The Sea Watch (16 page)

Laszlo still smiled, but abruptly it was the smile of an older man. ‘Oh, Master Stenwold Maker, this is the other part of the secret.’ He leant close, forcing Stenwold to bend nearer to him. ‘Do you believe in magic?’ he said.

Stenwold paused a long while before answering. His instinct was ‘No,’ of course, and nearly any other Beetle would not have hesitated to say so, but he had seen too much, encountered too many other kinden. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, and reluctantly.

Laszlo’s smile changed again, without moving, like the sea colours in the sunlight. ‘Well,’ he said, with a little less flippancy and a little more respect. ‘Magic? Now there’s something. I personally find it hard to credit, but there comes a point when you have to say, “I see that something’s making something happen, whether it’s magic or not.” Yes?’

‘Yes,’ Stenwold agreed.

‘Well, when we hit a storm, as I reckon you’ll be seeing, we ship the mast and Despard sets the engine to run, but it’s Fern there who calls the course. She’s a dab hand at reading storms, Ma’rMaker. But this is how the Bloodfly and his crew have skipped the seas for a generation now, ever since your lot first built those clocks. We never put out without an artificer and a seer, and a halfway decent backup for both, and with that we’re as free as anyone in this world, and we’ll take you to Kanateris in a fifth of the time, and you’ll find all the answers that there are to be had.’

Jodry Drillen was celebrating. He had a great deal to celebrate, having beaten Helmess Broiler, and a handful of other hopefuls, to be appointed the new Speaker for the Assembly. Moreover, his agents across the city had already begun to characterize his spell in office in glowing terms, before the ink was even dry on his letters of appointment. Not for him the fate of poor old Lineo Thadspar, who had lived to see his city under siege, his world shattered by war, and who had died without seeing it put right. Jodry was a man bringing peace and prosperity, people were telling one another excitedly – as though he had come with both commodities in a bag, to be given out in handfuls. Just now, everyone loved fat, jovial, avuncular Jodry Drillen, and he was capitalizing on it for all he was worth.

Arianna had to admit there were worse people to throw a party. Jodry was a good host: neither gaudy in his ostentation, nor parsimonious in his hospitality. He trod a fine enough line that a Spider-kinden could come to his grand townhouse and be neither offended nor bored. She had to admire his choice of guests, too: there was a delicate balance of Assemblers, ambassadors, magnates and wits, enough to keep the conversation moving. A few of his selections betrayed Jodry’s barbed sense of humour, for there was one of the interchangeable Vekken there, awkwardly unarmed but standing in one corner with clenched fists, no doubt complaining inside his head to his colleagues elsewhere in the city. The loathing in his eyes was not for any of his Collegiate hosts, but for the Tseni woman Jodry had brought in to balance him. It was a bold move of Jodry’s but, surrounded by such cheer and licence, the two Ants were cowed into keeping their dislike to a civil silence.

Even better, and greeted lavishly when he walked through the door, Helmess Broiler himself had been invited. As Jodry had made this publicly known, his adversary could not have stayed away without being jeered at. His arrival, to the covered smiles of at least half the room, had displayed a kind of wounded dignity. The sparkling, bejewelled woman on his arm had also served to deflect the mockery. Only Arianna smiled further on seeing her.
Oh you have a Spider-kinden woman on your arm, do you? It’s a shame that Beetle eyes aren’t so good for the fine details, Master Broiler, for she’s no true-blood Spider. There’s some halfway blood in that one.
The thought was petty but, following Stenwold’s departure, she had a fair store of pettiness to expend, and she was not sparing with it.

There had been a string of entertainers performing in the house’s large common room, Fly acrobats and jugglers, an old Spider-kinden man who sang, then a pair of Beetle clowns whose satirizing would have offended half the room, Jodry included, had it not been done so cleverly. Now a tall, sallow woman came up, that Arianna recognized as a Grasshopper-kinden, either an imperial fugitive or a rare traveller from the Commonweal. She carried some elongated stringed instrument, which she tuned with a few practised tweaks of her fingers. Arianna decided that she had heard enough music for one evening, it never being one of her joys, so she slipped out and up the stairs to the roof garden. Here, against a tastefully gaslit trellis maze of twining plants, a few other guests had taken refuge, either for trysts or private words. Arianna found a stretch of balcony between two spiny-leaved shrubs and looked out over the sleeping city: the streets of Collegium picked out in lamps and lit-up windows.

It was strange to think that Stenwold was not in the city. It made her wonder why she herself still was.

She heard someone step behind her and she tensed out of old instinct.
Once a spy . . .
The needles of bone that her Art gifted her with had already sprung from her knuckles.

‘Missing Master Maker, my dear?’

She straightened at the tone, because there were different kinds of authority. Some were assumed, like the titles that the Beetles loved to bedeck each other with. Some were innate.

‘Lord-Martial Teornis,’ she said, turning. She had seen him before, greeting Jodry. Their host had been resplendent in a white robe draped with folded cloth of gold, whereas Teornis, ever the gracious guest, had come dressed one step down, in a robe of black hung with red but in the same Collegium style. If there was a circlet of rubies half hidden amid the dark curls of his brow, well, he wore it well and he would be forgiven it. For a man who could have stolen the evening from under Jodry’s feet, it was pure diplomacy.

She felt dowdy in comparison with him. She had been too long away from her own kind, and too lowly and poor, even then.

‘I should probably tell you not to “lord” me, but frankly it’s a pleasure to find someone who gets our titles right. I’ve been Master-lord-magnate-chief-Spider too often in recent months. These Beetles can never understand the virtues of simplicity.’

She smiled, still shy of him. He was Aristoi, a scion of the Aldanrael family that held a solid slice of the power and influence in Seldis and Siennis. Her family had been nothing, mere dirt compared to him, hoi polloi of the worst order. When she was still young, they had become nothing more than dust at last, caught in the jostling of two noble houses and milled like flour.

‘I’m surprised to catch you alone, my dear, for I hear you’re quite the social celebrant these days. Old Stenwold’s been a good step for you to climb.’

‘I doubt he’d like to be described that way,’ she replied defensively.

‘Come now.’ Teornis stepped forward, almost close enough to brush her shoulder as he stood beside her at the balcony rail. ‘Quite a sight, these Beetle cities. All that heavy stone, all those glorious artificial lamps. Such a contradictory people.’

She felt frozen by his closeness. It was not a matter of attraction although, had he wished, no doubt he could have drawn her to him. It was pure, rank fear, the fear that any low-birth Spider-kinden learned, if they survived.
Do not tangle with the Aristoi. Obey them, respect them, but, most of all, avoid them. You are
nothing
to them.
Her mother’s voice, her dead mother who should have listened better to her own advice.

‘But we were talking about the social advantages of bedding Stenwold Maker,’ he continued, still looking out at the city. His smile was patiently amused, as though watching a clever child perform some prodigal task. ‘You can’t be so very touchy about that, surely? Sentiment?’

‘You’d pretend we have no feelings, Lord Teornis?’ she asked, forcing the words. In that moment she wanted him to drop this pretence, to turn on her like a lord of the Aristoi and cast her aside like the ragged renegade she was. Instead he smiled at her, as genuine a smile as anyone ever practised in the mirror.

‘We alone are gifted, amongst all the kinden, are we not? We feel as much as they, we love, we hate, we take joy, and yet we never lose our minds or practicalities amid the sea of our emotions. Small wonder that, alone of all the rulers of the old times, we still possess our palaces and our slaves. Feel what you want for Stenwold Maker, my dear, but don’t let that cripple you.’

‘And I thought you liked Stenwold.’

He laughed at that, with unfeigned delight as far as she could tell. ‘Oh, I do, truly. He’s a remarkable man. He’s more than half Spider, inside his head. A loyal ally, a man of principle, a halfway decent intelligencer, and an inspiration to his underlings. The man’s a constant source of amusement. I don’t mock you, Arianna. If you were going to ride to prominence on the wings of a Beetle, you chose the right man.’

She folded her arms. It was impossible to believe he was not still making fun of her, despite the sincerity in his expression. ‘I’m glad you approve.’

‘One might ask where now, of course?’ He was gazing over the city again, lost in contemplation. ‘You must feel the sides of your cage here begin to chafe – being what you are.’

‘And what
am
I, Lord Teornis?’ she demanded, expecting him to name her low-born, fugitive, a whore even, waiting for him to put the blade in.

‘A Rekef spy.’

That left her speechless, and her expression made him grin boyishly.

‘Oh, not now, not any more. My dear girl, you look so horrified that I almost wonder if I’ve hit on something I’d not known. No, no, we all know you’ve put away the old black and gold since the war, but still, do you imagine anyone’s
forgotten?
’

All she could think was that he was going to discredit her somehow – some way of ruining Stenwold. ‘So what?’ she got out. ‘It’s no secret.’

‘Nor is it a criticism,’ he rebuked her gently. ‘A Rekef-trained agent with a working knowledge of the Wasp intelligence networks, Master Maker’s lucky to have you. Assuming, of course, that he’s putting all that fine training of yours to work.’

Again she was silent, though for different reasons. She had never noticed any of Teornis’s agents watching her, she had not felt anyone fingering the pages of her life. Of course, given who he was, she would not have done.

‘Owing to certain . . . developments within the Empire we’ve lost a fair few of our deep-cover people within the Rekef. Either dead or forced to flee. Bothersome, as I’m sure you can imagine, since Master Maker and I agree that the Empire won’t be mending its nest for ever.’

This time he waited until the prolonged silence forced some words out of her.

‘Are you making me an offer, Lord Teornis?’

He looked directly at her. ‘Girl, you’re clearly very resourceful. You escaped the Spiderlands. You survived the Empire. You maintained a cover here in Collegium, and you led one of this city’s cleverest sons about by the nose. You then dropped the black and gold and lived to tell about it, and you’re currently living the high life as a socialite and a war hero. Not a bad run, given the start the world gave you. So why be surprised if my family can see a use for your talents?’

‘You want me to leave Stenwold?’

He shook his head, his smile sardonic. ‘Oh, dear, no. Think before you speak, dear girl. You’d be so much less use to us if you did that.’ He held up a hand. ‘Before we witness any upsurge of sentiment, I’ll stress my hope that Maker would never find out. Under ideal conditions, he’d enjoy a long life and go to his grave without suspecting. We’re allies, after all, and, more than that, I like the man, but that doesn’t mean that my family wouldn’t relish having someone close to him who can, let’s say, make the occasional well-timed suggestion.’

‘Well, Lord Teornis, forgive me if I haven’t had your upbringing,’ Arianna replied. There was not much room at the balcony between Jodry’s foliage, but she put what distance she could between them. ‘I, however, must talk in more mercantile terms. How much did you imagine you could buy me from him for?’

‘Adoption,’ he said, and in the quiet that followed he beckoned over one of Jodry’s servants to light his pipe. It was a Beetle habit, and not even a sophisticated one, except when Teornis was involved. She imagined, numbly, that the practice would suddenly become fashionable now. The smoke from the brass bowl of his pipe was sweet, not the old burnt smell from Stenwold’s study.

‘Of course I’m serious,’ he continued at last. ‘It’s a fair price in exchange for what you’ve built here in Collegium. If I set the best of my agents on to it, they’d never quite reach the heights of influence you can now command, not if they slept with the entire Assembly, men and women of all kinden. And besides, aren’t you bored? To be servant of just one master: what Spider was ever happy with a life that uncomplicated? And I’d rather you wrote your reports for me, rather than sending them back to your former Rekef masters. At least Stenwold and I are on the same side.’

‘Adoption . . .’ she murmured. Nobody belonging to another kinden could quite understand the scale of it: he might as well have offered her the moon. It meant nobility. It meant that she would become Arianna of the Aldanrael. It meant filling all those gnawing absences that had plagued her childhood.

‘Think about it,’ Teornis urged her. ‘You don’t need to make a decision now. In fact, you might never have to choose between old Stenwold and me. Report to me, live with him, and let’s do our work as though we were partners in the same business. I’d hope the time might never come when you would have to discover where your true loyalties lie.’