Wys shrugged her high shoulders. ‘Wys,’ she replied simply. ‘I’ve got a barque and a crew – most of which you see here. The “nuisance” tells me you’re into trading the exotic. Myself likewise.’
‘What’ve you got that’s exotic?’
‘To you, everything.’ She grinned, whereupon Tomasso matched her tooth for tooth.
‘Looks like you might have trawled something worthwhile up to the surface,’ he admitted to Laszlo, still without taking his eyes off Wys. ‘Been using your time well, then?’
Laszlo shrugged, ostentatiously nonchalant. ‘I like to keep myself busy, skipper.’
Tomasso’s eyes flicked towards Stenwold. ‘Master Maker, you look like a man with plans.’
‘Oh, plans certainly. You don’t seem overly surprised to be face to face with people from under the sea.’
‘You hear rumours,’ Tomasso said. ‘Sail these seas enough, and any number of drunk sailors will tell you about the sea-kinden. Never believed it, but that was only for want of evidence. I’ve travelled, Maker. I’ve travelled from Cerrih to Sea-Limnis and from Silk Gate to Port Planten, but I’ve never seen anything like this mob here. They have to come from somewhere, so why not the sea? There must be stranger things.’
Stenwold nodded. Silk Gate, as he knew, was on the Silk Road south of Mavralis. The other places were just names. ‘I get the impression that you and Wys would like the chance to get better acquainted,’ he said. ‘May I borrow Laszlo?’
‘Not sure I could prise him away from you, in any case,’ Tomasso said wryly. ‘Master Maker, you have the look of a man about to do something unwise.’
‘Oh, unwise, certainly. There is unrest beneath the sea, Master Tomasso, but somewhere here on land there may be the means to cure it. Unfortunately that means was last seen off Felyal, which means our talking to the Mantis-kinden.’
Tomasso grimaced. ‘I can’t see that Laszlo’s going to be much help there. I could find you some lads…’
‘If it comes to a shoving match, I’ve already lost it,’ Stenwold told him. ‘I know Mantis-kinden, though, as well as any outsider can. I know how they think, how they like to see themselves. I only need Laszlo to tell people how I ended up, if I get it wrong.’
Thirty-Six
It was the same Mantis dive that he had once gone fishing for pirates in, without success. He could only hope to have more luck this time, since the stakes were a whole lot higher.
He ducked beneath the lintel, into a waft of fire-warmed air, out of the night’s cool. He would have preferred to visit here by daylight, but had not managed to track down his target until after dusk. Laszlo had trailed dutifully after him all around the city, as he spoke to his informants or avoided people wanting to question him about his absence. Now he gestured for the Fly to stay back. If things went badly, he needed Laszlo to be able to make an escape and tell the story.
It was just as he remembered inside: a forest of wooden pillars cluttering the harbour-front tavern. The Mantids sat with their backs to the virtual trees, talking in low voices, eyes glittering red in the firelight. Winding pipe music came from somewhere, the voices of two instruments entwined, quavering some strange and sad melody.
Stenwold paused just within the doorway, and felt for his courage. There were a good twenty-five or so Mantis-kinden present, of whom he could name only one – and that one was no friend of his, not any more. He called on his memories of Tisamon, but then Tisamon had never been the most typical of his kind. Stenwold hoped that, in this most important thing, he had judged matters right.
He drew his sword. The whisper of steel on leather was barely audible even to himself, but it silenced them all, even the musicians. He felt their eyes settle on him, not with fear or alarm but with a crawling eagerness. Without any transition, weapons were in every hand: rapiers, long knives, spears. A few were even buckling on clawed gauntlets like the one that Tisamon used to wear.
One stood up, a hard-faced woman with a slender blade held loose in her left hand. ‘You have walked through the wrong doorway, Beetle,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps you should go elsewhere with your little sword.’
Stenwold reminded himself bleakly that offering him this chance to withdraw amounted to their most diplomatic level of politeness.
‘I’m afraid I know exactly what I am about. My name is Stenwold Maker.’
‘What’s that to me?’ the Mantis woman demanded. There was no sign of any recognition whatsoever in her face.
‘You speak for all here? Do you have no name?’ Names were important, Stenwold knew, for the Inapt set great store by them.
‘Akkestrae, they call me,’ she told him. ‘Now take your sword and go, Stenwold Maker the Beetle. You are not welcome.’
‘I am here to defend Mantis honour.’ Those were words that Tisamon had once used, or so Stenwold hoped, relying on a years-old memory. They had their effect anyway. He saw a reaction – an emotion for which the Beetle-kinden had no name – lash across all their faces. He guessed that their offer to let him duck back out and leave had just been withdrawn.
‘Hard words for such a soft, fat man to say,’ Akkestrae rebuked him. The angle of her rapier had changed even as he spoke, from idle to ready, just a twitch away from running him through. ‘Do you think you are the first of your kind to mock us, in your ignorance? The sea lies at your back, Beetle. It can take a good many more corpses yet before it is full.’
‘Do not lecture me on what the sea can hold,’ snapped Stenwold, with enough fire that she blinked and frowned at him. ‘I am here to defend Mantis honour,’ he repeated. ‘For it appears nobody else will.’
‘And who assaults it?’ she asked him contemptuously. ‘If you know of what you speak, then you must give us a name.’
‘Danaen,’ Stenwold replied. ‘Come forward, Danaen, and defend yourself if you can.’
There was quite a pause, and a murmur of Mantis voices in hissed outrage, before she stepped forward – Danaen, with her scarred face twisted in a look of arrogant disdain. It came to him, then, that the same expression had always been there whenever he met her, but he had previously chosen to interpret it as simple Mantis reserve.
‘I hear you are recently back from the dead, Beetle,’ she said in almost a whisper, save that the strange acoustics of the place carried it to all ears. ‘You must be eager to return there, that you call me out so.’
‘Call you out?’ Stenwold reproached her, keeping both hands steady on his courage. ‘I am here to right your wrong – and a wrong against all your kinden.’
With a tiny movement, so slight he might almost have missed it, her short, slender blades were both in her hands. ‘If your life wearies you so much, then I shall cut it from you,’ she snarled, her eyes cold.
‘Say what you must, Beetle,’ said Akkestrae, now sounding bored. ‘Speak and then have the grace to die cleanly – if your kind even know how.’
‘I have had Mantis allies before,’ Stenwold informed them, ‘and when I walked in the shadow of a Mantis, I had no fear of failure or betrayal. I knew that, once his oath was given, even Tisamon’s death would hardly prevent him carrying out his word.’
‘Tisamon!’ someone spat derisively from amongst them, and Akkestrae said, ‘That is no name to conjure with here, for we know his failings.’
‘As did he,’ Stenwold replied sombrely. ‘Yet he wore the Weaponsmaster’s badge, and he earned it. Who denies it?’
Akkestrae watched him as though he was prey that had just offered a certain extra enjoyment in its hunting, but no voice rose to question Tisamon’s standing now. It had been Stenwold’s main concern that his dead friend’s reputation would prove too corroded to bear the reliance he must place on it.
‘Tisamon taught me to put faith in the Mantis-kinden.’ He addressed the whole room whilst locking eyes with Danaen. ‘In the end, whatever his failings, it was his sword that cut the throat of the Wasp Emperor – his sacrifice that took the Wasp armies from our gates. Who denies it?’
