Twenty-Nine
The previous lord of the Hot Stations had not kept an audience chamber, had not used a throne, had dressed plainly and been little more than a tavern-keeper to the Benthic trains passing through. The previous lord had not received emissaries from Deep Seep and Hermatyre, bringing him word from their Edmirs as if he was an equal – at least as long as those Edmirs wanted something from him. Mandir contemplated this satisfactory state of affairs as he lounged on his high seat. Claeon had many faults, but the speed of his spies was not one of them, so his representative newly here in the Stations was very obviously sniffing after a certain pair of disappeared captives.
By his order, she came in unarmed and unescorted. They had met before, just the once, a few years ago, but she had not been in this position of responsibility then, merely a pretty adornment belonging to the retinue of Claeon’s then-majordomo. Mandir looted his memory and reckoned recalling that the man she then followed had eventually been torn apart by crabs… or had he been the one dropped into the stinging coils of a sea-anenome? Mandir had no wish to visit Hermatyre, but it did sound as though the entertainment there was second to none. Claeon was mad, but his madness gave him a distinct sense of style.
‘Haelyn, I believe,’ he named her, leaning down from his seat. She was as he remembered her, and he remembered her quite clearly. Sepia-kinden were one of the Kerebroi family’s minor branches, but so very comely. She now stood in the centre of his audience chamber, hands folded demurely before her, and clad in a long drape of white that had been arranged to hide and suggest in carefully calculated proportions. Her skin fluttered blue and gold and red, as though she was nervous, but her eyes remained steady.
‘Mandir, master of the Hot Stations,’ she began, ‘I bring you greetings from your fellow sea-lord, the Edmir Claeon of Hermatyre.’
‘How’s the old fellow doing?’ Mandir leered. ‘Fatter in body and looser in mind? Don’t answer that. Perhaps he’s doing better after all. His choice of majordomo has certainly improved. How long now since you took that office, Haelyn?’
‘Long enough.’
‘And what can our poor Hot Stations do for your majestic master?’
She squared her shoulders, tilted her head back. ‘He is glad to note that you have recaptured certain renegades, and looks forward to their return to him, to face justice.’
‘Renegades from Hermatyre?’ Mandir put on a great show of surprise. ‘Whatever next? Why would anyone wish to flee a colony governed by a man as fair-minded as Claeon?’
She did not rise to that. ‘Certain unusual renegades… you know full well I am talking of the land-kinden, Mandir.’
‘Land-kinden? Are there such things as land-kinden? Aren’t they all ten feet tall and able to kill with a single look?’
Haelyn sighed, folding her arms. ‘Shall we dispense now with the formal denials?’
‘Consider them spoken. I’m keeping the landsmen, however. Your master can holler and huff as much as he wants. He forgets that we are the coming power now, here in this stretch of the waters.’
‘Hermatyre custom feeds your industry here. You are wholly dependent on the trade of others,’ she pointed out.
‘Hermatyre custom won’t stop because Claeon passes an edict. That’ll just bring him one step closer to being pulled from his throne and torn apart by his own subjects – may the day be soon,’ Mandir replied flatly. ‘I never liked him, even before the old Edmir’s death. We’d all be better had the boy lived. I say this even though Hermatyre exiles currently throng my streets and do my bidding. Claeon’s about mad enough to do something very foolish, so don’t think I can’t turn away Rosander’s Thousand Spines if they end up marching in my direction. You can tell him that as well.’
She bit her lip. ‘You’re not leaving me much to say to him, that will not have me executed.’
‘So don’t go back, then,’ Mandir suggested. ‘We don’t get so many Sepia-kinden here. Take on with me. I liked you when I met you that time before. I like you more, seeing you again. Do you dance?’
‘Dance?’ she spat.
‘Sepia-kinden dance? Skin-dancing? Been years since I saw that. Like I say, we don’t get many of your kinden, and they don’t last here long.’
‘Because you kill them?’ she suggested bitterly.
He looked at her stonily, letting seconds of silence pass. ‘Because life is hard here, and your people are not suited for the heat and the graft. I’m not Claeon. I’m trying to keep a very artificial little world together here, and be as tough as I must, confiscating landsmen included, but I’m not Claeon. I know well what his pastimes are, his hooks and lashes. I like women and good drink, and fine things, but stripping the skin off my subjects has never appealed to me, nor would they stand for it.’
She still glared at him, stubbornly. ‘And yet my kinden do not last here, and still you ask me to stay. What sense is there in that?’
‘You’ll live longer here than at Claeon’s side, nevertheless. That’s all the sense you need.’
‘I don’t dance.’
‘Shame. The offer’s still open.’
‘You’re serious?’ Haelyn frowned at him, incredulous. ‘Mandir, you say Claeon’s mad? Where would you be, to steal his emissaries? What do you think he might do to retaliate, if he is so very rash?’
Mandir sat back in his seat, plucked at a fold of his long cloak and examined it minutely. ‘I don’t fear him, for if he sent a pack of Kerebroi here, he’d find half of them would switch sides as soon as they arrived, glad to be out of his shadow. As for Rosander, well, Rosander knows well what toys we have here. He has a few of them himself, and he knows we have many more. If Claeon were to send him here, I’d wager that would be the end of their friendship – which friendship I hear is tottering anyway. So, I keep the landsmen and, if you’ll agree to it, I’ll keep you too, and keep you well.’
‘And would taking to your bed be a condition of that offer?’ she sneered. ‘I regret that Smallclaw Onychoi have never been to my taste.’
Mandir cocked his head to one side. ‘You should review your fancies, Haelyn. When I was a boy, we Smallclaw were always last to the table, even here. The Kerebroi ruled, the Greatclaw were strong and led the trains, the Pelagists had no time for us. We just tagged along with whoever would have us, and made things and fastened armour and tried not to get anyone angry at us. But this is now, and I rule here, and my kinden are coming into their own. We run the Hot Stations, and we’re the leading edge of all that’s new under the sea. Being half the size of you doesn’t mean we have to look up to you any more.’ He gestured expansively around at the audience chamber, the guards, the displays of arms. ‘But, no, it’s no condition. Come to us here and you’ll be safe from Claeon, no questions asked. Because I like you. And because I’m not Claeon. The landsmen, you know, they keep what they call slaves in their homes: people who are property, who work until they die, and who live and die according to some owner’s word, without even a chance to complain.’ He paused to watch her reaction. ‘That’s the land, Haelyn, not death glaring in every eye, but not a paradise either, and more fool the Littoralists for preaching otherwise. But, you know what, Claeon would fit right in. Claeon would make a good landsman, whereas I’m proud to say I wouldn’t. Now, you’d better go and work out what you can say to your lord and master that will keep your skin intact, or else work out that you’re better off staying here with us. Take your time, either way.’
She nodded, retreated a few steps, and said, ‘Thank you,’ and then she left.
Within the regularly reconstructed confines of the Hot Stations, the inhabitants occupied space where they found it, and then used it for their own purposes until someone – formerly someone stronger, but these days more likely someone carrying Mandir’s writ – took it from them. This chamber, for example, a space like a crumpled dome, contained mostly ranks of sleeping spaces for those who had no special trade, no gift, no contribution to earn them more from their hosts. Here slept the drifters and the refugees, the itinerant Pelagists, the fugitives hopeful of a better life beyond the reach of Edmir or Nauarch. Each life was delineated by a little pile of possessions and a sleeping mat on the uneven floor.
Towards one end of the chamber, the end that linked most conveniently with the main business of the Stations, some larger patches of ground had been claimed. There was a tented space that had a ragbag of used goods for sale or barter, and there was an eating house which served the host of luckless residents with broth,
