Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Sea Watch

I hope you find her, Sten.

GA

That last line, that personal voice behind the formal style, tugged at Stenwold: Greenwise Artector, one of Hel-leron’s guiding council, a wealthy magnate and unlikely ally. Nobody but Stenwold knew quite how much he had orchestrated things, behind the facade of public life, to assist the Lowlands in its war against the Empire, even from the heart of an occupied city. Everything Greenwise had seen of the Empire’s numbers and movements and capabilities had found its way to Stenwold, and to Salma too, who had used it to slow the Wasp advance until the Sarnesh army was ready for them. It was an achievement worthy of recognition, yet Greenwise had been explicit that it go unrecognized. Stenwold knew exactly why: the Empire still had its people in Helleron, and its ambitions beyond. There would come a time when the Imperial banner would once again come to that city. At which point, Greenwise’s fellow magnates would have him handed over without a second thought.

There was a delicate scratch at the door and Stenwold folded the two letters together and put them away, an old instinct he didn’t need just now, but might need to take up again soon – just like the sword that hung on the back of the study door.

‘You can come in,’ he announced.

‘You’ve closed the latch again,’ came Arianna’s voice, amused. Another old habit, for a spymaster, past or present, valued privacy. He got up and opened the door to her.

He always felt better for seeing her, no matter what the odds. She had sustained him through the Vekken Siege, and it was widely claimed that she and he together had sent the Imperial Second Army packing. Nonsense, of course, but Stenwold was all unwillingly attracting stories that would have done justice to a sorcerer-hero of the Bad Old Days. Having a pretty young Spider girl at his side seemed to coin only envy and admiration, however, rather than the looked-for scandal.

‘They’re here,’ Arianna told him, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Cardless is attending to them.’ Cardless was Sten-wold’s third servant since the war, and not given to the gossip and sloth that had seen his master dismiss the other two. He had been Arianna’s choice, of course. Stenwold was used to choosing spies and agents, which meant his eye was attuned for different qualities.

He took a deep breath, looking down at his hands. It was time now to resolve the rumours.

Cardless had transformed Stenwold’s homely kitchen table into something fit for an important Assembler hosting a Master of the College. There were candles in ornate Spider-kinden holders, and the wine was a good Merro vintage. His three guests held a bowl each already. Two were well known to Stenwold, members of the expedition that had gone under his name. The lean old man was the historian Berjek Gripshod. The younger woman, tall and straight, was Praeda Rakespear, teacher of artifice. There were lines on their faces that had not been evident at their departure. Although they both wore the crisp white robes of their office, the travel of many miles seemed to hang about them, so that Stenwold could almost taste the dust.

The third visitor was a stranger who appeared to fill most of the room, stooping under the ceiling, the tiny bowl a toy in the palm of his hand: a Beetle-kinden, though taller than any man of Collegium Stenwold had seen, and he wore a tunic of a foreign cut, ornamented with gold at the neck and wrist. His bare arms were huge with muscle and traced with scars. He stood beside Praeda with a possessive enough air to be either her lover or a bodyguard. Arianna had met them at the door and then ushered them in to see Stenwold, the perfect Collegiate hostess.

‘Master Maker,’ said old Gripshod, by way of greeting.

‘Master Gripshod, Mistress Rakespear, and…’ Stenwold looked up at the giant cautiously. He felt that if the man straightened up and flexed his shoulders he would send the walls of Stenwold’s house tumbling outwards into the street.

‘Master Maker,’ Praeda said, ‘may I introduce Amnon, formerly the First Soldier of Khanaphes.’

Stenwold blinked at that, reflecting that Praeda had perhaps exceeded a scholar’s normal penchant for bringing back research material. ‘Well, I’m honoured,’ he managed.

The huge man regarded him with a slight, polite smile, the thoughts behind it well hidden.

‘Please, sit.’ Stenwold gestured to the table. Of course there were only four places set but, even as he noticed it, Cardless was seamlessly inserting a fourth before drifting back with a tray of fruit-bread.

They settled about the table. It was clear to them all that this was not just another case of a townsman greeting the returned explorers. They eyed each other like veterans who might or might not have fought in the same battles, or even on the same side.

‘What did you actually know, of what you were sending us into, Master Maker?’ Praeda asked him first. ‘Or what did Jodry Drillen know?’

‘What I knew, you knew,’ Stenwold replied. ‘And as for what Drillen knew, who can say? I’ll say that I don’t believe he was trying to stir up trouble anywhere but here in Collegium, but I have no window on his mind.’

‘They say he will be Speaker,’ Berjek murmured. ‘Did we bring that about?’

‘Yes and yes,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘But there were worse men for the job.’ And am I Drillen’s apologist now? ‘If I had thought he was sending you into danger, if I had thought that he was the kind of man to do so, then I’d have had no part of it.’

‘I believe you,’ Berjek acknowledged, although Praeda looked less certain. ‘I opposed you, you know, when you first started your ravings about the Empire. You were right then, so I’ll advance credit on your opinions now.’

‘Manny was killed,’ Praeda stated. ‘The Wasps killed him.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

She looked to Amnon then, and Stenwold placed his role as lover and not merely a guard. ‘If it hadn’t been…’ she began.

Berjek nodded. ‘And for the Vekken. It was your idea to have them with us, and I won’t say we weren’t ultimately grateful. You’ve spoken with them?’

‘As soon as they arrived. I’d left them time to report to their fellows but… Ant-kinden, of course – the Vekken here knew, as soon as your ship approached the harbour.’ They had told him little else, save that the Empire was there, and involved in an assault on the city, and on the embassy in particular. The interview with the returned Vekken ambassadors had been strange even by their standards. They had left so much out, and he had sensed that it was not just to spite him, but because they lacked adequate words to describe it. Whatever had motivated them to hold to their truce with Collegium, it was not accounted for in the little they had revealed.

‘Master Maker,’ said Gripshod, ‘we know why you’ve asked us here. It’s not merely to welcome the returning explorers and it’s not concerning city politics.’ He extracted a sealed and folded paper from within his robes, and Stenwold caught sight of the handwriting: his own name inscribed in that too familiar, desperately-trying-to-be-neat hand. He reached for it automatically, but Berjek held it back.

‘We need to explain first,’ Praeda said. Stenwold’s gaze flicked between the two of them, sliding past the chest of the huge Khanaphir soldier. ‘Whatever she’s written will be her own account but… it may not be as reliable as you’re used to.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stenwold was already on the defensive for absent Che without thinking.

The two academics exchanged glances. ‘Only that, on reaching Khanaphes, your niece’s behaviour was… erratic. Increasingly so,’ Berjek informed him, a man steeling himself for an unpleasant task. ‘She began acting oddly, absenting herself, avoiding engagements. She disappeared two or three times without warning or excuse. She kept odd company: foreign merchants, the Imperial ambassador.’ He saw Stenwold react to that last information, and nodded grimly. ‘Whatever was preoccupying her mind, it wasn’t official duties, Master Maker.’