‘Mistress Paladrya.’ The small, brave smile she managed for him provided a calming reassurance out of all proportion, focusing his mind and banishing distraction. ‘You took your boy Aradocles to the land, to be out of Claeon’s reach. Having met with the Edmir’s assassins in the Hot Stations, I now appreciate your caution. I know what the land means to your various kinden. I know also, from Mandir himself, that there are exceptions. You had reason to believe the boy would stand more chance of survival in the sun and air than anywhere beneath the waves.’
From behind Heiracles’s shoulder and penned in by the man’s servants, she nodded. Her gaze was fixed on Stenwold with a look of absolute intensity.
Stenwold took a step forward, and he felt and heard the other landsmen shift behind him, moving slightly too, as if backing him. They are not Tisamon but it is good to have friends. ‘Will you come to the land now, to see if he can be found and returned to his people?’ he asked her boldly, as though her captors were not there.
‘Yes,’ she said, simply.
‘This is not acceptable,’ Heiracles snapped. ‘The people of Hermatyre are… changeable. I must have something to win them over with, if we are to oust Claeon. This woman is notorious-’
‘As the killer of the young Edmir,’ Stenwold finished for him. ‘I recall it. However, she did not kill him, and he may not be dead. I have witnessed enough to know that the true heir would rally your people far more effectively than any show trial.’ He glanced at Nemoctes, then at Wys and her people. Heiracles had brought eight flunkies with him, armed with the sea-kinden’s curved knives, so Stenwold weighed numbers and the will to fight, wondering who could be relied on to take a side. ‘If Aradocles himself were here, you would support him, would you not, Heiracles?’ he asked, in tones dripping with reason.
He saw the battle on the man’s lean face, revealing the bitter ambition that the true heir’s long absence had fostered. Clearly he had lived the last five years believing the lad dead, and therefore himself the next in line if only Claeon could be removed. Paladrya and her evidence had clearly been not been welcome. Just as well he wanted her for the people to tear apart, or she would surely be dead already, Stenwold considered.
‘Heiracles,’ came Paladrya’s soft voice.
His head jerked towards her, while still keeping the land-kinden in view. ‘You have no voice in this,’ he cautioned her.
‘You cannot keep the landsmen here, not now. If you tried to do so by force, not only would you fail, but you would show yourself no better than Claeon.’
A brief fragment of expression appeared on Heiracles’s face, before he stifled it, but yet it spoke eloquently. He was a man with few illusions, and a great cynicism about others that he assumed was shared by others about him. The idea that anyone might seriously believe that there was any difference between Heiracles’s base nature and that of Claeon was obviously a new concept to him. Seeing that bitterness there, so briefly unveiled, Stenwold understood that such a difference did indeed exist, for all that it was whittled down moment to moment by the promise of power.
Paladrya took a deep breath. ‘I believe Aradocles is alive, because I cannot bear to believe anything else,’ she continued. ‘If so, he will return eventually. His heritage will compel him. Perhaps he will indeed bring a landsman army to retake his birthright. Perhaps he will have grown hard, toughened by the hostile land, so that even Rosander will fear him. Who can say what his exile will have made of him? But he will remember me, Heiracles. If he lives, however far he is grown from the boy I knew, I cannot but think that he will remember me. That being so, would you rather he returned to lead his friends against Claeon, to reclaim his throne and reward those who have been loyal to him, or would you prefer he returned later to confront whoever might have unseated his uncle, and whoever might have had his old tutor executed? What will you say to him then? And do you think you will ever sway the people’s love so greatly that you shall be safe from its retribution? You are not Claeon. Do not fashion yourself in his image.’
And Stenwold, the veteran of a hundred speeches, found himself wishing to applaud her. Even surrounded by her jailers, she was one of the most impassioned advocates he had ever heard. The young prince had a fine tutor, he thought, and if Heiracles does not agree, then I will take her from him and free her. I will go so far, before I leave the sea, however much I loathe it.
He felt something tear asunder within him, at that silent vow, the great weight of the ocean pressing down, eager to keep him to itself, and something else perhaps, some stab of anger and loss that was not in any way his own.
‘If the heir returned,’ Heiracles pronounced carefully, ‘he would know me as his most faithful subject.’ Everything had drained from his expression but the pragmatism. Chief adviser to a young ruler was not such a poor position, that look said. The ambitions for kingship had sunk without so much as a ripple, and he had recovered his statesman’s poise with an ease that would do justice to either a Collegiate Assembler or a Spiderlands Aristos.
Stenwold’s relief at the man’s response was disproportionate. ‘Then I shall need Paladrya,’ he declared.
‘Of course.’ Heiracles moved aside with grace, and the woman stepped tentatively free, moving with steps as halting as an automaton to Stenwold’s side, as though she feared being called back at any moment. He put a hand out towards her as she reached him, and she took it gladly, anchoring herself to his party.
‘Nemoctes, for the assistance of your people, I thank you,’ Stenwold said formally. As he thought of leaving here, of returning home, he felt not clear joy, but a muddied, unsettled sense of displacement. But that is what I want. What could hold me here, and yet… ‘I intend to return,’ was all he said, and the Pelagist nodded, frowning at him.
‘I shall see you to your land. Perhaps there shall be others also, who will guard your journey.’
Stenwold felt something kick inside him, some irrational surge of emotion, misplaced and out of character. Stay. He fought it down. I cannot… I have work to do.
‘How can we know that you’ll find the boy?’ Heiracles demanded, seeing Stenwold about to leave with his prized hostage.
‘Because your own agents shall come with me, if they’re willing,’ Stenwold replied.
‘What agents?’ the Kerebroi demanded. His followers became abruptly restless behind him at the mere thought of a land voyage.
Stenwold glanced towards Laszlo, who nodded back, grinning.
‘Mistress Wys,’ the Beetle said, ‘do you dare come with me – you and your fellows?’ He watched the question sink in. Phylles’s scowl deepened, Fel was blankly hostile as usual, but Wys’s face showed every stage of a progression from surprise to fear, to rising eagerness.
‘To the shore, land-kinden?’ she said. ‘To bring back the true Edmir? Sounds like the sort of job that reputations are built on, does it not?’
‘You are mad,’ Heiracles told her flatly. ‘Mad or a Littoralist,’ which latter was clearly worse.
‘Neither, in fact, but you’ll have heard how we Small-claws are always on the lookout for the next new thing,’ she told him levelly. ‘Now, you’ll retain me as your agent?’
‘If you’re insane enough to go, woman, then go with my blessing,’ Heiracles said acidly.
‘So go now,’ Nemoctes echoed, his resonant voice breaking in. ‘I do not like to think how long Claeon’s agents will take to track down this meeting, as they did the last.’ His eyes met Stenwold’s. ‘Good luck, landsman.’
‘Your lad can come with us,’ Wys suggested.
‘This one’s going nowhere but in the Tseitan,’ Despard declared firmly, glaring at the Smallclaw woman and holding fiercely on to Laszlo’s arm.
The other Fly was already shaking his head. ‘No, you take Master Maker,’ he told her. ‘I trust Wys, here.’ He winked. ‘We have business.’
Despard stared at him as though he had lost his mind. ‘And if I have to tell Tomasso that I lost his nephew to business?’ she demanded.
‘Then he’ll understand,’ Laszlo pointed out.
‘Nemoctes is right,’ Stenwold told them all. ‘Let’s go now while the tide is good.’