The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Another plague victim. Rose crushed the paper in his hand. “Where were the murders done?”

  “No telling, sir. The bodies were stuffed in the forepeak. Old Gangrüne found blood seeping under the door.”

  Rose stood very still. Something else was the matter with Fiffengurt, but he had yet to grasp it. The man was normally transparent. During their first crossing of the Nelluroq, this quality had made Fiffengurt’s stab at organizing a mutiny as obvious as a sandwich board hung about his neck. But there was a certain duplicity about him now. Something he was both itching to reveal and frightened even to think about.

  Rose determined to have it out of him. He stared mercilessly, until Fiffengurt began to fidget and blink. Every one of his officers produced a background hum just by standing and thinking; they were the telltale noises of inferior minds. Rose leaned closer, cocked his ear. Fiffengurt leaned ever so slightly away.

  “Which is it?” asked Rose.

  “Which is what, Captain!” Fiffengurt all but screamed.

  “I want your opinion. Do we enter the bay at this time, or not?”

  The quartermaster swallowed. “We don’t know if there’s seaway, Captain. The reefs—”

  “Blast the reefs. Assume that an approach is possible. Should we enter, should we attempt a landing there?”

  Fiffengurt was sweating. He chewed his lips, preparing to mouth some idiocy. Rose lifted a warning finger.

  “I have you, sir. I do not wish to hear lies. You will come to a decision about what you wish to share with your captain, knowing his sacred responsibility to guard the life of this crew. No hiding, Fiffengurt. You will decide, and shortly. Agreed?”

  The man was flabbergasted. He had prepared himself to withstand threats or violence, but not this. “Agreed, agreed, Captain. Thank you, sir.”

  Rose nodded slowly. Then he passed Fiffengurt the telescope. “What are your thoughts on the Storm?” he said.

  Far to the north, a band of scarlet ran along the ocean’s rim. It stood about three finger widths high and was paler than an old wine stain on a linen tablecloth. But it did not vanish with the sunset, and at night it grew starkly visible, and filled the crew with fear. They had faced it once before, except for the dlömic newcomers. It was the Red Storm, Erithusmé’s great spell of containment. A magic-dampening, curse-breaking barrier that had protected the North from the ravages of the plague for centuries, if Prince Olik was to be believed. It had not harmed them when they had passed through it from the North: indeed it had saved them, by dispersing the Nelluroq Vortex, the whirlpool the size of a city. But now—

  “I’ve told you what I think, Captain,” said Fiffengurt. “It’s still there. And that’s a wee problem for us.”

  “You trust Olik? Even in this preposterous business?”

  Fiffengurt took a deep breath. “I might not have,” he said, “if what he claimed about the Storm didn’t match so well with Mr. Bolutu’s … experience. They’d never met, Captain. They didn’t get together and conspire. Mad? Well, certainly they could be. But neither one of them had a whiff of madness about ’em. And why would their stories match? Pitfire, they ain’t even two stories. They’re one.”

  Rose stared at the red ribbon. A single story, but mad all the same.

  “One more thing’s clear to me, sir,” said Fiffengurt. “The Storm’s much weaker than before.”

  Rose looked at him sharply. “You noticed as well,” he said.

  Fiffengurt nodded. “Captain, you were still a prisoner when we came upon it the first time. But I watched it night and day. It burned like Rin’s own brushfire, sir. I tell you it’s a pale, frail thing compared with what it was.”

  “But not gone,” said the captain.

  Fiffengurt stared at the distant light as if wishing he could blow it out, snuff it like a candle, disperse it like smoke with his hands. “No, sir, not yet,” he said.

  “I will tell you something, Fiffengurt,” said Rose, gripping the rail, “and may the Pit-fiends roast me for eternity if I speak false. This is my last voyage, my last ship, my last foray into any water deeper than my testicles. Should I somehow live through this I will commission a home in the high desert, on the edge of the Slevran Steppe, of the kind the savages make of mud bricks and straw. I will dwell there with a peasant woman to cook for me until I die.”

  Fiffengurt nodded. “The desert will still be there, Captain.”

  But precious little else, he might have added. For if they sailed into the Red Storm they would be carried into the future: that was the spell’s unavoidable side effect, the cost of protecting the North from the plague. Bolutu and his shipmates had been hurled two centuries forward. Their fate might not be so extreme: just one century, perhaps. Or eighty years, or forty. Long enough for every last person who knew them to die.

  Rose glanced at Fiffengurt. Long enough for his Annabel to become a crone, if not a corpse. Long enough for their child to have passed through life without a father.

  And what evil, in forty or eighty or a hundred years, would the Nilstone have worked, in Macadra’s hands or someone else’s? What if, as the ghosts insinuated and Oggosk feared, some terrible process had already been set in motion by the power of that Stone? That horror that had passed overhead, the thing they were calling the Swarm: what if the talking rat was correct, and it grew over Alifros like mold upon an orange? Would the Red Storm propel them into a dead future, a murdered world? If he yielded to Ott, would they sail straight into the very apocalypse that he, Nilus Rose, had been chosen to prevent?

  Rose touched the scar on his forearm. It was that mark that bound him to the rebels—to Pathkendle, Undrabust, the Isiq girl, Hercól Stanapeth, Bolutu. He shook his head. Two tarboys, a girl in britches, a pig doctor, and a swordsman trained by Ott himself. There was no escaping fate. The Red Wolf had declared Rose one of that misbegotten number. Of course it was insulting company. And yet—

  All his life Rose had known that he possessed a fate. For lack of anything better he had long assumed that fate was wealth, a business empire that would dwarf his father’s nasty little fiefdom in the Kepperies. Rose had pursued that destiny with single-minded efficiency, become notorious and indispensable, the captain who would stoop to anything for a price. He had moved Volpek mercenaries and secret militias, deathsmoke and weaponry and the contents of plundered estates. Emperor Magad had employed him thirty times without ever knowing his name. Once Rose had actually paid a huge sum to one of Magad’s toadies, merely so that the man would point him out to His Supremacy at a ceremony in honor of the Merchant Service. No list of his many deeds, no flattery: just a pointed finger, and his name in the Imperial ear. The man had done it, and as it happened Rose was standing near enough to catch the Emperor’s casual rejoinder:

  “Yes, yes, our delivery boy.”

  To stand still and indifferent as the royal bastard sauntered on, and the snickers of his fellow captains began, was one of the harder moments of Rose’s life. Not long afterward he had faltered, stumbling in the darkness of his father’s shadow. Too little graft and larceny and you were beneath notice, a sap, unfit to sit at table with the mighty. Too much and they would wash their hands of you, forget they had ever needed you, throw you to the pack of lawyers they kept kenneled behind the manse. When His Supremacy had taken away the Chathrand, Rose had almost stopped believing in his fate.

  Then Ott had come to speak to him about a possible mission in the east, and his world had expanded as the old killer talked. I did this, he thought. I made the Emperor take notice, and this is the result. They will give me back the Great Ship and I will use it to make them pay.

  At the same time the voice of reason had told him that Ott was a lunatic, and any monarch who relied on him doubly so, and for a time that voice had prevailed. Rose had fled, but the lunatics had caught up with him and placed him in command. Soon thereafter the intimations of destiny returned with a vengeance.

  Somewhere between Etherhorde and Bramian, however, a second change had
begun. Rose had found himself infected with a strange notion. At first it had been a mere tease in the throes of sleeplessness: a shred of dream, the whisper of a ghost. Later it became harder to ignore, and now it throbbed like a blister. What if his destiny was not power, nor even wealth? The idea was so foreign to him that it was hard even to contemplate.

  Power, wealth: he had known both. And lost both. And won them again. Even now they were at his fingertips—and slipping through them, as though greased. The Chathrand was his, but could be snatched away by mutiny or enemy fire. In her walls were hidden millions in gold and precious stones; but out here they were useless, so much ill-stowed ballast, chunks of metal and rock.

  What if his fate was somehow not primarily about him, but others? What if the name of Nilus Rose lived forever because he chose (late but not too late) to use his power to alter the world? To redeem it, in a word.

  Preposterous. A vanity of the first order. By the Pits, he had just hanged a man to keep up appearances! Still, the notion would not leave him. There was a wound in the world, a sinkhole into which all life would eventually be drawn. That wound was the Nilstone, and anyone who helped defeat it would never be forgotten. It was a pragmatic path to greatness—and the only one, probably, given the time he had left.

  “Delivery boy,” he murmured.

  “Beg your pardon, Captain?”

  Rose jumped. Fiffengurt was standing right beside him.

  “What in the nine smoking slag-furnace Pits are you doing here?” Rose bellowed. “Is it your function to lurk at my elbow like a catatonic? Say nothing! Go and alert the men: we will enter that bay at the tide’s turning. That is at one bell past noon, as you may possibly recall.”

  Felthrup raced along the starboard rail with Sniraga creeping behind. His destination was Oggosk’s cabin, but first he planned to seek Marila at the chicken coops. They were once more full of birds: not the round, plump Arquali chickens, those indefatigable egg machines; but small, sturdy Bali Adro wood hens, gifts from Masalym, with eggs the color of a cloudless sky. Marila had taken to caring for the birds, and was not above pocketing an occasional egg (so very cool, sweet, viscous, gummy, sublime) for Felthrup himself. But the rat was not after eggs this morning.

  The door was closed, but Sniraga’s caterwauls brought Mr. Tarsel from his smithy to see what was the matter. Tarsel struggled with the outer door (knobs had vexed him since the day he allowed Greysan Fulbreech to treat his dislocated thumb) but opened it at last, and the rat leaped through before he could close it again. Tarsel cursed and shouted at him, but he had nothing to throw, and Felthrup did not stop to thank him, as he might have another day. Sniraga was left outside, wailing and scratching.

  Felthrup hated the coops. They reeked like no other part of the ship. They had taken on some ducks, too, and even a few stranger fowl with swan-like necks and wattles below their beaks like globs of dough. These latter pecked at him, and their beaks were hard as hooves. All the birds grew hysterical whenever he drew near. “Marila! Hurry, hurry, I need you!”

  But Marila was not here. Felthrup leaped onto the grain bin. He rubbed his paws together nervously. Better to wait. Lady Oggosk could not silence two as easily as one.

  They had at last decided: Marila, Fiffengurt and he. They would break their silence about the ixchel and Stath Bálfyr, tell the captain how he and Ott and the whole empire of Arqual had been deceived. They might not believe it, and what could they offer as proof? But to do nothing as the ship glided into that bay—no, that was impossible. At Felthrup’s urging they had held out for peace as long as they possibly could. But that time was over. Talag had sent no emissary. He was, however, sending ixchel in ever-greater numbers back to the Great Ship, with orders to kill him.

  Felthrup had never seen one, but he had caught their scent. It was reason enough to put up with Sniraga. He was, after all, the only being on the Chathrand who could swear that he had seen an ixchel since the day Rose ordered their massacre. And he was the only one who knew the exact location of the magic doorway, leading to the island wreck.

  The stink of this place, the miasma. It hurt his head, clouded his thoughts. He rehearsed his confession, before Rose and Ott: You were fooled. This island is the ixchel homeland. Your course headings are useless, a document forged with more care than ever you lavished on a forgery. You know nothing of where we will emerge when we sail north. Regardless of what the Red Storm does to us, we are blind and marooned.

  He could imagine the explosion. One or both men would likely commit murder on the spot, and feel it was their right. Violence first; then reason of a sort, twisted and mangled to explain their deeds. And fury, always fury: that most sacred emotion in the human range. How to restrain that pair of bulls? Rose had proved willing to subdue the spymaster from time to time, but who would subdue Rose?

  Only Oggosk. She would have to be there when they spoke. If they could not bring the captain to the witch, they would have to make the witch seek the captain. And soon. If they waited until Rose ordered a landing on Stath Bálfyr it would be too late.

  “Bother the girl!” Felthrup squeaked aloud. “Bother these birds and their mingled effluents! I will go alone!”

  Then he saw it. Right there on the wall, between the ducks and the wattle-swans. Where moments before there had been nothing at all.

  The Green Door.

  Felthrup’s heart raced. So it is my turn at last.

  Most of his friends had seen it already: that ancient, half-height door, with an opening lever so corroded one feared to seize hold of it at all, lest it break. The patch of wall it occupied was the only place in the chamber not blocked by a birdcage. Convenient, that. And even more convenient was the nearness of a three-legged stool. A few nudges and Felthrup would be able to reach that rusty lever, if he chose.

  Felthrup stepped in front of the door and sat down. He could feel his pulse racing. Think. Do not panic. Do not be a rodent now. Enchanted, perhaps cursed, the door appeared in odd places throughout the ship, vanished quickly, and did not appear again for weeks. Most of the crew had never glimpsed it; a few, like Thasha and Chadfallow, had seen it multiple times; and the doctor even logged the sightings in a notebook. Ramachni had warned Thasha to keep her distance. But oddly enough, the mage had also told Chadfallow that the door must be opened, sooner or later. That to do so could mean the difference between triumph and defeat.

  Which story to believe?

  Felthrup pushed the stool close to the door. He leaped up. The door was so old that cracks had opened wide enough for him to insert a paw. He bent his eye to a crack but could see nothing. Apparently the space beyond was dark.

  Then Felthrup heard the voice.

  “Help me!”

  A chill passed over him. The voice belonged to a young man. It was shouting, but Felthrup heard it faintly, as though from a great distance.

  “Help me! For the love of Rin, don’t turn away!”

  Should he answer? Should he run? Chadfallow had never mentioned hearing voices, and neither had any of his friends. Why was he, Felthrup, being singled out? Was it because he had already passed through the ixchel’s magic portal? Or because of where he ventured in his dreams?

  “Who are you?” he shouted into the crack. But his voice set all the birds to squawking so loudly that he could hear no answer, if answer there was. Felthrup whirled and hissed at the birds, then realized he was making matters worse. Aya Rin! This will be the death of me. He leaned his weight on the handle.

  It moved. Old hinges shrieked, and dust lifted around the edges of the door. Now Felthrup heard the voice more plainly. “Is someone there? Don’t leave me, I beg you! I’m a prisoner in the dark!”

  Felthrup leaped down and pushed away the stool. He sniffed: the air from beyond the door was close, like a vault opened after centuries. Or a tomb.

  He shouted his question again. When the birds quieted, he listened. The man’s voice came again: “Save me! In Erithusmé’s name I implore you!”

  Erit
husmé’s name! Felthrup rubbed his paws together in a whirl. Don’t listen! Don’t be fooled, rodent! Go and find Marila and warn the captain of the ixchel threat.

  In Erithusmé’s name?

  Felthrup wriggled inside.

  Marila chased after the captain, fuming.

  “Listen to me, sir! Lady Oggosk is throwing a fit! Throwing other things, too. Cups and books and ink bottles and little glass figures. You’ve got to talk to her before she kills somebody.”

  “She has my blessing, provided she starts with you,” said Rose, plunging down the No. 3 ladder way.

  Marila pursued him down the stair. “That’s not all, Captain. Didn’t you see Mr. Fiffengurt? Didn’t he explain?”

  “Fiffengurt has nothing to teach me about that woman’s hysteria!” he shouted. “Begone, girl! I have no time for urchins, married or not.”

  He charged across the upper gun deck, and Marila saw that two figures were waiting for him ahead: One was the leader of the dlömic sailors, whom Mr. Fiffengurt called Spoon-Ears. The other was Dr. Chadfallow. Both men looked worried and confused.

  Rose barreled past them, beckoning. They followed him past the forward cannon to the door of the little room called the Saltbox, which Rose had given the dlömic officer to make what use of he would. All three men rushed inside. The door slammed. Marila stood a yard away and stared at it, hands in fists. Men and dlömu passed her with nervous glances. She felt very small and primitive and pregnant.

  The door flew open; Rose stormed out. Or rather he tried to, but found Marila blocking his exit, a furious, disheveled, black-haired little demon staring straight up into his eyes. “I have to speak with you,” she said.

  Rose lifted her like a straw and moved her aside. Then he rushed off across the deck.

  Marila shot a glance at the two men in the chamber. The dlömu was leaning on the table, shaking his head as though overwhelmed by something he had learned. Chadfallow looked almost physically ill. He snatched up his medical bag and ran out of the Saltbox.