Wys and the others arrived shortly after, to discover three invalids and a corpse. Paladrya was the best off, though her pale skin was now bruised all the colours of stormclouds and puffed up enough to half close one eye and slur her words. Stenwold was just starting to regain control of his limbs by then. Having experienced the effects of Spider-kinden poison before, he knew how it was soon overcome by a healthy man, especially one with a robust Beetle constitution.
Laszlo was in the worst shape. Seeing Stenwold and Paladrya at the mercy of a man several times his own size, he had used the only equalizer that a Fly-kinden possessed. He had taken his knife in hand, and driven it straight into the man with all the hurtling speed his wings could give him. The weapon had all but vanished under the half-breed’s ribs, but Laszlo had broken his arm and several fingers. Even so, he grinned at Stenwold while blinking away the pain.
‘I wasn’t bringing you through all that sea stuff just to end up like that,’ he hissed. Wys was fussing over him instantly, cursing that she had no salt water at hand to accreate a cast. By then a couple of Roach-kinden had turned up, attracted by the noise, who seemed to be something like the city guard. They leant on their staves and heard Stenwold and Paladrya talk, and they saw that the dead man looked as though he had been able to defend himself, and they sent for someone to have a look at the body, but otherwise seemed to have no interest in arresting or detaining anyone. Stenwold and his company helped Laszlo in the direction of a doctor that the Roach-kinden recommended, who turned out to be a brisk, businesslike Sarnesh surgeon who splinted Laszlo’s arm and gave him a concoction to sip at to deaden the pain. The Fly would drink none, though, until he had spoken to Stenwold, so the doctor left them to it, willing to abandon his treatment room to them in exchange for a delicate gold arm-ring that Wys paid him off with.
‘Mar’Maker,’ Laszlo insisted, ‘I heard them. I know where he is.’
For a moment Stenwold thought he meant Teornis, but Paladrya interrupted with, ‘Aradocles?’ somewhat indistinctly, and Laszlo nodded eagerly.
‘They said the palace,’ he got out, hunching forward in his haste to tell them, before collapsing back on to the doctor’s couch with a groan. ‘The Spider’s man, that one that went for you, he tried to get inside, but they said their chief here’s seeing nobody, not even Aristoi… So they’re going to sneak in tonight… Aradocles is in Princep’s palace somewhere, they’re sure of it.’
Stenwold glanced from him to Paladrya, and then towards Wys and her crew. ‘Then we have to get into the palace, no two ways about it,’ he said flatly. ‘And if they won’t let us, then we’ll have to beat Teornis at the sneaking game and get to the boy first.’
Stenwold tried to do it the official way first. He presented himself at the complex that here in Princep they called the Monarch’s Palace. It was half-built, but it was large and much of it was composed of stone, so it was clear that the erratic architects of the new city had been putting a great deal of effort into it nonetheless. The approach of the various carpenters and masons and tilers was piecemeal to say the most. The foundations were all marked out, but walls had gone up here and there without any concerted plan, with some parts roofed over and others open to the sky, so that what was probably intended to be a series of interlocking quadrangles currently looked like a complex maze of cane scaffolding, stone and wood. There were gardens cleared around it too, that had been planted the year before with green and were now flourishing. Walking up to the palace doors Stenwold saw a dozen Bee-kinden gardeners, no doubt fugitives or deserters from the Empire, tending shrubs and bushes and transplanted trees with patient, loving care.
This complex was clearly the heart of Princep Salmae – or would be when there was enough of either city or palace to warrant it. The planners had set aside a lot of space for it and given the layout considerable thought. Paths of woodchips meandered through the green, and Stenwold was reminded of his sole visit to the Commonweal, and the ascetic simplicity that dominated everything they built there.
Also a reminder of the Commonweal were the armed men and women whom he took to be the palace guard: Dragonfly-kinden in leather and chitin armour, leaning on spears or strung longbows. But of course, Princep’s Monarch was born there, he considered. The presence of such guards suggested that Princep Salmae had not been slow in establishing diplomatic relations with its namesake’s homeland.
He spent a vexing half-hour talking to a lean old Roach-kinden man called Sfayot. Polite and white-bearded, the Roach explained to him that the Monarch saw nobody.
‘You should tell her,’ Stenwold stressed, playing his only good card, ‘that I was a friend of Prince Salme Dien. I knew him well.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sfayot gravely, ‘Master Maker, do not think your name is unknown to us.’
That brought Stenwold up short. ‘But, then, if you knew…’
The Roach set off through the gardens, beckoning him to follow, Sfayot walked with a staff, but he trusted little weight to it, and Stenwold guessed that as the habit of a man who had needed to defend himself in places where he could not openly carry a weapon.
‘You are indeed known to her, War Master Stenwold Maker,’ the Roach said tiredly. ‘She keeps herself aloof from the greater Lowlands, but there are certain names she knows. A few, a very few, she will meet with, should they come to her.’ He fixed Stenwold with a sharp, pale gaze. ‘There is another list of those that she does not wish to meet.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Stenwold said, at a loss. ‘I was his friend, the man this city is named after.’
Sfayot walked on in silence for some time, Stenwold dogging his footsteps anxiously, but at last the Roach paused before a flowering bush of some variety Stenwold had never seen before.
‘Do your people appreciate flowers, Master Maker? Of Beetle cities I have seen only Helleron, and I saw little sign of them there.’
‘We can do,’ Stenwold said, mystified. ‘As tokens of affection, sometimes, or to ornament a room. Yes, we like flowers, I suppose.’
‘And once you have used these flowers that you favour…?’ Sfayot said, almost too low to hear.
Stenwold was bewildered and weary, and still feeling odd twinges of pain from the halfbreed’s poison, so his voice was testy when he replied, ‘They die, I suppose. What of it?’
Sfayot nodded mournfully. ‘She will not see you, War Master,’ he stated, with finality.
Stenwold glared at him. He was on the point of insisting that something must be done, because a Spider Aristos and his Dragonfly-kinden killers were going to mount a kidnapping that very night. It would have been the right thing to do, to give the warning and move on, but Stenwold needed Aradocles for himself, not just to keep the boy out of Teornis’s hands. Any warning he gave might make his own job that much more difficult.
Instead he simply shrugged, as though he was taking the rejection with good grace and intended thereafter to leave, and would trouble Princep Salmae no more. He walked away, but he was looking about him, seeing where the half-constructed palace might best be entered, wondering where any sentries might be stationed after dark. When he glanced back for Sfayot, he thought he spotted the old Roach at the palace doors again, talking to a Beetle-kinden man. He frowned, for the man in question might have been Ordley Penhold, who had spoken so mysteriously earlier that day, but at this distance it was impossible to be sure.
So he returned to his allies, to await nightfall.