they both had drawn swords. His pride evaporated swiftly. Even thugs have friends. He had his own blade out, waiting for them, his other hand reaching into his tunic. I feel I’m about to attract a little too much attention. His hand inside his coat touched the butt of his other weapon.
He almost missed the little clack of the crossbow, but one of the men was abruptly down on one knee, swearing and tugging at the bolt through his thigh. The Ant whirled, looking for the archer, and a brief shape flitted past his head with a sound like a slap, leaving him reeling drunkenly. His attacker was a young Fly-kinden man, who touched down on a table almost within arm’s reach of him. He had a cudgel in one hand and a knife in the other.
‘It’s chucking-out time,’ the Fly announced. The Kessen stared at him, one hand to his head, sword weighing in his hand. Another Fly, a woman, stepped out from around the table with a little under-and-over crossbow. It would not have done much against a suit of armour, but the Ant-kinden wore nothing but a leather jerkin and breeches.
‘Take him,’ the Fly woman ordered, ‘and clear off.’
The Ant came to the right decision, hauling up his protesting friend and dragging him, limping, out the door. The Fly man hopped to the ground, inspecting the man that Stenwold had knocked out.
‘Backswimmer’s lads,’ he said.
‘He always did hire idiots,’ added the woman. She sounded a little better educated than her companion, or than most of the people Stenwold had been speaking to all day.
The Fly man stepped close to Stenwold, who regarding him cautiously, sword still in hand. ‘Perhaps you should come with us,’ the little man said.
‘And why would I want to do that?’ Stenwold asked. The woman was meanwhile keeping an eye on the den’s other patrons, who were making a grand show of ignoring everything. Her crossbow was not pointed at Stenwold, which was a good sign at least.
‘You have questions, don’t you? Or is this just a way for you to spend an idle afternoon?’ the Fly man inquired, adding, with just a touch too much drama, ‘Master Maker?’
It was said quietly enough not to carry, but Stenwold twitched on hearing it. So, I don’t play the old game as well as I used to, then. And am I surprised, here in my own town? Even in this dive I’m a public figure.
‘I’ll keep my sword,’ he said heavily.
The Fly shrugged. ‘However you like. But Backswim-mer’ll send a few lads out here as soon as he hears, just to hammer out the dent in his pride. So perhaps we should taste our legs, now, Master.’
He gave a grin and then sauntered away, with Stenwold following uncertainly in tow. The woman rested the crossbow on her shoulder, the great huntress in miniature, and then followed them outside.
In the old days, the sea had meant rather more to Collegium, not merely for trade but for the mysterious rituals and mummery that the city founders had placed such reliance on. The Moth-kinden had built this city and named it Pathis, or rather they had ordered their slaves the Beetle-kinden to lay stone on stone, according to their plan, but all their precognition had not foreseen the revolution of the Apt, which had cast them down from their power and preeminence, and sent them to live like hermits in their distant mountain retreats.
They had chosen well when siting their city, though. Where Collegium stood, the land fell shallowly down towards the sea, where the waters then possessed draft enough for merchantmen to dock. Down the coast from Collegium, the borders between land and sea became starker. There was no good shoreline anchorage for any ship of size, but the coast offered up a warren of little coves, inaccessible beaches, caves, a patchwork of cliffs and shallow bays most of the way to Kes.
This was one such meagre anchorage, a mere half-mile east of Collegium: a crescent of gravel and sand sheltered by the tall, uneven walls of rock that the sea ate away in slow bites at its leisure. The rock was layered in slightly slanted bands: pale, dark red, pink, pale, black, each stripe taller than a man. Helmess Broiler had read a theory once, about a great disaster which had happened an unthinkably long time ago, in which the Lowlands had slumped away from what was now the Commonweal, and where a great wedge of land had simply disappeared into the sea, shearing across the layers of bedrock to leave strata like this exposed forever more. He did not have an opinion on this notion. Events that had happened so very long ago seemed unlikely to encroach on his life, one way or another.
Elytrya clung to his arm, for it was cold tonight: the wind off the sea having nowhere to go save to prowl backwards and forwards about the cove. She did not like the chill, he knew, and even in Collegium’s mild winters she complained about it, dressing up in as many layers as she could wear. Now she had two woollen cloaks on, and still she shivered. Nonetheless, she had insisted on coming here. She had ordered the boatman to return for them in three hours, and stay out of sight until that time, on pain of forfeiting payment. The man had given Helmess a knowing leer as he resumed his rowing. A liaison, the old Assembler and his young Spider mistress? In truth it was a forbidding place for a tryst, but then Elytrya had business, not pleasure, in mind.
‘What are we waiting for?’ he asked. There was half a moon in the sky, and he saw no ships, lit or otherwise, casting shadows on the water. The air was clear of fliers, and he heard no engines.
‘Wait, dear one,’ she said, snuggling closer. Despite her shivering he could see her smiling. She had been planning this for a long time, he knew. He was to meet her allies at last. A moment later he felt her tense in his arms. Of course, her eyes were better in the dark than his. Or they would be if she were a Spider, which she’s not
…
‘Pass me the lamp,’ she said. He had to light it for her, for even the single steel igniter was beyond her, but when she had it in her hand she paced to within a few feet of the water’s edge, holding it before her.
And still no ships. Helmess listened for the slap of oars, the snap of a billowing sail. There was nothing to be heard.
Elytrya was retreating from the water. Where the lamplight caught her face, it showed her triumphant. But no one is coming, my dear, no one…
He thought he saw, in that same moment, a light within the ocean that was no reflection of the moon’s. As Elytrya backed towards him, he felt something jump inside him.
Ten feet out from where the waves lapped the shingle, shapes were breaking through the water. Helmess felt a lurch in his stomach, for all that he had halfway been expecting something like this. The seas broke, lapped back, broke again and fell away. A great carapace gleamed under moonlight, huge as a man, legs working nimbly beneath it to skitter up onto the strand. Helmess saw its raised eyes glitter above a flurry of mouthparts, and it raised to the sky a pair of pincers that could have torn steel.
Cinders and ashes, Helmess thought numbly, we’re about to be invaded sideways.
More shapes were following to left and right, as the great crab settled down on its underbelly, claws drawn in like a pugilist’s fists. He took them for yet more crustaceans, at first, but they were men. As massive as the crab, more so, but these walked ponderously on two legs, hulking shapes in all-encompassing plates of armour. Helmess sought for any sign of familiarity in them, and found none: in their slab-like mail they were as broad as they were tall, plodding out of the waves with a dreadful inexorability. Whatever they wore was not metal, he realized. The moonlight glinted on something more like the crab’s armour, but moulded to them in a way that mere reworked shell could not even approximate. One of them wore something paler, rougher and, as he approached, the others fell into a slow formation behind him, Helmess could hear the plates of his mail scratching together as he walked.
It can’t be, was all he thought. It’s impossible. How strong would a man have to be to…?
Elytrya stepped forward as the giant approached, and Helmess sensed a slight tremor within her. So this is her employer, is it? But Helmess could tell there was something more to it than that. A lifetime of unravelling other people’s connections told him that there was no leader here, just two lieutenants whose precise positioning was still in flux.
‘Rosander,’ she said, giving the middle syllable all the weight.
The helmed head nodded, seeming tiny between the great, mounded pauldrons. The man’s gauntlets were carved into forward-curving hooks reaching over his hands, and when he raised them, Helmess flinched back, though Elytrya stood her ground. She seemed like just a child, a toy, against the vast canvas of Rosander’s armoured breadth.
With surprising delicacy, the hands hidden under those claws pulled free the helmet. Revealed was a narrow, bald head, the skull ridged and braced beneath the skin as though to support the weight of the helm. The
