So much for my quiet return, Stenwold considered. I couldn’t exactly have locked them in the cellar, though, and theirs was hardly a killing offence. Despite the wreck of his sitting room, and who could know how much of the rest of the house, now they were gone his anger transformed into a bitter humour.
‘Oh, hammer and tongs,’ he murmured. ‘I dread to think what stories will be flung about the city before noon.’
A brief scouting expedition revealed that his own cellar was almost drained dry, only one bottle of inferior wine unopened, and some beetle jerky yet untapped. Remembering his own experiences with sea-kinden food, he hoped it would be seem enough compared with the lobster meat or whatever else they were used to. When he got back upstairs to them, Despard had already flown off to liaise with the family again, so he was left with the ever-faithful Laszlo and the four sea-kinden.
They weren’t exactly making themselves at home. Wys had essayed a chair, and was curled up in it, in a position that seemed painfully awkward to Stenwold but apparently bothered her not at all. Fel still stood, as if waiting for the next fight; Phylles and Paladrya had chosen the floor to slump down on.
‘I will do what I can to smooth this crossing for you,’ he told them, laying down food and drink. ‘But it won’t be easy.’
‘If you can do it, we can,’ Wys told him. Of all of them she was taking it best.
Stenwold nodded. ‘Of course you’ – he gestured to Paladrya – ‘have at least been on land before.’
‘Once. So briefly,’ she replied, almost in a whisper.
‘So tell me. Tell me everything you can about how and where Aradocles left the sea.’
She nodded wearily, taking a moment to gather her strength, while casting her mind back over the years.
‘I was Claeon’s lover, as you know,’ she started.
‘We don’t know why,’ Wys interrupted, almost immediately.
Paladrya looked sad. ‘He was… different before. While his brother was still well, before Claeon began thinking of the Edmiracy. It was ambition for power that poisoned him. But he always talked with me. With whoever he happens to lie with, I think. When the old Edmir fell ill, I knew – from hearing what he did not say, reading the gaps he left – that he would have Aradocles killed. A few years later and the heir would be of age, and everything would have happened differently… the temptation would not have been there. But the boy was still young, and Claeon saw that he himself might become great. And I saw where his thoughts were leading. I had taught Aradocles for many years and I loved him as a son. I knew that I had to save him.’
‘And I’ve seen for myself that it’s hard to escape Claeon’s agents,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘Even so, to the land? Considering the way your people seem to see us, how did that idea ever come to you?’
‘There were very few I could trust, but Aradocles had some house guards who were loyal only to him. I consulted with them. One was a Dart-kinden of strange family – an old family that had lived up against the Edge for many generations. They do things differently there, and the writ of Hermatyre – of anywhere – runs thin. Santiren, she was called. She told me of the ancient customs, rites and rituals of her people, which had been dying out for ever but still clung on. Rites and pacts with the land. It was her words that made my mind up. Left beneath the sea, Claeon would see Aradocles dead before he became of age. But Santiren believed that she could broker some contract with the land, just to keep him safe.’
‘Old ways,’ murmured Stenwold thoughtfully. ‘We ourselves are not so long established here, my people – not under our own governance. We were slaves once, and our rulers were wise and secretive. Who knows what deals they may have made, and with what powers? Anything is possible, back in the Bad Old Days. Perhaps the masters of Pathis-that-was knew more about your people than they ever bothered to tell us, their underlings.’ Stenwold saw that they were not following him, save perhaps for Laszlo, and gestured for Paladrya to continue.
‘There is little else to say,’ she stated. ‘I took with us two of the house guards, both Dart-kinden, Santiren and another. We rode on the Darts’ beasts, myself seated behind Santiren, and Aradocles behind
… Marcantor, his name was. Santiren led the way, and she took us swift and sure, over the Edge, through the shallows, travelling by night, hiding always from the light. Then it was night again and… the waters above us became less and less, until we came up into the air.’
‘But where?’ Stenwold asked her. Abruptly he stood up, rifling across shelves until he found a curled map of the Lowlands.
‘I do not know the name of the place. I don’t think Santiren did either. It was a forest, like our weed plantations, but instead of the tall weeds there were… only crooked, twisted plants. And it was cold, and there was the sky, the moon…’ She looked up fearfully, as though that great expanse of the heavens still oppressed her even through the ceiling.
‘Trees,’ Stenwold noted. ‘Many of them?’
‘There was nothing else visible of the land except the forest,’ she said. ‘And I bade Aradocles goodbye and returned, and for two years Claeon could not quite believe I had betrayed him, and he hunted everywhere for the boy. Then his suspicion won over his pride, and I became a prisoner, as you found me.’
And you do not mention the tortures he must have put you through, Stenwold thought. Her quiet strength impressed him more, the more she spoke. If only all your kinden had your selflessness, he considered. And what manner of man has Aradocles grown into, if he still lives? In your absence, whose hand may have guided him?
‘Trees,’ he muttered again. ‘Tell me, there was a beach first, perhaps? You scaled a cliff?’
‘No, your “trees” extended into the water, so that there was nowhere one could say, this is the land, or this is now the sea. It was an unnatural place, but Santiren swore she had met someone there that still honoured the old compacts.’
Stenwold looked straight into her face – so like a Spider-kinden’s, just as Aradocles must surely have seemed a Spider youth – and his heart sank.
‘Only one place, that can be,’ he declared. They looked encouraged, but he was already shaking his head.
‘The Felyal,’ Laszlo supplied.
‘The Felyal,’ Stenwold echoed. His personal feelings for the Mantis-kinden were decidedly mixed, just now, but their feelings for Spider-kind were quite clear and pointed. Oh he’s dead, he’s dead, for sure.
But Stenwold had unfinished business with the Mantids, those refugees of the Felyal that now called Collegium their home. He might as well drag this, the final fate of Aradocles, into the bargain. What did he have to lose?
Thirty-Five
Two streets away from Maker’s house, Cardless put his back to a wall and tried to think.
His world was falling away from him, leaving him with no visible means of support. How could this have happened? He’d had his life made out, surely? It couldn’t all evaporate, as simply as that?
He could go back to Stenwold tomorrow, make it out as a misunderstanding. He had been misled. He had been held hostage. It wasn’t his fault.
But then he remembered the grim look of the people Stenwold had brought home with him, the sort of people Cardless would never have thought an Assembler, a College Master, would even know. Killers, mercenaries and pirates, the lot of them. It brought back to Cardless the odd rumours about Maker, his early career, his precise role in fighting the Vekken and the Empire. Blood on his hands, they say, and not just from the war.