Gainer made a noncommittal grunt, but he was reaching up for a lever above his head. Stenwold glanced back, seeing the Fly’s agony of worry for Laszlo, as against Kratia’s bland indifference.
Gainer made a tiny adjustment to their heading with his off hand. Stenwold, peering ahead again, saw the enormous eye narrow, and abruptly Arkeuthys had abandoned its victim, casting the submersible end over end, away from it. Somehow it had guessed what even the human sea-kinden had not: the threat that the land-kinden could muster at range.
Gainer shouted ‘No!’ and hauled down on the lever. The Tseitan bucked with the force as a silvery missile flashed in the dim light, leaping like a living thing towards the retreating octopus.
It struck. It must have struck. Suddenly the sea was boiling black. Blood! Stenwold thought at first, but it was ink, of course. First to emerge from that angry cloud was Wys’s ship, canted to one side but with its siphons pulsing constantly, limping through the water but still intact. A stream of gleaming bubbles from its side looked like little enough, and Stenwold knew that Wys would have all hands to the pumps to keep the seawater where it belonged.
Then, behind it, Arkeuthys broke from its own screen of ink like a many-armed and angry god, its flowing form vast and all-encompassing. One tentacle was wrapped about the shaft of Gainer’s bolt, which it must have hauled out from its flesh, from wherever it had struck.
‘Time for your second shot,’ Stenwold said tensely.
‘There is no second shot,’ Gainer stated.
‘I don’t suppose that you have any suggestions, from your city’s long experience?’ Stenwold put to Kratia.
‘Don’t start sea wars with the sea-kinden.’ She seemed utterly composed, hands clasped on her knees, resigned to their collective fate.
For a time, an unknown time, they all hung there: the Tseitan seemingly motionless despite Maxel Gainer back-paddling as fast as he could, Wys’s injured submersible, and the great dark-flushed tangle of Arkeuthys looking like some indecipherable glyph in a lost language.
Then the great octopus was retreating, rippling and rolling backwards, away from them, and there was light, a pale, pure light all around.
I am here.
Stenwold jumped and stared at the others, looking for some evidence of those words in their faces. I cannot have heard that. I cannot… there is no way.
As the first streamers of glittering lace brushed past the carapace of the Tseitan, he heard Kratia – Kratia of all of them – utter an oath almost reverently. Then Lyess’s lambent, pulsing companion dragged a stinging curtain between them and the roiling form of Arkeuthys.
Stenwold assumed the monster would flee, as it had done after the death of Gribbern, but this time the octopus just hung there in the water, glaring balefully as the last shreds of its ink cleared. Wys’s barque remained stationary too, its lamps still blazing brightly, while Stenwold thought he saw a moving shadow at the fading perimeter of the light that was Nemoctes’s home turning restlessly in the water.
If we move from her shadow, we expose ourselves, Stenwold thought. Unless… He wondered just how far Arkeuthys’s understanding went. How human was its mind, of what breadth of vision?
Then the great sea monster was on the move, surging and rippling its way up through the water. Instantly Lyess’s glowing companion began ascending, as slow and graceful as an airship lifting off. Arkeuthys was close, moving faster, hovering immediately above. Stenwold saw Lyess’s light flash on something bright.
The octopus struck almost gingerly, extending to the very limit of its reach so as to be sure that none of that stinging veil so much as touched it. The tentacles were no longer simply lashing whips: gripped in one of them was the Tseitan’s harpoon, while another held a Dart-kinden lance. Stenwold saw them dig in, carve through the soft flesh of Lyess’s companion, hesitant jabs and slices as the octopus manhandled the unfamiliar implements. He remembered the Menfish, how they had struck and struck from above, aiming at the jellyfish’s blind spot.
‘Gainer, bring us up, point us at the monster,’ he ordered. ‘Bring us so we’re looking to pin it between us and her.’
‘Us and…?’ Gainer began to ask, but Stenwold snapped at him, ‘Just bring us up!’ The pilot quickly tugged at the sticks, sending the Tseitan climbing up the ladder of lights that formed Lyess’s long train.
The jellyfish was already shuddering. Arkeuthys could not risk getting close enough for a decisive strike, but it was gaining in dexterity, carving its way in minute portions towards the woman hiding within. Stenwold gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes fixed on the carnage. We are ascending too slowly. He stared into the gleaming flesh of the quivering creature, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lyess.
Then a blunt, heavy shape jetted swiftly across the flailing, translucent bell. There was no art to Nemoctes’s attack. His creature was no match for Arkeuthys. Still, it was large, and it was armoured, and he directed it straight at the octopus with all the speed its siphon could give it. Arkeuthys recoiled, attack momentarily forgotten. Arms lashed out, briefly wrapping about the ridged, coiled shell, and then casting Nemoctes aside with a single muscular convulsion, sending the ponderous creature end over end away from them, no doubt making a chaos of all Nemoc-tes’s carefully hoarded history.
Then the octopus returned to its task, but now found the Tseitan waiting for it.
‘Master Maker, there’s nothing!’ Gainer was saying. ‘No second bolt, and we’ve not the charge for another magnetic shock.’
‘Aim us, level us at it like a crossbow,’ Stenwold insisted. ‘Just as if we had another harpoon to take it between the eyes. Get us as steady as you can.’
‘That makes us an easy target,’ Kratia warned.
‘Do you think it would have any difficulty snatching us from the water when it decides to?’ Stenwold asked her.
‘That is true.’
The narrowed eye of Arkeuthys bored into them, its twin scalpels poised at arms’ ends. Gainer fidgeted and twitched at the controls, until they were absolutely centred on that alien gaze.
With a spasm of rage that seemed all too human, the octopus was abruptly streaming away in, a flurry of tentacles. Then it was gone, lost to the black abyss.
Stenwold settled back, feeling a great wave of relief wash over him. He could not tell if it was for himself, his return to the land now secured, or if it was because Lyess and her companion still lived.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said softly. ‘Only home.’
And in the depths of his mind he heard her soft voice. You shall come back to me, come back to me, some day.
Part Three
Footprints in the Sand
Thirty-Four
Using compass and clock and all the tricks that the Tidenfree crew had perfected over the years, Despard guided them home. After they had passed the reach of the Shelf, which the sea-kinden had called the Edge, they led rather than followed, with Gainer steering the Tseitan in slow, paddling circles from time to time to check that the bobbing shell of Wys’s submersible was still behind them. The journey was long, and they had come to the surface several times to take in fresh air, the Tseitan lying like a basking thing in the swelling water, whilst the other vessel listed alarmingly beside it, never intended to be brought up to the air. Still, Wys’s crew was able to provide food and freshly accreated water, for the Tseitan had little room for provisions, what with Stenwold’s bulk added to its complement.
At last, though, they came up in sight not only of land but of the city itself: a flare of white stone against a dusk-darkened coast. Gainer guided them in on the wrong side of the sea-wall, where those intent on underhand business moored under the deflected and well-remunerated eyes of the port authorities. The waves were high, though, so no other ship had dared the mooring that night. There were therefore no witnesses as the Tseitan rose to the surface, and none to see the rounded bulk of a much larger vessel break the water beside it.