed.
‘Very mercenary,’ agreed Laszlo. ‘And she’s got her eyes open, that one. She’s not scared of the land, and she doesn’t want to make war on it neither. Trade, Mar’Maker, that’s what she’s after, and she says she’ll pitch us up overwater just as soon as she can. Whatever happens, whatever this fellow and that slimer Heiracles and the rest settle on, you do your best to get yourself out of here on Wys’s barque.’
‘But will Wys go against her employers?’ Stenwold pressed, deciding this all sounded much too convenient.
‘Heiracles, she doesn’t like. Nemoctes she likes, a bit – and so do I, I think – but he’s not paying. She knows that if we get something going, her lot and my lot, then everyone will become very rich, and maybe she can set up some place just like this. They say the Man, the one who runs the Stations, he was just a freelance like her once.’