‘You have many of these devices?’ Teornis asked Chenni. Before her words he had assumed this was some singular prodigy.
‘Oh, a good dozen already, and more on the way. Our long stop in Hermatyre has been good for the manufactory. Otherwise, doing things on the move is always difficult. Of course, when we come for real, we’ll have the beasts with us to break up whatever your land lot have built, and carry it away.’
Teornis reminded her that it was not ‘his’ land lot after all, but she shrugged expressively.
‘Makes little difference to me, honestly,’ she told him. ‘I just know Rosander wants action. Too long in a colony’s making him and his lads go half-crazy. But now we’ve got this war that Claeon and the Lits have hatched for us. Something different, at least. Raiding the land-kinden’s probably more fun than raiding another train. Easier too, I reckon.’
And yet you haven’t asked why Claeon’s so happy to leave it to you, Teornis thought. He pictured an octopus, exploring warily with its tentacles, then a crab just blundering in sideways, pincers raised in belligerent threat. We become them, after long enough. We become our ideal form. My good luck that Spiders are both patient and cunning. I’ll have them all in our web yet, beetles and sea monsters, too.
It was from the heavier going that Teornis guessed they were close to land, the tilt that showed him the seafloor was now a steepening slope. Then he heard the surface waves battering at the metal of the thing’s nose, while the gears began making very different sounds. The half-dozen Onychoi became tense, waiting for something to give, but their forward progress, though slower, never stopped as the monstrous machine dragged itself doggedly on to the beach. Chenni let out a whoop of triumph, and for a moment the little half-naked people were hugging each other in an orgy of congratulation.
‘We’re ashore?’ Teornis pressed, when he could finally get anyone’s attention.
‘Oh we are that, Chief Landsman,’ Chenni told him. ‘So time for you to make your exit.’
They had to open the hatch for him, of course, and then it was an undignified crawl underneath the rear rim of the machine’s great curved hood, on hands and knees through the wet, weed-slick sand, before he could get clear. He did not care. Beneath a cloud-ragged midnight sky, he stood and stretched, with only the solid ground beneath him, only the air above. To not be trapped in a bubble at the bottom of the sea: whoever could have thought that this would ever be the limit of my ambition?
His confederates, Claeon’s men, crouched, waiting for him, in the surf as though clinging desperately to the last of their world. Whatever they had been promised, to break such a great taboo, they looked less sure of it now. Still, he would not want to be the one to return instead to Claeon, whose temper was less mythic than the deadly, inhospitable land ahead of them, but made up for that by being far more immediate.
Teornis approached them with a smile. ‘Which of you leads, here?’ he asked. It took some time for one of the men to come forwards.
‘I am senior here,’ the Kerebroi announced, already shivering in the cold night air, clad in nothing but his loincloth and ornaments. ‘I am Geontes.’ He was a man who looked close to Teornis’s own age, but broader at the waist, as all his kind seemed to be after reaching a certain point in their lives. His beard dripped miserably.
‘Well, Geontes, we will have to make a landsman out of you – out of all of you,’ Teornis told him, with a kindly smile. ‘You can hardly walk into Collegium dressed like the richest beggar in the Lowlands. Assuming you didn’t freeze to death before you got there.’
‘Your spy’s here,’ a sardonic voice observed from by his elbow. Chenni was pointing up the beach to where the cliffs began. Teornis’s eyes picked out a couple of figures making their careful way down by some narrow path: a Beetle man and a Spider woman… No, a Kerebroi woman, although he might have taken her for a Spider at a passing glance, had he not known. Here was Pellectes’s agent, the worm in the timbers of Collegium.
As for the man… Teornis found himself smiling as he placed the face. Oh, now that’s interesting. How many masters may a man actually have?
He now strode forward, every inch the confident Aristos, showing no hint of being a prisoner, of being kept for tendays away from the light and air.
‘Why, Master Broiler, as I live and breathe, how splendid!’
Helmess Broiler evidently did not find it so – which argued for wisdom. Matters were out of his hands as of now, though, Teornis decided. He bowed low before the woman. ‘Madam, you have had word of me, I hope?’
‘Some word,’ she agreed, regarding him with narrowed eyes. She was a reasonably comely piece of work, he decided, although close-up she did not compare to one of true Spider blood. Still, a Beetle could do worse, no doubt.
‘Lady, I am Teornis of the Aldanrael, former Lord-Martial of the Grand Army of the Spiderlands, and implacable enemy of Collegium. You, I take it, are of Pellectes’s party, one of the Littoralists?’
The hastily hidden bafflement on Helmess’s face was a joy to see. So I know more than you already, Master Beetle. Therefore beware.
‘Elytrya,’ the woman named herself. ‘I was told you would be of use to the cause. Is that so?’
‘Why else would I be here?’ Teornis assured her. ‘I bring some lackeys also, for your use, but we must have them properly disguised. It would not do for them to enter Collegium too openly, either as sea-kinden or Spiders.’
‘We have clothes, cloaks,’ she told him, still distrusting. ‘There is a carriage waiting, but these will not all fit in it.’
‘They’ll have to jog alongside, like servants,’ Teornis decided. ‘We’ll tell them it’s a landsman custom. The exercise will do them good, since I daresay Claeon doesn’t exercise them enough.’ He was watching carefully, and he noticed the slight crease of humour appear in her face. Oh Claeon, you are held in such low esteem even by your own allies. ‘Shall we go now?’ he offered, and she nodded curtly.
Behind them the Onychoi were fussing over the trial machine, but happily in so far as he could judge. Ahead, just a climb up the cliffs and a carriage-ride away, lay the civilized, land-bound comforts of Collegium. Even Beetle hospitality would serve, after what he had been through.
And there would be eyes watching for his return. Teornis had grown tired of dancing to another’s tune. It was time to make the melody himself.
The Collegium watch knew Helmess Broiler, that was clear, and were obviously used to his nocturnal perambulations. Teornis wondered if the man had publicly cultivated a hobby such as star-gazing, or collecting moths, to justify his habits, or whether he simply relied on his status as an Assembler to deflect rumour. Considering what he knew of him, Teornis suspected the former, and also guessed that the Beetle had arranged for this particular watch officer to have this particular shift, with open hand and blind eye to the ready. Helmess, he assessed, was a workmanlike intelligencer, and one who had kept a great secret for some time. So when did I hear that Broiler had got himself a Spider mistress? It had not seemed important at the time, and it had been quite the fashion after Maker took in Arianna. Waifs, strays and exiles from all across the Spiderlands had ended up as paramours and escorts to the Beetle-kinden men and women of consequence thanks to Stenwold’s proclivities. Teornis had seen no reason to have a spy in Helmess’s parlour, since he had always suspected Helmess was the Empire’s man, and the Aldanrael maintained a spy at the Imperial embassy. So why waste effort on one more old Beetle?
Oh, what we might have learned, had I done so. However, no regrets now. Time to weep for the past when my enemies are dead, as the poet said.
Teornis had made sure that, as Broiler’s four-beetle carriage was forced to halt at the gates to the city, he stepped just out to stretch his legs. Claeon’s people, looking like shabby peasants of no fixed kinden, clustered together behind the carriage, plainly shocked and horrified by Collegium even at night-time. Teornis had laid a reassuring hand on Geontes’s shoulder. I shall spare you too much further discomfort, he promised inwardly. He grinned up at the stars out of genuine pleasure at remaking their acquaintance, and because there would be those looking out for his face, should he ever re-enter the city.