from the waters, its slopes thick with tenacious greenery. In the centre of the bay was Kanateris, a town smeared up across two hundred yards of rock, and it was singing.
Stenwold heard some strange, shifting pattern of strings at the heart of it, switching and changing tone in a pattern that followed no laws of music he knew. Above it, though, he heard two score instruments adding their voices, and each in perfect pitch with the others, each following the strings and working out fantastic elaborations on the simple, erratic changes. The sound swelled and broadened as they neared, woodwind and strings and horns each succeeding the last, and being succeeded, but the tune evolving and evolving again from moment to moment. It became vast and intricate and sad and wise, that music, like nothing tame Collegiate ears had ever heard: music made for and by men and women who lived in a world older and more vibrant than his own.
Inapt music, he reflected. Collegium scholars might debate, but Stenwold knew for sure that, just as he knew how to fix a slipped gear or work a lock, so there were some things his own life would never quite encompass. He did not have to believe in magic to sense swathes of life that he would never truly enter. Even as Gude and the crew could move with the sea, and handle a sail with an instinct that no Apt mariner could quite match, so too was this astonishing lift and crescendo of music, that washed over him and through him, belittled him and humbled him, and spoke in a hundred voices, only a dozen of which he could understand. He felt something catch in his heart, catch and then pass on, as if to say, I have moved you: I hold you in the palm of my hand, and yet you cannot hear me, not truly.
As the Tidenfree tacked back again, the music reached its utmost, the notes hanging in the air over the island like a vast, invisible cloud. Then it began dying away, even as the sails were being furled, even as a low galley ploughed out to meet them and pilot them the last stretch of the way. Stenwold realized that the last of the underlying strings had gone, and from that cue the other musicians ceased one by one, each one drawing their line of the symphony to its conclusion. He was now close enough to see a few musicians up on the rooftops, packing away their instruments, making ready to start the day.
Even Laszlo had fallen silent in the face of that, and his voice held some last trace of reverence although, Apt as he was, he too was denied the music’s full breadth. ‘They string a couple of harps up, either side of the bay,’ he explained. ‘When the wind catches them, they sing and, if you’ve the ear for it, you can tell what the day’s weather will be, just from the pitch and sound. Of course, after a while people began playing along. They love their music, the Spiders, and any musician who’s particularly good can find herself a patron that way. So it got more and more, I reckon, until every morning most Spider ports greet the dawn like that. Quite something, isn’t it?’
Stenwold didn’t trust himself to speak.
‘The Spiders have a special name for your kinden,’ Laszlo added. ‘They call you the “noisy, silent people”.’
Still half-lost in the music’s last fading echoes, Stenwold nodded. ‘They may have a point.’ For a moment he and Laszlo stayed silent in the bows, as the oarsmen of the galley hauled away at the sweeps to bring the Tidenfree into dock. They were chained to their oars, Stenwold noted grimly, but then he should not be surprised at that.
Looking from the toiling rowers on the galley to the town itself, he found his eye being led up and up. Kanateris was just strewn up the mountainside, as though all the buildings had been originally heaped at the top and left to distribute themselves all the way to the waterline.
Seeing the direction of his gaze, Laszlo put in, ‘So, you can’t fly then?’
‘No.’
‘Can you do that trick where you climb up the sheer walls?’
‘Not that either. Never an Art I thought I’d have much use for.’
‘Splice me, Ma’rMaker, but what can you do?’ the Fly exclaimed.
‘Tread up stairs for as long as it takes.’ He gave a brief laugh. He was remembering Myna, which had also been a stepped city, albeit of a kinder gradient. He recalled the mad flight from the invading Wasps so long ago, how Tisamon had hauled and bullied him up step after step. If only I could have predicted what I’d face, one day, I’d not have complained.
‘Listen up!’ came Tomasso’s voice from the stern. The Tidenfree was now at one of the spindly piers that Kanateris extended into the water like long, rickety legs. Two of the crew were tying up, and their chief had just thrown a few coins down to the tug galley. Now he had his arms clasped behind his back, surveying his followers and looking every bit the pirate captain. When he had their attention, he went on: ‘Laszlo, Piera, you two and I will take our passenger to where he might learn what he needs to know. For the rest of you, nobody goes ashore. I want all hands waiting to take us away from here quickly, just in case. I don’t recognize most of the sails here.’
He met Stenwold amidships, where a plank had been put out to reach the pier. ‘Master Maker, perhaps you should go arm yourself fully?’
‘Three or four weapons is this season’s Kanaterese fashion,’ Laszlo added.
Stenwold nodded and was halfway to the hatch just as Despard appeared, staggering under the burden of his piercer.
‘I took the liberty,’ she grunted, proffering it with difficulty. The hefty, four-barrelled thing was almost as big as she was.
‘You certainly did,’ he agreed. He lifted it away from her to reveal a grin almost as big as Laszlo’s.
‘It’s a beauty,’ she announced, though it was clear that neither Tomasso nor Laszlo were overly sure of what it was. ‘Marlwright-Verwick design, isn’t it?’
I never met an artificer but they loved explosive weapons, Stenwold considered. ‘You know more than me, anyway,’ he remarked. She had loaded it well, he saw, for the four javelin-like bolts were neatly placed. He rested the piercer on his shoulder, thinking it would be a strange thing to walk into a town like this, sword, piercer and miniature snapbow. He felt like a brigand. Still, Tomasso had two long knives and a handful of throwing blades stashed in his belt, and Laszlo had armed himself with a bladed hook on the end of a rope – a Fly weapon that Stenwold had no fond memories of.
Piera turned out to be a sullen-looking Fly girl wearing a corselet of leather and chitin scales. She had a strung shortbow straining over one shoulder, and a fistful of stubby arrows thrust into one of her tall boots. A jagged scar across her forehead said that she was no stranger to a brawl.
‘Don’t we look the fearsome raiders,’ Tomasso declared. ‘Come on, Master Maker, let’s find you your answers.’ And he led the way to shore, over the timbers of the pier that creaked alarmingly when Stenwold followed.
‘Why no shore leave, chief?’ Laszlo asked as they set foot on to the brief strip of grey sand that served Kanateris as a beach.
‘Fern said “Old Friends” when I asked her about the future,’ Tomasso revealed. Seeing Stenwold’s look he grimaced. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t look to divination if we were off Collegium’s coast, Master Maker, but here in the Spider- lands I’ve learned to trust it. In this part of the world there’s scarce a ship’s captain that’ll put out to sea without a fortune teller’s seal on it.’
There had been a brief bustle about the piers themselves, as the early risers from two dozen craft of around the Tidenfree’s size began stretching and yawning and calling lazy insults to one another. The streets themselves, steep tiers of uneven steps that Stenwold trod carefully, seemed mostly deserted. What he had at first taken for buildings were mostly little more than booths and shacks: cloth over timbers that were set into the sheer rock. Each was covered up with an identical grey screen that billowed slightly in the dawn breeze. Those few locals that were out so early looked ragged and dirty, obviously those who could not even boast a roof of canvas for the night. Still, they were Spider-kinden mostly, and that drew stares from Stenwold. Back in Collegium the least of the Spiders graciously deigned to pose as equals with College masters and town magnates. Now he saw why there were so many of their kind scattered across the Lowlands, away from their homelands. Here were Spiders of no family or import, the lowest and the meanest. What nearly broke the heart was that they were still beautiful, men and women both. They stood there in their tatters with their grimy, exposed skin, and he saw beggars that would have provided a graceful ornament to any Collegium Assembler’s arm. When they caught and held his gaze he guessed that begging was not their only source of income. But, then, Collegium morality has never applied to the Spiders.
Something stirred near his foot and he jumped back, as hairy, spindly legs abruptly hooked up under one of
