“He isn’t deaf, and neither are your tenants and servants. Can you keep all of them silent about such amazing news?”
“I don’t know. But I do know I don’t want you attacking this adult.”
Broadtail is unhappy, but agrees. He sets himself the task of remaining with the bandit, keeping him away from the shelter inhabited by the Builders. He sits and listens as the “merchant” sells a great deal of strong cord, some unbreakable tools, and a quantity of superfine netting. Longpincer’s tenants and staff buy all he is willing to sell.
The merchant takes payment in Longpincer’s beads, then sends off his helper to spend them. That means Broadtail can’t keep both of them in hearing at once.
He hears Holdhard nearby and gets her to help. “Stay here and listen to the merchant. Ask him many questions, keep him here. Do not speak of the Builders.”
“I understand,” she says.
“Good.” He crawls after the merchant’s helper. He recognizes her flavor in the water: she’s the big one who can crack an adult’s shell with her pincers.
He stays back, just close enough to hear her scuttling along. She probably knows he’s behind her. Broadtail remembers the attack on his expedition and grows more angry. He hopes she doesn’t like him following her. He hopes she tries to fight him. A fight makes everything simple: even Longpincer’s strong notions of hospitality don’t extend to strangers brawling with guests.
But if she does notice him, she gives no sign and shows no anger. She visits Longpincer’s store houses and the homes of his more prosperous tenants. She trades Longpincer’s beads for small, valuable goods: fertile eggs, hot-water crops, diamonds. All very sensible.
Broadtail feels momentary doubt. Maybe they are just merchants. He might be mistaken about them being bandits. They might have an innocent explanation of where the goods come from.
Then her course bends toward the shelter holding the Builders. Innocent or not, he can’t let her ping them. Broadtail leaves the ground and swims, beating his flukes noisily and dodging past nets and rigging.
The big female turns. He must sound hostile, swimming toward her like some hunter, for she raises her open pincers and braces herself. Broadtail forces himself to slow and drop to the bottom a couple of arm-lengths away from her.
“I come to warn you,” he says. “You are walking toward danger.”
“Danger?” she says. Her speech is slow and overly precise. A real cold-water barbarian, this one.
“Poison things grow over there,” he says, gesturing. “They make adults sick. Stay away.”
“What poison things?” She folds her pincers slowly.
Broadtail is a scholar and remembers being a landowner. He begins to reel off the most alarming poison growths he can think of. “There’s a nasty colony of gill-blight down there, and since nobody wants to go clear them out some stinging tendrilworms are nesting as well. So please, stay away.”
“Very well,” she says, though he suspects she doesn’t believe him. Too bad. She’s just a visitor here anyway. If Longpincer—or Broadtail acting on his behalf—wants to keep something secret, he has every right to do so. If she doesn’t like it she can leave, and Broadtail rather likes that idea.
She alters course and trundles toward some of the smaller tenant homes. Broadtail considers his mental map of the estate. From those homes she can cut back toward where the Builders are staying by following the sandy slope. He decides to wait there for a while and intercept her.
He finds a comfortable spot where the sand isn’t too unstable and sits quietly. While he waits his thoughts wander, but he is well-fed and does not sleep.
Broadtail thinks about his own place in the world. For now he is Longpincer’s guest, but he hopes to change that. He remembers meeting others like that—adults with some accomplishment but no property, living off some admiring landowner. It can be a good life, but it does not survive the death of the admirer. When an apprentice inherits, the permanent guests are the first to go. If they are lucky, and still fit, they may stay on as tenants or servants.
Broadtail is not a greedy adult, but he does have his pride. That is not what he imagines for himself. But what does he imagine? What does he want? In the quiet he tries to hear his own thoughts.
He does not imagine owning land again. Every property has too many apprentices waiting to inherit. He remembers cases of landowners naming a favored friend as heir and they always end badly. Legal challenges, labor troubles, sometimes ambush and murder in open water. And Longpincer is devoted to the Bitterwater property.
Not a guest, not a landowner. A crafter, perhaps? Living as a tenant but earning his own way? He is nearly as good at netmaking as any professional, and of course he is an excellent writer. Can one get paid for that? Not very well.
Fishing is tiring and leaves little opportunity for scholarship. He is not a good trader. He has no taste for mercenary soldiering. He knows a lot about plumbing and flow, but every landowner is a self-proclaimed expert about that.
What he wants to do is to study the Builders and learn about the worlds beyond the ice. Is there a way to get paid for that? Broadtail doesn’t know of one.
A sound draws his attention. Someone is approaching along the slope from the direction of the tenant homes. It sounds like the big bandit female. She passes a few arm-lengths below him without noticing him, heading for the Builders’ shelter.
His position is perfect. He can spring down on her and get a pincer behind her head-shield before she hears him. It is the logical thing to do—she is a bandit, a murderer herself. The secret of the Builders must be protected.
Broadtail sits quietly and lets her pass. It is far easier to plan and talk about killing someone by surprise than to do it. The bandits are capable of it, but Broadtail realizes that he is not. “You!” he calls out.
She hears him and turns, pincers raised unambiguously to fight.
“I remind you that place is not safe. The landowner forbids anyone to go there.”
“I do not remember him telling me. You are not the owner. I go where I choose.”
“I don’t wish to fight you,” says Broadtail.
“Then let me pass. I am not afraid to fight you.”
Broadtail feels the frustration of all vent-dwellers speaking with barbarians. For a civilized adult, being peaceable and willing to negotiate is an admirable thing, worthy of praise. But among the barbarians those who do not fight are quickly bullied to death. And this barbarian is bigger than Broadtail.
“As you choose,” he says. “But I go now to tell Longpincer. You are not behaving as a proper visitor and I imagine you and your companion being expelled for this foolishness.”
“I am not afraid of you,” she says again.
Strongpincer and Shellcrusher leave the settlement, tired and hungry. He is rather annoyed at being forced to go without eating any of the wonderful-tasting meal he remembers. The packed travel food seems dull and unsatisfying.
But they have important news for their patrons, and perhaps it is best not to wait. Shellcrusher is certain that the creatures they seek are concealed at Bitterwater.
He caches the trade goods, stripping down to just enough food for a fast swim back. Strongpincer has the faint echo of an idea: he suspects his patrons plan to attack Bitterwater and recapture the creatures there. Strongpincer imagines the landowner and many of his apprentices dying in that fight. Which leaves the vent in need of a new master. Why not… Strongpincer? With Shellcrusher and his alien patrons supporting him, he does not imagine any tenant daring to oppose him.
As they swim he half-dozes, letting his thoughts wander even as he keeps up a steady beat of his tail. A warm house of his own. Servants to make meals whenever he wants. Thick layers of weeds and crawlers on his shell. Nothing to do but molt and grow.