Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘I don’t understand,’ Stenwold said, at a loss. ‘I was his friend, the man this city is named after.’
Sfayot walked on in silence for some time, Stenwold dogging his footsteps anxiously, but at last the Roach paused before a flowering bush of some variety Stenwold had never seen before.
‘Do your people appreciate flowers, Master Maker? Of Beetle cities I have seen only Helleron, and I saw little sign of them there.’
‘We can do,’ Stenwold said, mystified. ‘As tokens of affection, sometimes, or to ornament a room. Yes, we like flowers, I suppose.’
‘And once you have used these flowers that you favour . . . ?’ Sfayot said, almost too low to hear.
Stenwold was bewildered and weary, and still feeling odd twinges of pain from the halfbreed’s poison, so his voice was testy when he replied, ‘They die, I suppose. What of it?’
Sfayot nodded mournfully. ‘She will not see you, War Master,’ he stated, with finality.
Stenwold glared at him. He was on the point of insisting that
something
must be done, because a Spider Aristos and his Dragonfly-kinden killers were going to mount a kidnapping that very night. It would have been the right thing to do, to give the warning and move on, but Stenwold
needed
Aradocles for himself, not just to keep the boy out of Teornis’s hands. Any warning he gave might make his own job that much more difficult.
Instead he simply shrugged, as though he was taking the rejection with good grace and intended thereafter to leave, and would trouble Princep Salmae no more. He walked away, but he was looking about him, seeing where the half-constructed palace might best be entered, wondering where any sentries might be stationed after dark. When he glanced back for Sfayot, he thought he spotted the old Roach at the palace doors again, talking to a Beetle-kinden man. He frowned, for the man in question might have been Ordley Penhold, who had spoken so mysteriously earlier that day, but at this distance it was impossible to be sure.
So he returned to his allies, to await nightfall.
Looking out from the Wayhouse window, Teornis could watch the western sky darken. No red sky tonight, only angry clouds. That would serve him well enough, but he could not help thinking of the Spiderlands superstition that held a red sky to be a good omen.
Foolishness, obviously, for everyone is beneath the same sky. Everyone can’t be lucky all at the same time, surely?
Except that Stenwold Maker, the Apt, the prosaic, read no omens and observed no superstitions.
Enough of that
, Teornis told himself. ‘Varante,’ he said quietly.
‘Lord?’
‘We move.’ Teornis had stripped away his finery. Tonight was not the time for the flashy colours he wore for preference. He had on a hauberk of dark leather, backed with folded silk and lined with rows of metal plates, all of it dark. A cloak went over that, hood hauled up to hide his pale face. His Dragonflies had simple chitin cuirasses on, coated with soot, to hide their gleam.
Seldom, indeed, was an Aristos of the Aldanrael required to undertake such skulduggery in person, but the stakes were high and, for all that he prized Varante’s skills, there was a delicacy in this venture that the man was not fit for.
Teornis rested a hand on his rapier-hilt. It was his original weapon, rescued by Varante after the great octopus had snatched Teornis from the barge’s deck. Light, balanced and razor-edged, it had no gaudiness or jewels in its hilt. The sheer craft that had gone into its making spoke far more about the wealth and taste of its owner.
And I’d rather not have to use it, if I have any say in the matter.
They departed the Wayhouse swiftly as soon as the sky was wholly dark, creeping from the window, then climbing or flying to the ground. They passed through the half-made streets of Princep Salmae like shadows, heading directly for the palace. There was a scattering of travellers about after sunset, but none of them saw Teornis or his retinue as they closed on the palace grounds.
‘Your men understand their job here?’ Teornis whispered, catching Varante’s answering nod. Teornis had half a dozen Dragonflies with him, and four would now take him into the palace, to grab this troublesome Kerebroi youth and excise him as surgically as possible. The other two were tasked to give Teornis’s band a chance at entering unseen. It was a role that would almost certainly see them dead but, when Varante had briefed them, they had simply nodded and bowed. They knew that their people, their families and clansmen back at Solorn, would reap the rewards of their loyal service. Spider-kinden were renowned for their double-dealing ways, save amongst their cadres, their closest servants. Amongst such as Varante, the Aristoi knew that there was no substitute for unquestioning loyalty, and they dealt with them as honestly and generously as might any Collegium philanthropist.
The Commonweal guardsmen that Teornis had been warned about were making their slow patrols about the palace grounds in pairs, and Varante assured Teornis that there were surely a few up on roofs, or casting themselves overhead on shimmering wings. All told, though, there were no more than a dozen guards, and Teornis had the impression that an actual assault on the palace was unthinkable to most living here at Princep. They seemed to hold this Monarch of theirs in a reverence that bordered on idolatry.
Teornis, Varante and their retinue crouched low and waited. The Dragonflies did not seem unduly wary, but they were a sharp-eyed breed, and enough of them carried bows for Teornis to be cautious of an unexpected arrow between the shoulder blades just as he attempted his entrance. He had expected the garden grounds of the palace to be pitch-dark, a friend to the assassin and the spy, but the walled compound of the palace was ringed with lamps that were covered in glass of rainbow hues. The light they shed gave everything an inappropriately festive air.
Just when Teornis was beginning to think that his two decoys had got into trouble in the wrong place, they appeared, standing in the path of the nearest patrolling guardsmen. The two pairs of Dragonflies regarded each other coldly: the neat-looking Commonwealers, with their pristine armour and crescent-headed spears, confronting Teornis’s men from distant Solorn, who looked barbarous and scruffy and were obviously spoiling for a fight.
Teornis couldn’t hear all of what was said, only catching varying tones of voice. The palace guard sounded shocked and outraged that these exiles should trespass on the Monarch’s grounds. The intruders responded by making some extremely unflattering comments about not only the Monarch of Princep, but also the distant Monarch of the Commonweal itself, whose remote ancestor had thrown their equally remote predecessors out into the wide world. As they jeered and jibed, Teornis’s men drew their long-hafted swords, making their intentions unmistakable.
The Commonwealers needed no encouragement, and in the next moment they were striking, wings a-flare and spears levelled. Their antagonists were away in the same instant, buzzing low over the bushes with their swords trailing, shouting and jeering and generally making as much commotion as possible. Teornis heard a few gratifying shouts from elsewhere in the grounds, as still more guards were dragged from their appointed watch by the noise. One of the Commonwealers tore overhead, bow in hand, almost close enough for Teornis to put a sword into him, but the sounds of fighting and shouting arose ever further off. The two men tasked with this distraction were doing their job well.
‘Now,’ he urged, but he did not even need to say it. Varante and the other three were moving towards the palace already, seeking the easiest way in. They ignored the great gates entirely, for the uncompleted wall itself would have afforded them plenty of chances to enter, even if they had been unable to fly. Finding what shadows they could in the coloured light, they chose their gap.
Without any further difficulty, the Spider and his cadre found themselves within the palace of Princep Salmae: that jumble of the part-built, unbuilt and overbuilt that might one day be a vastly grand statement about how the people of Princep valued their rulers, but was today just a confusing and uneven building site.
Teornis nodded to Varante, and the Dragonflies took wing. They would now skulk and flit about the uneven contours of this place, poking and prying, opening doors and peering behind shutters, until one of them eventually found the Kerebroi heir. Then they would grab the lad and lift him out of the city by air – two or three of them sufficient, Teornis hoped, to hoist a slender youth aloft for the necessary distance. Teornis had come along himself only because he suspected his cadre needed his civilizing guidance. Without his master close at hand, Varante might already have gone down for death or glory in a pointless struggle with the palace guard.
Teornis himself stepped forward, now slipping beneath a half-finished roof, now between the struts and diagonals of scaffolding supports, now creeping out into what would be an open courtyard after the builders got around to delineating it with walls.
And, across that space, he came face to face with Stenwold Maker.
Laszlo had complained vociferously about being left behind. Something as trivial as a broken arm would not slow him, he insisted. The fact that he could barely get up from his bed to make this impassioned speech did not help his case.
‘What worries me is what will happen to him while we’re away,’ Stenwold confided to the others. ‘Teornis’s people may well come here for us, and he’s in no position to defend himself if they do.’
Wys shrugged. ‘I’ve got a lot invested in that lad’s family, landsman, so I’m not going to let anything bad happen to him.’
Stenwold saw his own frown mirrored in the faces of Fel and Phylles. ‘You’re proposing . . . ?’
‘I’ll stay right here at his sickbed and make sure he wants for nothing, surely,’ she confirmed.
‘Wys,’ Phylles murmured, darting a suspicious look at Stenwold, ‘Not just Fel and me. Not without you.’
‘You’ll go with or without me, as I tell you,’ Wys declared primly. ‘What, you need me to cheer you on? You need my little knife against their great big swords?’
Phylles’s face stated bluntly that she wouldn’t trust Stenwold an inch.
Wys folded her arms. ‘Do what he says. Do what
she
says too, for that matter,’ she added, nodding at Paladrya. ‘Honestly, the pair of you haven’t the sense you were born with. You’ve had the chance by now to see land-kinden, eh? We’ve all sat under the same sun, with our skins drying out and going red, eating their chewy food and looking at their daft money. They’re people just like us, even if they have chosen a stupid place to live, and this Stenwold Maker’s all right. Call me a liar, either of you?’
Fel shrugged, resigning his fate to Stenwold’s care, but Phylles still looked mutinous.
‘I don’t like it,’ she said stubbornly. ‘What if this is a trap?’
For a moment Wys looked as though she was about to shout at the woman, but then she was grinning despite herself. ‘What, all of it?’ she asked softly. ‘All of this, that enormous city we turned up in first, the one-legged woman, the going-up-in-the-air, this place, all contrived just to put us off our guard? Just go – go with them. Keep Fel out of trouble and keep the Kerebroi woman alive. We need her. She’s the only one the heir knows. I’m counting on you, Phylles. And you, Fel, you understand this?’
Fel let out a long sigh. ‘I understand less and less, as this goes on. Count on me, though.’ His voice was surprisingly soft.
So, leaving Wys to tend to Laszlo, asking him questions about Tomasso and the family, they set off for the palace.
The plan was both simple and complex, all at once. Stenwold had asked himself the question: how do we find Aradocles if he’s in that palace? Its interior layout had looked labyrinthine, even in its unfinished state, and he had no information that would allow a reasonably stealthy gang of rogues to creep into the place, rifle it for the missing heir, and then escape with him. Stenwold himself had grown light-footed for a Beetle-kinden, but that was still a long way from being particularly good at sneaking about, and this whole enterprise was looking increasingly hasty and doomed to failure. Without more luck than he could possibly hope for, there was every chance that they would either be swiftly discovered, or would still be searching the place as the sun came up.
So: turn the problem on its head. He had one key advantage over the undoubtedly stealthier Teornis, because his motives were at least relatively pure. He wanted to restore the boy to his inheritance, while the Spider just wanted to use Aradocles as leverage against Claeon. So what, in fact, did Stenwold need to achieve?
Not to find the boy, for the boy would find them. All they needed was to get themselves into the palace compound. If they were found in the grounds, then the guards would chase them away, just as Sfayot had turned him away in daylight, but if they were discovered within the palace walls, well, that would be a more serious matter by far. There would be questions and threats, and Stenwold would have the chance to tell all. With any luck, by the time he had finished talking, Aradocles might even be among his audience.
Get into the palace, that was the key. That would turn him from someone who could be brushed off like a beggar on the doorstep into someone who held their undivided attention.
The four of them made a careful, hesitant progress through the palace grounds, stopping frequently, using each tree and bush for cover. The guards did their best, but there were so few of them, and they were clearly not expecting intruders. Stenwold had the sense that this posting was something ceremonial for the Commonwealers, a gift from one Monarch to another. The patrols passed blithely by the crouched intruders without ever suspecting their presence.