Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Sea Watch

Then Heiracles knelt and bowed his head – less to a man than to the inevitable. ‘Welcome back, Your Eminence, my Edmir,’ he declared.

With a studied disregard for the knives, Aradocles went to assist Heiracles to his feet. In that moment, the way the youth moved reminded Stenwold very much of Salma. The heir nodded. ‘Use that title only once I have earned it,’ he reproached the older man. ‘I’m not in Hermatyre yet. Tell me, how do we stand there?’

‘The word has gone out to our… your supporters,’ Heiracles informed him. ‘Those of the Pelagists who have taken sides are gathering. A host is ready to march on Hermatyre.’

‘And their numbers?’ Aradocles queried.

‘Still mustering as yet. I hear from Wys that the Thousand Spines

…’ He glanced at Stenwold for more.

‘I hope that they shall not be a problem,’ was all Stenwold would commit to. Or have I misjudged Rosander and his priorities? he considered.

‘Then the numbers should be close to even and, once word reaches Hermatyre that you are with us, we expect the colony’s defenders to undergo a change of heart. Claeon can command obedience, but no love.’

The submersible had begun to descend. Stenwold watched the water outside darken and darken, until there was nothing but black. He could not suppress a shudder.

‘I do not want to come to the throne wading waist-deep in the blood of my own subjects,’ Aradocles said, frowning.

‘If they cling to your false uncle, what can they expect?’ Heiracles asked dismissively.

‘And how are they to know that I am truly with you, that my name is not merely an empty boast? Claeon will tell them that I am slain, that it is merely a trick to unseat the colony’s true ruler.’

It was clear from the way that Heiracles paused before answering that he was well aware of this. ‘I am assured that the people of Hermatyre are eager for your return, Edmir.’

Aradocles shook his head. ‘Not enough, Heiracles. I will not have my people slaying one another, each believing that they fight for the true ruler. If I were to show myself to them…’

‘There’d be enough there who’d gut you, because they’re Claeon’s parasites,’ Wys put in immediately. ‘And with you dead, boy, where’s that leave everyone? All it’d take is one lancer, or one of those new Stations weapons that can lob a spear ten yards. Getting close enough to see who you are is getting close enough to kill you.’

The heir to Hermatyre frowned, looking down at his hands, and, with a shock of familiarity, Stenwold recognized a mannerism of his own, doubtless transmitted to the youth via Salma.

A lengthy journey through darkness took them to where the loyalists were gathering. During the long hours, Stenwold sat alongside Paladrya and tried not to think about the Spider-kinden fleet and the progress it must be making down the coast, or about the Wasp armies massing to take advantage of Collegium’s downfall.

At last there was light: the limn-lamps of a small colony transforming the deep sea in shades of pale blue and gold. Stenwold joined the others in looking out across a crawling seabed. There were crabs and lobsters and similar beasts there, jostling for leg-room, harnessed and saddled, and the swift darting of squid-borne cavalry passed overhead. Spiral shells bobbed and danced around one another, hanging in the water like airships, and some trailed living tentacles while others were propelled by mechanical siphons. Around it all there were the sea-people, a military mob of them, without order and without distinction, and belonging to all kinden.

They docked, and for Stenwold there was the usual awkwardness of them dragging him, cauled again, over to the encrusted mound that was the colony. It had been a long enough absence that the pressure, the cold and the claustrophobia were not the least dulled by his past familiarity. Still, he had been given his chance to avoid this reacquaintance up at the Collegium docks, and he had only himself to blame for being a prisoner of the sea once again.

They held a council of war, whereupon a handful of Krakind nobles and Pelagist leaders got to see Aradocles, so that they could vouch to their followers that this was the true heir after all. Some attempt at a plan was made, but Stenwold soon gained the uneasy feeling that these sea-kinden were simply not used to war. Their idea of such a fight, even with the numbers they had amassed, was to hurl their people at the enemy, as swiftly and fiercely as possible, and hope to let sheer individual skill and inspiration carry the day. Of all the sea-kinden he had met, Stenwold wondered if the only one who might understand how to conduct a war was Rosander.

The Krakind let their discussions run on, till most of the Pelagists gave up on the whole business and went off to tend to their machines or their animals. Stenwold now looked up as he heard one approaching him.

‘Nemoctes,’ he named the arrival.

‘Stenwold Maker.’ Nemoctes was wearing his shell mail, the same shield slung across his back. ‘I have a message for you.’

Something twisted inside Stenwold. ‘From…?’

‘Her, yes. Lyess.’ Nemoctes looked troubled. ‘She told me that you’d put a question to her, before you left, and that her companion has the answer now. She told me also that you were coming back to us. She seemed very sure of that.’

Stenwold nodded tiredly. ‘Take me to her.’

‘You need not, if you do not wish it,’ Nemoctes cautioned. ‘She is

… behaving strangely. I have never before known her like this. Something has changed with her.’

‘Take me to her,’ Stenwold repeated, and levered himself to his feet. Nemoctes’s expression darkened but he nodded, gesturing for Stenwold to follow him.

On the way to the hatch, Paladrya approached him, her expression suddenly one of alarm, and he wondered what she had guessed at, and by what means. She reached out a hand to him and he touched fingers briefly, feeling like a man going to his own execution.

He found that his memories had strayed, during that period when Lyess and her domain had been so much on his mind. In his thoughts, during his incarceration at the Hot Stations, during the flight in the submersible, he had recalled pure light, as though he had travelled with Lyess in a room full of windows: as though the clean sunlight had shone in from every point.

Now, standing before her again after so long, he discovered that his mind had glossed over the shapes in the translucent material of the creature around them: the coils and sacs and organs casting their shadows through the ambient glow. His mind had rewritten the place, gilded and edited it until he found he recalled something like a domed hall of lucent marble, when all along he had been dwelling within the guts of a monster.

Lyess, though, his memories had not needed to alter: beautiful as a statue and just as cold; blank-eyed as a Moth-kinden, or as the Monarch of Princep Salmae. He could feel the shreds of old glamour stir at the sight of her, her skin paler than alabaster, her form so perfect in its curves and in its grace that she seemed more the work of some arch-genius artificer than a product of nature. About her shoulders her hair stirred and waved under unfelt currents.

‘You came back,’ she said. He could not read her face because, like an Ant-kinden, she had lived all her life in a communion that had never needed facial expressions. Unlike the Ants, though, that communion had denied any human contact, until now.

‘Nemoctes said you had an answer for me,’ he said slowly, thinking carefully on his words lest he commit to something without realizing.

‘You asked me to seek out the memories of our ancestors,’ she told him. ‘You wished to know if the Littoralists were right and if your forebears drove ours from the land.’