The great raft was looming up and he saw several boats there already, with Skater-kinden men standing ready to take the painter line. He put a hand on Gaved’s shoulder to halt his rowing, and the little craft coasted the remaining feet until two Skaters captured its prow with their long arms and tied it up. He put a few coins into their hands, good Helleron Centrals that the Skaters preferred to imperial currency. With that evidence of his prosperity from Stenwold’s diminishing bounty, no further questions would be asked of him. It was exactly as he had hoped. Scyla had chosen this place for its advantages, but she must live with its drawbacks too.
He stepped onto the raft, with only a flick of his wings to keep his balance, feeling the twinge of pain in his side still from where Daklan had stabbed him outside Collegium. He normally prided himself on healing quickly, but just now he was glad to have been able to heal at all.
Scyla had miscalculated, of course, in her lust for secrecy. She thought she had her buyers where she wanted them. She believed herself safe from intrusion out here on the lake, far from any shore.
Thalric smiled a little at that thought. He did not know how well Spider-kinden could swim but he knew that they could not fly. Let her squirm how she liked, there would be no swift escape for Scyla this time.
The others were joining him cautiously on the raft, looking not like a rich buyer’s retinue but more like nervous thieves. Tynisa was pressing at her hand, and he saw that the narrow wound there had opened up yet again.
To Lieutenant Brodan, it seemed clear that the murky waters of the lake were a metaphor for where his career was going. I must be mad, to be out here with this wretched woman. Certainly my men all think I’m mad. He could see it in their faces. They had followed him out here, in the rain and cold, but they were heartily regretting it. They had been kicking their heels amongst the reeds for two hours now, waiting in the dark. Occasionally a Skater would spot them as it padded across the choppy waters, and Brodan was sure they would all be laughing at the skulking Wasp-kinden.
It’s just like the last time. He remembered many fruitless nights spent on or by this lake, trying to intercept contraband that seemed to be able to turn invisible at will. Pillaged loot from the Commonweal had been flooding through Jerez: whole libraries of books, armouries of mail and weapons, treasure beyond counting, yet Brodan’s investigators had found such a tiny fragment of it that he suspected the Skaters had given it up out of pity.
And there she was, the source of all his problems. The wretched old creature was perched on a hummock and staring out at the water. She seemed to be whispering to herself and he wondered if she was actually mad, this whole business her private lunacy. That would explain a great deal.
‘I am losing patience,’ Brodan said through gritted teeth. ‘There is nothing for us in this.’
‘Losing patience? Were you ever gifted with that?’ Sykore said sharply, and Brodan unsheathed his sword in automatic response. She turned her head to stare at him, baring her pointed teeth in a hideous grin. ‘Oh, perhaps one day, Captain, but not on this night. You need me this night.’ Her red eyes fixed him to the spot. ‘They are out there now, as is the box – that and your renegade Thalric, and his Lowlander friends, all together.’
Brodan looked back at his carefully picked handful of men, all of them crouching alongside him in the reeds by the lakeside. They were his strongest fliers, able to make the distance between here and the raft while keeping their strength for the fight. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ he demanded. ‘If there is any chance you know what you’re talking about, then we should go right now. We take the box, we leave. And meanwhile we kill anyone who looks at us funny.’
‘And which is the holder of the box? You cannot tell and, while you decide, she will shift and change and lose you,’ Sykore told him flatly. ‘No, you have no chance until the box is revealed. I shall know immediately, and then you shall go and take it. Not until then, or it shall be lost in the mist. I am afraid, Captain, that you must swallow your impatience and wait.’
‘You go too far,’ he murmured, but he knew he would not follow up the implied threat.
Sykore glanced back to the lake, baring her teeth in a derisive smile. She had seen into his mind, seen how desperate he was to bring back the box, not for any great purpose but for fear of failure. Like so many of these Wasp-kinden, Brodan lived a life entirely dictated by fear – fear of his superiors’ wrath, his peers’ plots and his inferiors’ ambitions. If only the conquered could see their conquerors as I have, they would rise up in revolt tomorrow, she thought. And they would die for it. Fear is the greatest motivator, fear can make a man fearless, so long as you make him fear you more than he fears any other.
Sykore settled back, heedless of the cold and damp, waiting for that magical moment when the Spider-kinden magician would produce the box out into the chill air, whereupon she would send Brodan and his people across the waters.
‘They’re coming.’
Nivit froze midway through checking an account, watching Sef’s head come up and scent the air like an animal. Something guilty twitched inside him. He had just been thinking about the lake-people and their promised bounty.
‘They ain’t coming,’ he said dismissively.
‘They are,’ she whispered. ‘I can smell them.’
Nivit snorted. ‘Oh, right, what do these water-Beetles smell like, then? Other than rotting reeds and lakewater?’
‘They smell of the poisons they use in order to work their machines.’
Nivit stared at her. ‘Girl, that almost made some sense,’ he said, and put the tablet down to approach the door.
‘I can smell them,’ her hollow voice continued, like dead leaves, ‘as they can scent me and, though I have done all my kinden know to hide myself, yet they have found me at last…’
Now that she had mentioned it there was indeed the faintest whiff of something bitter and oily on the air, and Nivit tried to remember whether he had smelled the same when those lake-people actually had come to his door.
‘You… you stay away from the door, why don’t you,’ he ordered, and Sef obediently retreated away into the darkest recesses of his hut. Obediently, that was the key, and what made her story ring even a little true. She did exactly what she was told, like no Spider ever did, even a Spider that had been enslaved. This could be easier than I might hope for.
He went sideways from the door over to one of his spyholes, peering out into the darkened street outside. Girl’s probably imagining the whole thing.
Even as the thought came to him, he spotted a little pacing shadow, a long-legged, hunch-backed figure a little like a Skater, yet not to be confused with them. He jumped to another spyhole and found himself looking at a broad-shouldered form whose outline showed the armour plainly. Two other large figures were waiting in the shadows nearby.
What had she called the man – Saltwheel? A good Beetle name, but these lake-dwellers were not good Beetles. Now Saltwheel, or whoever, was coming over.
Coming about the bounty. Got the money on him, like as not.
Nivit glanced back at the Spider girl, grimacing. Gaved was always too soft, and he’d taken a shine to Sef, but in time he would get over it.
The Skater smiled bitterly. I am going to curse myselffor this in the morning…
But it was very clear to him how the land lay just now. The lake-dwellers wanted her back, but not because she was their slave – a class uncared for and unmourned from what Sef had said. They wanted her back simply because she could tell people about them.