here?’
‘A very fair question, but the answer lies below the waves and not above it,’ the Spider replied.
‘We were snatched from our ship by your sea monster,’ Stenwold explained, unable to keep a shudder from his voice. Even to think of that moment, the creature’s arm coiled about his leg, the sudden lurch, the waters closing over his head…
‘But I see this is not some prison made especially for landsmen, then,’ Teornis intervened brightly. ‘You are a native yourself, I perceive. Are the sea-kinden so very law-abiding that you are their one criminal? What are your circumstances, that you must endure our company?’
Stenwold could make her out more clearly now. She looked very pale against the surrounding gloom, the sallow lights catching her skin. Like all the sea-people she wore very little, just a kilt and a cloth pulled about her breasts. Her appearance was gaunt, and the way she held herself showed a woman hurt and vulnerable.
‘This is the Edmir’s own oubliette,’ she pronounced. ‘These spaces are reserved for those valuable enough to keep, and too dangerous to ever let loose. I am here because I am a traitor to the Edmir, and yet
… and yet he has not steeled himself to kill me.’
‘This Edmir, he’s your lord, is he? The ruler of this place?’ Teornis pressed, and Stenwold had to strain to see her nod. The Spider continued, ‘And what is this place? What is it called? If it is no cave, then what is it?’
‘This is the colony of Hermatyre,’ she told them, obviously considering the words self-explanatory.
‘A town?’ Teornis asked and, when she did not respond, ‘There are many people in this colony of yours?’
‘Oh, thousands,’ she told them. ‘Hermatyre is the largest of all the colonies, and that’s not counting the Benthist trains.’
‘Well, who’d count them?’ said Teornis drily, still chipping away at his bafflement. ‘Excuse us for these questions, but we find ourselves strangers and prisoners in a very hostile place, and you are the first person who has had pleasant words for us.’
‘Why are you to blame for us being here?’ broke in Stenwold, perhaps impoliticly. ‘Or do you take that back now, now that we are none of your… Aradoces, or whatever the name is.’
‘I am to blame,’ she confirmed sadly. ‘It was I who turned the Edmir’s eyes towards the land. I have endangered not only you but all your kinden…’ She stopped fearfully, and at that point Stenwold heard movement above. Before his eyes, Paladrya faded, her pale skin greying until, lost in the dimness, she had blended with the stone around her. What good can it do her, he wondered, since she is still in her cell? He guessed this hiding Art was pure reflex, her last attempt at defence, slipping beneath the notice of her captors so as to escape one more beating, or worse.
A knot of the sea-kinden had entered the room from above and were peering down at them through the gratings: four men and a woman, gold ornamentation glittering in the sick light against fish-white skin and lustrous dark hair. ‘Land-kinden,’ one of the men called.
‘We hear you,’ Teornis said.
‘You are the leader here?’ they asked him.
‘No one else is.’ Teornis risked a glance at Stenwold, while squaring his shoulders. The unspoken thought was there: I will meet this, whatever they intend. Stenwold wondered whether the thought of poor Arianna’s fate lay behind the man’s bravery, and he was seeking to make amends.
The sea-kinden hauled up the stone grille, and Stenwold realized that nothing but the hatch’s own weight kept it in place: no locks or latches. He wondered if he might be able to shoulder it open, if he managed to climb up there. The grille looked like a four-inch thickness of stone, and must be a prodigious weight, but surely not impossible to shift.
Teornis held his arms up towards the gap, and they could just reach down to take hold of his wrists and haul him out, his boots kicking at the sides to stop him being scraped against the stone. He stood in their midst like some lord, with nothing of the captive about him, and for a moment they hung back a little uncertainly. Then their spokesman smacked him across the side of the head, and another shoved him in the back, making him stagger, and they jeered at him as they manhandled him out of sight.
Stenwold hoped the Spider’s considerable resourcefulness would help him survive whatever was to come. But, of course, he is Teornis of the Aldanrael, so he’ll come back on a litter carried by a dozen virgins. The sentiments rang hollow, though, and Teornis, his enemy of only the day before, had now become one of the most familiar points in Stenwold’s world.
Laszlo let out a long sigh. ‘And then there were two, Ma’rMaker. I’m of a mind to go scout out this Hermitty place, before they drag me off as well.’
Stenwold made a wry face. ‘Sounds like a grand plan, Laszlo. Perhaps I’ll go with you once I’ve picked up some Mole Cricket Art and can walk through walls or something.’
‘Fly-kinden Art beats all,’ Laszlo announced. ‘But we were talking to the lady. Hey, lady, you still there?’
Stenwold was watching for it now, and saw how Paladrya now paled and shaded gradually from stone- colours to the pallid white that served these sea-kinden for skin tone. It was nothing like the Art Danaen had used to become so very still that Stenwold had overlooked her: this was simply a camouflaging, a blending of shades.
‘I am here,’ she told them.
‘What will happen to Teornis?’ Stenwold demanded of her.
She looked downwards. ‘I cannot say, for I do not know what they want, of you. Possibly they will torture him, if the Edmir is so inclined, or if they think that he knows anything of Aradocles.’
‘We know nothing of him – assuming it’s even a him,’ Stenwold told her. ‘Why should we?’
‘Because, some years ago, I took him to the shore and sent him away on to your land, to escape the Edmir. I had hoped he would come back, perhaps with an army of land-kinden, but I have heard nothing. I hoped that you… that he had sent you here.’
Stenwold shook his head wearily. Other people’s problems, he thought, as though I don’t have enough of my own.
‘Lady, if I walked out from here, what would I see?’ Laszlo interrupted.
‘We are beneath the Edmir’s palace,’ she told him. ‘There are many tunnels down here, and quarters for his most trusted servants and guards, and rooms for his pleasures.’ There was a catch in her voice on that last word. Torture, Stenwold at once surmised, remembering her mention of it, and then he looked at Paladrya again and guessed that she had undergone her share of that treatment as well.
‘And then?’ Laszlo pressed her eagerly.
Looking at him, the ghost of a fond smile appeared on her face. ‘And then, small one, you would come to the main halls of the palace, and from there it would be but a step to the Cathedra Edmir. And from there to anywhere in Hermatyre that you might choose, if you but knew anywhere – or anyone.’
Laszlo nodded, obviously seriously considering this further. ‘Well since our hosts have seen fit to give me a cloak, how much would I stand out, up there? I saw a few fellows around my size, when we looked out over the market or whatever you had there.’
‘You might be taken for a Kerebroi child, perhaps, or one of the Smallclaw-kinden,’ Paladrya guessed. ‘Although you have hair, and none of the Onychoi do.’
Stenwold could only blink at these unfamiliar terms, but Laszlo shrugged casually.
‘I’ll try and keep my head covered,’ he said. ‘Now, let’s see about this grating.’
Stenwold folded his arms, and watched as Laszlo’s wings flared in the dimness, and took him to the top of his own cell, until he was clinging to the grille.
He heard Paladrya gasp in astonishment ‘That is your Art?’ she said in awe. ‘But that is amazing, impossible…’
‘Lady, that’s just flying,’ Laszlo replied offhandedly. ‘Still, I reckon your fellows up there wouldn’t expect me to end up at this end of the bottle.’ He had twisted himself now until he had his feet firmly anchored against the wall, his shoulders pressed to the grille. For a moment he paused, breathing heavily, then his wings flared and flickered, spread out flat against the grating, and he used all their upward force to push at it.
It did not move. He might as well have been trying to pry the stone of the bars apart.
Laszlo collapsed back to the cell’s floor with an expression of astonishment. ‘Well, I thought I’d at least shift it a bit. How much can it weigh?’ he muttered.
