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.
Stenwold himself was glad for the lanternlight crowning walls, but he quickly conceded that his sea-kinden companions had far better eyes than he, and soon it was Paladrya taking the lead. Cautiously scouting the way, raising a hand to them whenever she saw more guards on the path, she sought no cover herself, for her Art hid her. As she moved, her skin crawled with patterns of light and shade so that, when she was still, she became as invisible as she had been in the cell in Hermatyre where Stenwold had first met her. Her warning upheld palm, as the patrols approached, flashed palely towards them or they would never have caught her signal. Sometimes the Dragonflies walked within feet of her, as she stood motionlessly out in the open, and then Stenwold’s own eyes would slide off her, losing her amongst the nocturnal shapes of the garden, until she moved again.
They reached within a short dash of the wall, finding a convenient gap that still jutted with scaffolding and boards. Just as it seemed they would be able to make an unopposed entry, one of the Dragonfly guardsmen appeared around the corner, and chose that moment, and that spot, to stand contemplating the skies, leaning on his crescent-headed spear. Stenwold cursed inwardly, and began to plan if it would be possible to overpower the man without the alarm being raised. He was brought out of his reverie when Fel tapped his shoulder and pointed upwards, directing his eyes to find another man sitting atop the wall, a crooked staff laid across his knees.
Not this gap, then, Stenwold thought. That was always going to be the most difficult part: breaching this final line of defence and breaking into the palace proper. Of course, every gap in the walls might similarly have eyes on it, and he had hoped that inspiration would strike once he got here. There was still a good fifteen feet of empty ground between them and the walls, though, and Stenwold could see no way of getting past the sentries without being seen.
Paladrya and Phylles were busy conferring, hands moving silently in the sea-kinden sign language, and a moment later the Kerebroi woman had started towards the sentry in a progress of stops and starts, from unseen to a ghosting shadow, as her skin blurred to keep up with her surroundings.
Stenwold turned to Phylles to ask her what was going on, but she was already moving off as well, not headed for the guards, but for a section of the wall that looked complete, and unwatched. Once there, she began inching her way along the line of it, moving with a slow, continuous motion that offered nothing to attract the eye. She was slowly edging towards where the wall finished, the gap where the guards were stationed, and she glanced up at the man sitting above.
The compound wall was not so very high, Stenwold considered. Could she jump up and grab his ankle? Was that the plan? He looked over to Fel, but the Onychoi man was watching intently, tense as a wire.
A sudden thought came to Stenwold as he spotted that what he had seen as a crooked staff borne by the man aloft was in fact an unstrung bow. He realized that none of the sea-kinden would know it for what it was. He opened his mouth to utter a warning, but to call out would be just as fatal.
Then there was sudden shouting in the garden behind them, like a harsh exchange of insults. Stenwold froze, losing sight of Paladrya entirely. The archer above stood up and strung his bow, all in the same powerful motion, and then was aloft and scooting overhead, already reaching for the first arrow. The spearman took a few steps forward and, for a hopeful moment Stenwold thought he might follow. He stuck to his post, though, until Phylles moved a little closer and he saw her.
The guard’s eyes widened, and he made as if to point the spear at her, but then Paladrya was magically beside him, her hands on the weapon’s haft. As he wrenched at it, Phylles struck. The whip-like barb of her Art weapon pierced his neck, and he fell, twitching.
Stenwold hurried closer. ‘What have you done?’ he hissed. ‘What will they think of us now?’
