Then they were rattling through the sleeping streets, the Kerebroi shambling along behind again, and only Teornis spared a moment to look again towards the skies. Certainly the sea-kinden would not think to, and Beetles are so earth-bound. His keen eyes caught the shudder of wings up there, and an excitement that had been distant till now began abruptly welling up. I am back in the Dance.
They encamped at Broiler’s townhouse, the Beetle magnate now looking harried, and with good cause. Claeon’s men he had already been expecting, and no doubt he felt confident of handling the bewildered, land-lost Kerebroi, but Teornis provided a rogue factor, an element that his planning had not taken into account. The game had changed.
And yet Teornis made sure to appear meekness personified. Though their conversation had been slight, he had shown himself, on the journey, to be Claeon’s man, relieved only to be out of the depths. ‘Oh you cannot imagine,’ he had whispered to Helmess Broiler, ‘the darkness, down there, the sense of weight. It is no place for us landsmen, no place at all.’ Even so, the Beetle had not seemed convinced.
Geontes and his fellows ended up squatting about Hel-mess’s parlour, their shabby cloaks over their Hermatyre riches giving them the look of larcenous tramps. Helmess’s servants were mostly absent, no doubt promptly sent away to avoid telling tales of these remarkable strangers. There was only one on hand to serve some drinks, a stocky man with a cultured air who Teornis tentatively identified as a halfbreed, albeit a very subtle one. Spider blood, so worth watching.
‘Sands,’ Helmess said when asked about him. ‘Forman Sands, my man of all work.’ He wore a steely little smile as he said it. Teornis knew the expression from his dealings in Helleron long ago. It was polite Beetle parlance for someone that removed obstacles in business and personal life, by whatever means.
‘He seems a handy fellow to have around,’ Teornis remarked.
‘Oh, he’ll do,’ Helmess agreed, the implicit threat hovering. The Spider only smiled politely.
While the Kerebroi were being served bowls of wine, most of which ended up slopped on the floor, Teornis went to the window and leant out, taking in a deep breath of cool air. Sensing Helmess at his shoulder, he said, ‘I am not quite used yet to having a sky up there,’ which was true. He smiled back at his host whilst, at the windowsill, his fingers busily spun glinting strands. ‘Tell me, Master Broiler, what do you yourself seek from all of this?’
‘Why?’ Helmess asked him, eyes narrowed. He was suspicious, yes, but suspicious only of the question. The instructions that Teornis’s hands were sketching went unseen, save by the eyes outside the house that they were meant for. It was not just the sea-kinden that possessed a silent finger-language.
‘Have they promised you a governorship? What on earth does Rosander intend to do with the place, once he has it?’
‘I doubt he’s thought it through,’ said Helmess, drawn into speaking, despite himself. ‘And so he will need someone to think for him. I fancy that Elytrya and I shall be appointed king and consort of the city. Surely, Rosander has no clue how to govern the place, and after sufficient raids from the sea he will wish for something more permanent. I will be waiting, and of proven loyalty.’
I cannot think of any phrase less fitting for you. ‘As you know, my own people will descend on this place soon enough,’ Teornis told him, wondering absently if the ships had even left harbour yet. ‘Once the back of the Assembly is broken, by whatever means, the picture you sketch may be attractive. An ostensibly independent Collegium will look better to us, and I am sure you will be happy to let our ships ply the sea trade on your behalf. It was all we ever wanted, after all. Such a great fuss over a few coins here or there in a merchant’s purse.’ He brushed off his hands, their work done, strands of glittering thread ghosting away into the night air.
He turned away from the window, smiling at Helmess, and placed his back to the wall. The Kerebroi sat sullenly as Elytrya spoke to them about the great things that the Littoralists would accomplish, once their long-lost land had been reclaimed. Helmess drank sparingly and remained suspicious.
His man of all work stayed close to his elbow. It was impossible to tell from his face just how far into this conspiracy Sands was. Has potential, that one, Teornis noted. Just how much potential, we’ll see in a moment.
Perhaps half an hour later his people came bursting through every available window.
They were his Dragonfly-kinden, and so had been able to go to ground in Collegium with ease. To the Beetles, Dragonflies meant the Commonweal, who were enemies of the Wasps and therefore nominal friends of the city. Most Beetles had very little idea what a Commonweal Dragonfly should look like and so these men and women, lean and hard in their armour of chitin and hide and with their personal histories written on their skins with scars and tattoos, easily passed muster. The Commonweal was known to be a strange and backward place, after all.
They fell upon the Kerebroi with a will, without hesitation. Geontes was among the first to die. A few of the others had knives out, but tangled in their unfamiliar clothing, before the Dragonflies butchered them. Other intruders had arrows poised on the string, directed at Sands, at Helmess, at Elytrya. Teornis’s instructions had been necessarily crude – kill all Spider-kinden save the Arista and myself – because the Art-web language was difficult for non-Spiders to follow, and he had not dared to be more specific. Forman Sands, caught at arrow-point standing creditably in front of his employer, owed his life merely to Teornis’s need for a simple message, and it was lucky that Teor-nis’s followers had identified Elytrya as the ‘Arista’ or she would have died too.
It was over so swiftly, with a minimum of fuss. Of the three Dragonfly principalities in exile within the Spider-lands, the warrior-folk of Solorn were those most divorced from their heritage. They had long turned their back on the peace and philosophy of the Commonweal, scratching out a harsh livelihood on their rocky peninsula, bandits, raiders and mercenaries like their cousins in Princep Exilla. Teornis had employed them in his personal house guard and cadre for years.
‘Varante,’ he greeted their leader. The tall, cord-muscled man bowed in a quick, jerky movement. He was automatically cleaning the blade of his punch-sword with a torn swatch of cloth taken from the cloak of one of the dead. He had served the Aldanrael for twenty years, had Varante, and grown grey and leathery in their service. But not old, never old.
‘Lord-Martial,’ the Dragonfly addressed him, ‘honoured to serve. The bodies in the bay?’
Teornis gave him a wide and genuine smile. His depth of feeling surprised him: how glad he was to see this familiar face, this old retainer who had now restored him to power. ‘Not in the bay, no,’ he considered. ‘That would send entirely the wrong message. Have them taken out and dumped somewhere inland. The further inland the better. Let them become food for ants and worms, but not for fish.’ He turned to Helmess and Elytrya, all smiles now. ‘You may be feeling some anxiety as to where this is going,’ he told them, as though there were not eight corpses being stripped of their valuables and manhandled out of the window one by one. They stared at him, shocked into paralysis. Only Sands seemed able to react, and he was keeping carefully quiet, understanding that he had just become the most expendable person in the room. I wonder if he would contemplate a change of employer?
‘You’ – Teornis pointed at the Kerebroi woman – ‘will achieve your conquest of the land. Bring Rosander and his host to Collegium, and that will serve. All I said before remains just as true. And you,’ his finger flicked towards Helmess, ‘can be governor or king or grand high sealord of this place after we’re done, for all I care. Everything goes ahead just as you want.’ Teornis’s smile was iron. ‘But we do it my way. So now let’s talk about Aradocles.’