‘My bannermen did what they could,’ the big Onychoi replied, implacable. ‘Your beast let one go and your Dart-kinden the other. I see you have somehow managed to retain the third.’ He glanced briefly at Teornis, without much apparent interest. ‘Or were you about to hand him over to someone else? Me, perhaps.’
‘This man is not for you to torture.’ Claeon paced the chamber, which was part of his own suite of rooms. The curved walls were ornamented in golden arabesques that Teornis found beautiful in their execution, but gauche in their effect.
‘You think of torture,’ Rosander murmured. ‘Don’t colour me with your pastimes. I might be able to hold him more securely than you, however.’
Claeon rounded on him furiously, storming up to the man’s immense bulk as though about to break his hand on that stone carapace. ‘Do not be impudent! I am Edmir here! You are strong, Rosander, but do not think, here in the heart of my palace, that you can mock me.’
Rosander looked down at a man who was a fraction of his size, and he sighed slowly. ‘The Shell Hunters Train has been trading at Hermatyre during these last few days. Yesterday, twenty of my bannermen asked my permission to take their retinues and depart with the Hunters when they leave.’
Claeon narrowed his eyes. ‘And you refused?’
‘And I gave them my blessing, for they would go whatever I said, and I would rather they came back to me, when next we meet, than cut all their ties to the Thousand Spines. My people are bored, Claeon. They want to move on. I want to move on. Give me my war. Give me this landsman, to start with.’
Claeon held up a hand to silence him. ‘This one is special. This one will be more use to you alive and happy than would any number of corpses or prisoners. You know Pellectes, of course?’
This was the fourth man, another Kerebroi. The stranger was taller than Claeon, leaner save for having something of a belly. His long hair and beard were lustrous with a shiny greenish hue that Teornis hoped was merely cosmetic.
It was not clear from Rosander’s blank expression whether he knew Pellectes or not, so Claeon went on: ‘He is the leader of the Littoralists, and his people are already up above, learning about our enemy.’ He turned to address Pellectes. ‘Rosander will be the agent of our return to the land.’
‘So it is foretold,’ Pellectes breathed.
Teornis found his eyes meeting Rosander’s in a shared look of exasperation. The Onychoi shifted stance in a further chafing of armour, his pose subtly suggesting that his patience was waning fast. ‘Tell me then,’ he said, ‘what’s so special about this land-kinden.’
‘He claims that the land-kinden that we have been spying on are at war with another tribe of landsmen, and that he himself is a member of this other tribe,’ Claeon declared, dismissing with a wave of his hand any number of centuries of landbound politics.
‘And it is true,’ Pellectes assured them eagerly. ‘My own agent within their colony has confirmed it.’
Rosander took two clumping steps forward to stand before Teornis. ‘What can you do for us, then?’
The Spider looked the huge man directly in the eye. ‘I have agents in Collegium, their colony. I can compromise their defences, guide your soldiers, identify their leaders. It would appear we have a common enemy.’
Rosander’s gaze weighed him up, the resulting assessment uncertain. He looked sidelong at the green-bearded Littoralist. ‘So where does your orthodoxy feature, in all this?’ he grunted. ‘First time I’ve heard your lot ever talk of friendly land-kinden.’
‘But it is so,’ announced Pellectes. ‘For just look at him! He is almost kin to us Kerebroi. It is clear that these are our cousins, who somehow avoided the great purge and fled to the further reaches of the land, to find safety. Now we can strike together against our persecutors.’
The Onychoi made a disparaging noise. ‘Sounds convenient,’ he remarked.
‘It is not convenient,’ Pellectes snapped back at him. ‘We have a duty to our ancestors to avenge the wrong done to us. Those that forced us from our homes must now be punished and destroyed. We will reclaim our birthright.’
The dry stare of Rosander swung back to Teornis. ‘Anything up there look like my brother, landsman?’
‘Not that I ever saw,’ Teornis told him easily.
‘Good. I’d hate to have to kill any bastard as tough as I am.’ Rosander looked back to find Pellectes shaking with fury, right before him.
‘You dare not mock!’ the man shouted in his face.
‘I dare,’ Rosander growled.
Pellectes’s nostrils flared. ‘Your ancestors were driven, too. You too have lost a homeland. It is your duty, carried down from parent to child across all the centuries, to reclaim it. It is your destiny to be the agent of our return. How dare you jest at such? What would you say to your ancestors, when you mock their spilt blood?’
‘I’d tell them they were weak fools to be pushed around, and that I like the sea just fine. Don’t try to infect me with your cant. My bannermen and I, we want conquest and plunder. Keep your ideology to yourself.’
‘You must not sully the cause-!’ Pellectes started ranting, and then stopped. Teornis had watched Rosander draw a knife, a remarkably understated move for so huge a man. His arm, encumbered by all that weight of stone, had struck swiftly nonetheless. He had the curved blade pressed against one side of the Kerebroi’s throat, the curved claw of his gauntlet alongside the other. Two tiny trickles of blood patterned Pellectes’s neck. The Littoralist had gone very still, eyes almost out of his head with compounded rage and fear.
‘Good. Now keep silent,’ Rosander addressed him, and turned his wrist to take the knife away. The Littoralist stepped back shakily, hands going to the two shallow, bleeding nicks.
‘Have this one make arrangements then,’ the Onychoi instructed Claeon, jabbing at Teornis with the blood-tipped spike. ‘Make it soon, though. Any longer and my train will be on their way. They’re not meant for this colony life, and neither am I.’
He turned and lumbered away, trailing faint motes of stone dust.
Pellectes bared his teeth after him. ‘The barbarian!’ he spat. ‘Edmir, there must be some other way to further our cause. Must we rely on such ignorant beasts?’
Claeon folded his hands before him. ‘But I do rely on him, Pellectes. I need him, alas.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Moreover I only need you because you’re of some use to him, and so if he decides to separate your babbling head from your shoulders, I shall cheer him to the echo. You listen to me, now. It was I who made your worthless Littoralists something more than a laughing stock in Hermatyre, and I can undo that just as easily, if you cease to be of use. Do what I say and don’t cross me, or I’ll have Arkeuthys eat the lot of you – and a sour stomach that would give him, no doubt.’
Pellectes kept his peace stiffly, mortally offended but not deigning to make a reply. Claeon shook his head dolefully. ‘Honestly, Pellectes, do you really believe all that business? About the land being a place of plenty? I’m reliably informed it’s horrible up there.’
‘When we retake our ancestral home, it will become paradise again,’ Pellectes replied, with absolute conviction.
‘Whatever you say. I’ll have a message for your spy soon enough. Now get out of the palace and go back to your wretched followers.’ He waited until the Littoralist had stalked off, and then turned to Teornis. ‘You see what I must deal with? Having brutes and madmen as my allies.’
Neither of whom you make much effort to keep as allies, Teornis considered, but he nodded sympathetically. ‘You’ll want a message from me,’ he noted.
‘As soon as we can find some way that you can write it.’ Claeon shook his head, for it had proved an unexpected barrier. The Kerebroi wrote in some incomprehensible fashion that involved setting patterns down somehow on the thick paper they processed from pressed seaweed. Furthermore, the characters they used were wholly unfamiliar to Teornis, which had quite thrown him. He had never even considered there being a different manner of writing, but the squiggles and half-pictures of the sea-kinden held no meaning for him whatsoever.