In the morning he took breakfast, sending another of his Dragonflies out with money to supplement the meagre fare the Brothers could provide. Sands was already back, but first Teornis heard the report of a couple of his men who he had sent off on another errand before even arriving at the Wayhouse.
‘Tell me you’ve found Maker?’ he prompted them.
‘He came in a flying machine to the airfield,’ one of the pair informed him. ‘He has several followers: two Flies, a Mantis, a Spider, and one other. The flying machine left this morning, in the direction of Sarn perhaps. Maker is talking to people.’
‘Of course he is,’ Teornis said absently, but he was thinking – just random people, Stenwold? No friends from the past? No special contacts? Have I eroded your advantage already, old man? ‘Keep an eye on him,’ he instructed, and the Dragonflies nodded, bowed briefly and left the room.
Sands and Varante came in next. Helmess’s halfbreed thug wore an odd expression, one that Teornis could not immediately read.
‘You’ve had an eventful night, I hope?’
‘We found a tracker, my lord, after a while.’
‘Just one?’
‘One’s all we needed, my lord.’
Teornis rolled his eyes. ‘Suspense is for stage actors, Master Sands. Kindly enlighten me.’
And Forman Sands explained what he had learned, and Teornis’s eyes went first wide in surprise, and then narrow in careful consideration.
Thirty-Eight
The architects of Princep evidently intended raising some great edifices to overlook their airfield, but nothing was in place but their plot boundaries as yet. With dawn these became the site of an impromptu foreigners’ market, and Laszlo took Wys and her cohorts out to inspect what wares were on show. The peddlers were mostly Roach- or Fly-kinden, so Stenwold guessed that there would be nothing for sale that would have excited a Collegium merchant, but to Wys it would all be both strange and saleable, no doubt.
While they were thus occupied, he found a little eatery with a scattering of chairs and tables, and bought for himself and Paladrya some concoction of rice and roasted mealworms to breakfast on. It took some persuasion to convince her to taste it, but it turned out to be acceptable to a marine palate.
Jons Allanbridge was already airborne by now, heading in the direction of the Sarnesh fortifications named Mal-kan’s Folly, in the hope of intercepting Balkus and wringing some information from him. That seemed the best that Stenwold was likely to achieve, left to his own devices.
He cast his gaze about for Laszlo and the others, saw them some distance away, looking at some poor clothier’s homespun and woollens: all wonders, no doubt, for the sea-kinden. When he glanced back, he found Paladrya staring at him, and for a moment he held her gaze.
‘I am waiting for the strike,’ she told him. At his frown she elaborated. ‘Some careful, camouflaged creature, waiting as its prey drifts nearer and nearer, drawn in by some lure. Aradocles is the lure, I am the prey. Where is your trap, Stenwold Maker?’
‘I am not the trap-laying kind,’ he told her.
‘Then why? You were safe back with your people, so why are you now here?’
‘You think I mean your boy harm?’
She studied him for some time before she said, ‘No, but I still don’t know why.’
A new voice broke in, ‘You forget Master Maker’s essential nobility of character.’ Someone sat down briskly at their table, as naturally as if this new arrival were an old friend. Stenwold found himself looking into the face of Teornis of the Aldanrael.
For a moment nothing was said. He had his little snap-bow concealed inside his tunic, ready loaded but not primed. His sword was at his belt. There were two of Teornis’s Dragonfly-kinden standing a respectful distance away, but their blades were to hand, slanted back over their shoulders, and Stenwold had no illusions about his own speed on the draw compared with theirs in response.
‘Teornis,’ he said, at last, ‘this is a… surprise.’
‘You might at least say a pleasant one,’ the Spider remarked, smiling amicably. He gave a nod to Paladrya. ‘My lady, outside the Edmir’s grasp you look decidedly more radiant – as do we all, I fancy.’
‘I knew you would somehow trick your way out of his clutches,’ Stenwold observed.
‘You make it sound as if that were unfair,’ Teornis said. ‘Was I unjust to cheat Claeon of his prize?’
‘Yes, if you did so by promising him the head of Aradocles,’ Stenwold replied flatly. He sensed Paladrya tensing.
For a moment all humour dropped from Teornis’s face. ‘Remember your slippery friends freed you before Claeon introduced you to his pleasure chambers, Stenwold. You would have promised him a good deal more, I swear it, to be rid of his company. Ask her: I’ll wager she and I have that experience in common.’
‘But you are here for my Aradocles,’ Paladyra said softly. ‘I can see that much.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ and all the good nature was back on display. Teornis smiled at her fondly. ‘But I won’t harm a hair on the lad’s head. He’s far too valuable for that.’
‘You’ll use him to control Claeon,’ Stenwold confirmed, ‘and bring the sea-kinden down on Collegium, as your armada arrives.’
‘Even as you’d use him to oust Claeon and remove a threat to your city,’ Teornis agreed. ‘Were it not for the paltry matter of a disagreement between our peoples, I’d heartily support you.’
‘What do you want, Teornis?’ Stenwold asked. ‘We are now enemies. Your people have made us that.’
‘Oh, I know,’ the Spider replied, his expression suggesting genuine regret. ‘No idea of mine, but we all have our duty. Still, surely we can sit here and speak awhile, without drawn blades? For who else has seen what we have seen? Who else from the land has been within Hermatyre, has endured that darkness, those depths? You and I and your Fly, wherever he is, but none else that has lived to tell the tale. And yet here we are, and don’t you think that unites us more than a traders’ squabble? We were friends once, Stenwold. When this is over, we’ll be so again. You’ll want friends in the east when the Empire returns, as we both know it will.’
Stenwold looked at the man’s infinitely trustworthy, yet infinitely deceptive face, and shook his head. ‘Why couldn’t your family be happy with what it had already?’ he said, almost in a whisper. Paladrya glanced between them, sensing the weight of their history but knowing that it excluded her.
‘Only the dull and the foolish are ever happy with what they’ve got. Do you sit there, victorious son of the Apt revolution, and preach stagnation? No, and if we’d not moved to jostle the status quo, then one of your greedier magnates would have done so soon enough. Life is all about striving and change, Stenwold. What a bland creature you yourself would be, had the Empire not reforged you, eh?’
‘Happier, I’d say.’
‘We are not made for stale happiness,’ Teornis told him. ‘Look at us now, unthanked champions escaped from an impossible prison, returned from certain death, trekking across the Lowlands to hunt down a scion of a mythical kingdom, and to find him, too, and what odds would anyone have placed on that?’
Stenwold felt something twitch, within him, but he held it at arm’s length, kept it from his expression. ‘Long ones, I’d say,’ was all he would commit himself to replying.
Teornis stood up, still smiling. ‘There has never been a Beetle-kinden like you. Your people sorely underestimate you, and you’re wasted on them. After all this has blown over, after we’re friends again, come to Seldis. A man of your skills is wasted in Collegium.’
Teornis bowed to them and strode off, just some Spider-kinden Aristos taking the morning air. A moment later, Wys and the other sea-kinden rejoined them hurriedly, staring after Teornis suspiciously.
‘Who was that?’ the little Onychoi woman demanded.