Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘As for finding you, we had to rely on them to bring you to us,’ came Kratia’s clear tones. ‘I had planned to invoke the office of an envoy, but these sea-kinden of yours seem an uncivil band of rogues. The people of Grande Atoll possess some manners, at least. The local politics have played into our hands, though, I see, or we’d never have got you back.’
‘In a way,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘Or perhaps it is better to say that we have caught them at their worst, under the hand of a tyrant. They might have been smoother-mannered under their previous ruler, and I hope they will be so under the next.’
‘You intend to restore this heir to them?’ she asked him.
‘If he still lives to be restored.’ The possibility that Aradocles would be years dead, slain by the terrors of the land the moment he parted from Paladrya, had been the universal thought that nobody had voiced.
Still, I will be on land and free, and that is surely the greater reward of any bargain I could strike with them. I owe the people of the sea precious little. I have my own worries, after all. I wonder what has gone awry in Collegium, that needed my hand to steady it.
And on that thought: ‘You have kept this from the Vekken, I would guess. They would not understand.’
There was no immediate answer, so he craned round to catch her expression. The interior of the
Tseitan
boasted only one dim lantern, but it was easy to pick out the amusement on her pale face.
‘Tell me,’ he prompted.
‘We come here with the Vekken’s blessing,’ she told him.
Stenwold spluttered over that, and from beside him, Maxel Gainer piped up, ‘It’s true, Master Maker. There’s been all kinds of deals being made concerning your disappearance. They’ve set up Master Tseitus as a hero, and your man, Master Drillen, has done up some treaty or other over the
Tseitan
, so we’re allowed to build more, and they had her and one of the Vekken ambassadors signing something, and then the two of them came to me, with that Fly girl in tow, and said we had to go hunt for you.’
‘“That Fly girl” was the start of all of this,’ Despard said acidly. ‘Without me you’d none of you be here, and don’t you forget it.’
‘You see, Master Maker, you made your point effectively, to us, and also to Vek. Collegium is rich in ways that we are not, and anyone who turned down such riches would lose place to those that did not. If either Vek or Tsen turned its back on Collegiate trade, then the other would triumph, sooner or later. It’s easy to see how Sarn was won over, those years ago. I think that, could we ensure it, either of us would rather have your city sink beneath the sea for ever, but as the best of Vek has failed to destroy you, and as we have no ready means to do it, the only remaining choice is to accept your crooked bargain. So, Collegium is rich, but it’s easy to see that the only way that either of our cities get a fair bargain from your people is through you, Maker. We trust you, whereas your fellows would swindle and cheat us. It was a very strange day when I looked into the face of a man of Vek and needed no Art to know that he and I were thinking the same thoughts.’
Stenwold sat back, unexpectedly sobered by the cold logic of it. ‘Perhaps, in time, your people shall see this as less of a poisoned chalice, Mistress Kratia,’ he murmured. ‘The Sarnesh, at least, have voiced no regrets.’
‘Because your people have tamed them like pets,’ she replied, contemptuously.
Stenwold shrugged, feeling too weary with the whole business to answer.
At least we have them, for now, and Vek also. Two years’ hard diplomacy have borne fruit at long last. Strange how the solution to the Vekken problem turned out to involve
more
Ants, not fewer.
‘Master Maker,’ said Gainer from beside him. ‘More friends of yours?’
‘Hmm?’ Stenwold peered ahead. The darkness of the waters seemed near-total to him, now, and he saw only the lights of Wys’s barque ahead.
‘Another craft just passed between us and them, or something did,’ Gainer informed him.
‘Probably Nemoctes,’ Stenwold decided. ‘He’s supposed to be somewhere about . . .’
Even as he said it, a shape flashed across their view, pale against the black. It was slim and streamlined, with streamers of tentacles billowing behind it, and there was a brief glimpse of a slender rider couching a lance, leaning forward right above the beast’s huge round eye.
It was gone at once, leaving Stenwold with a moment of confusion:
Heiracles or Claeon?
‘Get closer to Wys,’ he ordered. His instincts said trouble, sure enough. He could only hope that Wys knew better what was going on.
The dark water was suddenly full of movement. The Dart-kinden riders came sleeting from the abyss all around them, slicing into momentary sight as the lamplight of the
Tseitan
’s ports caught them, before wheeling and vanishing in close formation. He spotted them again, as shadows against the glare of the other submersible, saw them break aside every which way without striking, flurrying back into the dark. It was an attack, beyond question, but one that some trick contrived by Wys had turned aside.
‘They’ve found us,’ Stenwold said, feeling a cold hand clench inside him.
So close, so close. Surely they cannot drag me back now.
He felt bitterly the lack of any way of speaking to Wys. Right now, the Pelagists’ Far-speech Art would have been invaluable.
The riders were soon back. One made a run straight towards the
Tseitan
’s nose, but turned aside at the very last minute, close enough, as she hauled her beast off, that they could see her narrow, wide-eyed face clearly. Stenwold guessed that the alien nature of the Collegium submersible must be giving them pause, but such hesitation would last only so long. They were getting close to Wys’s barque now, Gainer steering the
Tseitan
until they could even distinguish figures within the ornate window set in the vessel’s bows. The small figure of Wys was signalling to them, pointing at something, making urgent, exaggerated gestures.
Something pale and shapeless passed in a flurry beyond the far side of Wys’s submersible, lit momentarily by the vessel’s limn-lights. Stenwold had a brief glimpse of the bar-shaped pupil of a great mottled eye, an eye he had seen before.
‘Arkeuthys,’ he murmured. The agent of his capture had returned to prevent his escape.
Then the
Tseitan
jerked and shuddered, resounding under the crack of an impact. ‘Are we shot?’ Despard demanded, eyes wide.
Gainer was wrestling with the controls, trying to keep the vehicle on a level course. A moment later there was a second knock, throwing them to one side, and Stenwold understood: the Dart-kinden were lancing towards them, making swift dives and then breaking their spears against the
Tseitan
’s shell.
‘Gainer, what’s the hull made of?’ he demanded.
Their pilot bared his teeth. ‘Magnaferrite over pumice-steel,’ he snarled out, all of which material was after Sten-wold’s day, as far as artificing went.
‘That’s strong? They’re sticking spears into us.’
‘Spears?’ Gainer let out a strained laugh. ‘Let them jab at the body all they want, just please let them steer clear of the
legs
.’
The thought sent a chill through Stenwold. Damage a few of the
Tseitan
’s six paddles and the ship would become helpless prey for Arkeuthys, or it would drift and sink, becoming nothing but an elaborate tomb.
‘Gain height,’ he suggested. ‘They may not like the sun.’
‘It’s nighttime,’ Despard interrupted, and Stenwold blinked in genuine surprise. It had been a long time since he had needed to know.
Another impact came, sounding from right beside the portholes and sending them lurching downwards for a moment, before Gainer could correct them. ‘No worries about the glass,’ the artificer said, without having to be asked. ‘Thick enough that a snapbow couldn’t break it, and I know that ’cos I tested it with one.’
They had a mad, wheeling view of Wys’s barque, almost on its side but making steady progress, dancing through the water with its pumps rippling in a blur. The Dart-kinden cavalry were pale streamered arrows dashing past it, always breaking away just before striking, their mounts bucking angrily.
Their world, their view, was suddenly blotted from sight. The coiled ridges of a shell surged in front of them, and Gainer cried out and hauled at the sticks to steer them away. They were nearly upside down as they wheeled past the monster’s head, itself almost the size of their vessel, with a squid trapped and thrashing within the beast’s net of slender arms. Then the giant creature had coursed away, slipping backwards and downwards through the water, and dragging its prey with it.
‘What . . . what was that?’ Despard squeaked.
‘Nemoctes,’ Stenwold told her, ‘and be glad he’s ours.’
And let’s hope he’s already put the call out to any other Pelagists in the area, because we need all the help we can get.
Another dart flashed past their ports, its rider yanking it around even as it passed, too close for a spear charge.
‘Pull away!’ Stenwold said automatically, but Gainer pulled the wrong way, and something heavy and soft impacted with them: the rider’s mount itself.
Abruptly they were diving, dragged initially by the creature’s weight, then by its own efforts as it tugged at them. There was a hideous screeching, scratching sound from all about them, like nails on glass, as the creature’s tentacles took hold. Two or three unrolled across the viewports, their undersides lined not with suckers but with barbed hooks, like little claws, that scratched white lines down the glass as they writhed for purchase. Somewhere around the middle of the ship, above them, came a hollow boom, and then the sound of something strong and savage scoring and gnawing at the metal.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Despard yelled at Gainer.
‘I’m done! It’s ready!’ he shouted back. ‘Arms in, everyone, arms in!’
‘What?’ Stenwold goggled at him.
‘Don’t touch the walls, Master Maker!’
Stenwold pulled his elbows in, still insisting he be told what was going on, and then Gainer hollered, ‘Now!’ Despard, behind them, slammed down the lever she had been poised beside, and for a second every inch of the
Tseitan
’s interior was lit by an uncompromising white radiance.
Stenwold cried out, sure that something had exploded inside the engine. His eyes momentarily blazed with reversed images, then he saw, through the ports, that the tentacles were gone, A moment later a long, bleached form could be seen drifting away, down and away, its tentacles a peeled-back mess, with a separate, smaller body falling beside it.
‘What just happened?’ he asked, almost reverently, as Gainer dragged them up out of their dive.
‘It’s a kind of side effect of the engine, which we discovered when we built her,’ the pilot said, almost cheerily. ‘The engine has a lot of magnets in her, so if you’re not careful, you can build up quite a charge differential between the nose and the tail. One of Master Tseitus’s apprentices was almost killed, you know, when we discovered that from the original.’
‘Are you telling me that . . . ?’
‘For a bit of a second the hull was working like a lightning engine,’ Gainer confirmed. ‘It’s a design flaw, but I reckoned it might come in useful some day.’
‘Master Tseitus would be proud of you,’ Stenwold said. It probably wasn’t true, as Tseitus had reserved his pride for his personal consumption. Still, the lad deserved it, and Tseitus deserved to be remembered fondly. The old man’s antisocial and cantankerous side could be lost to history.
‘I hope so,’ Gainer said, and then exclaimed, ‘Hammer and tongs, what’s that?’
They were in sight of Wys’s ship again, but something was dreadfully wrong. For a moment Stenwold thought it had somehow become malformed, but then he realized the truth, and his heart lurched. Curled about the contours of the submersible were the many arms of Arkeuthys. The great octopus held the ship helpless in its grip, and no doubt that great shearing beak was already trying to crack its way in to reach the morsels inside.
‘That’s . . .’ Stenwold ran out of words.
‘That looks mighty like what got you into all this in the first place,’ Despard filled in for him. ‘I got one quick look at it, up top. Didn’t want another, to be honest.’
‘Do we need them?’ Kratia asked coolly.
‘Yes!’ Stenwold roared at her, and Despard snapped ‘Laszlo’s in there!’ little fists bunched as though she was going to attack the Ant there and then.
‘Ram it,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘Can we ram it?’
‘Be like a flea up against that thing,’ Gainer said, but his expression was solid determination. ‘But we’ve been saving a little something, haven’t we?’ He had already set a course towards the stricken submersible.
‘Are you telling me this ship’s armed?’ Stenwold asked him. ‘Did we authorize that, back at the College?’
‘Master Maker, you were grabbed by an arse-bastarding
sea monster
,’ Despard reminded him. ‘You think we’d come out here without
something
?’
Their view of the leviathan and the submersible wheeled and circled as Gainer fought to keep the
Tseitan
on a straight course. ‘Just like a snapbow,’ the pilot murmured between clenched teeth. ‘Like a real
big
snapbow with a point on it that you wouldn’t believe.’