The Sea Watch by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page B

they had ordered their slaves the Beetle-kinden to lay stone on stone, according to their plan, but all their precognition had not foreseen the revolution of the Apt, which had cast them down from their power and preeminence, and sent them to live like hermits in their distant mountain retreats.
    They had chosen well when siting their city, though. Where Collegium stood, the land fell shallowly down towards the sea, where the waters then possessed draft enough for merchantmen to dock. Down the coast from Collegium, the borders between land and sea became starker. There was no good shoreline anchorage for any ship of size, but the coast offered up a warren of little coves, inaccessible beaches, caves, a patchwork of cliffs and shallow bays most of the way to Kes.
    This was one such meagre anchorage, a mere half-mile east of Collegium: a crescent of gravel and sand sheltered by the tall, uneven walls of rock that the sea ate away in slow bites at its leisure. The rock was layered in slightly slanted bands: pale, dark red, pink, pale, black, each stripe taller than a man. Helmess Broiler had read a theory once, about a great disaster which had happened an unthinkably long time ago, in which the Lowlands had slumped away from what was now the Commonweal, and where a great wedge of land had simply disappeared into the sea, shearing across the layers of bedrock to leave strata like this exposed forever more. He did not have an opinion on this notion. Events that had happened so very long ago seemed unlikely to encroach on his life, one way or another.
    Elytrya clung to his arm, for it was cold tonight: the wind off the sea having nowhere to go save to prowl backwards and forwards about the cove. She did not like the chill, he knew, and even in Collegium’s mild winters she complained about it, dressing up in as many layers as she could wear. Now she had two woollen cloaks on, and still she shivered. Nonetheless, she had insisted on coming here. She had ordered the boatman to return for them in three hours, and stay out of sight until that time, on pain of forfeiting payment. The man had given Helmess a knowing leer as he resumed his rowing. A liaison, the old Assembler and his young Spider mistress? In truth it was a forbidding place for a tryst, but then Elytrya had business, not pleasure, in mind.
    ‘What are we waiting for?’ he asked. There was half a moon in the sky, and he saw no ships, lit or otherwise, casting shadows on the water. The air was clear of fliers, and he heard no engines.
    ‘Wait, dear one,’ she said, snuggling closer. Despite her shivering he could see her smiling. She had been planning this for a long time, he knew. He was to meet her allies at last. A moment later he felt her tense in his arms. Of course, her eyes were better in the dark than his. Or they would be if she were a Spider, which she’s not . . .
    ‘Pass me the lamp,’ she said. He had to light it for her, for even the single steel igniter was beyond her, but when she had it in her hand she paced to within a few feet of the water’s edge, holding it before her.
    And still no ships. Helmess listened for the slap of oars, the snap of a billowing sail. There was nothing to be heard.
    Elytrya was retreating from the water. Where the lamplight caught her face, it showed her triumphant. But no one is coming, my dear, no one . . .
    He thought he saw, in that same moment, a light within the ocean that was no reflection of the moon’s. As Elytrya backed towards him, he felt something jump inside him.
    Ten feet out from where the waves lapped the shingle, shapes were breaking through the water. Helmess felt a lurch in his stomach, for all that he had halfway been expecting something like this. The seas broke, lapped back, broke again and fell away. A great carapace gleamed under moonlight, huge as a man, legs working nimbly beneath it to skitter up onto the strand. Helmess saw its raised eyes glitter above a flurry of mouthparts, and it raised to