Twenty-One

Their ship was a shell. His wonder at the sight of it, hanging in the pale glow of the colony like a spiral moon, was all that stopped Stenwold from going out of his mind.

Wys had come back quickly, too quickly, which suggested that the missing prisoners, and the slaughter of the guards, had not gone unnoticed. Stenwold guessed that the Edmir’s pursuers were expecting them to attempt a flight into the colony proper, not to use this marine exit, but the thought surely would not evade them for long.

‘Get these over their heads,’ the small woman snapped impatiently. A moment later, the woman called Phylles was trying to drag a bag of clear membrane over Stenwold’s face. He tried to fight her off and she jammed an unkind knee into his stomach, then unrolled the filmy material so that his head was entirely within it. It smelled like rotting fish and the waxy membrane made a blur of the world beyond, and he tried to pry it off, convinced he could not breathe. Phylles hit him again, unsympathetically, and he gasped, finding out that the bag did not cling to his face, and that there was a little air sharing its interior with him.

He had meanwhile lost track of what else was going on, so the wash of water caught him by surprise. He tried desperately to kick himself away from it, but Phylles held on to his collar, and he was buffeted fiercely as the room filled up within moments. Her bare feet seemed somehow glued to the floor, and she handled him as though he was a kite in a high wind, until the inflowing current had subsided. Then she began grimly dragging him away, and the walls receded behind them, until he realized that they were outside the colony and under the vast weight of the water.

It was hard to breathe then, not from the caul – which had puffed out against the sea – but from the cold, clenching weight of ocean all around him. He had closed his eyes when the water came at him, and he only opened them again after he had re-established a rhythm to his breathing. To his astonishment the membrane about him, which had made his vision so smudged and grainy in the air, showed his surroundings crystal-clear.

Behind them the colony glowed out a thousand colours. His heart skipped to see it, looking so alien and beautiful. Yes, for all that he had been its captive, he could not deny that it was beautiful. It was huge, too. The irregular, bulging walls rose up and up, in towers and domes and spires and intricate skeletons of white stone, draped with fronds and frills and gills of waving plantlife, and all illuminated by great bulbous lamps of ghostly greens and bloody reds, brooding purples and violently bright blues. For a moment he forgot about the fathoms of water around him, the monsters that swam in it, the horror of drowning, just gazing at that sight that filled his whole horizon. The colony was a city. The colony was immense.

The colony was alive, he saw then. It was alive in that sea life swarmed across it. The lights picked out a million sparks of fish in ever-changing constellations, the clinging slick hands of octopuses, high-stepping crabs picking their way sideways up the colony walls, shrimp the size of a man’s arm darting here and there in a flurry of beating legs. The colony was alive beyond all this, though, for its outer walls were built of life: cells and cells of it, each with its rosette of tiny arms. When a fish skimmed the stone, he saw a flurry of motion as the colony-builders dragged their tendrils in, then spread them out again once the intruder had passed.

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?’

‘Oh you think you’ve got problems?’ Laszlo remarked, and she chuckled at that, looking him up and down.

‘We should shave you, boy,’ she told him. ‘Could make a Smallclaw of you yet. Spit me, I’m minded to hand your big friend and the Traitress over and hold on to you. A man who can hang in mid-air like that would be worth his keep.’ The eye she turned on him was so cheerfully acquisitive that Laszlo could find no ready reply.

‘Where are we going?’ Stenwold asked. ‘Now we’ve got the threats of execution out of the way, can you tell us?’ In his arms, Paladrya struggled to sit up, still shaking slightly. Now he saw her in the stronger light of the ship’s interior, she was clearly a woman ill used, and ill used for some time. There were marks on her pale skin that even her Art could not hide, and she was gaunt and hollow-eyed.

‘Just a place, some farm my paymaster’s commandeered. Owners are sympathizers, probably. This is political. It’s more important for you to know who you’re going to get handed over to, than where the deal’s done. I’d guess they’re some of the old Edmir’s party – Claeon’s brother’s lot. After all, it’s only because of the Thousand Spine mob that they didn’t wind Claeon’s guts out on a spear, whether Aradocles was dead or not.’

Thousand Spine . . . That’s . . . Stenwold fought for the correct words. That’s Rosander’s train, his warband or whatever. That means Claeon took over, and he used Rosander as muscle, yes. So now I’ve got Obligists who live in the city – the colony – and I have Benthists who don’t, only some Benthists, like Rosander, do because they’re invited, and the Obligists are split into rival camps anyway . . . He clenched his fists in frustration, because he was trying to understand the result of millennia of divergent history, and he had to get it right. His life would depend on it.

‘Wys,’ he addressed her, and she nodded. ‘Wys, your people are . . . where do you fit in?’

‘Freeloaders, landsman. And we don’t fit in. We don’t take to the open seas, and we don’t live in the colonies, we just take our opportunities. Me, Phylles, Fel and that useless bastard Lej up in the engines, we’re Wys’s Hunters.’

‘Mercenaries,’ Stenwold agreed, and when she looked blank he added, ‘For money? You understand money, here?’ He suddenly thought of the wealth of precious metal he had seen, but Wys was nodding.

‘Of course we have money – what do you think we are? Mercenaries . . .’ It was clear the word was new to her. ‘Oh, I like that.’

‘There can’t be many like you,’ Stenwold said. Particularly if you don’t even have a word for what you are.

‘Money’s only good at a colony,’ Wys agreed, ‘and there’s not so many things an Obligist needs to hire someone from outside for. We’re a select group.’

And I’ll wager you’re bandits whenever the money dries up, Stenwold reflected. ‘Are we free to wander on your ship?’

‘Our barque?’ Wys’s gesture took in the limited coil of the living space. ‘Don’t get in Lej’s way, don’t annoy Phylles, and Fel will be watching you. Aside from that, you’ve a little while till we arrive. We’re fighting against current to get there. I’d advise sleep, but it’s your call.’ With that pronouncement, she did something quick and complicated with one of the nets on the wall, and turned it into a hammock. She bundled herself into it fully clothed, or at least without removing her brief tunic, and was apparently asleep in an instant.

Stenwold and Laszlo exchanged glances. ‘We’re getting somewhere, slowly,’ the Beetle murmured.

‘In understanding these madwigs, maybe.’ Laszlo shrugged. ‘No closer to getting back to the light and air, though, Ma’rMaker.’

Stenwold nodded. In truth he was trying not to think about that. It was hard to retain any composure when his mind was playing host to the yawning chasm that lay between him and home. I think if I saw some black-and-yellow down here, I’d embrace it. But, no, Teornis was right. Even the Empire can’t reach us down here.

And if the sea-kinden reach upwards? He had no idea of their capabilities, though they had enough aptitude to make these submersibles, however the ships worked. They produced the light and, somehow, the air . . .

‘The air . . . ?’ He frowned. ‘Paladrya . . .’

She was watching him fearfully, as though bracing herself for a blow. She had not, he guessed, found much to trust or like in people since her incarceration.

And she had been Claeon’s lover, she said. And she’d betrayed him for this Aradocles, and then Claeon found out, and locked her up, and worse . . .

And where in the bloody world has this Aradocles been, if she pitched him landwards years ago? The obvious answer loomed, but he fought it down. If this heir is dead, that’s no use to me. But if he can be found . . .

It was the bait for his hook, in order to catch some chance of getting back home. Surely they would want their precious heir returned to them? But first he had to understand them, lest he put a foot wrong, and this abyssal world then swallow him for good.

‘Paladrya, tell me about the air,’ he said gently.

‘I don’t understand.’ It was clear in her expression.

‘You people can breathe underwater. Why haven’t I just drowned? Why keep those caul things?’

A flicker of something like humour crossed her face, which must have been a rare visitor of late. ‘You mustn’t take offence,’ she said, ‘but the cauls are for children. It is the earliest Art any of us learn, but not before the age of six, perhaps, or seven . . . so we have the cauls. The Benthists developed them, they claim. They need them more, when they’re travelling.’

Stenwold let the subject of the Benthists go by for the moment. ‘But the air,’ he pressed her. ‘Air goes stale, even my people know that. How are you . . . are you making air? You have machinery of some kind?’ It can’t be an Apt solution, unless they’ve been Apt for, what, thousands of years, long enough to be forgotten by the rest of us, all ties with the land severed.

‘We accreate it, of course,’ she said, voice tailing off by the end of the sentence when the word made no impact on him. ‘Accreation,’ she enunciated, as though to a fool or small child. ‘We extract it from the water.’

‘There’s no air in water,’ Laszlo jeered, ‘Or else you wouldn’t drown.’

She gave the Fly a level stare. ‘There is indeed air to breathe in the water, if you possess the Art to free it. It’s the simplest form of accreation.’

Stenwold and Laszlo exchanged looks. ‘What else can you . . . accreate?’ the Beetle enquired slowly.

‘There are many things in the water,’ she told him, ‘if you can but draw them out. The limn-lights, for example, are simple work.’ A twitch of her hand took in the pale globes illuminating the inside of the submersible. ‘But most of what we need, we make – we accreate. Shell, bronze, gold, membrane, stone, all of it can be formed by someone with the skill and Art for it. Some things the sea makes for us, like the shell that this barque is made from, but almost everything else is made by accreation.’

‘So you just, what, conjure all your raw materials out of the water?’ Stenwold asked incredulously.

‘Raw materials?’ she asked, frowning again.

‘Ask him this question,’ broke in a new voice. Phylles had come back, and Stenwold guessed that the curved nature of the ship meant that no conversation could be private. The purple-skinned woman crouched on her haunches, still trying to look angry but obviously intrigued. ‘How do you people ever craft things on land, land-kinden, if you don’t accreate from the sea?’

‘We . . . make things,’ Stenwold said unhelpfully. ‘Someone mines the raw materials – the metal ore say – from underground, and then it gets smelted into the metal, and maybe cast in a mould, or else a smith beats it into a shape and finishes it off, or perhaps a machinist cuts the metal into the right shape, if it’s precision work . . .’ He broke off, for she had drawn a knife out. Only later he would remember that she needed no knives to fight with. She laid the blade before him, and he saw it was four inches of razor-sharp bronze with a hilt fashioned of some pearly shell.

‘So you people would, what, get a lump of bronze, and just sort of force it into looking like a knifeblade?’ she asked him, sounding utterly disbelieving.

‘Well, heat it up and beat it flat, over and over . . .’ And I’ve seen not a single fire, not a naked flame, and what on earth would they burn here, unless they can ‘accreate’ coal or something. The cells weren’t warm, but they weren’t cold either, they don’t have much need of clothing other than for a minimal modesty . . . they can’t make fire. They make things without fire. ‘And you . . . don’t do that?’

Her face was doing something strained, and he realized she was not-quite-laughing at him. ‘Beat it flat? Like with a rock or something? Over and over . . . ?’ She lost the battle and a delighted crow of derision erupted from her. Stripped of her customary ill humour she looked even more like a discoloured Beetle-kinden from some far-off city.

‘Very funny,’ Laszlo snapped angrily. ‘And you do better, do you?’

She gave him a pitying look. ‘Man in the Hot Stations made this for me. They’re good with metal there. I told him what I wanted, and he set out a tank, and I came back three days later and he’d got the blade formed. I did the hilt myself. I make most of the fittings round here.’ She took up the knife, and Stenwold saw that the blade was plain, but the grip was lightly incised with intricate, geometrical patterns that were picked out with verdigris as neatly as though jade had been inlaid. Which she made by this accreation, he realized. Not cut, not carved, but simply laid in as part of her plan, as she sieved the materials from the seawater. He recalled all that fantastically intricate jewellery he had seen in Hermatyre. So they can just grasp gold from the sea, and shape it how they will without need of the whitesmith’s art. I wonder if they realize they could just buy themselves a chunk of the land, no need for invasion?

And what are the limits of this Art of theirs? The question inevitably followed on from his previous thoughts. What could they not make?

Phylles was still smirking at him, but there was a degree of uncertainty behind her expression, that had perhaps underlain her earlier hostility as well. She’s scared of us, Stenwold saw. We are land-kinden, and we are strange to her. ‘Do you believe that my ancestors drove yours off of the dry land?’ he asked her. ‘Do you dream of going back?’

‘I saw the land once,’ she told him flatly, raising her belligerence like a shield. ‘Up on the surface, while cack-handed Lej was getting this thing moving again. Dry and barren, it was, and I could feel my skin cracking just being up there, out of the water. You’re welcome to it, land-kinden. Just don’t you lot try coming down here.’

She stormed off again, heading up the slope where their engineer had appeared from. Stenwold smiled slightly after her. She might be a sea-kinden of some unspecified type, but he had met a lot of other people like her, as easily offended and overly defensive. He decided he knew how to handle Phylles, whatever she was.

‘Right,’ he said vaguely, glancing up at the bald Mantis-cousin, Fel. Throughout the conversation the man had not offered a single contribution, just standing there with his arms hanging loose by his sides, as though he would be fighting at any moment. Very like a Mantis. ‘No chance of anything to eat, I suppose?’ he asked. ‘Anything that’s not fish, ideally, although I accept there’s small chance of that.’

For a moment Fel just looked at him, with the spikes on his fists flexing slightly, but then he stepped sideways and started rummaging one-handed in one of the cargo nets.

‘Do you feel able to answer more questions?’ Stenwold asked Paladrya. ‘It sounds as though whoever hired these mercenaries isn’t going to kill you out of hand at any rate.’

She was still pressed against him, held in the embrace of one arm. She had stopped shaking, but he had the sense of keeping stable some very precious, fragile thing. ‘Ask,’ she said quietly. ‘I cursed you to this, by my interference, so I will make amends any way I can.’

‘Well, then . . .’ For a second Stenwold floundered in the ocean of his own ignorance. ‘This Hermatyre that the Edmir rules . . . there are other colonies, there must be . . . ?’

‘There are,’ she agreed. ‘There is Deep Seep, down in the dark and the cold. There is Grande Atoll, I have heard, beyond even that . . . and the Pelagists tell of colonies further still.’

‘And Hermatyre’s relations with them? Might there be allies against Claeon? He doesn’t sound the diplomatic type,’ Stenwold mused. Paladrya was already giving him what had become her usual look, when he said something that puzzled her.

‘Relations?’ she asked. ‘Well, there is some trade. The Benthist trains call at those places, sometimes, and there are the Pelagists . . .’

‘But surely they care, if their neighbour is taken over by a tyrant?’ Stenwold pressed.

‘Why?’ she said simply.

‘Well . . . what if Claeon decided to take over this Deep Seep, as well, and sent an army over?’

‘This happens on land?’

‘It happened to my home city – colony – very recently.’

She flinched at the thought. ‘It takes the Benthist trains many moons to travel between colonies, even if they follow direct paths, and usually their chief interests are in scavenging the depths. The Pelagists are swifter, but even they . . . they are so thinly scattered that to see five of them in one place is cause for surprise. How should such a thing be accomplished?’

‘A desert,’ interjected Laszlo soberly. He was obviously quicker to grasp the idea than Stenwold. ‘The sea floor is a desert. These Benthists are like nomad tribes – like the Scorpions in the Dryclaw, say. You exchange a few messages, a little trade, some raiding probably, but each colony’s got to shift for itself alone, I reckon. Which means that each colony’s also its own worst enemy, come to that. Which gives us this mess we’ve run into. Lady, tell us something we need to know, will you?’

‘Speak,’ Paladrya invited. Fel was back with them then, no doubt disappointed that they had not tried to take advantage of his being distracted. He handed them strips of something tough and stringy. Stenwold tried it cautiously, and found it infinitely welcome, just like dried beetle jerky and, best of all, only tasting very slightly of fish. I suppose a lobster is just an aquatic beetle, when it comes down to it.

‘Tell us about your kinden, your sea-kinden,’ Laszlo continued, and in the Fly’s face was the avid look of a traveller learning something that nobody else of his country has ever known. ‘These families of yours . . . ?’

‘The Seven Families, yes,’ Paladrya echoed, ‘although that’s just tradition. There are always rumours of other families, other kinden within the families we know . . . in the deep places, in the far places, other colonies . . .’

‘Hold.’ Stenwold put a hand up, glancing at their guard. ‘No chance of something to write with, and write on? I should be making notes, at least.’

Fel looked as though he had been asked for the moon on a stick, but after a moment he brought over a rounded sheet of thin, leathery cloth, and a thin seashell that had been capped with something like horn. There was ink inside it that wrote somewhat messily, as though Stenwold was scribing on blotting paper, but it was not so different from the reservoir pen sitting on his desk back in Collegium. The letters he formed, though, were obviously unfamiliar to his hosts. Well, I suppose that, whenever they were exiled down here, it must have occurred before literacy was well established.

‘The Seven Families,’ Paladrya repeated, and Stenwold remembered that she had been a tutor, once. ‘First of the Seven is the Kerebroi, who rule the colony of Hermatyre and all its farms and land,’ she recited as if by rote. ‘Of the Kerebroi, we Krakind are the mightiest, but those who are Dart-, or Sepia-, or Wayfarer-kinden are our cousins, and ought not to be slighted that they lack our skill at governance.’

There was a snort from Phylles, who had come back down to hear the lesson. She obviously had other ideas about the predilections of the Krakind.

‘Hold on,’ Laszlo said, holding a hand up just like a schoolboy. ‘Krakind, you said, as in “kraken”?’

‘What’s kraken?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘Well, Mar’Maker, that beast that hauled our arses down here would be a kraken to most mariners, and no mistake. You hear stories, you know? Like how they’re supposed to be really smart, rescue drowning sailors and all that . . . Guess that’s a load of rot, then.’ He raised his eyebrows at Paladrya. ‘So you’re one of them, are you? Octopus-kinden?’

She nodded. ‘As is Claeon, as is Aradocles, and their royal line which has governed Hermatyre for eleven generations.’

‘Go on, though,’ Stenwold prompted. ‘The Seven Families?’

‘Next is the Onychoi, the people of the claw,’ she told them. ‘Some live within the colonies, but most are Benthists, travelling the ocean floor. Many live in the Hot Stations now, I’m told. You have met Rosander, and Wys, and Fel here. They are all Onychoi of one kind or another.’

That’s a lot of variety to fit in just one kinden, Stenwold thought, contrasting Wys and Rosander. Or, no, they’re not kinden, but several kinden all within the one family: crabs and shrimp and whatever Fel happens to take after, I suppose, but they’re all kin. I suppose that means they’re the closest kin to us, as well, of all the sea-kinden.

‘Next come the Archetoi, who build the colonies and allow us to live within them,’ Paladrya went on, her voice acquiring a sing-song pattern, a rhyme for children. ‘They are the Builders, and worthy of honour, and none who relies on the colonies should offend them or stand in their way, for we survive by their grace. After the two great families and the Builders, there are also the lesser kinden,’ Here Paladrya threw a very pointed look at Phylles. The dark-skinned woman scowled but said nothing, as Paladrya went on, ‘There are four of them, and usually the Polypoi are counted first of these.’

‘You leave me out of this,’ Phylles said gruffly. ‘I don’t want any part of your stupid Obligist hierarchies.’

‘The Polypoi are lonely and self-reliant,’ Paladrya went on, and then Phylles broke in with, ‘Loners. Loners, not lonely. We do just fine on our own.’

‘Perhaps you can set the record straight after we’re done,’ Stenwold suggested, which drew her frown on to him.

‘No skin off my nose whether you get a proper education,’ she told him, and made a great show of stomping off again.

Paladrya took a deep breath. ‘Well, the Polypoi live beside the colonies, mostly, in outlying farms and homesteads, or just on their own like hermits. Or sometimes there are Onychoi hermits, and the Polypoi live near them. We claim that they are lonely, or why else would they stay just outside, rather than simply going on their own ways?’

There was a sound of derision from elsewhere in the vessel, but Stenwold gestured for Paladrya to continue.

‘Then there are the Medusoi, who constantly travel the oceans, and have little to do with the colonies at all. They are the greatest of the Pelagists, meaning those who swim freely, although there are Kerebroi and Onychoi who also feel no ties to a colony or train. The Medusoi are strange and dangerous. Sixth of the Seven Families are the Gastroi, the lowly. The Gastroi live mostly outside the colonies, but they keep the farms and herds that feed us. They are quiet and uncomplaining and dutiful, and in turn we must protect them from the dangers of the sea. They are also skilled at accreating, and at working the shells and stones that the sea leaves us with.’

She appeared to have finished there, so Stenwold indicated on his fingers that even land-kinden could count to seven. She had become something brighter for a brief moment, given the chance to teach, but now she retreated into herself again.

‘The Seventh family is . . . different. Those I have told you about, they are part of our society, even peripherally. Even the Medusoi recognize where they fit in and, although they are dangerous if crossed, they will not seek out danger. The Echinoi are different, however. The Echinoi have no laws. We do not even know if they have language. They are . . . something other than human, it is said. Some claim they resided within the sea long before the other families came, and resent us for our intrusion. Certainly they, of us all, have no need of air. How their children manage, we cannot guess. The Echinoi are the spine-kinden, and they roam the vastness of the seabed. When their bands find victims – a farm, a train, even a whole colony – they attack without mercy. They are the enemies of us all. Hope that you never see them, land-kinden. They would not care who or what you were. They would feast on your bones.’

‘Lovely,’ Laszlo muttered darkly. ‘Just when you thought you were surrounded by thoroughly unpleasant people, there’s worse.’

Fel had remained blank throughout Paladrya’s lecture but, at that, he smiled, showing neat, predatory-looking teeth.