‘Money’s only good at a colony,’ Wys agreed, ‘and there’s not so many things an Obligist needs to hire someone from outside for. We’re a select group.’
And I’ll wager you’re bandits whenever the money dries up, Stenwold reflected. ‘Are we free to wander on your ship?’
‘Our barque?’ Wys’s gesture took in the limited coil of the living space. ‘Don’t get in Lej’s way, don’t annoy Phylles, and Fel will be watching you. Aside from that, you’ve a little while till we arrive. We’re fighting against current to get there. I’d advise sleep, but it’s your call.’ With that pronouncement, she did something quick and complicated with one of the nets on the wall, and turned it into a hammock. She bundled herself into it fully clothed, or at least without removing her brief tunic, and was apparently asleep in an instant.
Stenwold and Laszlo exchanged glances. ‘We’re getting somewhere, slowly,’ the Beetle murmured.
‘In understanding these madwigs, maybe.’ Laszlo shrugged. ‘No closer to getting back to the light and air, though, Ma’rMaker.’
Stenwold nodded. In truth he was trying not to think about that. It was hard to retain any composure when his mind was playing host to the yawning chasm that lay between him and home. I think if I saw some black-and- yellow down here, I’d embrace it. But, no, Teornis was right. Even the Empire can’t reach us down here.
And if the sea-kinden reach upwards? He had no idea of their capabilities, though they had enough aptitude to make these submersibles, however the ships worked. They produced the light and, somehow, the air…
‘The air…?’ He frowned. ‘Paladrya…’
She was watching him fearfully, as though bracing herself for a blow. She had not, he guessed, found much to trust or like in people since her incarceration.
And she had been Claeon’s lover, she said. And she’d betrayed him for this Aradocles, and then Claeon found out, and locked her up, and worse…
And where in the bloody world has this Aradocles been, if she pitched him landwards years ago? The obvious answer loomed, but he fought it down. If this heir is dead, that’s no use to me. But if he can be found…
It was the bait for his hook, in order to catch some chance of getting back home. Surely they would want their precious heir returned to them? But first he had to understand them, lest he put a foot wrong, and this abyssal world then swallow him for good.
‘Paladrya, tell me about the air,’ he said gently.
‘I don’t understand.’ It was clear in her expression.
‘You people can breathe underwater. Why haven’t I just drowned? Why keep those caul things?’
A flicker of something like humour crossed her face, which must have been a rare visitor of late. ‘You mustn’t take offence,’ she said, ‘but the cauls are for children. It is the earliest Art any of us learn, but not before the age of six, perhaps, or seven… so we have the cauls. The Benthists developed them, they claim. They need them more, when they’re travelling.’
Stenwold let the subject of the Benthists go by for the moment. ‘But the air,’ he pressed her. ‘Air goes stale, even my people know that. How are you… are you making air? You have machinery of some kind?’ It can’t be an Apt solution, unless they’ve been Apt for, what, thousands of years, long enough to be forgotten by the rest of us, all ties with the land severed.
‘We accreate it, of course,’ she said, voice tailing off by the end of the sentence when the word made no impact on him. ‘Accreation,’ she enunciated, as though to a fool or small child. ‘We extract it from the water.’
‘There’s no air in water,’ Laszlo jeered, ‘Or else you wouldn’t drown.’
She gave the Fly a level stare. ‘There is indeed air to breathe in the water, if you possess the Art to free it. It’s the simplest form of accreation.’
Stenwold and Laszlo exchanged looks. ‘What else can you… accreate?’ the Beetle enquired slowly.
‘There are many things in the water,’ she told him, ‘if you can but draw them out. The limn-lights, for example, are simple work.’ A twitch of her hand took in the pale globes illuminating the inside of the submersible. ‘But most of what we need, we make – we accreate. Shell, bronze, gold, membrane, stone, all of it can be formed by someone with the skill and Art for it. Some things the sea makes for us, like the shell that this barque is made from, but almost everything else is made by accreation.’
‘So you just, what, conjure all your raw materials out of the water?’ Stenwold asked incredulously.
‘Raw materials?’ she asked, frowning again.
‘Ask him this question,’ broke in a new voice. Phylles had come back, and Stenwold guessed that the curved nature of the ship meant that no conversation could be private. The purple-skinned woman crouched on her haunches, still trying to look angry but obviously intrigued. ‘How do you people ever craft things on land, land- kinden, if you don’t accreate from the sea?’
‘We… make things,’ Stenwold said unhelpfully. ‘Someone mines the raw materials – the metal ore say – from underground, and then it gets smelted into the metal, and maybe cast in a mould, or else a smith beats it into a shape and finishes it off, or perhaps a machinist cuts the metal into the right shape, if it’s precision work
…’ He broke off, for she had drawn a knife out. Only later he would remember that she needed no knives to fight with. She laid the blade before him, and he saw it was four inches of razor-sharp bronze with a hilt fashioned of some pearly shell.
‘So you people would, what, get a lump of bronze, and just sort of force it into looking like a knifeblade?’ she asked him, sounding utterly disbelieving.
‘Well, heat it up and beat it flat, over and over…’ And I’ve seen not a single fire, not a naked flame, and what on earth would they burn here, unless they can ‘accreate’ coal or something. The cells weren’t warm, but they weren’t cold either, they don’t have much need of clothing other than for a minimal modesty… they can’t make fire. They make things without fire. ‘And you… don’t do that?’
Her face was doing something strained, and he realized she was not-quite-laughing at him. ‘Beat it flat? Like with a rock or something? Over and over…?’ She lost the battle and a delighted crow of derision erupted from her. Stripped of her customary ill humour she looked even more like a discoloured Beetle-kinden from some far-off city.
‘Very funny,’ Laszlo snapped angrily. ‘And you do better, do you?’
She gave him a pitying look. ‘Man in the Hot Stations made this for me. They’re good with metal there. I told him what I wanted, and he set out a tank, and I came back three days later and he’d got the blade formed. I did the hilt myself. I make most of the fittings round here.’ She took up the knife, and Stenwold saw that the blade was plain, but the grip was lightly incised with intricate, geometrical patterns that were picked out with verdigris as neatly as though jade had been inlaid. Which she made by this accreation, he realized. Not cut, not carved, but simply laid in as part of her plan, as she sieved the materials from the seawater. He recalled all that fantastically intricate jewellery he had seen in Hermatyre. So they can just grasp gold from the sea, and shape it how they will without need of the whitesmith’s art. I wonder if they realize they could just buy themselves a chunk of the land, no need for invasion?
And what are the limits of this Art of theirs? The question inevitably followed on from his previous thoughts. What could they not make?
Phylles was still smirking at him, but there was a degree of uncertainty behind her expression, that had perhaps underlain her earlier hostility as well. She’s scared of us, Stenwold saw. We are land-kinden, and we are strange to her. ‘Do you believe that my ancestors drove yours off of the dry land?’ he asked her. ‘Do you dream of going back?’
‘I saw the land once,’ she told him flatly, raising her belligerence like a shield. ‘Up on the surface, while cack-handed Lej was getting this thing moving again. Dry and barren, it was, and I could feel my skin cracking just being up there, out of the water. You’re welcome to it, land-kinden. Just don’t you lot try coming down here.’
She stormed off again, heading up the slope where their engineer had appeared from. Stenwold smiled slightly after her. She might be a sea-kinden of some unspecified type, but he had met a lot of other people like her, as easily offended and overly defensive. He decided he knew how to handle Phylles, whatever she was.
‘Right,’ he said vaguely, glancing up at the bald Mantis-cousin, Fel. Throughout the conversation the man had not offered a single contribution, just standing there with his arms hanging loose by his sides, as though he would be fighting at any moment. Very like a Mantis. ‘No chance of anything to eat, I suppose?’ he asked. ‘Anything that’s not fish, ideally, although I accept there’s small chance of that.’
