Art to give them purchase. He had almost suffered a heart attack when Teornis’s Dragonfly thug had burst out of the window below, surely after hearing an incautious movement of Laszlo’s. But the Dragonfly’s imagination was not a match for his senses, and he had soared straight up to the flat roof, to stalk about angrily immediately over Laszlo’s head, unable to locate his quarry.
Laszlo shuffled to the front edge of the building, peering carefully out of the long, narrow gap between wall and shingles that had given him entrance to this hiding space in the first place. The first thing he saw was Sands himself standing at the front doorway below. The man – some kind of halfbreed, Laszlo guessed, but mostly Beetle in his looks – paused briefly, hands going through a brief ritual as casual as if he was adjusting his clothing. A Fly’s sharp eyes, though, saw the hilts of the weapons whose presence Sands found so reassuring. The man then strode off into the streets of Princep Salmae, and Laszlo had an uneasy feeling about his intentions, despite all that Teornis had said. His course could be set for a variety of destinations in the city, it was true, but surely Stenwold was in that quarter too.
Laszlo bunched himself for a swift exit, knowing he would make better time through the air than the man walking the streets below him, and thus be able to warn Stenwold just in case. He reached for his Art, about to have his wings eject him from the dark space like a cork from a bottle, when the Dragonfly was abruptly before him, blotting Laszlo’s strip of light for a second before alighting on the roof again. Some movement, some shifting of balance on the Fly’s part, had been heard, and this time the man was obviously fighting mad, absolutely convinced that there was an eavesdropper, crossing back and forth about the roof, no doubt sword in hand ready to deal death to the intruder. Most often his pacing brought him to the very lip of the roof immediately above where Laszlo lay concealed.
The Fly all but held his breath, keeping deadly still. Of course, he could simply make a run for it the moment the Dragonfly’s back was turned, and under any other circumstances he would have trusted to his race’s famed agility and speed in the air to throw off pursuit in double time. With Dragonfly-kinden, though… if ever there was a race just as comfortable in the air as Laszlo’s own, it was they. When the Tidenfree had sailed through Spiderlands waters, they had met plenty of Dragonflies from various of the exile principalities that had budded off from the Commonweal centuries earlier. Those from Castilla were as paranoid as Ants, those from Magnaferra polite and elegant as Spiders themselves, and these clowns from Solorn, that Teornis had recruited, were savage and bloody-handed as Mantids, but they were all bad news to have as enemies, swift and sudden, skilled and agile, and utterly relentless. Probably I could outfly him, Laszlo told himself, but ‘probably’ might not be good enough. Those big swords the Dragonflies favoured could cut a poor Fly-kinden in half, given the chance.
The halfbreed was meanwhile out of sight across the city, and his path had looked very much as though it might intersect Stenwold Maker’s whereabouts at the airfield. Laszlo itched to go, but the cursed Dragonfly just continued hunting the barren square of roof above him, and would not give up on the scent.
Thirty-Nine
‘This is a gold Central, from the Helleron mints,’ Stenwold explained patiently. ‘That’s the price of a sword, traditionally. These in silver are Standards, ten to a Central. This,’ he held up a disc of clay divided into segments, ‘is a wheel of bits. You can break it into pieces, and there are,’ he squinted at it, ‘fifty bits to a Standard here. They fire these wheels locally. They’re no good outside the city they’re made in.’ He laid the coins down at the outdoor table he and Paladrya had commandeered earlier for their breakfast.
At first he thought that Wys was finding all this difficult to take in. Then he realized she was just having trouble believing it.
‘This… this is money?’ she asked him, holding up a Central. ‘But it’s gold!’
‘Probably no more than half gold,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘We don’t use paper for money, up here.’
‘I’m not surprised, since I’ve seen your paper. Spit on it and it turns to mush,’ she said derisively. She stuck out a thin arm, displaying a bracelet of finely interwoven golden threads. ‘This is money, then?’
‘It’s worth money,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘I couldn’t say how much. There’s not much weight of gold to it, but the workmanship is fine.’
‘It is? Why, thank you.’ She grinned at what had apparently been a compliment. ‘Everything’s backwards here, but I think I like it. Despite how pissing hot and cold and fussy your air gets.’ Her pale skin was roasted pink in places, and she had secured from some vendor a Spider-style parasol to keep off the sun. Fel and Phylles had been driven into the shade before noon, but Wys could not get enough of the land-kinden and their buying and selling.
‘Can I keep these?’ she asked, of the coins Stenwold had been making his demonstration with.
‘Consider them a downpayment,’ he told her, and she fairly scampered off towards the nearest peddlers. Stenwold met Paladrya’s eyes and saw her smiling.
‘The Smallclaw were always the most enterprising amongst us,’ she said. ‘Hence the Hot Stations, I suppose. Even Claeon has had to make adjustments for them. They will lead the way to our future. I don’t imagine they really care who holds the Edmiracy of Hermatyre, in the long run.’
‘But you do,’ Stenwold told her, ‘and I find I do too.’ He was waiting now, either for Laszlo to return with something, or for some news from the local messengers he had sent out. It was frustrating to know that Teornis was ahead of him but, lacking a contact in the city due to Balkus’s ill-timed absence, there was little he could do. ‘What was your plan?’ he asked Paladrya. ‘Originally, when Claeon took power, what did you foresee?’
‘It would have been a grand thing to have had a plan, back then,’ she replied, still smiling at him. ‘It was all I could do to make that decision: to betray Claeon, save the boy. I thought Claeon would find me out sooner, and kill me in the heat of his rage. Until I met you, I had considered myself unlucky that I had been able to hide my crime from him for long enough for him to wish to keep me alive in order to punish me, rather than destroy me outright.’
There was just a twitch, at her eyes and the corner of her mouth, to hint at the force of Claeon’s displeasure. Stenwold covered her hand with his own, trying to find words of sympathy. A moment later a shadow fell over them, and a stout Beetle stood there: a moustached, balding man some years Stenwold’s senior, and wearing the working leathers of an artificer. Without introduction he sat down across from them at the crude table, staring narrowly at Paladrya.
‘Can we help you?’ Stenwold enquired, one hand finding the butt of the snapbow.
‘You’re the fellow that’s been asking questions?’ The accent was pure Collegium.
‘Some questions, possibly. Are you the man who has the answers?’ Stenwold pressed him.
The other Beetle looked from Stenwold back to the sea-kinden woman, who had withdrawn deeper into her cowl, plainly discomfited by him. ‘It’s a Spider lad you’re looking for. Curly hair, barely more than a child. Came in with the Prince’s lot.’
‘With Salma’s people, yes,’ Stenwold confirmed. Seeing the flicker of surprise in the man’s eyes, he added, ‘I knew Prince Salme Dien at Collegium.’ And let that fact carry some weight here, surely?
‘Is that so?’ was all the other man would say, then, ‘What might you want this lad for?’
Stenwold frowned, wondering if this character was a slaver, perhaps, hoping to offload some random Spider-kinden criminals or debtors. ‘To reunite him with his family, Master…?’
‘Penhold, Ordley Penhold,’ the Beetle told him, but something had set in his face, at Stenwold’s words. ‘Well, good luck in your search, friend. I hope you find what you’re after.’ Ordley Penhold stood up, his expression decidedly unfriendly, and stomped off, leaving Stenwold none the wiser.
There were two other enquiries after that: a starved-looking Fly-kinden who almost certainly was a slaver’s agent, and a Roach woman who tried to get money out of Stenwold by dropping vague hints about the youth he was looking for. The morning was wearing on, and their chances were looking grim, when the halfbreed turned up.
At first Stenwold assumed he was another Beetle, perhaps an associate of the departed Ordley Penhold, but there was a cast to his features that spoke of some mingling of bloods. In truth, Stenwold had already seen many such in Princep Salmae, and he supposed that this new city’s unjudging ideology made the place even more attractive than the somewhat forced tolerance of Collegium.
He was a big man, this halfbreed, and well dressed and, when he spoke, his voice was as cultured as a
