They heard sounds above, then. They had more visitors, it seemed. Stenwold stood up, hoping that it would be Teornis being returned to them at last, but there was a conversation going on above, something more than just dropping off a prisoner.
‘Change of shift?’ Laszlo suggested quietly. He was standing, too, braced for action, ready to employ his Art. Stenwold wasn’t sure, but he suspected the Fly was going to try some impossible piece of theatrics if the cells were opened, jumping the eight or ten guards above, in a bid to gain the pitiful span of freedom it would win him. He knew he should dissuade his companion, but the voice in his head was telling him that it would be better, surely, to be killed in some futile endeavour than to rot away down here in the dark.
‘Then you take it up with the chief,’ he heard a woman’s high-pitched voice say. ‘You read what’s there, and if you want to go interrupt him when he’s getting himself all worked up, then fine.’
‘Since when are you on the staff?’ one of the guards demanded, and then, ‘Hey, I asked you-!’ There was someone already halfway down the ramp before the first guard got to them. Stenwold thought it was Chenni at first, but then he saw it was another woman of her kinden, diminutive and hunched.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ the woman said, turning with raw vitriol in her voice, ‘the chief’s staff changes with every phase of the moon, mostly because they get on his nerves all the time by not doing what they’re told.’ The guard loomed over her, but she seemed utterly unflapped.
‘Three of you – for two prisoners?’ another guard objected. The ramp was getting cluttered now. There were at least four of the jailers there, and a sharp-faced man a little taller than they were, also as bald as half these sea-people seemed to be. Another knot of guards was gathered about someone else still at the top of the ramp.
‘You don’t think we can handle them?’ the woman asked, stepping down off the foot of the ramp and forcing a pair of the guards to follow her.
‘Himself’s just doubled the watch here,’ her opponent objected. ‘Doesn’t make sense, him just sending three… three I-don’t-know-what-you-are’s to take care of this pair. They’re important, these are.’
‘All the more reason for you to do what you’re told. You’ve seen the orders,’ the woman rejoined.
Stenwold was becoming very aware of Laszlo. The Fly had gone very tense, and now he half flew, half climbed to the top of his cell, where he waited silently, obviously ready to act on the instant. Something’s up. The guard had been listening to the woman’s words, but Stenwold realized that Laszlo had been reading something into her tone. Something was not ringing true. Something was up.
‘Look, I’m not having this,’ the chief guard decided. ‘Maybe Himself has a few Onychoi on the staff to do the dull jobs, but I never heard of him hiring a Polyp.’ He gestured back up the ramp. ‘I mean, why would anyone?’
‘Because we can do this!’ snapped another woman’s voice, and abruptly two of the guards at the top of the ramp were falling, just dropping down into the oubliette itself. They were twitching as they hit the ground, spasming and fitting.
The chief guard was shouting some kind of oath as he pulled his knife from his belt-loop. The small woman was marginally quicker, whipping out her own dagger and ramming it hard into his groin, and then into his throat, to choke off his scream. On the ramp it became utter chaos. The bald man had gone into a frenzy, lashing out at all around him with his bare hands. Stenwold recognized his kinden as like the man with Chenni, who had smashed the cell grating with his bare hands. The newcomer had the same Art-bulked fists, with his spines set forwards like knives, and he carried a pair of stilettos jutting upward in his hands as well. As he fought, Stenwold spotted the kinship he had missed before: just as Paladrya’s people resembled Spiders, so this man was a cousin to Mantids.
Now the other woman was coming down the ramp, also lashing out with her bare hands. She drove two of the guards before her and, although they had blades out, they were keeping well out of her reach, so much so that the bald man killed both of them from behind before they realized how far down they had backed away. They got a spine in the back of the neck each, as brutal and surgically precise a blow as anything Stenwold had ever seen.
There were no more guards, after that. The final man had been going after the small woman with his curved dagger when he had trod over Laszlo’s cell and the Fly had snagged his foot through the grate, tripping him. The woman’s steel had done the rest. Now she was looking down at Laszlo as he hovered at the very top of his cell, desperate to be out of it.
‘Well, that settles that,’ the little bald woman said shakily, staring at the blur of the Fly’s wings. ‘They really are land-kinden, not just hoaxes.’
‘Time,’ grunted the bald, Mantis-looking man, and the small woman nodded enthusiastically.
‘Right, Phylles, open up the lids.’
The other woman, who had created such an affray with the guards, came to crouch by Stenwold’s cell. He looked up at her curiously. On the one hand she was a kinden he had not seen before, not the Spider-like elegance of Paladrya or the guards, nor possessing Rosander’s squat bulk. Yet from another point of view, she was familiar. She wore more clothing than the other locals, to start with. Whilst practically every other sea-kinden went about in a state of indecent undress, by Collegium standards, this woman was wearing a long leathery coat over some kind of tunic and, although she was barefoot, she wore something approaching breeches too. She was heavily built, her hair spikily short, and her skin looked bruise-purple in the fickle light. In her face and build, though, she was not unlike Stenwold himself, not unlike all those Beetle-kinden he knew back under the sun. Although it meant nothing, although she would be no more a Beetle than Paladrya was a Spider, the sight gave him heart.
‘Stop staring,’ she growled at him, and put her hands to the grating. She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling it out, and then had it lifted off without effort. She reached a hand down to him, grinning, and seemed surprised when he took it. Only then did he remember the way that the guards had been trying to keep clear of her touch. Something squirmed within her grip, and he nearly let go, but some obscure sense of keeping face made him hold on. She hauled grimly, and he kicked and scrabbled at the stones to help her, and between them they soon had him lying gasping on his belly on the oubliette floor, legs still dangling down into his cell. By the time he had found his feet, Laszlo was free as well, and had taken up one of the dead guards’ knives.
‘Now, come on,’ the small woman urged them, her voice low and urgent.
‘And who says so?’ Laszlo demanded. He was keeping his distance from the newcomers but had dropped out of the air.
‘Some weighty people want you out of here,’ she said, squaring up to him, meeting him eye to eye.
‘So maybe we’ll make our own way.’
‘Laszlo,’ Stenwold struggled into a sitting position, ‘where would we go?’
The Fly looked unhappy. ‘What about her?’ he asked, pointing downwards.
‘Time, Wys,’ the bald man repeated pointedly. He was already standing near the top of the ramp, half crouching in the shadow of the doorway.
‘Her who? Who else is down there?’ The small woman – Wys? – squinted at where Laszlo was pointing. Paladrya’s skin shimmered reluctantly before she let herself be seen.
‘You a land-kinden?’ Wys asked doubtfully.
‘I am not,’ answered Paladrya.
‘Then you’re not in my brief. Let’s go, landsmen-’
‘She stays, I stay,’ Laszlo said stubbornly. ‘She’s a prisoner too.’
A pair of men arrived above, not expecting trouble, perhaps merely come to investigate where the guards had gone. Stenwold caught only a brief glimpse of them before the bald man struck. His hands lashed out, blurring with speed. Stenwold didn’t notice whether it was dagger-points or the spikes of the man’s Art, but he had taken the unsuspecting pair down in an instant. He looked pointedly down at the others.
‘Get her up, Phylles,’ Wys said, exasperated.
Phylles gave the world a look of resentment and frustration, and hauled the grate off Paladrya’s cell, reaching down to pull her up with a lot less effort than she had Stenwold.
‘Spit me,’ Wys said, staring. ‘It’s the Traitress.’
In the brief silence that followed Stenwold tried to catch Paladrya’s reaction to this accusation, but she would not meet his eyes.
‘Oh, we’ll bring her too, all right. There’ll be a nice bonus when we hand her over,’ Wys said enthusiastically. ‘Now, let’s move. Any funny business and we’ll be delivering a land-kinden with one arm or
