Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Sea Watch

Haelyn had not wanted to bring Claeon the news. It had seemed a good moment, after the report came to her, for her to abandon her post and seek anonymity within the twisted chambers of Hermatyre. Being Claeon’s major-domo was a career that promised no longevity, but she had already lasted longer than most. Telling a paranoid tyrant that his enemies really were moving against him seemed like suicide to her.

Yet here I am, and she knew it was through pure self-interest. When this was over, she wanted to be alive, yes, but she also wanted the gratitude of the winner. If she abandoned Claeon now, and he triumphed, then she would undoubtedly regret it. There would be resentful hands enough to drag her from whatever hiding place and cast her in front of his throne. Worse, if she stepped into the crowds now, and the insurrectionists won, then Heiracles, of notoriously short memory, would have forgotten her assistance long before she was able to make a claim on his generosity. She must stay the course, and hope that Hermatyre fell to the attackers before Claeon’s madness killed her.

But first she would have to survive this moment. ‘Your Eminence, great Edmir,’ she began.

Claeon sat hunched on his throne. His mood had been foul of late. He had known that Heiracles and the other malcontents were mustering, and although he had sent his soldiers out to break heads and shed blood, the insurrectionists had evaded them easily. Worse, a number of his own people had not come back at all, and Haelyn strongly suspected that they had cast their lot with the other side.

He was glowering silently at her now, waiting for her to speak on. There were two Dart-kinden guardsmen at the door, and at a word they would have her on the floor, their spears crossed over her neck. Then Claeon would climb down from his throne, knife in hand and full of bravery against a helpless victim.

‘They’re coming, aren’t they?’ he asked, his voice very soft, and to her surprise she thought she heard fear in it. What has he heard? The rumour was rampant throughout the colony that Aradocles had returned, but nobody knew for sure if it was true, not even she.

‘Our scouts confirm it, Edmir,’ she reported, bracing herself, but the explosion of anger never came. Instead he crouched motionless upon his throne, one hand gripping the coral of it painfully hard.

‘Guards,’ he said, no shout but just a flat command. Even as Haelyn flinched, he instructed them, ‘Have all my warriors prepare for war. Spread the word through the colony, that all those who can fight must now show their loyalty to the true bloodline. Have them arm themselves, have them rouse their beasts. Our colony is under threat from greedy, violent men who seek to depose the rightful Edmir, men who seek to sully this throne with their ignoble, unworthy heritage.’ He stood up, and for a moment he seemed cloaked with an authority that Haelyn had never witnessed before. ‘Tell them that Hermatyre will stand or fall through their resolve. Have them make ready, therefore. And send for Rosander and Pellectes. I will have orders for them, too. We will crush this rabble, this pack of upstarts with their pretender heir.’

The guards marched out swiftly to bear their leader’s words to his people. Claeon took a few steps away from the throne, suddenly a smaller man, divested of majesty. ‘Mine,’ he whispered. ‘Mine. What I have taken must not be taken from me.’ His narrowed eyes found Haelyn again. ‘What do the Arketoi?’

‘The Arketoi?’ she asked, baffled. ‘Nothing. No more than they ever do. They build. They repair.’

‘Good.’ He seemed more comforted by this news than she had expected, and strode past her, his progress jerkily swift, out of the throne room and into the antechamber with its great window. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded of the view outside – and almost at once it was occluded by a coiling bulk that half crawled, half slid from somewhere above. A vast, penetrating eye pressed itself to the clear membrane.

‘Arkeuthys,’ Claeon addressed it, ‘rally your people. All that we rule is under threat. Draw them from every crevice, every crack. Bring all of your kin, arm them and direct them. To war, Arkeuthys, to war!’

What words the great octopus might have then sent back, through Claeon’s Art-forged link, Haelyn could not guess, but a moment later the beast had thrust itself away from the colony’s uneven stone and was jetting off into the black void.

There was a light cough from the doorway, and Haelyn saw Pellectes there. The green-bearded Littoralist leader looked awkward and out of place, giving Haelyn the distinct impression that he had been interrupted in the middle of preparing his own exit.

‘Your Eminence?’ the man enquired.

‘Come here,’ Claeon bid him curtly, and Pellectes crossed the throne room to the window with obvious unwillingness.

‘You must rally your people,’ Claeon continued, with false heartiness. ‘Have you not heard that all our freedoms are under threat? Call on your Littoralists. They shall be chief amongst my armies.’

‘Your Eminence,’ Pellectes demurred, ‘we are visionaries, idealists, but we are no warriors.’

Claeon had seized the Littoralist’s arm in an instant, and Haelyn saw the flesh go white under the Edmir’s grip. ‘Oh, but you have spoken so boldly of invading the land, of thus taking what is ours by right! You talk such a fight as all the world has never seen, Pellectes!’ Claeon’s tight smile was painful to behold. ‘Have I not supported your cause? Have I not even enlisted Nauarch Rosander and primed him to carry the Littoralist banner on to the shores of the land?’ He yanked the taller Kerebroi close, the smile becoming a snarl almost without transition. ‘And do you believe, if the boy should triumph, he will have any time for your nonsense? Do you not think, instead, that there are plenty of tattle-tales in this colony who would be only too happy to point out to him those who once had my ear, and shared my confidences? You have more enemies than you know, Pellectes, and if I am undone, you yourself shall never step safely in Hermatyre again. Now, go arm your people, every one of them, for you have as much to lose as I do!’

He hurled the man from him, sending the Littoralist sprawling on the floor, and Haelyn watched Pellectes stumble back to his feet, already running for the door.

Even at that moment one of his guards returned and the Edmir bellowed furiously at him, ‘Where is Rosander?’

‘Edmir, he musters his Thousand Spines already,’ the guard promised him, and at that, Claeon smiled.

‘Do your people believe in destiny and prophecy and that kind of thing?’ Stenwold asked, trying his best to sound casual. He was back in Wys’s submersible again, which he trusted in a battle more than Nemoctes’s living vessel. Wys made a face at that question. ‘Destiny? Not likely. Destiny’s what you make for yourself. Ain’t that right, Spillage?’

‘Sounds right to me,’ came the voice of the Greatclaw engineer from above.

Phylles was looking less certain, though, so Wys prodded her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still hung up on all of that stuff?’

The Polypoi woman looked stubborn, so Wys explained. ‘Her folk are all about omens and telling the future, sitting and seeing what the currents send past them, cryptic messages from the dead, all that rot. But we civilized her – or at least I thought we’d civilized her.’

All around them the dark sea seemed studded with stars: the limn-lights suspended from the larger craft and creatures in Aradocles’s fleet.

Paladrya laid a hand on Stenwold’s shoulder, and he smiled.

‘Say what you like,’ she addressed them all, ‘we all have destinies, and those destinies can be uncovered. I have seen it done.’