‘This accreation business?’ Stenwold said.
‘You’ve seen their ornament – how very fine and delicate the work is?’ Tseitus pressed. ‘Now imagine machine parts made that way, with infinite precision and detail. All it takes is a craftsman who can envisage what he needs with enough clarity – and they already have them, only a few yet, but there will be more.’
Stenwold’s rejoinder died on his lips. ‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘And their materials, too.’
‘I’ve seen mostly bronze – that and various kinds of shell and cloth, and this paper.’
Tseitus shook his head swiftly, very much the debating academic. ‘No no, the clothes and the paper they make from seaweed, or some such. They weave and spin and pulp and stitch just as we do. The rigid materials, though, are accreated, and whilst the wider undersea may consider bronze the cutting edge of progress, here in the Stations it is different. Why do you think they go to the trouble of living here, without the Builders to shelter them? The heat: the heat and the minerals in the water allow them to accreate stronger stuffs. Their metal, Maker, they call it Benthic spring steel. I swear to you it’s a finer temper than any you’ve ever seen above water. So strong, so flexible… if we can somehow find out how to make it by conventional means, we could revolutionize half a dozen fields of mechanics!’
‘And this is what you’re after, is it?’ Stenwold asked him. ‘This is why you aid them, because, on the side, you’re trying to unravel this new metal of theirs?’
‘I am a scholar and an artificer, of course,’ Tseitus said, as though astonished that the question should even be posed.
Stenwold put his head in his hands. ‘Were you aware that they intend to invade Collegium?’ he asked wearily. ‘Hermatyre has an army of restless Onychoi waiting, even now, for the word.’ He looked up at Tseitus, saw the old man caught by a sudden uncertainty.
‘I…’ the Ant muttered, ‘I would have died, in my submersible
… or they would have starved me, killed me… I had no choice.’
‘No doubt,’ said Stenwold sadly, wondering if he himself would have one either.
Mandir’s audience chamber was as makeshift and uneven as the rest of his domain, but the Man of the Hot Stations had taken pains to impress each visitor with his importance.
He had a throne, for one thing, or at least it was a kind of high chair built of pieces of coral and stone and metal, in a blocky, mismatched mosaic. It placed him so that any visitor would have to look up at him, and on either side of it, as evidence of his martial prowess, was displayed a fan of spears, curved swords and other oddly shaped weapons. The pair of Onychoi warriors that flanked his seat added further to such implied potency, but Stenwold’s favourite touch, viewing the man enthroned in state, was the cloak. Mandir wore a cloak that fell all the way to the floor, a garment cut long enough to fit a gangling giant, dyed in deeply vibrant purple and edged with shimmering, overlapping discs that Stenwold eventually recognized as polished fish-scales.
‘You’re looking peaky, landsman,’ Mandir addressed him. ‘Are you eating properly?’
It had been two days since Stenwold had eaten. He had needed the time to work out what his moral stance was: what he was willing to compromise. In the end, he suspected, hunger had begun to wear down his finer objections. It had been a long while since he had truly been obliged to fast.
‘Mandir,’ Stenwold named him, wondering if there was some proper form of address. He could hardly call him just ‘Man’. The little despot looked satisfied, though, and gestured for him to speak.
‘I’ll work for you,’ Stenwold continued tiredly. ‘I will provide you with designs, and improve the designs your people have already.’
‘It’s all I ask,’ Mandir replied reasonably. ‘I’ll have my people fix you a solid meal. You look like you could use it.’
‘Wait,’ Stenwold told him, one hand up. The gesture caused the guards to stir, their armour scraping. ‘I have conditions,’ he said.
Mandir’s forehead wrinkled. ‘He has conditions,’ he told the air. ‘The lord of the land is grown grand again, is he?’
‘You want my help,’ Stenwold pointed out.
‘I do, I do want it. You, on the other hand, need to eat. Be thankful we’re giving you fresh water on credit.’
‘It’s not a very great condition, Man of the Stations,’ Stenwold said, seeing the formality of address have a placating effect. Mandir made another laconic gesture, and Stenwold went on, ‘It concerns my companion, Laszlo.’
Mandir grinned at that. ‘I’m hearing a lot about him. He’s turning out to be quite a favourite. Shaved his head, hasn’t he? Wants to look civilized.’
‘So I understand,’ Stenwold nodded. In truth, with his stubble cropped, and with the way he held his shoulders now, Laszlo looked uncannily like the small Onychoi found among Mandir’s own people. He had taken on the mantle of surrogate sea-kinden with an ease that suggested an interesting past, and Stenwold recalled how Laszlo had served the Tidenfree as its factor, the one they sent out to make deals.
‘I hear he’s quite today’s flavour.’ Mandir warmed to his subject. ‘Does jigs and dances with his Art and all that. I was going to have him to dance for me some time.’
Dancing was perhaps not one of Laszlo’s strong points, but since he was the only person in the whole of the depths who could fly, there would be little skill needed to amaze an audience. Mandir’s people had been turning up at all hours wanting to see this prodigy from the land.
‘He’s no artificer, Mandir,’ Stenwold explained. ‘He’s restless and unhappy. He wants to see more of your realm here. If you let him roam a little, I’ll stand surety.’
‘Will you so?’ Mandir peered down at him as if suddenly regretting the distance. ‘Why?’
‘Because he’s not used to being imprisoned,’ Stenwold said. ‘Because you’ve told me how we land-kinden don’t thrive down here, and maybe that’s because we’re always being penned in, never free. Think how you yourself might like it, to be barred up in some strange place, and cut off from everything you know. If he has a chance to get to know people, make some new life for himself here, well…’
‘And what of you? I’m not letting you go trawling off on your own,’ Mandir warned him.
‘I will at least have the satisfaction of whatever news he brings back with him and, as long as I am in your hands, you can be sure that he always will come back.’
‘He’ll spy for you,’ Mandir accused.
‘If that’s how you wish to phrase it. But if I can have eyes and ears outside, it will help me adapt, too. I admit, it seems that I’m here for the long haul, so at least give me something more than just the work.’ He was not sure how convincing he was being, but then Mandir was no expert in Beetle-kinden expressions, any more than Stenwold could reliably read the Man himself.
‘Well,’ the little tyrant said at last, ‘perhaps… Perhaps, but I have conditions too.’
Oh, yes? ‘What conditions might those be, O Man of the Stations?’
And Mandir reached under the folds of his over-long cloak and produced an object that was small even in his hands, which sent a jolt of recognition through Stenwold.
‘Where…?’
‘Oh please, landsman, you can answer that one for yourself. From Claeon’s people, who took it from you, of course. They had no idea what it was, but my agents in Hermatyre bought it from them because it looked like something I might be interested in.’ Mandir’s eyes gleamed. ‘I am interested, too, landsman. I have studied this thing, and I don’t understand quite how it does what it does, but I can see its purpose, and it is beautiful.’ The emphasis, the sudden passion, was surprising, and Stenwold was forced to recast the little man as something more than merely a jumped-up merchant lord. An artificer, at heart, he thought: an artificer now holding a cut- down snapbow. In Mandir’s hands, the two-barrelled weapon that Totho had made for Stenwold shone malevolently in the limn-lights.
‘You work on this device, landsman. You plan me a simple version of this thing, that my craftsmen can copy. I’ll give your friend the freedom of the Stations in the meantime, so long as he realizes he’ll always be watched. But I want one of these. I want the Stations to have these. These,’ he announced, with a steely grin, ‘are nice.’
