‘Weed seas,’ Laszlo murmured, beside him. ‘How many ships have run foul of those? These ones must go all the way to the surface?’ The barrier was a wall of weed, a dense forest of anchored fronds that dangled upwards towards the unseen, distant air.
‘Reaching for the sunlight,’ Wys confirmed. ‘How else?’ A frown. ‘Or do you not-?’
‘Yes, we grow crops. It is one of the primitive skills we land-kinden have mastered. Along with wearing shoes and not living in the arse-baiting sea,’ Laszlo snapped pointedly. ‘You are really getting on my nerves, you know that?’
‘Laszlo-’ Stenwold started, because Fel and his killing fists were very close, and he had lost track of where Phylles was, and it was not so very long ago that sea-kinden had been debating how expendable Laszlo was. Wys was laughing, though, a hand pressed to her mouth to hold it in.
‘You’re priceless,’ she told Laszlo, fondly patronizing. ‘I’d love to keep you. Business intervenes, though.’
They had pulled nearer to the shell, which was now turning out to be considerably larger even than the ship. Stenwold saw motion near the base of it, where an octopus of considerable size was squatting in a rosette of coiled tentacles, one baleful eye regarding them. Something else dashed past the window, and he received only the blurred impression of some dart-like shape with trailing streamers, and a figure impossibly mounted upon it.
‘That’s our patron’s steed, I reckon,’ Wys observed. Phylles had come out from some hidden nook, and padded across to her, peering outside.
‘Looks it,’ she agreed. ‘And that’s… Pelagists of some sort. What are we into here?’
As their viewpoint rounded the shell, she had picked out another sea-monster lurking there. This one looked at least more acceptable to Stenwold: something like a flattened woodlouse with an anchor-shaped head. It was comparable in size to Wys’s submersible.
‘You people ride these monsters?’ Laszlo demanded.
‘Well, yes, on them or inside them, for those without the know-how to work one of these beauties,’ Wys replied, patting the shell-ship’s hull. ‘How else to get about? It’d take for ever to swim. Spillage, hold us here!’
There was a vaguely affirmative noise from above, and for the next few minutes the submersible jockeyed about in the water, shifting from side to side, and then dropping a good distance quite suddenly. Bubbles flashed past the window on their long journey back to the mother air.
Phylles was at the land-kinden’s elbow, proffering a limp handful of translucent membrane. Stenwold accepted the caul from her reluctantly. Travelling in this machine, for all its strange construction and motive power, had seemed the closest to normal life since the monster Arkeuthys had ripped him from the barge.
Stenwold was readier this time, when the rush of water coursed over him. As Phylles took hold of him, he did his best to kick a little, to help her progress, but he remained little more than inconvenient baggage, bobbing and twisting at the end of her arm. He gained confused views of the coiled submersible, and then of the great stony mound they were heading for. The place had a single hole cut into it – at the hinge where the two halves of the shell met – and they entered through another pair of twin hatches. Just like a lock, Stenwold decided, thinking of canals and water levels, only more so. How do they make the doors work? The doors here were not those neatly folding segments, but a kind of curved plug of thick, whorled stone, or possibly just more shell. The inner surfaces, he noticed, were slick with mucus that sealed them wetly against the open sea.
The shell-house’s innards were lit in dull shades of blue by a dozen small lamps, and a ramp carved out from the building’s inner wall curled down from the hatchway to the floor below. The place was cluttered with bales of what Stenwold took to be dried weed, and at first there was no welcoming party to be seen. Wys did not seem discouraged by that, and led them down to stand in the midst of the little empty space available. Stenwold glanced left and right, and saw Fel and Phylles watching warily.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ Wys called out. ‘Some of us have other business.’
The figure that stepped out was one of the Kerebroi, Paladrya’s people. He was tall and lean, with a hooked nose and a magnificent beard ending in twin forks that coiled like ram’s horns. His hair, above a high forehead, was swept back in elegant waves. Beyond a cloak and a kilt, all he wore was a fortune in gold and jewellery, his bare chest almost hidden by an entire vest of linked pearls.
‘You have the Edmir’s prisoners?’ he asked suspiciously. Stenwold now saw movement behind him: four or five very tall, thin men and women wearing peaked helms, breastplates and greaves of some pale substance. They carried spears with long needle points, but held them loosely, without threatening Wys’s party.
‘You doubt me?’ Wys asked. ‘I’m hurt. I have more than that, councillor. I have land-kinden.’
The tall man’s hooded eyes narrowed. ‘You no doubt imagine I will pay more if I believe so.’
‘Oh, boss,’ Wys said, ‘I’ll hold you to the asking price, but these are the real deal. You, boy, do your trick.’
Laszlo glared at her but, after Fel had prodded him, he let his wings flare and ascended halfway to the distant, gloom-shrouded ceiling. The expressions on the faces of the spearmen were caught between fear and wonder, but their master merely nodded, still frowning.
‘As good as your word,’ he said. ‘And your reward is well earned in this case. Would you stay with us for word of another assignment?’
‘Pay me for this one first,’ Wys growled. ‘And, while you’re at it, how much for her?’
She hauled on Paladrya’s hand, dragging the woman forwards. The tall man’s eyes widened for a moment, his mask of disinterest slipping.
‘You?’
‘Heiracles,’ she named him dully.
Two of the thin guardsmen had levelled their weapons, on her appearance. Stenwold saw something barbed squirming alongside the narrow spearpoints.
‘What is this?’ Heiracles demanded.
‘From the Edmir’s private cells – not dead at all,’ Wys elaborated.
‘Well, then, that can be rectified. My people will be glad indeed to know that justice was truly brought upon the Traitress. We always suspected that Claeon lied.’ He nodded at his men. ‘Kill her. We’ll preserve her head for proof.’
‘Hold on, chief. She says your boy might be alive too.’
A twitch of Heiracles’s hand halted his spearmen, his eyes fixed not on Wys but on Paladrya herself.
‘They said you killed him,’ he murmured. ‘Claeon said so… we assumed you were in it together, and then he disposed of you. He was not best known for his sentimental nature. You, on the other hand.. .’
‘Why would I kill Aradocles?’ Paladrya asked quietly.
‘You were Claeon’s lover.’
‘And yet I did not love him. I loved the boy, as a tutor should.’
Wys coughed delicately. ‘Ah, boss…’
‘Pay her.’ At a gesture from Heiracles, one of the spearmen came forward with what looked like an oblong, carved stone. He set it before Wys, who opened it up along an invisible crack. Within, Stenwold saw sheaves of the thick, leathery stuff they used as paper, colourfully inked. Wys counted through these, as though they were deeds or promissory notes, and was obviously satisfied.
‘A pleasure, Archon,’ she said, beaming. ‘Now, you had something else for us, before we head on to the Stations?’
‘Stay and listen to our counsels, and then I may,’ Heiracles told her. ‘Come, bring them all. Follow me.’
Laszlo had landed again by now, bored with being stared at. Heiracles allowed himself just one worried glance at the two land-kinden, before leading them among the stacked bales. His people had cleared a private little space there, and another pair of his guards was waiting, along with someone of another kinden, a broad figure with dark brown skin not unlike Stenwold’s own, wearing a coat of grey hide over his bare chest. He seemed to have white stubble covering his head and chin, but on closer inspection, Stenwold saw that this was not hair at all, but little nodules of something that resembled stone.
‘When are the rest of your people arriving?’ Heiracles asked him, and received a weary shake of the head in response.
‘They’ll be here when they get here,’ the man grumbled in a hoarse voice. ‘Doesn’t work like for your lot, all living next-door. We’ve been travelling for days, and Nemoctes will be here, oh, half a day maybe. Or two hours
