confirmed. ‘I have men outside, waiting to escort him back.’
The man of Rosander’s kinden who had been with Chenni earlier was abruptly standing behind the newcomer, blotting out the light.
‘You’re sure the Edmir would not prefer that I keep him? It seems foolish for him to trust his prisons, if men like this can so easily walk out of them.’
Stenwold saw Haelyn’s skin flush and dance with nervous colours. ‘Alas,’ she said, keeping her chin high, looking Rosander straight in the eye, ‘I fear he would be most displeased with that.’ Displeased with me, was the meaning obvious in her bearing.
Stenwold glanced back at the Nauarch and thought he saw some sympathy register in that narrow face.
‘You are worth more than your master,’ the big man rumbled. ‘Take your prisoner. Inform Claeon that I will speak to all his charges soon. If not, then my train may become restless yet again, and there are more ways than one to make him “most displeased”.’
‘Thank you, O Nauarch,’ Haelyn replied, and Rosander pushed Stenwold, almost gently, towards her.
‘Your Edmir had better place more guards upon his oubliettes,’ Rosander commented. ‘For if another prisoner were to escape, we might start losing confidence in him.’
Haelyn looked hard at Stenwold, obviously seeing something as strange in him as he saw in all his current surroundings. Then she was heading carefully around the hulking warrior, and Stenwold felt he had no choice but to follow.
Twenty
When Stenwold was returned to the oubliette, the smashed grate had been replaced and the Edmir’s guards lowered him back in, under Haelyn’s watchful eye. Stenwold had noticed, while still up above, that their original quartet of warders had now been doubled. He wondered whether that would deter Rosander, should the man want another chat.
‘Where’s Teornis?’ was the first thing he asked.
Laszlo shook his head grimly. ‘Didn’t bring him back, not yet.’
‘They may not, ever,’ Paladrya’s ghostly voice spoke from the gloom. ‘The Edmir has certain… tastes. With two land-kinden in hand, he may choose to test his third one to destruction. He believes that enjoying the pain of others is a prerogative of rulers.’
She had appeared from the dark, her skin losing its stone colours. Stenwold pointed a finger at her, angry with her because he had no other target. ‘You!’ he snapped, and she flinched. ‘Start telling me something useful.’ When she just stared at him he went on, ‘To start with, tell me about this nonsense that we’re supposed to have driven you into the sea.’
‘It is nonsense,’ she agreed, which was the last thing he had expected to hear. ‘Just an old, old story, and one that nobody cares about, except the Littoralists. Nobody else believes it now.’
‘Your Rosander seemed to believe it,’ Stenwold retorted hotly but, even as he said it, he was not sure it was true. Rosander had just been passing on the myth, and Stenwold knew a hollow excuse for warfare when he heard it.
‘I could not say what the Nauarch believes,’ Paladrya said meekly. ‘In truth, I would guess that we did once live on the land, for although we have Art to breathe the water, this air is still more natural to us. Our home is here, though. It was not long ago that anyone claiming that we should go back to the land would have been laughed out of the colony, and the Littoralists were considered a bad joke. But now the Edmir humours them, and gives them power. Now people who laugh at them often meet a bad end. And then there is Rosander,’ she added. ‘Rosander has been promised his war…’
‘A war on my people,’ Stenwold confirmed.
‘Any war, but Claeon finds in your people an enemy fit to match Rosander’s power.’
Stenwold sought out Paladrya’s pale face, trying to maintain his ire, but his basic decency was already sapping it, telling him that this woman was not, herself, deserving of it. He sighed deeply. ‘Look, tell me some of the things that you just take for granted here, will you? What’s an Edmir. What’s a Nauarch? What’s going on between Rosander and this Claeon? How does this place work? Can you teach me that without just muddying the waters?’
‘I was a tutor, once,’ Paladrya said sadly.
‘And I was a student. We’re well met, therefore, so tell me.’
‘This is the colony of Hermatyre. There are other colonies, but none are close by. The sea… perhaps it is different on land, but the seabed is mostly barren, deserted. It is hard to live, in those great expanses, and dangerous. So, whenever the builders found a colony, there are many who come-’
‘Builders?’ Stenwold interrupted. ‘Explain builders. Who builds? Your people?’
‘The Arketoi,’ she told him. ‘They build the colonies, layer on layer. They are always building them, over and over. They are the start of it all. In the distant past they began to form Hermatyre, and then my kinden came, and all the others, the great families.’ She was scanning his face for signs of understanding. ‘Ways of life,’ she told him. ‘It is not easy to live in the open water, as I have said. Few are the kinden who can manage alone. Those who live in the colony are called Obligists.’
‘That’s a kinden?’ he asked, bewildered.
‘No, no. It is just a way of life. The Obligist path is to live within the colonies that the Archetoi build. Obligist because we are obligated to them: everything we have we owe to them.’
‘They are your masters? This Claeon…?’
‘No, no,’ she repeated, clearly finding it hard to accommodate his level of ignorance. ‘They barely notice us, do not care at all for us. Certainly they do not rule us. They simply create these spaces into which we creep to live our lives, and where we hope not to offend them. When the colony is attacked, as when the Echinoi raid, then we defend our homes with our lives, and perhaps that is all the builders see in us: expendable soldiers who will die for their creations. Who can fathom their minds?’
‘I’m finding it increasingly difficult to fathom even your mind,’ Stenwold said acidly, and immediately regretted it as she flinched. ‘So Claeon’s not an Architect? So what is he, then? Where does he come in… and Rosander?’
‘Claeon is Edmir. The Edmir rules the colony, or at least the Obligist population within it, the Kerebroi and Onychoi and all the other great families.’
Stenwold just stared at her pointedly, and he had the sense that she was trying to work out where best to start. Even the youngest child she might have taught would take for granted matters that were a complete mystery to these land-kinden.
‘I am of the families of the Kerebroi. The kinden of the family of the Kerebroi are the majority here in Hermatyre. Claeon is Kerebroi, but of the royal line, and he is Edmir over the colony. Also in Hermatyre there are others. There are the kinden of the families of the Onychoi. Rosander is of the Onychoi, as were his servants that took you from Claeon’s care.’
Stenwold seized on that. ‘Rosander is Nauarch of the… of the something train.’
‘The Thousand Spines. Rosander and his people are Benthists. They travel the wastes, where they scavenge and trade. Normally they would arrive at a colony like this and be gone back into the darkness, but Rosander’s people have been here for five years now. Claeon brought them. Claeon keeps them here.’
‘And they’re getting restless,’ Stenwold saw. ‘Rosander has a lot of warriors, yes? His people are fighters by nature. And I’d guess yours aren’t?’
She nodded. ‘You begin to understand it, land-kinden. Claeon lets the Littoralists speak to Rosander of their ancient, stupid grievances, and then Rosander plans his conquests. He has been to the land already, so they say.’
Stenwold shivered at that. Is this a serious threat? He imagined Rosander’s giants ranged against snapbows. How strong was that armour? But then they’re hardly likely to issue a formal declaration of war. He wondered how much of the dockside and the riverfront a determined raiding party of Rosander’s creatures could
