There was a footstep on the deck behind him, and he turned to see Arianna. She had come attired for battle, wearing a leather cuirass, and with a strung shortbow holstered across her back. It was what she had worn, close enough, when she had come to fight at his side against the Vekken, and he found himself smiling at her wanly.
‘The boat’s ready,’ she told him, ‘for when they are.’
‘They’re coming up already,’ Tomasso remarked. Indeed, the Dragonfly-kinden were back on deck, all three of them, their search having obviously been cursory. Is this Teornis telling me something? Stenwold wondered. Has he told them to be brief to show he trusts me? Or are they just better at killing than at diligence?
The Dragonflies were now airborne, heading back towards Teornis’s vessel, and a moment later Laszlo and his comrades were winging back towards the Tidenfree as well. Stenwold took a deep breath and headed amidships for the boat. It was a narrow launch hung out over the Tidenfree’s side, ready to be winched down by two of the more Apt members of the crew. His boarding party were standing ready: Elder Padstock and two of her people, with snapbows at the ready; Danaen and two of hers, with swords and bows, arm-spikes and Mantis bloody-mindedness.
Stenwold joined them, with Arianna at his back, and a moment later Laszlo dropped down in their midst, making the Mantis-kinden twitch and scowl.
‘You know what we’re about,’ he addressed them. ‘Keep your eyes open, shout out if you see something out of place. We’re taking no chances. Do not act, unless they act first, or unless I order it. If we see violence today, I do not want my party to be the instigator.’
‘Very good, War Master,’ Padstock assured him.
‘Then let us be about it,’ he said, and carefully stepped down into the rocking boat. They joined him one by one, with Danaen’s warriors taking the oars. Last down was Laszlo, who perched himself at the bow as the boat was winched into the water. He had his bow ready, an arrow to hand, a small but martial figurehead.
As the Mantis-kinden hauled on the oars, Stenwold took his glass out again and tracked down the other ship’s launch. It was a grander, broader affair, and four of Teor-nis’s eight were rowing, and making no greater headway. The Spider lord himself could be clearly seen, reclining in the stern. Assuming it is him and not some lookalike relative, the unpleasant thought came to Stenwold. At this distance, though, he could not bring that face into sharp focus no matter how he adjusted the lenses.
At least we can be glad of one thing regarding his Dragon-flies, another idea struck. If they had been some Apt kinden, Flies even, then perhaps they could have set some incendiaries or explosives within the ship. Be thankful for Inapt enemies.
They were nearing the barge, a low-sided craft, cumbrous and bulky in the water. The Vekken had been no great shipwrights, and what skill they possessed they had reserved for their warships. The barge seemed so close to the water that any large wave would swamp the rails. Hammer and tongs, if the weather grows poor she may founder and sink out here, and would that not be an irony? Teornis and myself clinging to the same plank.
Laszlo’s wings hauled him into the air before the prow of the launch nudged the barge’s side. He had tugged a rope ladder with him, and after a moment’s securing he let it down. Danaen stood in the launch, shifting her balance in perfect time with the waves, and let her own wings bring her up to the barge’s deck, and her people followed suit as Stenwold tied off the launch. A wise precaution, bringing Mantis-kinden who can fly. He was uncomfortably aware of his own shortcomings in that regard, and how much of a trap this ship could become, and beneath it all, of the appalling depth of water below, which could swallow all the schemes that he and Teornis together might hatch until the end of time.
He put such thoughts out of his mind and began climbing.
Of the two launches, he had arrived first, and he chose the stern as his standpoint. Padstock and the two from the Maker’s Own company fanned out behind him, snap-bows cradled in their arms. Stenwold watched as the three Mantis-kinden took their stand to one side, further forward than he would have liked. Danaen’s hands were seldom far from her sword hilts.
There was a light touch on his shoulder, and he took Arianna’s hand briefly. She looked serious, nervous even, but he supposed that was only natural. Teornis is one of the Aristoi, after all, and it must take a lot for Arianna to set herself against him.
Laszlo had fluttered over to look over the far rail, and now he was on his way back. ‘Guests are here,’ he said shortly as he looked upwards, and Stenwold guessed he was missing a handy spread of rigging to find a seat in. The Vekken barge was moved by steam-engine, though, and not sail.
A moment later, a pair of Teornis’s Dragonflies dropped on to the deck, barely twenty feet away. The violence nearly started then and there, with weapons springing into the hands of the Mantids and the Dragonflies responding with half-drawn bowstrings. The moment passed, though, and a few moments later the man himself appeared.
The Spider Aristos looked like a tragic hero from some high-class play. No, Stenwold corrected his first impression, he looks like the man those actors are trying to resemble. He wore a long jacket of black silk, glittering with complex traceries of silver thread that were thickest at the cuffs of his full sleeves. Over this he had donned a cuirass of chainmail worked fantastically fine, looking lighter and easier to move in than Stenwold’s leather and canvas. I’ll bet he can swim in that, if need be, and then, Fine mail over silk, maybe enough to slow a snapbow bolt?
The headband that Teornis wore was plain gold, setting off the darkness of his hair and narrow, pointed beard. At his belt he had a rapier with an elaborately twisted guard, while on his left hand he wore a heavy glove of embroidered leather, a duellist’s parrying tool. He even had a knife hilt visible in the top of one of his high boots.
His followers had filed up after him: two more Dragon-flies, and a quartet of the Kessen Ant-kinden with their large shields and shortswords. But not snapbows, Stenwold noted. We have that advantage yet. He was uncomfortably aware that, by bringing Laszlo as messenger and Arianna as adviser, he was putting himself at a disadvantage if it came to brute force.
‘Lord Teornis,’ he said, letting his voice ring out as though he was in the Amphiophos.
‘Master Maker,’ the Spider allowed.
Stenwold stepped forward until he was at least level with Danaen. ‘I thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’
‘Why should I not meet with my old friend, Stenwold Maker?’ Teornis answered. ‘Albeit he has levelled some hurtful accusations at my own family recently.’
‘We will talk frankly, or there is no point to this,’ Stenwold told him. ‘We are here without witnesses other than these, who are sworn to each of us. If we cannot speak openly of what we know, what’s the point of any of it?’
For a moment Teornis’s expression admitted nothing, but then he smiled readily. ‘Well then, speak.’
‘Pirates under orders from your family have been preying on Collegiate shipping,’ Stenwold started. He stopped when Teornis raised a hand. ‘If you’ll deny that, then-’
‘When pirates take orders, Master Maker, they are privateers, and that is a different game entirely,’ Teornis corrected him. ‘Do proceed.’
‘Why? Why give such orders?’
‘I am not obliged to lay out the plans of the Aldanrael to you, if you cannot fathom them for yourself,’ Teornis replied evenly.
‘And now? Will you declare war before the Assembly? Or will I have to make public the papers we took from the captain of the Very Blade?’
‘After her death,’ Teornis put in coldly.
Stenwold stared at him. ‘Do you claim that she was none of yours?’
‘Oh, she was mine, Maker. She was my cousin, Elleria of the Aldanrael. She always was too bold and incautious in her dealings, poor creature, impatient of the proper precautions when dealing with codes and letters. She was, in short, a fool, and doubly a fool for being willing to play pirate captain rather than practise prudence on land. But she was family, and your minions killed her.’ His eye took in the three Mantis-kinden with barely disguised loathing.