The pier was a long one, extending far out to sea on its uneven stanchions. In the waning moonlight Stenwold tried to see if there was anyone standing out there. ‘Perhaps this is one of her nights off?’ he suggested.
‘Someone is there,’ Paladrya declared, and the other two were nodding. Fly-kinden had sharp eyes and, of course, the sea-kinden were used to the gloom that was the best their limn-lights could make of the deep sea’s utter darkness.
‘Just one person?’ Stenwold asked cautiously. He saw Laszlo glance suddenly upwards, abruptly suspicious, but the two sea-kinden were again nodding.
‘Unless someone could be hiding behind that little structure there,’ Paladrya filled in. There was a boxy little shed towards the very end of the pier: a small storage hut, he guessed.
Out over the water again. Stenwold found himself remarkably unwilling to step even on to the boards of the jetty. It was not just that they were worm-eaten, and complained creakily about his weight. It was the sea itself beneath. He felt that it was waiting for him. I escaped it once, and it wants me back. And he thought: Yet do I not wish to go back? ‘Return to me’, she had said… He shook himself irritably and led the way down the pier’s uneven length.
He was more than halfway to the end before his eyes could pick out even the suggestion of shape ahead. If something went wrong out here, he would be at such a disadvantage that he might as well just throw himself into the ocean. Irritably he unlatched a lamp from his belt. He had hoped not to have to use it, as whoever was out here obviously valued their moonlit privacy. He struck the steel within, and a wan gas flame ignited, almost white and turned as low as it would go. Despite his misgivings, he felt a great deal better after it was lit.
He approached with caution, Paladrya and Fel shadowing his footsteps and Laszlo hanging slightly back. The lamp illuminated the pier’s end, flaring palely on the rotten boards of the storage shed, before touching on the back of the figure at the very end of the pier. It was indeed a Mantis woman, as far as Stenwold could tell, sitting on a barrel and staring out to sea… no, she was fishing. As he drew nearer, he spotted that she held a reel of line that was dangling into the midnight waters.
He heard her sigh, and he stopped a prudent distance away, with the shack right by his elbow.
Her voice drifted across to him, sounding weary: ‘I’m selling nothing and I’m buying nothing, and I carry no coin, strangers. You’ll get precious little from me.’
‘We don’t mean to rob you,’ Stenwold addressed her, ‘only to ask you a question, if we may.’
She had a stick in one hand, he now saw, a thick, four-foot length of wood. Without looking round, she leant on it, pushing herself off the barrel with a curiously lopsided motion, turning as she did so. He realized that she was younger than he had thought, her pale hair cut brutally short. Her face had a lot of lines on it, the evidence of pain and bitter feelings.
‘Cynthaen,’ he addressed her.
‘Most of her.’ She stepped forward, not Mantis-graceful but with a rolling lurch, and he saw, belatedly, that one leg was just a wooden stump from the knee down. When he lifted his eyes again, she met his gaze with keen cynicism, looking for the pity.
‘The Wasps?’ he asked her.
‘Gift of the Empire, yes,’ she said, ‘and of a surgeon of your own kinden. Trimmed me and seared me and told me how lucky I was, to be alive. So what do you want to ask me, Master Beetle? Have you found me a foot that needs a new owner?’ There was a humour in her voice, but it was sharp-edged.
‘I want to ask you about the sea-kinden,’ Stenwold told her. ‘Your people sent me to you.’
‘They remember me, do they?’ She lowered herself back on to the barrel, balancing herself between the stick and her sound leg. ‘Sea-kinden? Stories, Master Beetle, just stories.’
Stenwold glanced towards his companions, and Cynthaen followed his gaze. When he turned back to her, her face had become closed, resigned.
‘So,’ she said.
‘Your people, your family, made a pact, I am told,’ Stenwold explained. ‘And some years ago, that pact was called upon.’
‘Was it, now?’ she said blandly, hunching forward over her stick.
‘There was a boy brought up from the sea,’ Stenwold prompted. It was clear she knew exactly what he was talking about, but her face would admit none of it. All she would say was, ‘Was there so?’
‘He would have seemed like a Spider-kinden to you,’ the Beetle went on, a little desperately, as Cynthaen simply arched a sceptical eyebrow.
Stenwold opened his mouth, wondering what he could say next, just as Paladrya pushed past him, stepping far too close to the Mantis-kinden woman: almost within reach of the jagged spines on her forearms.
‘Please,’ the Kerebroi woman declared, simply, ‘we have come to take him home. Are there any of your people who might remember?’
Cynthaen had gone very still, and at first Stenwold thought it was because of finding a Spider-kinden woman before her, and was within an inch of striking out at her, but the expression on the Mantis’s face was not one of hatred, as he would have expected. Instead it was puzzlement slowly being replaced by something like recognition.
‘You,’ the Mantis said, and left the single word unqualified for a moment, before adding, ‘Was it you?’
Paladrya was now frowning, as the other three gathered closer, trying to work out what was happening here.
‘We were few and far between, those of us who kept the Watch, even before the Wasps came,’ murmured Cynthaen, very softly indeed. ‘Five, perhaps? Six? Dying traditions, they were: the offerings into the deep, and the harvest of the sea. As for now? I don’t know if anyone keeps the Sea Watch now. I am the only blood of my house remaining, what’s left of me. I recognize you, though. You’re of his kind, all right, and no Spider.’
Stenwold heard Paladrya’s breath catch. ‘You…?’
‘Do I remember you?’ Cynthaen frowned. ‘There in the shallows.. . not the two long bastards who came with him, but there was one other. I was watching from the trees. I remember. It could have been you, at that. It could have been. Nigh on five years ago, but I almost think it was you, after all.’
‘Do you know…’ Paladrya’s voice was shaking. ‘Do you know.. . whether he lives? My Aradocles, does he live?’
‘The Wasps came.’ Cynthaen’s voice went hard again, and she tapped her stick against her wooden leg. ‘They burned us out. Torched every logging camp and trading post along the edge of the Felyal, and then carried on till they hit Collegium’s walls.’
‘Is he here?’ Paladrya asked her. ‘Please, you must tell me, I have to know. I sent him on to the land, all those years ago, to keep him safe…’
Cynthaen gave a barking, incredulous laugh. ‘Safe? You chose the wrong place and time, woman. But your lad did fight, I give him that. Fought at the Felyal, and then with the Prince. Went and joined the Landsarmy, he did. Most of the villagers, the traders and the loggers, they couldn’t make it here. They moved too slow, had no boats, and the Wasps were already standing in the way. So they went north instead. Signed on with the Prince of the Wasteland.’ She nodded at Stenwold. ‘You know who I mean.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Stenwold breathed. ‘Yes I do.’
‘Then you’ll know where they ended up,’ Cynthaen told him. ‘In that new place of theirs. You want your lad? If he lives at all, he’s there.’
‘Princep Salmae,’ pronounced Stenwold.
‘Mar’Maker!’ Laszlo shouted an abrupt warning, and Stenwold whirled round to see a figure kick off suddenly into the air, from the roof of the storage shack. Stenwold’s hand came up automatically, tugging the little snapbow out of his coat and loosing both bolts, one after the other. One of them must have struck, through luck more than any skill, for the flying figure faltered in the air and then crashed to the pier, smashing through the old boards and vanishing almost instantly into the dark water below.
Almost immediately two others were upon them: lean, scarred men with long-hafted swords glittering, swooping down to avenge their comrade. One of them went straight for Paladrya, and the other stooped on Stenwold.
Fel got himself in the way of that second one. The sword sparked off his bracer, then he and the attacker were trading blows. Dragonfly-kinden, Stenwold saw – and not just Dragonflies but men of a look he had seen
