Salute the Dark

‘The Commonweal’s at least half as big again as all the Lowlands put together, Master Maker. I can’t claim to know more than a fraction of it by sight. All I can say is that we can’t be too far north, because there’s no snow on the ground still – but that’s hardly helpful news.’

‘You’ve got time enough stranded here to ask the locals,’ Allanbridge pointed out. ‘After that, if you could bring some of them back here to help us out of the tree, it would make my life a lot easier.’

Stenwold nodded, looking over at the castle, wondering who it had been defended from and whether its inhabitants had even heard of the Lowlands. More to the point, whether the inhabitants had spotted the pale balloon of the airship caught, like an errant moon, in the tree, and what they might think if they had.

‘We’ll go down,’ he confirmed. ‘We need to know how much further to Suon Ren, and whether we’re even still on course. Jons, I’ll leave you alone to make your repairs. Destrachis and Felise, it’s now time to earn your keep.’

‘They don’t make their terrain easy to walk over, in the Commonweal,’ commented Stenwold, after he had hauled himself up yet another series of weed-infested steps. The Commonweal plants growing here amidst the unruly grass all bristled with little hairs that brought him out in a rash, so that he had to wear his heavy artificer’s gloves to pull himself up the tiered slope.

They seemed no nearer to the castle than before. As seen through his spyglass, of course, it had not seemed so far.

Now they stood on top of another hill, because winding their way along the lower ground looked to be a recipe for continually going astray. The land around looked so alien to him, cut as it was into descending terraces. ‘Why can’t they just leave their hills alone?’

Destrachis gave him an odd look. ‘This is farmland, Master Maker.’

Stenwold gave him a doubtful glance. ‘Well, it’s a lovely crop of weeds they’ve got left over from last year, is all I can say.’

‘Well, it was once farmland,’ Destrachis admitted. ‘Not tended in the last five years, surely. I wonder where precisely we are.’

‘Quite.’ Stenwold set off down the next hillside, treading in a series of bone-jarring thumps. He had heard of step-agriculture, of course. Che had explained that the Moth-kinden practised it, through lack of space. He had expected the great and unindustrialized Commonweal to be more… natural, though. Here every part of the landscape had been modified by man’s hand before being left, it seemed, to grow wild once more. He even thought that he had spotted, from one hilltop, a waterway cutting straight as a die through the undulating landscape. Canals? They possessed no automotives, no rails, so canals he could understand, but to chop up what must be several square miles of hill-country in this way seemed absolutely insane. ‘They’ve got plenty of space here, it seems to me. Why can’t they just put up with the odd slope?’

Destrachis shrugged, his longer legs managing the constant drops in level more easily. In fact Stenwold was the only one of them having any significant trouble.

‘Efficiency,’ remarked Felise Mienn, which surprised Stenwold enough that he stopped in his tracks. It was, he realized, the first word she had said since they set off. No, it was the first word he had heard her say since he returned from Sarn.

‘Where there are many people to feed it is more efficient,’ she continued, in the tone of a schoolteacher. ‘These steps were first cut many centuries ago, each generation of the peasantry repairing and restoring the work of their fathers and mothers.’

‘Many people?’ Stenwold glanced at Destrachis, who was peering around about the landscape, looking uneasy.

Felise stared at him, and Stenwold had no idea whether she even understood his words.

‘I don’t like it either,’ agreed the Spider. ‘You had a good look at the castle, though, and it seems the only landmark hereabouts. I hope we’ve not ended up crossing over into the Wasp-occupied provinces or something. That would be amusing, don’t you think?’

‘We are being watched,’ Felise commented, without emotion.

‘Where?’ Instantly Stenwold’s hand had fallen to the toy he had brought along from Collegium, and that was now slung, barrels facing upward, on his back.

‘Left and left of ahead,’ the Dragonfly replied.

Stenwold took a moment to work that out and risked a covert look. ‘I don’t see anyone.’

‘They are there.’

‘Probably just some people from the castle, come to see the newcomers.’ Stenwold descended another step awkwardly. ‘Or guilt-ridden peasants come to continue the work of their fathers and mothers.’

‘The castle is deserted,’ announced Felise with absolute certainty.

‘How… Do you know this place?’ Stenwold asked her.

‘Master Maker,’ Destrachis said, with a strange tone to his voice, ‘when you were eyeing the castle through that magnifying machine, you did at least notice whether it is actually inhabited, yes?’

‘It’s still standing.’