He knew then how it would be a crime, a terrible crime, to buy her knowledge with false coin – and a crime that would come with its own form of punishment. If he knelt before her, if he even took her hand, it would be as if he had signed a contract, made a vow. From that point on, the very creature that contained them would enforce her right, more terribly than any bride’s father in dragging him to his nuptials.
‘I can’t.’ He heard his words and watched her face, half expecting that it would remain calm as ever even so.
‘You must!’ she insisted. ‘You are mine! I marked you as my own. You have thought of me, only of me!’ Her features twitched and quivered, without ever forming a coherent expression.
‘No longer,’ he explained. ‘Perhaps the land air has washed all the sea from me.’ Or perhaps the Monarch was right, and I have been saved by my admiration for another. But he said none of that.
‘But you want to know,’ she insisted, and her hand, still offered to him, kept clenching and unclenching.
‘I do, but I cannot meet your price, Lyess.’
For a second she stared at him, and some emotion flowered at last in her face. It was rage, pure rage, as callow and raw as a youth’s, flooding through her and contorting her features until her perfect teeth were bared, her eyes turning into daggers.
‘No!’ she shrieked, and lunged towards him faster than he had expected. The hand that had been offered to him was at his throat in an instant, still feeling cool and slick. He stumbled back, and she went with him, until she had him pressed against the yielding flesh of the wall. He had a hand on her wrist by that point, and her grip was not strong, but then something writhed against his neck, something in her palm, and he went very still.
Phylles’s Art, he thought, having seen the lashing barbs of Wys’s crew-woman kill their share of victims, and now it seemed that Lyess’s kinden possessed a similar weapon. Thinking of the curtain of stinging tendrils her companion trailed behind it, he realized that he should have guessed at that before.
‘You are mine,’ Lyess insisted. Against her so-pale face, in the grey-white light, it was hard to tell if she was weeping or not, but her voice suggested it. ‘I was led to you! You were given to me!’
‘By who?’ got out Stenwold. ‘Nemoctes?’
‘Nemoctes?’ she spat. ‘What would he know? He is so concerned with Edmirs and heirs and doing right. Do you think I was close by to save you, by chance? It was destiny! It was pure destiny!’ She pushed him back against the wall again, but there was very little strength to her, even in her rage. Only the poisoned sting in her palm held him captive.
‘What destiny?’ he asked, in his most calming voice.
‘The Seagod said,’ she told him. ‘The Seagod promised. It sent me to rescue you.’
Stenwold recalled that vast segmented shadow, that clawed silhouette. Even as a landsman, even as an Apt landsman, he had felt a power off the Seagod, radiating an all-encompassing awareness that no mere beast could own. ‘It saved us from the Menfish,’ he said softly.
‘It told me of you when I travelled in the deep places,’ Lyess whispered reverently. ‘It spoke of the landsman, and told me where I must be – and when. I hated it then, for we Pelagists must be free above all, but then we took you within ourselves, and I… I have never… never known…’
Never known being close to another human being, Stenwold finished inwardly, but the scholar in him enquired, ‘What could this Seagod want with me? It makes no sense? Why would it care?’
Abruptly she was holding his face between both her hands, drawing him close to her, almost close enough to kiss. ‘It told me of you,’ she whispered. ‘There is blood coming from the land: a great outpouring of blood that shall wash over everything until it comes to where the land meets the sea. The sea is great, but that blood is the blood of ages past, and if it is not stopped on land, there will be no end to it. In the end, the sea itself shall be red with it, and all that we are shall be destroyed, even to the furthest Pelagists, even to the Seagod itself. If it can be stopped at all, then you are the man who might do so. So, I must save you from Arkeuthys, and take you with me, admit you to where no trespasser has ever been suffered, where only the distant voices of my fellow Pelagists have ever spoken. Thus you were given into my care. So you are mine.’
Stenwold was frowning at her. And where have I heard prophecy like that before, talk of blood on blood? ‘I cannot be yours, Lyess,’ he said, as gently as he could. He felt her Art writhe and twitch against his face.
‘I will kill you,’ she breathed. ‘Do you think I cannot?’
‘And what will become of this prophecy then? And your Seagod, too?’
‘Must I care?’ she hissed. ‘Must I believe in prophecy? I want! I have never wanted before. If you cannot be mine, then I shall kill you.’ But, even as she said it, the wrath began ebbing from her, like a high tide that time could not sustain. Her shoulders shook, and she collapsed against him.
‘It’s not fair,’ he heard her say. ‘I asked for none of this. For all my life I needed no one. Now how shall I live, knowing that there is more?’
He wanted to tell her that there would be others, that he was Stenwold Maker of Collegium, who believed in neither prophecy nor destiny, and was not worth such despair or longing. He said nothing, though, but let her sag into his arms, the porcelain-delicate translucence of her, and held her close until the distant, transmitted tones of Nemoctes’s voice came, querulous and faint, to announce that Arado-cles’s army was preparing to march.
Forty-Four
Haelyn had not wanted to bring Claeon the news. It had seemed a good moment, after the report came to her, for her to abandon her post and seek anonymity within the twisted chambers of Hermatyre. Being Claeon’s major-domo was a career that promised no longevity, but she had already lasted longer than most. Telling a paranoid tyrant that his enemies really were moving against him seemed like suicide to her.
Yet here I am, and she knew it was through pure self-interest. When this was over, she wanted to be alive, yes, but she also wanted the gratitude of the winner. If she abandoned Claeon now, and he triumphed, then she would undoubtedly regret it. There would be resentful hands enough to drag her from whatever hiding place and cast her in front of his throne. Worse, if she stepped into the crowds now, and the insurrectionists won, then Heiracles, of notoriously short memory, would have forgotten her assistance long before she was able to make a claim on his generosity. She must stay the course, and hope that Hermatyre fell to the attackers before Claeon’s madness killed her.
But first she would have to survive this moment. ‘Your Eminence, great Edmir,’ she began.
Claeon sat hunched on his throne. His mood had been foul of late. He had known that Heiracles and the other malcontents were mustering, and although he had sent his soldiers out to break heads and shed blood, the insurrectionists had evaded them easily. Worse, a number of his own people had not come back at all, and Haelyn strongly suspected that they had cast their lot with the other side.
He was glowering silently at her now, waiting for her to speak on. There were two Dart-kinden guardsmen at the door, and at a word they would have her on the floor, their spears crossed over her neck. Then Claeon would climb down from his throne, knife in hand and full of bravery against a helpless victim.
‘They’re coming, aren’t they?’ he asked, his voice very soft, and to her surprise she thought she heard fear in it. What has he heard? The rumour was rampant throughout the colony that Aradocles had returned, but nobody knew for sure if it was true, not even she.
‘Our scouts confirm it, Edmir,’ she reported, bracing herself, but the explosion of anger never came. Instead he crouched motionless upon his throne, one hand gripping the coral of it painfully hard.
‘Guards,’ he said, no shout but just a flat command. Even as Haelyn flinched, he instructed them, ‘Have all my warriors prepare for war. Spread the word through the colony, that all those who can fight must now show their loyalty to the true bloodline. Have them arm themselves, have them rouse their beasts. Our colony is under threat from greedy, violent men who seek to depose the rightful Edmir, men who seek to sully this throne with their ignoble, unworthy heritage.’ He stood up, and for a moment he seemed cloaked with an authority that Haelyn had never witnessed before. ‘Tell them that Hermatyre will stand or fall through their resolve. Have them make ready, therefore. And send for Rosander and Pellectes. I will have orders for them, too. We will crush this rabble, this pack of upstarts with their pretender heir.’
The guards marched out swiftly to bear their leader’s words to his people. Claeon took a few steps away from the throne, suddenly a smaller man, divested of majesty. ‘Mine,’ he whispered. ‘Mine. What I have taken
