them. They were few, and more skilled at not being caught than catching other ships.’
‘Believe me, it’s different within the Satrapies,’ Teornis told him. ‘It’s just part of progress, of entering a larger world. Nothing is ever all good. My advice? Have your captains hire an escort frigate at Everis. Now we’re your friends, you may as well take advantage of us.’
Six
It was true, the sea-trade of Collegium had never been much since the revolution. The wealth of the Spiderlands – the art, the silk, the jewellery – travelled north up the silk road to Helleron, then by rail or air to Sarn and Collegium. There were few who would brave the short side of the triangle by sending a boat to hug the coast eastwards to Seldis and Siennis. In the Collegium harbour today there were twelve ships of any reasonable size, six of them boasting Spiderlands sails. The sea was an uncertain partner when it came to trading ventures, so the Beetle-kinden had turned their backs on it.
Normally vice would follow the money, but there was a certain kind of shadowy endeavour that thrived in places overlooked and left behind. There might be only two dozen large vessels here at the best of times, but there was a steady trickle of other boats in and out: fishers, small traders, venturers: smugglers, spies and malcontents. There were inevitably a few drinking dens near the docks where the flotsam of the coast could gather without official eyes upon them.
Despite the solid Beetle architecture of the exterior, this was a Spider-kinden dive that Stenwold had chosen. He had the impression it belonged far more to the average Spider-kinden than did all Teornis’s silks and fine wines. The room was dim, the windows shutting out the daylight, and the ceiling and walls were draped with folds of cloth that distorted the shapes of the three or four rooms inside. Men and women sat about on a cushion- strewn floor, conversing in low voices. Two serious Fly-kinden moved pieces about on a dark wooden board, playing some game that Stenwold could not identify in the poor light. Somewhere in the gloomy depths of the place, perhaps even in some cellar below, a musician was playing intricate strings.
He had not come here as Stenwold the Assembler, of course, so he was dressed in hard-wearing canvas and leather, a tramp artificer’s battered garments. A reinforced cap balanced on his head, complete with a scarf he could draw across his nose and mouth to ward off fumes, or to hide his face. He carried a sword at his belt, a burden he had not realized how much he missed. People did not normally go armed in Collegium and, now the war was done, the city guard paid close attention to those that did. Yet still, even Stenwold’s eyes could see that almost everyone here had a weapon close at hand.
Evil men and women, he thought, undermining the rule of law and civilization for mere profit. The scum of the Lowlands and beyond. He could not stave off a childish sense of excitement. He was not behind his desk or before the Assembly. He was doing his own work. He was investigating again. It was like old times.
He could have sent someone else to ask his questions for him. Ah, but who could I trust? In truth he meant, I am not so old yet that I cannot shift for myself once in a while.
The Spider-kinden proprietress was an old woman still clutching tenuously to the natural grace of her people. For a single bit, she passed Stenwold a bowl of something acrid and mostly clear.
‘New in, master? What’s your ship?’ she asked him.
‘I’m in the market,’ Stenwold replied carefully.
‘Buying or selling?’
‘Speculating, just now. If you’ve a patron interested in talking, I have an hour or so to spare without pressing obligations.’
She nodded. ‘Take yourself a seat, Master Speculator, and perhaps you’ll hear something to your advantage.’
Over the next hour Stenwold learned more than he could use of the petty doings of the docks. Had he been looking to invest in some unlicensed trade, he would have been doing very well indeed, but nothing shed light on Failwright’s notes, still less his disappearance. Once or twice he had the impression that, if he cast aside his feigned disinterest and asked a direct question, he might startle something useful from an informant, but he was keenly aware that he was feeling out an unfamiliar place blind. It was imperative that he did not send advance warning to those he was trying to uncover.
After that he tried a narrow room that lay practically on the waterfront, open to the sea, the interior a forest of columns. Here the Mantis-kinden refugees and expatriates came to talk and drink. They would sit with their backs to the wooden pillars, and plot the downfall of their enemies or tell each other stories of their great days, whilst a young man sang something low and mournful in the shadows towards the back. Stenwold spent an awkward time here, constantly feeling that blades were being unsheathed around the bulk of the column he had set his back to, and he learned very little.
He next tried a Fly-kinden taverna, where the front room was the only space he could physically fit into. The Flies were suspicious of him. Many of them came forward with information, but much of it was patently made up on the spot. They were a clannish lot and, as he left there, he had the sense of being followed. By this time it was getting dark, and he knew he should return home, but he was feeling out of sorts and frustrated by now, awash in a sea of useless information.
He proceeded on to a gambling den set up in what had once been part of the port offices. The Vekken fleet had burned the place out, the Port Authority had relocated, and nothing official had since been found to fill the gap. Now the rotten tooth of the building’s shell had been fitted out with tables and chairs, where men and women of many kinden were talking and dicing with one another. Stenwold made himself known to the proprietor, a slab- faced Beetle woman, then elbowed his way to a small table to see what his nets might bring in.
There were two petty smugglers whose boat had been sunk by a rival band, and who were obviously hoping Stenwold would invest in their meagre skills. There was a drunken old man whose rambling lies swooped between versions of events like the moths that skittered between the den’s three hanging lamps. Stenwold eventually disposed of the ancient opportunist by giving him some coins for another drink, then sank back into his chair, feeling disgusted with himself.
If this was Helleron, he thought, I’d know what I wanted by now. Of course, Helleron had no port, no piracy, no tradition of the romantic freebooter that had been fashionable in Stenwold’s youth. He remembered stories, songs, even plays. The pirate as anti-hero had enjoyed a brief vogue then amongst Collegium’s wealthy middle classes even as some five or six notorious corsairs, and perhaps a dozen anonymous ones, had savaged the previous generation’s coastal trade, turning from criminals to posthumous heroes in fifteen years. There had been a Mantis captain known as Arthemae with her scarred face; the ruthless Bloodfly who would slay every crewman left on his prize if one but lifted a knife against him; the Beetle Gavriel Knowless with his ship the Ironcoat…
A shadow fell over Stenwold, eclipsing the guttering light and cutting loose his reverie. He looked up to see a stout Beetle man leaning over his table.
‘Yes?’
‘Laem said you’re asking questions,’ the big Beetle said.
Stenwold shrugged. ‘And?’ He had already caught the tone: whatever his questions, this man was not here to answer them.
‘And you got money,’ the man said, reminding Stenwold briefly and inappropriately of a student trying to solve a logic problem. He readied himself.
‘Rich men shouldn’t come down here. About time you headed home, rich man. But leave your purse.’ The big Beetle put his hands on the table and loomed over Stenwold, who sighed.
A moment later he had grabbed his end of the table and whipped it upwards, as hard as he could. The other man lurched forward as his support was yanked away, and his face met the tabletop as it came up, with the crunching sound of a broken nose and dislodged teeth. Stenwold was up in a moment, giving himself space as everyone else in the den started and stared, some reaching for weapons, others just making sure they were well out of the way.
The big Beetle did not stir, so Stenwold guessed he had been knocked cold. Despite his station in life and his pretence at dignity, he could not help but feel a spark of pride.
A moment later two other men were moving towards him, another Beetle and a Kessen Ant-kinden, and
