‘Gribbern is dead, but another who heeds me rescued your friend,’ Nemoctes declared. ‘They head for the Hot Stations – as I discover Wys had already guessed. We will hold a fresh conclave there, beyond Claeon’s reach.’
‘Good for you,’ Laszlo replied stubbornly. He half hoped the man might take offence, showing what he was made of, but Nemoctes simply nodded.
‘It’s war, isn’t it?’ Wys said unexpectedly. ‘Any way you look at it, Hermatyre’s going to fight with itself.’
A shadow crossed Nemoctes’s face. ‘If these land-kinden can secure the heir for us, then perhaps the bloodshed will be little, and within the palace only. Otherwise… it may be a uncertain situation indeed, if Heiracles raises the mob in his own name.’
Wys made a rude noise. ‘I’d not follow Heiracles out of the sun unless he paid me. I don’t know what they think of him in Hermatyre, but I don’t reckon it’s much.’
‘You may be right.’ Nemoctes shrugged, the plates of his armour scraping. ‘My people have helped him as much as we can, and more than we should in some cases. We have no army to fight on his behalf, though, and nor would we, anyway. I do not care, myself, what blood runs in his veins, but enough others do, and therefore will not accept him even though they bear Claeon no love.’
‘Maybe I’ll start trading out of Deep Seep soon,’ Wys mused. ‘Don’t recall anybody caring much about wars down there.’
‘Too cursed cold down there, is the reason,’ Phylles muttered, and Wys nodded glumly.
‘Well, you go talk to your folks,’ she told Nemoctes. ‘We’ll see you inside the Stations, and then we’ll see what’s where.’
The tall man nodded, and opened the hatch, stepping into the small room beyond. Once he was gone, Wys sighed long and deep. When she looked up, her eyes were bright, though.
‘Fel, Phylles, Lej,’ she addressed them, even the unseen mechanic, ‘It’s one of those times.’
‘You mean where we either get rich or dead?’ Phylles asked sourly.
‘We’ve been rich so far, haven’t we? And not dead even once?’ Wys was grinning. ‘With such a record, how can we go wrong?’
Both Phylles and Fel were still looking highly unenthusiastic, so she dismissed them with a wave of her hand. ‘Land-kinden,’ she beckoned, ‘Laszlo, come to the window with me. Let’s see Nemoctes off.’
Laszlo followed her over to the far end of the chamber. Nemoctes must already have reached his mount, for now the creature was lazily departing, retreating ponderously backwards off into the darkness.
‘Tell me about your people, landsman,’ Wys prompted him.
‘You mean my kinden?’
‘I mean your people. There are some folks up there who’d want you back, yes? Someone must have shed a tear when your barque docked again at your colony, and you weren’t on it.’
‘My family,’ Laszlo replied. Or at least they’d better have, rotten bastards.
‘Pay to get you back, I’d wager,’ Wys considered.
Laszlo shot her a sidelong look but she was watching the passing waters idly. ‘They would, at that,’ he informed her, though with the same mental caveat as before.
She nodded. ‘I’m a woman used to making my own way in the world, Laszlo,’ she said, ‘and you may have noticed that I’ve taken a shine to you. You’re not so different to us, for all you’re clueless. I keep wanting to shave your head in order to make a civilized man of you, but otherwise you’re just a human being, like we all are.’
A fair sight more than you or your crew, Laszlo thought, but he just nodded diplomatically.
‘Heiracles, Nemoctes, and Claeon even, none of them have the brains of a stone,’ Wys observed thoughtfully. ‘What do they see in you? That you’re either a threat, or something to conquer, or some kind of, what, captive militia to rule the colony with? No, no, no, stupid, all of them. I’ve seen you. You go and talk to Spillage like you’re an engineer. Your clothes are in a poor state, and you wear more of them than anyone could want, but I can see they were tailored well enough. Your people have potential.’
‘Well, thank you,’ said Laszlo acidly, and she put up a warning hand before his face instantly.
‘You just rein in that tongue and listen to someone when they’re telling you something to your advantage,’ she snapped. ‘Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if we never got to the Stations at all, but left you somewhere where you could just kick off for home, up above the waves?’
His breath caught and he wanted to shake her, to clutch her tight. ‘Home?’ he whispered.
‘Your people make things differently to us. That means they must make different things from ours,’ she said. ‘Things we’ve never seen. Things that are common as dirt to you will be like crab’s ink down here,’ she said, which he assumed was a rare or non-existent commodity. ‘Things we take for granted, well, your lot’d tear each other apart for them. You see where I’m going with this?’
‘Trade,’ he replied.
‘Surely, trade,’ she agreed. ‘Stuff Heiracles and stuff their war, I say. If your people, your family, were of a mind for barter, then why not? All anyone’s ever said about the land was that it was death, that the landsmen – if there even were any – were murdering savages, and that everything up there was like poison. Now here you are, and if we haven’t managed to poison you, I reckon you’re not likely to poison us. So how about we forget the Stations and start making some money?’
‘What about Master Maker?’ Laszlo asked her.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ she said. ‘Heiracles will sell him somewhere, or Nemoctes, or who knows what. This is between you and me, Laszlo.’
Home. My family. This was the best offer he was likely to get and surely, once there, he could do something to rescue Stenwold…
That seemed unlikely, he had to admit. By the time any reliable contact was established between the Tidenfree crew and Wys’s people, Stenwold would have gone on to whatever fate the sea held in wait for him.
Inwardly, Laszlo swore.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said slowly, ‘but I do have to get Master Maker out. It’s not right, otherwise. But, listen, if we both get up on to land, then I promise you’ve got a deal. My chief’ll be happy for it. You’d like him – he’s just your sort of person. We’re like you, kind of, my family. We’re all making our own way in the world, too. Get us both back, and you’ve got yourself a deal.’
Wys remained expressionless for a moment, wholly impossible to read, but then she smiled unexpectedly. ‘You’re a tricky little pismire, you are,’ she told him. ‘Well, I reckon it’s the Stations then, and there we’ll see what we can’t do for your friend.’
Travelling with Lyess was strangely like riding in the cabin of an airship. Despite the labouring bell of the creature above them, it was impossible to tell whether they were making headway or just being coasted along by the current flowing outside. For all the creature’s size, they were like a speck of nothing amid the vastness of the ocean. By Sten-wold’s reckoning, most of the time they might as well be stalled in place and going nowhere.
To relieve the sameness of their voyaging, he tried meditating on Art, something he had not done in a decade. He was unsure what malformed Art might come to a man, locked down here in the depths, but the gentle rhythm of the huge jellyfish was conducive to letting his mind wander, and at least it passed the time. Sometimes, when he came to himself, though, he found Lyess sitting right next to him, a fraction of an inch from touching – and watching him, always watching.
She is lonely, he understood sadly. She had not realized how lonely she was until I gave her something to contrast it with.
When the sea did give his eyes something to feast on, the meals it provided sat ill with him. On one occasion they saw a battle, or at least something like a battle. A Benthic train straggled out in a long dark line against the grey mud of the sea bottom, comprising a chain of armoured beasts and the occasional equally armoured machine. Against them had come a tide of orange and red, and at first Stenwold could not discern what he was looking at. It seemed to be a sea of spines and spikes, a crawling carpet of points and jagged edges. Then his eyes began to single out movement, and he saw that the attackers were great thorny starfish – many-fingered, creeping monsters – along with some that resembled simply impossible balls of lance-like skewers, advancing like tight-knit units of pikemen. In amongst these thronging creatures were men, lithe men with orange skins that seemed likewise rough and spined. Wearing piecemeal armour of bronze, wielding spears and forward-curving swords, they threw themselves at the Benthists in a berserk fury, their animals surging on every side.