Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Fascinating, my lord, to see a city in potential. After they build it, it will be nothing but a slum of shacks, no doubt, but as of now . . .’
Teornis nodded, pleased with the assessment. ‘Well, we must enjoy it before they ruin it by making it real.’ He had the Fly bring the machine down outside the nominal boundaries that passed for Princep’s walls, and then sent the flyer away. Once he had Aradocles in hand, if the heir was even here, then he would find his own way back to Collegium without difficulty.
‘How do you plan to find your man, Lord Teornis?’ Sands asked him. ‘Send your Dragonflies hunting through the streets?’
‘Only as a last resort,’ Teornis replied. ‘My former patron, the Edmir Claeon, has some interesting resources. The customs of his people can result in a curious manner of art. See this?’ Teornis reached into his tunic and produced the portrait Claeon had ordered drawn. It was a remarkable sketch in purple ink on their thick, spongy paper, but the artist had known Aradocles by sight and, by his skill at accreation, had been able to render the image accurately from his mind straight into the picture. ‘We shall take this likeness,’ Teornis explained, ‘and we shall make enquiries about a Spider youth. There is bound to be someone in this city whose business is tracking and finding, so we shall put them to work for us. And meanwhile we shall find our Master Maker.’
He took the rest of the night to find a Wayhouse, a rough-hewn timber building, still new and unpainted. A generous donation of Helmess Broiler’s money ensured that he and his party would not be disturbed there. The brief walk through Princep Salmae had amused Teornis: even after dark, the place was busy just like a Spider town, and it was – also like certain places in the Spiderlands – filled with such a remarkable variety of the lower elements of society. On the road to the Wayhouse he counted a dozen different kinden, most of them not normal residents of the Lowlands, and Roach-kinden most of all. He knew of Roaches from the Spiderlands, where they were itinerant nuisances, vagabonds and charlatans. They had their uses as procurers, spies and informants perhaps, but here they were bustling about everywhere as though Princep was some kind of home for them, and as though they were fit to be considered responsible citizens. That made Teornis smile, when little else had just recently.
Since Princep didn’t stop for dusk, there was no reason that their search should. Teornis, however, felt that he had earned some sleep, He passed the portrait to Forman Sands and Varante, and sent them off to locate anyone whose business was the hunting down of fellow human beings. Forman Sands seemed a good man to be asking questions, Teornis had decided, and Varante was a good man to keep a wary eye on Sands, just in case some residual loyalty to Helmess Broiler remained.
With his agents thus dispatched, Teornis took the straw mattress that was all the Way Brothers could offer him, and slept easy, blessed by pleasant dreams.
In the morning he took breakfast, sending another of his Dragonflies out with money to supplement the meagre fare the Brothers could provide. Sands was already back, but first Teornis heard the report of a couple of his men who he had sent off on another errand before even arriving at the Wayhouse.
‘Tell me you’ve found Maker?’ he prompted them.
‘He came in a flying machine to the airfield,’ one of the pair informed him. ‘He has several followers: two Flies, a Mantis, a Spider, and one other. The flying machine left this morning, in the direction of Sarn perhaps. Maker is talking to people.’
‘Of course he is,’ Teornis said absently, but he was thinking –
just random people, Stenwold? No friends from the past? No special contacts? Have I eroded your advantage already, old man?
‘Keep an eye on him,’ he instructed, and the Dragonflies nodded, bowed briefly and left the room.
Sands and Varante came in next. Helmess’s halfbreed thug wore an odd expression, one that Teornis could not immediately read.
‘You’ve had an eventful night, I hope?’
‘We found a tracker, my lord, after a while.’
‘Just one?’
‘One’s all we needed, my lord.’
Teornis rolled his eyes. ‘Suspense is for stage actors, Master Sands. Kindly enlighten me.’
And Forman Sands explained what he had learned, and Teornis’s eyes went first wide in surprise, and then narrow in careful consideration.
The architects of Princep evidently intended raising some great edifices to overlook their airfield, but nothing was in place but their plot boundaries as yet. With dawn these became the site of an impromptu foreigners’ market, and Laszlo took Wys and her cohorts out to inspect what wares were on show. The peddlers were mostly Roach- or Fly-kinden, so Stenwold guessed that there would be nothing for sale that would have excited a Collegium merchant, but to Wys it would all be both strange and saleable, no doubt.
While they were thus occupied, he found a little eatery with a scattering of chairs and tables, and bought for himself and Paladrya some concoction of rice and roasted mealworms to breakfast on. It took some persuasion to convince her to taste it, but it turned out to be acceptable to a marine palate.
Jons Allanbridge was already airborne by now, heading in the direction of the Sarnesh fortifications named Mal-kan’s Folly, in the hope of intercepting Balkus and wringing some information from him. That seemed the best that Stenwold was likely to achieve, left to his own devices.
He cast his gaze about for Laszlo and the others, saw them some distance away, looking at some poor clothier’s homespun and woollens: all wonders, no doubt, for the sea-kinden. When he glanced back, he found Paladrya staring at him, and for a moment he held her gaze.
‘I am waiting for the strike,’ she told him. At his frown she elaborated. ‘Some careful, camouflaged creature, waiting as its prey drifts nearer and nearer, drawn in by some lure. Aradocles is the lure, I am the prey. Where is your trap, Stenwold Maker?’
‘I am not the trap-laying kind,’ he told her.
‘Then why? You were safe back with your people, so why are you now here?’
‘You think I mean your boy harm?’
She studied him for some time before she said, ‘No, but I still don’t know why.’
A new voice broke in, ‘You forget Master Maker’s essential nobility of character.’ Someone sat down briskly at their table, as naturally as if this new arrival were an old friend. Stenwold found himself looking into the face of Teornis of the Aldanrael.
For a moment nothing was said. He had his little snap-bow concealed inside his tunic, ready loaded but not primed. His sword was at his belt. There were two of Teornis’s Dragonfly-kinden standing a respectful distance away, but their blades were to hand, slanted back over their shoulders, and Stenwold had no illusions about his own speed on the draw compared with theirs in response.
‘Teornis,’ he said, at last, ‘this is a . . . surprise.’
‘You might at least say a pleasant one,’ the Spider remarked, smiling amicably. He gave a nod to Paladrya. ‘My lady, outside the Edmir’s grasp you look decidedly more radiant – as do we all, I fancy.’
‘I knew you would somehow trick your way out of his clutches,’ Stenwold observed.
‘You make it sound as if that were unfair,’ Teornis said. ‘Was I unjust to cheat Claeon of his prize?’
‘Yes, if you did so by promising him the head of Aradocles,’ Stenwold replied flatly. He sensed Paladrya tensing.
For a moment all humour dropped from Teornis’s face. ‘Remember your slippery friends freed you before Claeon introduced you to his pleasure chambers, Stenwold. You would have promised him a good deal more, I swear it, to be rid of his company. Ask her: I’ll wager she and I have that experience in common.’
‘But you
are
here for my Aradocles,’ Paladyra said softly. ‘I can see that much.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ and all the good nature was back on display. Teornis smiled at her fondly. ‘But I won’t harm a hair on the lad’s head. He’s far too valuable for that.’
‘You’ll use him to control Claeon,’ Stenwold confirmed, ‘and bring the sea-kinden down on Collegium, as your armada arrives.’
‘Even as you’d use him to oust Claeon and remove a threat to your city,’ Teornis agreed. ‘Were it not for the paltry matter of a disagreement between our peoples, I’d heartily support you.’
‘What do you want, Teornis?’ Stenwold asked. ‘We are now enemies. Your people have made us that.’
‘Oh, I know,’ the Spider replied, his expression suggesting genuine regret. ‘No idea of mine, but we all have our duty. Still, surely we can sit here and speak awhile, without drawn blades? For who else has seen what we have seen? Who else from the land has been within Hermatyre, has endured that darkness, those depths? You and I and your Fly, wherever he is, but none else that has lived to tell the tale. And yet here we are, and don’t you think that unites us more than a traders’ squabble? We were friends once, Stenwold. When this is over, we’ll be so again. You’ll want friends in the east when the Empire returns, as we both know it will.’
Stenwold looked at the man’s infinitely trustworthy, yet infinitely deceptive face, and shook his head. ‘Why couldn’t your family be happy with what it had already?’ he said, almost in a whisper. Paladrya glanced between them, sensing the weight of their history but knowing that it excluded her.
‘Only the dull and the foolish are ever happy with what they’ve got. Do you sit there, victorious son of the Apt revolution, and preach stagnation? No, and if we’d not moved to jostle the status quo, then one of your greedier magnates would have done so soon enough. Life is all about striving and change, Stenwold. What a bland creature you yourself would be, had the Empire not reforged you, eh?’
‘Happier, I’d say.’
‘We are not made for stale happiness,’ Teornis told him. ‘Look at us now, unthanked champions escaped from an impossible prison, returned from certain death, trekking across the Lowlands to hunt down a scion of a mythical kingdom, and to
find
him, too, and what odds would anyone have placed on that?’
Stenwold felt something twitch, within him, but he held it at arm’s length, kept it from his expression. ‘Long ones, I’d say,’ was all he would commit himself to replying.
Teornis stood up, still smiling. ‘There has never been a Beetle-kinden like you. Your people sorely underestimate you, and you’re wasted on them. After all this has blown over, after we’re friends again, come to Seldis. A man of your skills is wasted in Collegium.’
Teornis bowed to them and strode off, just some Spider-kinden Aristos taking the morning air. A moment later, Wys and the other sea-kinden rejoined them hurriedly, staring after Teornis suspiciously.
‘Who was that?’ the little Onychoi woman demanded.
‘Our enemy, unfortunately,’ Stenwold explained sadly. Then he frowned. ‘Where’s Laszlo?’
‘He knew your man there,’ Wys gestured. ‘He went
up
.’ She mouthed the word almost superstitiously. The sea-kinden were still finding the concept of Art-powered flight hard to reconcile. They twitched every time some citizen of Princep coursed overhead.
‘Up?’ For a moment Stenwold didn’t understand, but then he rose quickly, trying to spot Teornis, but the Spider and his men were already out of sight.
Laszlo’s gone to spy on Teornis, the fool. Doesn’t he realize how sharp-eyed those Dragonflies are?
And yet Fly-kinden were a stealthy lot, renowned for getting wherever they weren’t wanted, and getting out again with what wasn’t theirs.
And also, if I read Teornis’s words right, I am in dire need of learning what his plans are.
He sighed. It was out of his hands now.
Be safe, Laszlo, and next time try not to be so cursed rash.
And succeed. If it’s possible, succeed.
‘What now?’ Wys asked him flatly. ‘We’ve got to wait for him to come back? Is the heir even
here
?’ Her gesture took in the busy chaos of Princep, a skeleton city still under construction.
‘My “friend” Teornis overestimates me, just as he says my people underestimate me,’ Stenwold murmured, drawing confused looks from all present.
‘What do you mean?’ Paladrya asked him.
‘I mean that his own researches are further ahead than ours, and he has told us something that we weren’t sure of until now, although Teornis assumed I’d possess the same knowledge as a matter of course. He
knows
that Aradocles is alive, and not only alive but somewhere in this city.’
Forman Sands was waiting when Teornis returned to the Wayhouse, but the Spider waved him away, retreating into his private room with a bottle of the best wine the Way Brothers could provide him, and brooding there for almost an hour. At last he sent word by Varante that Sands should join him.
‘Tell me that you were successful at their palace, Master Sands,’ Teornis directed him. At the halfbreed’s expression, his face soured. ‘Or not, as the case may be?’
‘The man I met said only this: she sees no one.’
‘Indeed?’ Teornis raised an eyebrow. ‘I trust you waxed long to him on how important my business with Princep is. Does the name of the Aldanrael carry no weight, these days?’
Forman Sands spread his hands helplessly. ‘No one, he said. The Monarch of Princep Salmae is in mourning and has been since the war. She makes appearances, sometimes, up on her balcony to wave to her people, but receives no ambassadors, no statesmen, no Assemblers, no Aristoi. She’d turn away the Wasp Emperor himself.’