The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  He turned and walked briskly away. Far down the trail ahead of him, Pazel saw a small house carved into a hillside. It had a door of iron, and its windows were barred.

  The path was level, now; they had reached the crater’s floor. Here the houses grew more numerous, and there were squares and meeting-places among them, and some larger buildings with great porches and balconies draped in flowers. They passed along the streets, under the eyes of the silent, olive-skinned people, until Valgrif stopped at last before a door in a stone wall. He barked once, sharply, and the door flew open at once.

  A trio of selk came out into the street. They were doctors, they said, and bustled around the newcomers to prove it, studying them, touching their wrists and shoulders. They were quiet and serious. Pazel had the feeling that they were paying more attention to what they sensed with their fingertips than what they saw. The effect was unsettling.

  “You’ve, er, never treated our kind, naturally,” grumbled Corporal Mandric.

  The selk paused in their work, looking at him.

  “Turachs, you mean?”

  “Humans, human beings.”

  “But of course we have,” said the doctor. “All our lives—except for the last hundred years. Come in, strip off those rags.”

  Inside, they found a series of airy rooms, furnished with beds, wardrobes, dressing-tables, shelves of books. Other selk were at work here, and from a back room came the sound of water gushing into a basin, and a puff of steam.

  “Your home, citizens, for as long as you stay with us,” said Valgrif. “You can dine here, or in the great hall, or anywhere else you like. Of course you have the freedom of Uláramyth.”

  Pazel stood in the center of the large common room. His leg was throbbing so badly that he had broken out into a sweat, but the glad, dream-like feeling was stronger than ever. He was thinking of Ormael. And as he glanced around he suddenly knew why. The chambers were uncannily like the house of his birth: the same simplicity, the same brightness and warmth. He turned to his sister, and she nodded, speechless. The dining-table was the size of their old dining-table, and pushed close to the window, just as their mother had liked. There was even a courtyard at the back with a small, spreading tree.

  “It’s not an orange tree,” said Neda.

  In Ormael the soldiers had mutilated her tree, broken its limbs, hurled oranges through the windows of the house. Before they moved on to Neda. Pazel took her hand, expecting her to snatch it away. But she didn’t. She even squeezed his hand in reply. Then Cayer Vispek said, “Why should it be an orange tree, sfvantskor?” and Neda dropped Pazel’s hand as though it burned.

  Hercól set the Nilstone down beside Ramachni. He unstrapped Ildraquin, bent and tore off his ruined boots one at a time. Then he slid down against the wall. He sighed—and Pazel thought he had never heard a sound remotely like it from the warrior. Rin’s eyes, he’s let his guard down. For the first time since they’d met on the far side of Alifros, Hercól was not protecting anyone. His eyes closed, gentle and serene. He was off-duty. It made him look like another man.

  The women moved to the back chambers to undress. One of the doctors was cutting away the left leg of Pazel’s trousers. He stood thinking of Dastu in the mountains, where the hrathmogs hunted and the maukslar raged. Do not forget the world outside.

  9. Here Nólcindar uses the correct term Duirmalc (Auru, “place of last curses”) to refer to the bottommost pit of the infernal Nine. Students of demonology, take note: Holub’s Dermac is a vulgar corruption.

  11

  From the Final Journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt

  Monday, 11 Halar 942

  The great and deadly Empire of Bali Adro—where has it gone? To this day we have seen no ships but that flying fragment, no forts or garrisons on the islands but a few burned & abandoned. We expected to be fighting our way into the Island Wilderness; instead we are gliding through it without so much as a sighting of Imperial forces. Only far to the south & west, on the edge of the horizon, do we still see those flashes, and later hear a great slow boom like a rolling wave. Sometimes too there is an eerie shimmer that makes the dlömu point & whisper among themselves. I tell Spoon-Ears that his men are sounding more frightened than my own. He agrees. “Their fear has a face,” he says. “A woman’s face, staring out at them from a white hood.” I know who he means, but can she be the force behind those great discharges? Is she mightier than Arunis ever was?

  While I have him, I pop another question that’s been haunting me, but this one I can only whisper: “You worked on the Chathrand’s repairs, when she was in dry dock?”

  “I was present,” he says with a nod.

  “Then tell me: is our keel cracked, by damn? Are we sailing with a broken spine?”

  He shakes his head, & I breathe a great sigh of relief. “But it was cracked, to be sure,” he adds. “I saw the damage myself. Amidships, it was, close to her lowest draft.”

  “You patched a mucking keel?”

  His eyes glance left and right. “Not at all,” he murmurs finally. “That is what is so strange. The crack closed of its own accord. When we came back it was gone—totally self-sealed, as if the wood were living flesh—but better even than flesh, for it healed with no scar. Not even the master shipwrights could find the spot again. But do you know what else is strange? That crack … bled.”

  “Bled?”

  “For the short time it was open, yes. Like young sapwood. I saw it myself: a thin, red-gold nectar. There were still drops of it about the keel when the crack disappeared.”

  Nectar from six-hundred-year wood. Cracks that heal themselves. If I needed more convincing that the Gray Lady was like no ship afloat, I have it now.

  The Island Wilderness is vast & varied, like a big plate dropped on stone & shattered into thousands of pieces. Those pieces lie flung over a greater expanse of sea than all the waters claimed by Arqual, where many a doughty sailor has passed his whole career. Only the southern third of the Wilderness is charted, & we are nearing the end of that region. Afterward we will depend on what Prince Olik sketched back in Masalym, & the remarks he made to our sailmaster.

  All this effort to find Stath Bálfyr, from which island we have course headings leading precisely nowhere: course headings fabricated years ago by one Lord Talag, for no other reason than to lure us there. And now Ratty’s learned that Talag & his clan are still aboard (so to speak), & still waiting for us to reach their homeland, waiting for their moment to strike again. How will they do it? What will they try? Ratty thinks there is good in Talag yet, & that our best hope is to appeal to it. For myself I’m not interested in the mix of good or bad in the fellow. But I know this: a man who could shape his entire life around such a deranged & brilliant scheme as Talag’s is capable of anything, mass murder included. If it is part of that scheme to poison us all on landing, he will do it.

  Simply to wait for that moment would be lunacy. We must warn Rose, somehow, & hope he is calm enough to believe us—and then sane enough to turn back. That this would require defiance of Sandor Ott is a given, & not on Rose’s part alone. Haddismal will be forced to choose between them, & heretofore whenever a choice has arisen he has stood with Ott.

  Yet we must turn back. Without knowledge of the currents, we might wander in the Nelluroq until we died of thirst. And even if we managed to cross in safety, where would we emerge? We have no knowledge of our position relative to the Northern lands. We could arrive in the heart of the Mzithrin, & be sunk by the White Fleet. Or in Arquali territory, where our own dear Emperor has promised to kill us & our families should we return without completing the mission. We might get lucky & scuttle into some port in the Crownless Lands. But even if they granted us sanctuary, the news of the Chathrand’s resurrection would soon escape, & both would descend on our poor hosts in fury.

  No, we must return to Bali Adro sooner or later, & seek better information from some quarter. So why haven’t I told Rose yet, before we ran northward for weeks? Do I fear that he t
oo will take Ott’s side? Am I that much a coward, after seeing what the spymaster did to Chadfallow?

  Each day we creep nearer. The whole crew is yearning for Stath Bálfyr; you can hear it in their voices, see it in their darting eyes. They are dreaming of home, & in their morally weakened state they forget, for moments, all the heartless immensities of Alifros that lie between.

  I am not immune from temptation. Our bow points North; my heart pulls North like a lodestone, & pays no heed to reason. Some nights I think of Anni & me together, keeping house, raising our little one, making sweet love. That is when I feel most evil: when I catch myself imagining such an end, without regard for the ones we’re leaving behind.

  Against such gloom Felthrup is my strange defender. He cannot say why, but he believes our friends will catch us yet. “There is Ildraquin and its compass-needle power,” he reminds me, “and more to the point, there is wisdom and fearlessness in that company.” But is there a blary boat, and could it ever catch up with the Chathrand? A pity that there’s no Ildraquin at our disposal. We speak of them like guests who are fully expected, just running a little late, when in truth we do not even know if they are alive.

  I do not ply him with these doubts. What if his hope is but a shield against smothering despair? Ratty feels things so acutely; in many ways he too is like a child. But his understanding of things runs deeper than any child’s—deeper than his few years of woken life can easily account for. “My only gift is dreaming,” he told us recently, but that is a splendid gift in dark times. And it was his dreaming, they say, that saved us once before.

  In another dream, however, he saw the face of Macadra, & that face is much on his mind. “She too is searching for us,” he told me yesterday. “She does not know if the Nilstone left Masalym by land or sea, & so she scours both. We have a head start, but she has engines of madness to propel her. We will not be alone out here much longer.”

  And still there’s nothing. Weird evening glimmers, a lost pelican, a peal of thunder on a day without clouds. I would almost prefer a sail on the horizon. Better to spot the wolves at a distance than to worry each day that they’re padding behind you, sniffing out your trail.

  Tuesday, 12 Halar 942

  There are odd fish, & there is Uskins. Since this voyage began our first mate has been a dandy, a despot, a pretender to noble blood, a torment to me personally, a whipping-boy for Captain Rose & most recently a madman who gobbles pork. Now, apparently, he is a soul reborn. To the whole crew’s amazement he has recovered his wits & his self-control. There can be no question of him returning to his duties (indeed he has had no duties pertaining to the ship’s functions since the day he tried to plunge her to the bottom of the Nelluroq Vortex), but there is talk of him returning to his cabin, any day. For now he may be glimpsed walking the deck with Dr. Chadfallow, looking saner (and better groomed) than he has since Etherhorde.

  This very afternoon he came to me quietly, the doctor a few paces behind, & asked my pardon for his “many trespasses” against both me & the tarboys under my charge. He called himself a man emerging “from a nightmare that has lasted longer than you’ve known my name.” I think he wanted to shake hands, & busied mine with a greasy wheelblock. “Glad you’re mending” was the best I could do, & I dare say it came out less than heartfelt. Why I could find sympathy for the man when he was raving, but feel only contempt at the sight of him dressed & decent is a matter for philosophers. I only know that I do not like him, & never expect to. Perhaps this is my failing, for are we not told to answer trust with trust, humility with respect? Uskins shuffled off with the doctor’s hand on his shoulder. To this very hour I feel like a cur.

  Wednesday, 13 Halar

  There has been a knife fight on the orlop, & a Plapp’s Pier man is fighting for his life. No witnesses, but there was deathsmoke in the air when the Turachs arrived. Before Chadfallow put him under the ether the lad swore he’d been jumped. This is likely a fib: a number of lads on the deck above heard two men shouting at each other well before the thumps & crashes began.

  The Burnscove Boys swagger about like new fathers, unable to hide their joy. The victim is particularly hated for some deed back in Etherhorde involving the Imperial police & a shipment of ivory. Rose is livid. Haddismal is both angry & concerned. There has been a shaky truce since Masalym, but it is clearly breaking down. And that is in no one’s interest: the balance of power on the Chathrand is just too fine.

  I’ve long known that Rose depends on the gangs’ mutual hatred to ensure that the crew never comes together to oppose him. But last night I learned another thing. It was that boozy smuggler Mr. Druffle, of all people, who opened my eyes.

  I’d set Druffle & Teggatz at work together on a comprehensive food inventory: part of my report to the captain on our readiness to brave the Ruling Sea. It was a poor partnership: between Druffle’s laziness & Teggatz’s incoherence, the inventory had simply ground to a halt. I had knocked their heads together rather roughly, then felt mean about it & joined in the effort, thinking it could not take long.

  We finished near sunrise. Poor Teggatz had to go right into his morning ritual of stoking the galley stove. Druffle & I watched him, too tired to crawl away. Then our beloved cook produced a jug of good rum from some cubbyhole in the galley & poured us each a dram.

  Druffle’s eyes grew moist. “That’s some fine nectar, Teggatz. Oh, for the sweet things in life! Have you never tasted island honey? A gentle soul like me could kill for it, die for it.”

  “Let’s have no talk of dying,” I said.

  We sat on the floor & spoke of other things—or rather Druffle & I spoke, & Teggatz made his usual blurts & interjections. But the rum loosened the cook’s lips (he should drink more often) & when I began talking about the gangs he shook his head.

  “Ain’t you curious!” he said.

  “Well now, Rexstam, I don’t think of myself as such.”

  “As to why they don’t recruit? Eh, eh?” He poked me in the chest. “The gangs. They don’t recruit. Why not, why not?”

  “But of course they recruit,” I said.

  Teggatz shook his head. “Not for serious. Not like Etherhorde.”

  “He’s right,” said Druffle. “There’s a lot of scare-talk here. But in the capital, Pitfire! Say no to an invite and it’s choppy-choppy, off-with-his-private-parts-into-the-soup.”

  I drank, meditating on the matter. They had a point. Nearly forty percent of our boys remained neutral, outside of either gang. In the dockyards that situation wouldn’t have lasted a week. Invitations to join up were not really invitations: they were orders. The ones who said Bugger off showed up floating in the marshes, if they showed up at all.

  Why had the gangs taken it so easy? The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. “All right, you’ve stumped me,” I said at last. “Explain it to me if you can.”

  Teggatz rubbed his apron sorrowfully: he could not explain. But Mr. Druffle had a gleam in his drunken eye. He beckoned me closer. He winked.

  “I have a suppository.”

  “Do you now?”

  He nodded proudly. “Want me to share it?”

  Fortunately he didn’t wait for an answer. “Listen, Graff: on most ships, you have your Plapps or your Burnscovers—but just the lads, just the membership. The two kingpins never used to sign on with nobody. They’d sit home in Etherhorde, plotting to kill each other, getting richer by the year. And they didn’t care what their lads had to do to win new recruits. But this time Rose changed the game. He made your Emperor stick Kruno and Darius aboard personally. Was that easy, I ask you?”

  “Bah ha,” said Teggatz.

  “Not likely,” I said.

  “Likely!” said Druffle. “It was a pig’s business, and you know it! But Rose got it done, and now what do we have?” He held up both index fingers. “Balance. Order. And if one of ’em tries too hard to tip the balance, Rose can do something no other captain ever could.”

  He folded away one finger.


  “Kill him?” I said, appalled. “Kill a ganglord?”

  “Who’s to stop him?”

  “But my dear Druffle, that would bring the house down! Boss or no boss, the gang would explode!”

  “BOOM!” shouted Teggatz, flinging his arms & spilling precious rum.

  “Boom is right,” said Mr. Druffle, “but boom don’t help a dead man. I’ll bet you a bottle Rose warned each gang not to use their old, bloody methods to boost their numbers—not to rock the boat, see? And if one of ’em does anyway—well, our captain knows what to do.”

  Druffle sat back & drank. There was nothing more to his “suppository,” but he had made his point. The gangs were actually weaker with their bosses aboard. If there was anyone the members feared more than a ship’s captain, it was their bosses back home. This time the bosses had been dragged along—and they were the ones who had to be afraid.

  Teggatz, in his halting way, put the cap on the discussion. “Plapp. Burnscove. Is it bad to have them aboard? Too bad! Nasty, icky, wash your hands. Only one thing could be worse.”

  “And that would be, Mr. Teggatz?”

  “Not having them,” he said.

  Thursday, 14 Halar

  A spot of embarrassment & confusion. The dlömic woman who spit the seeds that day caught me looking at her. She was kneeling beside a bucket, bathing her face & arms. I think it was the way her half-webbed hands held the sponge that made me stare. I’m sure I did not know I was doing it, though, until those sly silver eyes caught my own & held me like a predator for a moment. I turned away, reddening, & she mumbled something caustic that made her fellow dlömu laugh. Their eyes tracked me too, until I invented a reason to march swiftly amidships. She is lovely. Also hideous. Black skin & silver hair & bright eyes that can’t ever be read.

  Friday, 15 Halar

  Of the two ganglords, Darius Plapp has generally distinguished himself as the stupider (a remarkable achievement). In a bar in Etherhorde I watched him drop a fat purse before a stunning, green-eyed girl seated alone at a table for two.