When Stenwold came to his senses, the world seemed unnaturally calm. The boards beneath him clung together still. He heard the wash of water, the creak of timber and rope and the sounds, surprisingly few, of the Tidenfree’s crew going about their business. After the Lash it seemed like another world.
The storm had been no brief squall, either, He had not realized, after they had the engine working again, and the ship was shouldering through the waves by main force, that they would have to keep at it hour after hour through the embattled seas. Night had come, and only the compass had kept their course through the darkness, the clouds that swallowed the moon, the wind and surging seas that dragged them this way and that. From his labouring post within the engine room, Stenwold had seen none of it, but he could see in his mind’s eye how tenuous was the path the Fly-kinden were treading. They relied on Fernaea to give them a course, using whatever doubtful tricks and sleights the Moth-kinden had taught her in their far mountain retreats. She called out, high over the storm, to Gude and her crew at the steering oar. Gude was Inapt, too, and Laszlo had claimed that the best seafarers all were, that they retained some instinctive connection with wave and weather that the Apt could not match. Still, for that very reason, Gude could not read the compass nor set a course by it. The ship’s second artificer had been clinging up there beside her, taking the readings from clock and compass rose, and relaying them in a manner that Gude and Fern could master. It was a lunatic’s dream, and the thought had loomed large in his mind throughout the night that it would only take one of these small mariners to misjudge, and the land would never again feel the tread of Master Stenwold Maker, nor even know his fate.
Still, some other part of him could not help but feel a grudging admiration. Fly-kinden, they’ll cheat and exploit anything, even the basic laws of nature.
He could not say for sure when the storm had finally abated, or when they had passed through it. He had been at the pump in the engine room, and the work that had seemed trivial at first had become crucial soon enough. Even with the hatches bolted down, enough water came in from above to swamp them. Despard was continually at the engine, hovering above it much of the time with utter concentration. Laszlo apparently knew just enough of the trade to act as the absolute last-ditch, stand-in, backup artificer, or at least enough to pass her the tools Despard cried out for as she made adjustments and small repairs, wings blurring here and there, while the engine laboured on.
There was no rest. Stenwold pumped away the water until his arms burned, and then he pumped some more. He had done the work of two Fly-kinden at a time, and he had carried on doing it all night. I may not fly. I may be huge and heavy and slow. I can work, though. Beetle-kinden won no sprints at the Collegium games, but give them a track long enough and they would be lumbering on when even the fleetest of their competitors had fallen.
Still, he was not young and his endurance had its limits. He could not say when he had reached these, for his memories had become fragmented by fatigue. He only knew that he was waking up now, feeling every part of him complain, feeling his arms scream at him for the abuse he had heaped on them. He was rousing from an exhausted sleep, who knew how long after, and the storm had passed.
He lay on the floor of the engine room, half curled protectively about the engine. He winced at that. Had something slipped a gear then he would have known about it the hard way. There was a slight pressure against his kidneys which he identified as Despard, fast asleep while sitting up, and using him as a broad pillow. He was loath to wake her but, now that he had returned to consciousness himself, every part of him that was crushed against the hard boards was letting him know about it. He shifted as carefully as he could, hoping he would be able to let her down gently, still sleeping. At the first movement, she twitched and gave a small cry, instantly on her feet – no, not her feet, but airborne for a moment, then coming down a yard away from him.
‘Beetles,’ she said, still half asleep, but in unmistakable tones of disdain. She yawned and stretched, grimacing. ‘Don’t like Beetles, as a rule. Big, clumsy bastards. You’re all right. Can find a use for you.’
Stenwold sat up slowly, regretting every inch of it. ‘That’s from the orphanage, then, that you don’t like us?’
He heard the tiny whisper of a knife clearing its sheath. Despard was in the air again, hovering inches above the deck, staring down at him. ‘How do you know…? What did I say?’
He looked sadly at the tiny knife she held, wondering what untold miseries he had just unwittingly brought back to life. ‘A Fly with a Beetle name? There’re only so many ways that can come about. A student of mine, a half-breed, he’s gone through life with a Fly name for the same reason. Not that he ever disliked Flies, to my knowledge.’
She touched down on the floor again, carefully putting the little blade away and seeming embarrassed by her reaction. ‘Only natural,’ she said. ‘After all, we’re much nicer, as everyone knows.’ Her bleak smile belied it. ‘Believe me, the wedding was the first good thing that happened to me in all my life.’
Stenwold frowned, still intent on the slow and painful business of getting to his feet. ‘Wedding?’
It took her a moment to catch his puzzlement. ‘Family, Maker. We’re all family here. That’s how the Bloodfly business works. That’s how you get a third-generation pirate like Tomasso. So, if someone can do something useful, like fix an engine, or like Fern’s charlatanry, then you get them hitched. Believe me, at the time it was a good deal.’
Stenwold, upright now, tried to stretch, calling on all the Art of his ancestors just to straighten his arms. ‘Who’s the lucky fellow?’ A thought struck him. ‘It’s not Laszlo, is it?’
Despard burst into a peal of incredulous laughter that utterly erased her earlier brooding, and then there came a voice from outside the room, ‘Please, Ma’rMaker, I have standards,’ and Laszlo himself slipped in. From his bright smile to his clean clothes there was no suggestion that he had actually been on the same vessel with them the previous night. He was almost painful to look at in his neatness. ‘You might want to come up on deck now, Ma’rMaker. We’re in sight of Kanateris.’
‘Already?’ Stenwold levered himself forward step by strained step.
‘Well, you don’t think we’d go through all that if it wasn’t quicker, do you?’ the Fly asked, hopping ahead of Stenwold, then up the steps and into the half-light.
They were under sail again, the crew buzzing about the rigging keeping everything shipshape, Stenwold assumed, whatever that meant. Off the port bow he saw land as a darker shadow against the lightening sky.
‘Dawn over the Bolas Islands,’ Laszlo proudly announced.
Stenwold glanced about, seeing Tomasso standing on the aft deck once more. Gude still had the oar, and Stenwold wondered if she ever tired, or whether she had taken the Lash in shifts along with her fellows. Of the more fragile Fernaea, Stenwold saw no sign, and he guessed that she was exhausted by her card-tricks throughout the storm.
‘And where might the Bolas Islands be?’ he asked them. ‘Except on the other side of the Lash, that is?’
‘The Strand,’ Laszlo said, ‘as the long coast of the Spiderlands is called, has an enormous bay bitten out of the middle of it. The biggest Spider cities are located there, and all the major houses have holdings scattered about that bay. It’s about as big across as… oh, say the distance from Collegium to Vek. And a bit more, maybe. Anyway, the line of this bay must continue on under the water, like it’s a big bowl on the seabed, because there are shoals you have to watch for and, around the rim, some little fingers of it stick up above the sea. That’s the Bolas Islands, and on the biggest of those is Kanateris.’
‘What is it? Some noble’s retreat?’
‘Oh they’d love that.’ Laszlo’s intolerable grin grew ever wider. ‘No, Kanateris is pirate country. All the seaborne scum of the Spiderlands ends up there eventually, either to buy or sell.’
‘Hmm.’ Stenwold went to lean on the rail, and found it too low, of course. He settled for resting a foot on it, holding on to one of the shrouds of the jib for balance. The wind was steady and the sea was calm enough as a result. ‘And the Spider nobles, they just put up with that, do they?’ He saw from the Fly’s face that he was being foolish to ask, even before Laszlo answered.
‘There’s not a noble house that doesn’t keep a few privateers on the books, that call themselves pirates. Everyone says how terrible that Kanateris exists, but nobody does anything about it. This is the Spiderlands, Ma’rMaker, and they’re awfully clever about everything they do.’
‘I suppose…’ Stenwold paused, frowning. ‘Do I hear… music?’
‘That you do,’ Laszlo confirmed.
It drifted towards them over the waters, as they neared the island and started cutting across the wind. At first he caught only tattered snatches of it, a melody and harmony he could not make out. Then they were past the island’s near point and tacking into the land-cupped harbour. The chief of the Bolas Islands was a mountain jutting
