they held that degree of loyalty to their ostensible employer.
She scowled at him again but, at a gesture from her, the few surviving pirates were soon left, kneeling and unarmed, but alive. At that point the doors to the rear cabins were thrown open. The Very Blade had a high rearcastle to it, but nobody had issued from it during the fight, so Laszlo had assumed it was deserted. Now four more pirates, Spiders all, dashed out with drawn rapier, not on the attack but ready to defend themselves. In their wake came…
Laszlo let out a sharp breath at the sight of her. She was tall and elegant, immaculately dressed in a neatly tailored hauberk of hide, chitin and silk armour. Her shirt and breeches were of striking red, and there were rings aplenty on her hands. The Spider-kinden master of the vessel, surely, and she stared around at the mob of Mantids, not even deigning to draw her rapier.
‘What is this?’ Her voice cut clear and crisp through the confusion, and everyone fell silent for it. Danaen snarled and moved in on her, blades extended in a fighter’s crouch. The Spider woman eyed her disdainfully. ‘What is this rabble that comes to infest my ship?’ she demanded. ‘How dare you?’
Laszlo could sense her Art radiating off her in waves, blazing away at all around her: command, dread and the crushing hammer of her authority. He saw Danaen’s advance falter, the Mantis hunching behind her swords as though warding off a physical blow. Laszlo had never before witnessed a bona fide Spider-kinden Arista unleashing all of her Art and will.
‘Leave this ship while you still can,’ the Spider snapped and, incredibly, Danaen took a backwards step. Laszlo felt any words freeze in his throat. This single woman was facing down the entire Mantis boarding party.
Or not the entire party.
She began, ‘If you-’ and then pitched backwards so fast that only later did Laszlo register the long-shafted arrow that had struck her. Danaen gave a yell of fury and launched into the dead woman’s bodyguards, her own people following right on her heels.
That was the end of it. Laszlo had some of Jaclen’s crew secure the few survivors aboard the Migrating Home, whilst Danaen’s people continued scouring the Blade belowdecks for any other latecomers. They obviously considered it a great victory, but Laszlo had long noted that Mantis-kinden seemed to take no great joy from these events once the killing was done. They would sing and drink, he knew, but mostly to commemorate their own fallen. The kinden had made melancholy into a national pastime, and he found them incomprehensible. The Mantids had left the Spider-kinden dead out on the Blade’s decks, apparently as a sign of disrespect. The other fallen, whether their own or the balance of the pirate crew, they pitched into the sea for the crabs and fish to eat their fill of, after stripping them of anything worth taking. By the time Laszlo began his own search of the vessel, the Mantids were standing about, looking grim and private, as though resentful that there had not been more of a fight.
He entered into the aft cabins, where the Arista had emerged from, and it was not hard to identify which was hers. She had not stinted on her finery, even on this rough vessel, for the walls were draped in coloured silks, and there was a padded couch and a writing desk. He rooted around for a short space of time, collecting some coins and a fistful of papers. There were several documents strewn about, and the scroll tacked out onto the desk was evidently a work half-finished, but none of it revealed a comprehensible word. Each page bore a complex, coloured pattern of interlocking shapes, as though the Spider captain had been engaged in some peculiarly styled abstract art.
Laszlo nodded glumly. This was Spider code, he knew from experience, and impenetrable unless one knew the secret of it. Because, as a kinden, they were their own worst enemies and fiercest rivals, Spiders usually went to extremes of complexity in disguising their secrets. Why, they said that Spider-kinden pattern encryptions were so fiendish that even they themselves struggled with it…
He paused, frowning at the incomplete missive spread out on the desk. He was no spy, but he imagined that one would have to be extremely skilled just to compose something like that in one’s head. Of course, Spiders as a whole were a subtle lot, but the woman who had ventured forth from this cabin had seemed more forthright than most. ..
And there it was. His heart leapt with glee when he noticed it. There was a little scrap of parchment pinned alongside the coded message she had been working on, and there, in absently elegant handwriting, was the original: the words that she had been painstakingly encoding, to be destroyed, in some never-to-come future, after she was done.
My dearest Aderonis, Laszlo read, I am conceiving a loathing for this business. I would rather stay with you and let these villains have their way but, without my reminding them of the family’s direct authority, who knows what they would do? Not what was demanded of them, certainly. Bide well, then, and know that I do think of you, despite the water that lies between us. It will take more than tides and hard weather to keep me away from you.
He stopped reading. It had, indeed, taken more than that, but a boatload of Mantis raiders could put a hole through anybody’s plans. He wondered who Aderonis was, and what he would think when no word came, and then when word finally did come. The family’s direct authority, he thought unhappily. No mistaking the meaning of that. You did it, Master Maker, he considered. You put one over on the Spider-kinden. I just hope you feel happy with yourself after they find out you killed one of their Aristoi. Killing a tattered renegade like Ebris of the Ganbrodiel would raise no great waves, but a female of the family Aldanrael… Could I have stopped the Mantis-kinden? He had not even known that a bow was being drawn on the woman until after the arrow had hit its mark.
I think the war has just started.
He stowed the papers inside his jerkin and flitted back out for the decks. Jaclen could continue to Everis, but Laszlo and Danaen’s people would be steering the Very Blade back towards Collegium, because Stenwold Maker needed to hear of this as soon as possible.
Thirteen
The name hung in the air after Stenwold had spoken it: Aldanrael. A name grown familiar to the folk of Collegium, a name that spoke of friendship and rescue in dark days. He did not rush the silence but looked from face to face, those few there with him in his study: Jodry Drillen, of course, who was looking as though he had just been stabbed; brooding, bearded Tomasso, keeping his peace before the Speaker; Laszlo and the Mantis, Danaen, as witnesses; the reliably solid figure of Elder Padstock, Chief Officer of the Maker’s Own company; and Arianna.
She stood behind his chair, her hands on his shoulders. Those hands had twitched as he named the Spider house, and he had merely thought, She understands what this means, crossing swords with the Aristoi.
‘Can… can you be sure, though?’ Jodry managed at last. ‘Towards the Spiderlands, things are seldom clear, they say… don’t they?’
‘Things have been well concealed from us for over a year, if Failwright’s notes are to be believed,’ Stenwold replied. ‘We have accomplished that rarest of achievements: we have stolen a march over the Spider-kinden. They did not know we were warned of them until Danaen’s people hacked down their hirelings. There was a Spider- kinden master of the ship that Danaen sailed into harbour, and she left papers.’ Stenwold gave a half-smile. ‘The Aldanrael is named.’
‘Stenwold,’ Jodry almost whispered. ‘Stenwold, we can’t… you know what this means. There must be another way. You are bringing us to war.’
‘No!’ Stenwold snapped. ‘That’s exactly the rumour that Teornis will stir up. That is the muttering that people like Helmess Broiler will raise, who bear neither of us any fond feelings. They will say, “There goes old Maker, desperate for another war so he can play soldier again.” I did not bring us to this, Jodry. I have uncovered a plot, a hidden war against our city.’
‘Then what are you proposing?’ Jodry demanded.
‘We confront them. We expose what we have discovered, and call their bluff. I’d hope they’d back down, blame everything on someone else, and give up whatever scheme it is that they’re about. Either that or we’ll exchange the Aldanrael for some other house less interested in our shipping. You know how the Aristoi families
