Builders, Stenwold thought. Their builder-kinden, the… the Archetoi, Paladrya said. Surely not…? But he thought of the smashed grating, and how it had been nothing but a honeycomb of hollows within. Cells built on cells built on cells, until… The magnificence, the overwhelming sight before him, showed how far that ‘until’ had gone.
Then Phylles was yanking him along and, in her sure grip, he turned helplessly in the water and saw the ship.
He understood, then, the peculiar internal geometry of the vessel that had kidnapped them here. The sea-kinden did not build what nature itself could build better. Wys was already swimming swiftly ahead of them, where her destination hung in the sea, pale and banded in the suffused glow of the colony Hermatyre. It was a coiled spiral, and Stenwold had seen such adorning pendants in the Collegium marketplace, brought in by beachcombers and of a size to fit neatly within a man’s hand. Perhaps something like this washed up occasionally, whole or in pieces. A lucky beachcomber could have lived inside it.
Phylles reached her arms about his chest, linked her hands together, and then kicked off towards the shell, giving him a better view of it. The cavity that the shell’s original owner would have occupied served as a hatch now, with some manner of artful contrivances flanking it. Opposite that, at the rear, a circular stencil of sections had been cut out and covered over with something transparent, and a pale light could be seen glimmering from within. He tried to make out a propeller or limbs, or any other propulsion device, but there was nothing there he recognized.
Wys had already disappeared through the shell’s entrance, towing Laszlo, and the bald man shepherded Paladrya after them. Stenwold felt Phylles give an extra kick to propel them inside, and he was let go within a narrow, circular-sided chamber. He found that he himself was having to breathe heavily by now, although she had done all the work. Collegium scholars had known for years that the goodness in the air, necessary to keep a flame or a man alive, could be used up, so he guessed that the caul was nearing the end of its effectiveness. He understood the purpose of this small room, though, even before the water drained swiftly from it, and he had the filmy hood off before Phylles could help him with it.
‘You,’ she said accusingly, ‘are pissing difficult to move.’
Still feeling the bruises, he looked back at her stubbornly.
Wys had opened another of those segmented doors, and beyond lay what must be the vessel’s main chamber, a long, upward-curving room lit by two of the phosphorescent lamps. There were nets hung on the walls, with a few bundles slung inside them, but otherwise it seemed a bare sort of place.
‘Lej?’ Wys called. ‘Lej? Hey, Spillage! ’
Something loomed ahead of them, and Stenwold recoiled from it before realizing what it was: the head and shoulders of another man of Rosander’s kin, but poking vertiginously down from beyond the upward curve of the ceiling.
‘Chief?’ the apparition said.
‘Get us moving,’ Wys told him shortly, and he instantly withdrew into the upper reaches of the vessel.
‘What will you do with us?’ Paladrya asked. She had her arms wrapped about herself in the very picture of dripping misery.
Wys grinned unpleasantly. ‘With these two land-lads, I’ll be handing them over, and I’ve not the faintest clue why someone wants them, save that they’ll do better for being out of Claeon’s raspy little hands. For you, woman, I’d guess a traitor’s death, and why not?’
Paladrya dropped to her knees and then fell over on to her side, and Stenwold thought that she had somehow willed her own death in preference to execution. She was still breathing, though, and her eyes were wide open. When he knelt beside her she only shook her head, saying, ‘I’m sorry.’
Phylles put a hand on his shoulder, to haul him off, but Laszlo stepped in between them, wings flickering momentarily, and she backed off, obviously unsure about land-kinden Art.
‘Leave her alone. What’s she done to you?’ the Fly demanded.
‘She gave Hermatyre to Claeon,’ Phylles spat.
‘Oh, and you’re all such concerned citizens, are you?’ Laszlo, half her size, stood with hands on hips defiantly.
Wys snorted in amusement. ‘He’s got you there.’
Phylles glared at her, and then at Laszlo. ‘Well, she’s a murderess,’ she declared, although without much conviction. Stenwold guessed he had witnessed only a fraction of the blood on her hands.
‘I didn’t,’ Paladrya said, so quiet only Stenwold heard.
Laszlo, meanwhile, was obviously spoiling for a fight. ‘And you’re a charitable institution now, are you? And all those guards you and him chucked around, they’re all sitting up again with headaches, are they?’
‘We rescued you!’ Phylles yelled at him indignantly.
‘No, you didn’t.’ Laszlo folded his arms, chin jutting pugnaciously. ‘You’re going to sell us to someone else, right? If this is a proper rescue, take us to Collegium docks, please.’
‘She said she didn’t kill anyone,’ Stenwold said loudly, because what little patience Phylles possessed was obviously being eroded by the moment. The woman glared at him, and he saw something move in her hands, as though she held some twisting creature there. A moment later she had stomped off along the upward curve of the deck.
‘The Traitress can say what she likes, but she killed the real Edmir,’ Wys said, not unsympathetically. ‘I’m no Obligist. The little sprat was probably an obnoxious turd and deserved it, but a death’s a death.’
‘Aradocles,’ Stenwold pronounced slowly. Under his arm, Paladrya nodded weakly. Stenwold felt slow-witted, continually numbed and baffled by his surroundings, to not have perceived the link. ‘This Aradocles was the Edmir?’
‘Would have been, surely, after his father died,’ Wys replied, frowning.
‘His father?’ It took a moment for Stenwold to catch up. Hereditary titles. He understood that the Commonweal managed things in the same way, and of course there was the Imperial family of the Wasp-kinden, but really… government by bloodline? Neither the Wasps nor the decaying Dragonfly state encouraged him to place any faith in it.
Abruptly the giant shell containing them shuddered and lurched, and Stenwold knew they were under way. He looked to the window ahead, cut into the shell’s rear face, and saw the seabed beneath them recede. We’re going backwards, he thought, and felt the same intermittent surges of motion that had confused him in Chenni’s smaller vessel.
Wys wore a strange expression. ‘Spit me, but you really are land-people?’ She glanced from him to Laszlo.
‘That we are,’ Stenwold confirmed.
‘This must all be complete babble to you, then?’ she observed.
Stenwold laughed at that, although Paladrya flinched as he did so. ‘Oh, you could say that. But this Aradocles of yours isn’t dead, not the way she tells it. That’s the story the Edmir’s put out, is it?’
Wys’s smile grew cynical. ‘Sounds like some things are the same, land or sea, but I believe he’s dead, anyway. He disappeared: great big hunt on for, oh, two years or so – where was the missing heir? Then word came out there’d been some dirty business in the palace. One of the lad’s own staff, his tutor, had done for him. They had her killed, they said, and Claeon went from being regent to Edmir. Big ceremony, not that any of us got invited. But it was her.’ She jabbed a finger at Paladrya. ‘They led her through the streets with a chain about her neck. I was there for that. I remember her face.’
‘She swears she took him onto the land,’ Stenwold stated.
‘Hah, well, good as dying, that, isn’t it…?’ He saw the new thoughts crowding into Wys’s mind even as she said it. ‘So Claeon’s swiping land-kinden, is he?’
Stenwold mutely gestured at himself and Laszlo. The small woman looked thoughtful. ‘We’ve taken on more than we thought, here,’ she muttered. ‘For a start, I didn’t believe you were really landsmen. I’d thought that was just a Littoralist story. Spit me, what are we involved in here?’