Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Well, yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it?’ Stenwold suggested.
‘No, land-kinden,
all
of them. All their goods, their wagons, their crèches, their infirmaries, everything that they need to live, out in the depths.’
Stenwold frowned, trying to understand it. True, a great many of the crawling beasts were heavily laden, but he had assumed that was the norm for this place and these people. ‘Then . . . ?’
But by then it was clear. The direction that Rosander’s Benthists was taking would neither draw them up before the city nor crash into the advancing dissidents. Instead they were simply going away, heading off across the seabed towards the depths, resuming the Benthist life after living so long on Claeon’s promises.
‘Save me from sea-kinden with a sense of drama,’ Stenwold murmured, but then Paladrya was hugging him, hard enough to drive half the breath from his body.
‘You did it!’ she shouted. ‘You drove away Rosander!’
He put an arm about her, finding that the gesture could be both affectionate and comradely, without any awkwardness. ‘Just talk, that’s all it was. The sort of talk my people are good at, though.’
She kissed him, without warning or apparent premeditation, and their eyes locked, Paladrya seeming more startled by it than Stenwold himself.
‘I don’t want to piss on your party, or anything, but there’s still more of Claeon’s lot than of us,’ Wys pointed out sourly.
Stenwold eyed the defenders, seeing them eddy and mill aimlessly now that the Thousand Spines were abandoning them. More of them than the attackers, yes, but not so very many more that victory would be swift for them. In fact, this looked like a recipe for a bloody and mutually destructive contest. He shivered at the thought.
The attackers’ advance became swifter now, and he could see the defenders forming into a rabble of a line, ready to receive them. Then something detached itself from the pitted surface of Hermatyre, and rippled towards them in a flurry of tentacles. Stenwold found that he recognized it: not only because it was far larger than any other of its kind there, but from its very attitude, the pale and rubbery hide laced with scars, those great flat-pupilled, white eyes.
Arkeuthys.
The sea-monster that had dragged him down into this nightmare world the first time. All across the surface of Hermatyre, the smaller octopuses were now squirming into the water, fanning out across the defenders, coming to rest on the seabed or simply undulating back and forth. Arkeuthys just hung there before the attackers, though, like a vast tentacled skull, as the attackers’ advance began to slow to a crawl. The reputation alone, the very name of the great monster, seeped into each mind like a curse.
Aboard Nemoctes’s companion, Aradocles lifted his head.
‘It’s the big beast, Arkeuthys,’ Nemoctes suppied, watching through the eyes of the creature that carried them. The Pelagist was fully geared for war, shell armour and shield and hook-headed axe.
‘Oh, I know that,’ said the heir of Hermatyre softly. It had been a long time since he had used the Art of Speech, years indeed since he had been close enough to one of Arkeuthys’s brood. Now he felt the mind of the creature just like a sun, burning away in the water with the malevolent fire of its long years. The octopuses, the Krakind’s namesake beasts, were more than mere animals. They were guardians and patrons to the humans who claimed kinship with them, and in return the beasts lived longer and longer, lifespans stretching from the brief span allotted to their lesser cousins until they could count their years as men did, or longer. As they aged, they grew wiser, too, more cunning in the ways of the world, and of humanity. They had always been a force here, in Hermatyre, a silent but influential counsel in the affairs of the Edmirs.
Arkeuthys
, sent out Aradocles, into the watery void.
Hear me.
He was not sure that he had properly recaptured the Art of it, until that slow voice came back, sounding like stone grating on stone.
So, you have returned after all.
Did you ever doubt it?
It would not be the first time
, Arkeuthys replied,
that rumours of you have stirred up fools. I have personally defended your honour by putting down such lies. Has the idiot Heiracles not told you of his previous attempts at unseating your rightful blood? Or would he perhaps clothe himself in virtue now, as though it could be accreated, like metal or shell?
I have no illusions about Heiracles
, Aradocles replied. The presence of Arkeuthys in his mind was vast and heavy, and it made his knees want to buckle, his bowels to loosen. But he stood all the straighter, under the force of that vast scrutiny.
Heiracles knows his place, now.
And do you?
There was bleak amusement in the great monster’s thoughts.
Your rabble cringes from me even now. What did you expect, Aradocles?
From them? That they would follow me this far – and further, as they must.
Aradocles took a deep breath, sensing the abyss beneath him that he must plumb.
And from you? Obedience, as due to your rightful Edmir.
There was a very long pause indeed, and the eventual response was not words at all, but a feeling that indicated amusement – only amusement.
Hear me, Arkeuthys
, Aradocles persisted.
You served my father well, and you are a great ruler of your own people. After I was lost to Hermatyre, when I was believed dead, you then served my uncle. Why should you not? He was thought by all to be the rightful Edmir of Hermatyre, so it was not your place to question him. Now you know the truth of my return, why should you not serve your rightful lord, and turn from the false one?
He sensed the quality of the silence change at the far end of his link with Arkeuthys. At last the great beast murmured,
Claeon has valued my support, and given me much freedom. He has made me a very Edmir of my people, as he is Edmir of yours.
As he was
, corrected Aradocles sharply.
Arkeuthys, you are your people’s ruler. It has never been the place of the Kerebroi to interfere in such matters. Do you think I would try to unseat you because you have served others in my family? Only continue to serve my family still, and why should I bear you any grudge?
And the baffled reply followed fast on the heels of his words.
But your people will remember only too well what I have done in Claeon’s name, little one.
They will remember that it was done in
Claeon’s
name, that is all. And if they should ever complain, well, if they would have me as their Edmir, then they will live by my decision.
The attacking force’s advance had stopped entirely now. All eyes, on both sides, were fixed on the giant octopus, as it undulated slightly between both lines, its eyes narrowed to the merest of slits.
Claeon would not make such a generous offer, nor would your father, if they found themselves in your place. You must be aware of the reality of what I have done, of the weapon I have made myself in Claeon’s hands against those who resisted his rule.
I have spent time amongst strange people
, Aradocles replied simply.
I have learned new arts. Their word for this is amnesty, and that is what I offer. Do you see its meaning, here in my mind?
I do . . .
Then speak to the Krakind Kerebroi gathered amongst the defenders. Tell them one thing only. Tell them I have returned, the true heir, to claim my throne. Do this, and you shall remain to me as much as you ever were to Claeon – and with one advantage more.
And what is that?
pried the thoughts of Arkeuthys.
Why, that I am
not
Claeon
, Aradocles told the creature drily.
Surely you cannot claim that you actually liked my uncle?
Arkeuthys began abruptly jetting backwards in the water, as Nemoctes reported, coiling and pulsing until he hung over the defenders. In Aradocles’s mind, though, echoed the faint suggestion of laughter.
It was only when Aradocles’s troops entered Hermatyre that Stenwold realized just how messy things could have become. The city possessed dozens of the double-doored hatches, but each outer one could have been held with ease by just a few spearmen, and then again at the inner door. There were no defenders in evidence, though. Stenwold himself had watched as Arkeuthys had drifted over Claeon’s marshalled forces, expecting a sudden charge, the first blood of the war. There had been a change plain to see in the enemy army, though, a ripple of shock passing through them. As the attackers had drawn closer Stenwold had witnessed a great deal of the sea-kinden’s busy underwater hand-speech as Krakind Kerebroi – the kin of Aradocles and Claeon – passed on news to their allies of other kinden.
And the defending force had soon begun to break up. Individuals had sidled off, and then whole troops of them, the majority of the defenders simply giving up and going home. Some even left their weapons behind: spears driven point-first into the seabed or the falx swords abandoned. The octopuses – all of Arkeuthys’s crawling, lurking kindred – had simply slithered away across the great gnarled dome of the colony, leaving the way clear.
Some of the defenders had not disbanded, though. A number had come to join the attackers, gladly switching sides for no reason that Stenwold could understand just then. Others, however, had remained under arms, and they hurried back into Hermatyre, desperate to get inside its coral walls before the heir’s forces reached them. There were not enough that they could have held the city, however, even if they could have been sure of support from the rest of the populace.
Aradocles’s forces began the slow process of filing into the colony, streaming in through every entrance and forming up in their separate detachments, braced for Claeon’s counterattack. For Stenwold, this was the longest part of the assault, watching the foot-soldiers of the assault force queue and mill until their own turn came. Hermatyre had not been built with such a grand number of visitors in mind.
‘I suppose, if we’d needed, we could have used the Gastroi to cut our way in,’ he suggested. The looks he received from the others revealed nothing but horror.
‘You cannot
cut
,’ Paladrya told him, as if even the mention of the word was sacrilege. ‘The Builders, the Arketoi, would be angered.’
Stenwold remembered those pale little tattooed men, the mysterious kinden who had constructed Hermatyre and all the other colonies across the seabed. ‘I didn’t see any of them in the battle line,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think they really, well, noticed this kind of thing.’
‘Battles? Politics?’ Paladrya replied. ‘Oh, sometimes they do, and woe betide anyone who attracts their attention. Break any of the substance of Hermatyre, though, and you’d never be able to go near a colony ever again. The entire kinden, they’d
know
.’
At last it was Stenwold’s turn, and he took up his caul and let Paladrya pull him over to the city’s stone outer skin and help guide him inside. He had come this far, and he wanted to see this finished.
The army had divided into different cohorts, and now the Pelagists’ far-speech would not help them for, of Nemoctes’s people, only the man himself was entering the colony. Meanwhile each cohort, entering by a different gate, would start moving through the twisting paths of Hermatyre, seeking out resistance wherever it was to be found.
Stenwold himself followed close behind Aradocles, with Paladrya to one side of him and Phylles to the other. He had never gained much of a sense of Hermatyre’s layout before, while being bundled through the streets by Claeon’s men or Rosander’s, but now he had a chance to appreciate the colony’s bizarre architecture, its curious beauty and its utterly alien design. A living city, surely, or one that had been grown and then died, as more city was grown on top of it, over and over. Within that stratified crust, the colony was expressed in diverse hollows: chambers as small as a cramped room or as great as a city square; the walls patterned, segmented, moulded into symmetrical designs of unknown import in the secret architectural language of the Builders. The tunnels interlinking the chambers led up and down seemingly at random: ribbed passageways of stone winding and twisting like worms through the city’s heart. Everywhere there was limn-light, those coloured globes of radiance that the sea-kinden crafted for lamps, casting dim-coloured veils across the pale stone, and across the grim faces of the invaders.
They had expected Claeon’s people to fight them from room to room, but there was barely any resistance, just a few straggling defenders caught up by the attackers’ tide. The residents of Hermatyre watched Aradocles and his people pass, making no move to stop them, but nor did they cheer. Instead they waited, untrusting and unsure, to see the outcome. Stenwold was reminded that Aradocles had been absent for years, and their memory of him was of a mere youth, and not a king. Rightful heir he might be, but these people had been living under Claeon’s capricious and heavy-handed rule, and they had no guarantee that the Edmir’s nephew would prove any better.
And then they came out upon a vista that Stenwold did recognize, at last. Here he had returned, by all the strange roads that fate had led him along, to the Cathedra Edmir, the heart of Hermatyre, the great plaza that gave onto the gates of the Edmir’s palace complex. This was the place that he had first been dragged to, feeling bewildered and battered, for his first introduction to the sea-kinden. This was where Paladrya had been imprisoned since Claeon’s suspicion fell upon her, until Wys’s people had broken them both out.