reflection in that almost casually bloody advance. A few of those spring-bows, those harpoon-launchers of Mandir’s, would lay us low in short order. We catch the sea-kinden here at the very turning point of Aptitude. But clearly the Man of the Hot Stations was jealous with his inventions, and none had made it as far as Hermatyre, and so the little device that Totho had crafted for his old mentor, that little trinket of murder, brought death like a plague upon Aradocles’s enemies.
Had there been more Greatclaw Onychoi there with their heavy mail, then Stenwold might not have had such an easy time, but the Kerebroi relied on speed and close-in fighting, and none of them was faster than a snapbow bolt.
At one point the defenders, almost in the entryway of the palace itself, had formed up a respectable row of spears, the Dart-kinden standing side by side with a discipline the rest of the field had not witnessed. Aradocles paused, glancing back at Stenwold, who merely nodded.
The young Edmir pointed his blade like a wizard from the Bad Old Days, some Moth Skryre bringing down a curse on his enemies. He pointed his blade, and a man in the centre of the line pitched backwards. He pointed again, and the next man’s helm cracked, a small hole drilled neatly into the skull beneath, which became a gap the size of a fist in the back of the luckless man’s head. The fatal sword selected a third target. By now Stenwold found he could load his snapbow without even looking at his hands, but then it had always been the genius of Totho’s weapon that any fool could become proficient with it after only a little practice.
A Kerebroi man, a lean figure with a greenish beard, was now trying to hold the defending spearmen together. Aradocles singled him out emotionlessly. In the last moment before Stenwold followed suit, the enemy leader met the landsman’s gaze, his face twisting into a mask of fear and loathing. Then Stenwold’s shot took him in the temple, snapping his head back, his body vanishing behind the rank of his followers.
The spear line broke apart, the lean and swift Dart-kinden falling into a chaos of struggling warriors trying to get out of the path of that deadly blade – and Aradocles advanced up the steps of the palace.
A shock went through the enemy. Stenwold saw it in their movements, as though a school of fish suddenly changed direction, all at the same time. Looking across the battle from the elevation of the steps, he realized that another contingent of Aradocles’s followers had finally arrived from the left, Nemoctes, in his mail and shield, driving a wedge through the weakened defenders. The battle had come to a close then and there, with his flanking assault, and Claeon’s wretches were being killed if they tried to resist, disarmed if they surrendered. Many who surrendered were still killed, Stenwold noticed, a hundred grievances and revenges being written out in blood. There was nothing he could do about it, and this was hardly a vice found only beneath the waters.
‘Claeon!’ Aradocles called out again, and entered into the palace – making it his own even as he did so.
Claeon descended hurriedly, wondering just how long Pellectes’s incompetent defence would hold the bastards back. Time enough for an escape, perhaps, if an escape was possible. Out into the open sea, head off into the depths. Someone will take me in. Some Benthist train, some minor colony out there. Then I’ll raise a warband and I’ll come back here. I’ll have that boy’s head on a spear, I swear it!
The door ahead of him swung open at a touch, a little water gushing past his feet. The next door would take him into the ocean.
And yet he paused. There could be insurgents waiting just beyond, hanging in the water, staking out his private dock. After all, they knew about it – when Paladrya and that cursed land-kinden had been taken from his oubliette, it had been this way they had come to escape. This, his private egress into the sea, and it had been sullied by base freebooters and fleeing prisoners.
He paused then because, of course, this hatch only opened outwards and, in all the excitement about the prisoners’ exit, he had never considered how their rescuers had got in.
He reached his hands towards the hatch once more, but hesitated. What if there was somebody out there?
And in the trembling fastness of his mind he heard the mocking words: Oh, there’s nobody out here, Claeon. Nobody at all.
‘Arkeuthys?’ He spoke the name out loud, unable to stop himself.
Indeed. That familiar pressure, the great mind of the sea monster.
You betrayed me! Claeon sent back to it, agonized. Why?
The boy is persuasive, the giant octopus replied idly. Come out, Claeon. Come into my arms and let me finish this. Your head would make a valuable gift.
If you truly wanted to kill me, then you’d not have warned me, Claeon divined.
Perhaps that is the extent of my sentiment, came the murmured reply, like distant rocks falling. Ah, Claeon, we have had such times together, have we not? We have been partners in each other’s misdeeds.
But you betrayed me! Claeon insisted. You were always my other half. You took joy in the work I set you! Why throw that away now?
Arkeuthys chuckled, unrepentant. Well, I always thought that I had matched you in wickedness for wickedness, Claeon, but then the boy explained to me that I had just been loyal to the man everyone thought was the true Edmir, so I decided that I would rather be the other half of someone less demanding. It’s over, Claeon. Give up now. Perhaps the boy will just hang you in a cage as a warning, rather than peeling your skin off.
Claeon whimpered and backed away, clutching the heavy maul closer to him, and then he was bolting back up into the main body of the palace, clumsy in his armour, rebounding from the walls and staggering. He could hear the sounds of the fighting getting closer every moment, it seemed, and he had only one place to go.
The throne room, his sanctum, provided no shelter now, but where else was there for an Edmir to meet his end?
He stumbled through the passageways of his palace, all abandoned now – as he had been abandoned, save by those fools currently being butchered under the incompetent command of Pellectes. Littoralists! I should never have reached out my hand to them. This is all Pellectes’s fault! If he hadn’t had me kidnap the landsman… but then how would I have enticed Rosander to keep the peace for me, save by dangling the land before him like a dead fish?
And he burst into the throne room, seeing the seat of all his power and command, yet taking no joy from it.
His throne room had a door, though it was very rarely closed. Now he got his hands about the rim and hauled at it until the valve-like disc closed shut behind him.
But there was no way to seal it. This was no pressure door, such as led into the ocean. Aradocles could pry it open with ease. Claeon had always relied on guards to keep out his enemies. Now he had no guard but himself.
He thought he could hear shouting beyond the closed portal. Were the cursed boy and his landsmen even now approaching, calling out his name? Claeon whimpered with dread and hate, raising up his maul. Can it be done? Then I shall do it. With a great cry, he launched the weapon’s beaked head at the door’s hinge, striking away jagged fragments of stony stuff, compacting the hollow chambers of the coral. Shouting incoherently, he struck four, five times, smashing the substance of the frame, pressing it in on itself. Either the door would fall completely away, leaving him not greatly worse off than he was before, or…
Panting heavily he stepped back and looked at his handiwork. He had exposed the tombs of a thousand tiny creatures: the barren little cells that their brethren had sealed them up inside, when they were built over, when Hermatyre was being laid down. The door still held its place, though and, when he tugged at it, it was wedged solid. He had now sealed himself within his throne room.
‘What have you done?’ a woman’s voice demanded, and he whirled about with his maul raised. Stepping from behind the throne came Haelyn, his majordomo. The Sepia-kinden woman looked aghast.
‘My throne,’ Claeon snarled. ‘I am the Edmir, no other. He shall not have it. This is mine.’
‘And what will you do now?’ Haelyn asked incredulously. ‘Do you think they won’t find a way in? And if they don’t, will you starve? Or what?’
‘I will defy them to my last breath. If I die, I shall be the last Edmir of Hermatyre to sit here and rule.’
‘Claeon, listen to me,’ she insisted, ‘there is another way. For all that has gone wrong between you, Aradocles is your nephew still. If you beg it of him, he will be merciful.’
‘Why?’ The Edmir scowled at her. ‘Why mercy, when he has me by the throat? Mercy is not for Edmirs. Mercy is only for the weak.’
‘What other chance have you?’ she yelled at him, stepping down from the dais. ‘Listen to yourself,
