‘They could damage my companion so that we cannot go further, and then they will cut through to us. We must go deep, as they are creatures of the surface.’
Then the Menfish suddenly scattered, all three vanishing into the dark water. It gave Stenwold no relief, since it was all too clearly a flight from some worse monster.
For a moment the travellers held their place in the water, the ragged-edged dome above them expanding and contracting silently. Then a shadow coursed past them, a great armoured form of which Stenwold caught only glimpses: a segmented carapace, paddle-like limbs and tail, folded pincers like the largest of all scorpions. It utterly dwarfed them, and it seemed to Stenwold that it would have dwarfed almost anything.
Lyess was on her knees, staring at the thing as it passed. She was saying something over and over, almost under her breath. Stenwold bent close to hear her, and caught the words, ‘Gods of the sea.’
‘Gods?’ he repeated numbly. The monster of monsters was coming back, making another inquisitive pass. He saw compound eyes, larger than he himself was, glitter in the jellyfish’s light, as something behind that broad grid of facets considered him and weighed him, and determined his fate.
‘We call them so.’ Lyess was almost breathless. ‘We meet them seldom. Sometimes they kill us, us Pelagists, but more often they let us live. They are the real powers of the deeps.’ Her previous reserve had been stripped from her. Fear and exhilaration raced each other across her face, where Stenwold saw colours – grey and red and deep blue – surface and fade within her skin.
‘Do they have’ – he hardly dared ask – ‘a kinden?’
‘Nemoctes believes they do,’ she whispered. ‘He says that a Pelagist he knew once travelled to the deep places, to some tiny colony where only we and fugitives go. He told how an Onychoi came in like none he’d ever seen before, half again as tall as a normal man, and clawed, no kinden that he’d seen before or since. He swore that it was Seagod-kinden.’
The plated shadow was now receding away on its own inscrutable errands, and in its absence Stenwold could not help thinking, Sailors’ tales, as above, so below? But he could not deny the fact of the Sea-god, and if it was not actually a god, then perhaps he had no wish to meet anything yet more godlike. Let us be thankful that the sea keeps its greatest mysteries hidden.
It was not long after that she woke him, hovering over and almost touching his face, until the sense of her presence broke him from his slumber.
‘The Hot Stations,’ she announced. ‘We have arrived.’
He sat up to see the striking, turbulent vista beyond the clouded walls of Lyess’s companion, and the word that sprang unstoppably from his lips was, ‘Helleron.’
Twenty-Seven
‘I see you no longer trust me,’ Claeon snapped.
Rosander, Nauarch of the Thousand Spines Train, had arrived in full armour, its stony plates grating constantly against one another. The Onychoi gave such an impression of concentrated weight that Teornis was surprised he didn’t fall straight through the floor. Tiny traces of powder sparkled in the air where newer pieces of his mail were still establishing their fit against their neighbours. Beside him the Spider-kinden and Claeon and another Kerebroi man all looked like so many children.
‘Claeon,’ Rosander murmured, ‘if the sea were filled with trust, from the depths up to the sunlight, there would not be sufficient trust for me to trust you.’ His hard, narrow face broke into an equally hard smile. ‘Besides, I must get used to carrying the weight in the air. When my campaign starts, there will be little chance to let the water bear it. So, tell me, when will that be?’
‘It would be sooner had your fools not let the land-kinden escape,’ Claeon accused, but Rosander was having none of it.
‘My bannermen did what they could,’ the big Onychoi replied, implacable. ‘Your beast let one go and your Dart-kinden the other. I see you have somehow managed to retain the third.’ He glanced briefly at Teornis, without much apparent interest. ‘Or were you about to hand him over to someone else? Me, perhaps.’
‘This man is not for you to torture.’ Claeon paced the chamber, which was part of his own suite of rooms. The curved walls were ornamented in golden arabesques that Teornis found beautiful in their execution, but gauche in their effect.
‘You think of torture,’ Rosander murmured. ‘Don’t colour me with your pastimes. I might be able to hold him more securely than you, however.’
Claeon rounded on him furiously, storming up to the man’s immense bulk as though about to break his hand on that stone carapace. ‘Do not be impudent! I am Edmir here! You are strong, Rosander, but do not think, here in the heart of my palace, that you can mock me.’
Rosander looked down at a man who was a fraction of his size, and he sighed slowly. ‘The Shell Hunters Train has been trading at Hermatyre during these last few days. Yesterday, twenty of my bannermen asked my permission to take their retinues and depart with the Hunters when they leave.’
Claeon narrowed his eyes. ‘And you refused?’
‘And I gave them my blessing, for they would go whatever I said, and I would rather they came back to me, when next we meet, than cut all their ties to the Thousand Spines. My people are bored, Claeon. They want to move on. I want to move on. Give me my war. Give me this landsman, to start with.’
Claeon held up a hand to silence him. ‘This one is special. This one will be more use to you alive and happy than would any number of corpses or prisoners. You know Pellectes, of course?’
This was the fourth man, another Kerebroi. The stranger was taller than Claeon, leaner save for having something of a belly. His long hair and beard were lustrous with a shiny greenish hue that Teornis hoped was merely cosmetic.
It was not clear from Rosander’s blank expression whether he knew Pellectes or not, so Claeon went on: ‘He is the leader of the Littoralists, and his people are already up above, learning about our enemy.’ He turned to address Pellectes. ‘Rosander will be the agent of our return to the land.’
‘So it is foretold,’ Pellectes breathed.
Teornis found his eyes meeting Rosander’s in a shared look of exasperation. The Onychoi shifted stance in a further chafing of armour, his pose subtly suggesting that his patience was waning fast. ‘Tell me then,’ he said, ‘what’s so special about this land-kinden.’
‘He claims that the land-kinden that we have been spying on are at war with another tribe of landsmen, and that he himself is a member of this other tribe,’ Claeon declared, dismissing with a wave of his hand any number of centuries of landbound politics.
‘And it is true,’ Pellectes assured them eagerly. ‘My own agent within their colony has confirmed it.’
Rosander took two clumping steps forward to stand before Teornis. ‘What can you do for us, then?’
The Spider looked the huge man directly in the eye. ‘I have agents in Collegium, their colony. I can compromise their defences, guide your soldiers, identify their leaders. It would appear we have a common enemy.’
Rosander’s gaze weighed him up, the resulting assessment uncertain. He looked sidelong at the green- bearded Littoralist. ‘So where does your orthodoxy feature, in all this?’ he grunted. ‘First time I’ve heard your lot ever talk of friendly land-kinden.’
‘But it is so,’ announced Pellectes. ‘For just look at him! He is almost kin to us Kerebroi. It is clear that these are our cousins, who somehow avoided the great purge and fled to the further reaches of the land, to find safety. Now we can strike together against our persecutors.’
The Onychoi made a disparaging noise. ‘Sounds convenient,’ he remarked.
‘It is not convenient,’ Pellectes snapped back at him. ‘We have a duty to our ancestors to avenge the wrong done to us. Those that forced us from our homes must now be punished and destroyed. We will reclaim our birthright.’
The dry stare of Rosander swung back to Teornis. ‘Anything up there look like my brother, landsman?’
‘Not that I ever saw,’ Teornis told him easily.
‘Good. I’d hate to have to kill any bastard as tough as I am.’ Rosander looked back to find Pellectes shaking
