beer jug off Laszlo. She wore a leather cuirass studded with chips of chitin, and bracers of bronze-inlaid wood cut to let her arm-spines stand free. To one side of her belt were two short blades, narrow as rapiers but no longer than shortswords. They had guards that hooked back down their hilts in a clutch of jagged spurs.
Stenwold produced the brief note he had received from the messengers. ‘Yours?’ he asked.
Her eyes barely glanced at it. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘And you are…?’
‘Danaen,’ she said. He knew her by reputation, by notoriety. It was what he had been looking for. The Mantids of Felyal had not been good neighbours always. The Collegium-spawned logging towns at the edge of the Felyal had been profitable, but they had sent tales back with the lumber: fights, people disappearing. Every so often some pedlar would go into the woods and not come back, or a merchant who assumed too much would be found with his throat cut. Sometimes, once every decade perhaps, things would go bad and the Felyen would close their borders for a month or so. It was part of the trade.
That was the least of it, of course. Longships from Felyal plied the waves between their own treeline and the isle of Parosyal, and they were jealous of their seas. Every so often they would come out in force, and then the ships of Kes or Collegium would have to take care, and keep some goods back ready to appease them. Of course the Mantids’ real targets had been Spider-kinden merchantmen. Whenever the raiding days came upon them, brought on by some irregular and inscrutable calendar all their own, no Spider-kinden was safe on the seas.
That was all in the history books now, even if the ink was still not dry. Felyal was no more, and the rebuilding was like to take generations the way the Mantis-kinden went about things. The Imperial Second Army had scythed down the flower of the Felyen warriors, burned out their holds, and driven them like chaff until many of the survivors came to Collegium. They had fought the Wasps with a will, loosing their long arrows from the walls and killing the Imperial soldiers in the air, but now that it was peace they were a mutinous and violent minority kicking their heels in the poorer areas of the city, always on the point of drawing a blade.
Danaen had been a longship captain, back in the day. She had done some little trading down the coast, but her name was spoken of as a raider – another kind of pirate. I am in good company here today. Most importantly, a woman like Danaen could be trusted in one thing: she would be no friend to the Spider-kinden or to the Aldanrael. They had not bought her, could not buy her: rich as they were, they had not the currency. She was just what Stenwold needed but, looking on her ravaged features, he found he feared her. Mantis-kinden were unpredictable, quick to take offence and just as quick to kill over it. She is not Tisamon, I must remember.
‘To business, then,’ he said. He met Danaen’s cool, slightly contemptuous gaze. ‘How many followers do you have who would sail with you?’
She shrugged. ‘Who can say? It has been too long since they were called upon, perhaps – too long since the black-and-gold burned our ships. Some have taken the coin of your merchants. Some have gone to the Ant city, to be their scouts for when the Empire comes again. The old ways are dead, Beetle.’
Perhaps we can breathe life into them yet. Stenwold did not say it, though. He felt profoundly uncomfortable at using one such as Danaen. It was not that he did not like the Mantis-kinden, but they understood their honour far more than they would ever understand such things as diplomacy or necessity. ‘You’ll not need your own ship for this,’ he said. ‘I want Collegiate ships protected from piracy. Particular Collegiate ships.’
Her lip curled into a sneer. ‘So, you are just one more merchant offering your gold.’ Still, she made no move to go.
‘No.’ He gathered himself. ‘I do not want you striding about deck, waving flags and frightening them off. I will have your people below decks and hidden. Only when the ship is boarded, if it is, will you make yourselves known.’
Something had come alive in her expression. ‘And fall upon them?’
‘Take their ship, if you can. Force a surrender – a surrender – if possible. Find proof as to who gave them the orders, whose is the ship. You understand me?’
‘We fight,’ she said.
‘You will be under the command of Tomasso here or whoever he designates,’ Stenwold told her sternly. ‘This is not blood for blood’s sake. I must know the truth.’ And I will not mention the Spiders, not yet. I don’t want your people believing they have my licence to gut every Spider-kinden in Collegium. ‘Answer me, Danaen.’
He could almost feel her will bucking against him, but he held her gaze placidly. It was she, in the end, who glanced away. ‘I will obey the Fly-kinden, if that is your wish. If our enemies throw down their arms, we will spare them.’
‘Whoever they are?’
She looked at him again, lips twisted. ‘Do you wish me to sign one of your papers? Which ship are we to sail on?’
‘Ah well, there’s the question.’ Stenwold’s time had so far been spent in drawing up a mental picture of the vessels that had been the pirates’ prey: a picture based on cargo, on ownership, on the make-up of the merchants and investors behind the voyage. He had isolated a few vessels sailing within the tenday which would make a tempting target. And, yet, it’s plain that whoever is behind this, the Aldanrael or not, will be keeping their eyes on the docks. They are well-informed, as Failwright’s figures show. So, then, will they not notice a score of Mantis marines embarking, and will they not then mark that ship down as one to avoid?
‘You will board Tomasso’s Tidenfree,’ Stenwold instructed. ‘Tomasso will then rendezvous with the vessel I nominate. The captain of that ship will receive a sealed letter from me, explaining that I have paid for some added security for his trip. Believe me, every shipping magnate and consortium is very aware of the dangers, and I hope that my name will be sufficient to convince them to take you. From then… well, it’s always possible you’ll get a very pleasant voyage to Kes and back, but if not, you’ll be ready.’
‘We will,’ she agreed. In her mind she was sharpening her swords already.
‘Three Centrals a man for the voyage. Five Centrals bonus each if the ship’s attacked. Another five each if I get the proof I want.’
Mantis-kinden did not haggle, nor were they much for the value of money. She nodded without comment.
‘We’ll get ready to sail, then,’ Tomasso stated, standing. Danaen was abruptly on her feet as well.
‘I shall gather my warriors,’ she declared. ‘It will be good to smell blood and the sea again.’
She left through the fallback hatch in the ceiling, a flutter of wings and then a slam of wood. What price incorruptibility? Stenwold asked himself, and not for the first time.
There was a bright summer sun in the gardens of the Amphiophos. A Beetle woman in Assembler’s robes was entertaining a youth half her age, waited on by a pair of servants with wine and figs imported from the Silk Road cities. Arianna watched them sourly, sitting on her own in the greenery. The Beetles were not great gardeners, she decided. When they had set out to make this city theirs, those centuries ago after the revolution, they had been concerned with more practical matters. The Amphiophos, like some parts of the College and a few other buildings, was left over from the city’s former masters, though, and the Moths had possessed an eye for beauty. Even though the place was more ordered now, and though there was a mechanical sundial that chimed the hour, and some fountains recently put in, to the Inapt mind the gardens were still a restful place. Except that she could not relax.
I did everything I could to arouse his suspicions, she thought. Everything but actually tell him. When Stenwold had come back from his voyage, from wherever it had taken him, Arianna had been nervous, unsure of herself and of their continuing closeness. When he had lain with her, she had clutched at him like a desperate woman, as she had when they had first come together. Surely he had seen the parallel: the way she had been when she was a Rekef deserter who lived only by his graces, and fought the Vekken alongside him because her life was inextricably reliant on his own. But, no, there had been no hint of suspicion in his eyes.
I asked almost nothing. Surely he was suspicious that I did not even ask where he had been. She had been denying herself temptation. If she had heard something of any significance, then it would have dragged her down – down towards the next betrayal in a life that was a string of them, like pearls in a necklace. She had passed over the subject of his absence as though he had simply stepped out to order wine and victuals. Stenwold the Spymaster, surely that omission spoke to you?
And it had not. If anything, Stenwold had simply been grateful not to have to explain himself, and that was all. He bumbled on his way, like a Beetle did, engrossed only in his own business while a world of meaning and subtlety passed by above his head. How can he not see where I am? That I am on the brink? Does he want me to
