The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Shall I fetch another cup, Captain Rose?”

  Rose made no answer. Ott walked back to the table and poured himself tea in Rose’s cup and sipped it. He drained the cup and set it back on the saucer. Then he grabbed the steward by the hair. In a blur of movement he hauled the man down, hooked his left arm around the steward’s neck, moved his right hand to the man’s chin, and pushed once, ferociously. The steward’s head turned backward, much too far. His gaze less shocked than saddened. The crack was audible. The man fell dead.

  “What were we saying?” asked Ott. “Something about ‘our crawlies,’ I believe?”

  Rose found himself backed against the wall. Sandor Ott took a napkin and dried his lips. Less than six feet separated the men.

  “You were seen on the mercy deck. Is that where you released them?”

  “The mercy deck,” said Rose. “Yes, it was there, forward of the tonnage shaft.”

  “And they fled through this strange Green Door? The door that you have, oddly enough, both padlocked and wedged slightly open?”

  Rose nodded. “Perhaps they did at that.”

  “Or perhaps not. Perhaps they are here under your mattress, or under the floorboards, or stuffed into speaking-tubes. How I wish there was trust between us, Captain. Our relations have been all wrong.”

  What if he shouted? Just screamed for aid like a child? No, no: some things were forbidden him, forbidden any son of Theimat Rose.

  He stepped away from the wall.

  “Take your knife, and your insinuations, and your killing glee from my sight,” he growled. “Prepare a defense for this murder. At nine bells I will send the Turachs to place you in chains.”

  Ott finally allowed himself a smile. He walked to Rose’s desk, tapped the papers there significantly.

  “Mr. Elkstem tells me you borrowed our charts. Our crucial charts. That you brought them to your chambers. But they are not on your desk, or in your cabinets there. Would you care to save me the trouble of ripping the place apart?”

  Rose felt his heart quicken. His mind had never worked faster in all his years. His eyes flicked right and back again.

  Ott raised an eyebrow. “The washroom, Captain? What a curious hiding place. I do hope you’ve kept them dry.”

  He stepped quickly to the door, passing very close to Rose again. Mocking him, daring him even to gesture at drawing that knife.

  Ott pushed open the washroom door. He frowned: there were no charts in sight. He leaned in farther to look behind the door.

  A red whirlwind struck him full in the face. Sniraga had pounced from a shelf. Ott reeled backward, tearing at the cat, and in that instant Rose drew his knife and stabbed.

  The blade passed through Ott’s upper arm. Roaring, the cat still affixed to his face, Ott spun on his heel and kicked Rose squarely in the groin. The pain was like an explosion. Like pressing one’s ear to the cannon as it fires. Rose staggered, swinging the knife before him, meeting only air.

  Fall and die, fall and die. Rose slashed again, missed again. Ott tore the cat away and flung it with both hands at the wall. His face a ruin, his eyes blind with blood.

  Blind. Rose charged the smaller man. He struck Ott like a bull, lifted him off the ground and crushed him against the wall. The spymaster’s head struck the solid wood. His hands clawed; he was groaning, red bubbles on his lips. Rose grappled tighter, slamming Ott again.

  Ott’s teeth sank into his neck, tearing through flesh and muscle. Rose bellowed and lurched enormously. Then he slipped in the blood, and both men went down. Another crack. Ott’s head striking the table.

  They were on the floor, entwined like lovers, bleeding to death. Ott’s torn mouth twitched, and he clawed feebly at Rose. The captain struck with his fists: two punishing blows, and Ott was still. Beyond the cabin men were shouting. He rolled away from Ott and groped for the desk. Haddismal and his men were out there, pounding. Somehow Rose gained his feet.

  Perhaps Ott was dead. Never mind: he would hang if he lived. Rose dragged himself to the door and freed the dead bolt, but there was still something amiss. The doorknob would not turn. And then a new agony reached him, shouting to be heard above the rest. It came from his palm. He released the knob and looked at it. The flesh looked oddly burned.

  Poison.

  With his next breath it struck him. Like standing naked in a blast of sleet. He was paralyzed, his limbs stiff as boards. The speed of it. Even his eyes were affected. Even the filling of his lungs.

  The pounding went on. Somewhere behind him, he heard Ott begin to move.

  Fiffengurt was out there too. “Get the rigging-axe!” he was screaming. “Those are siege-doors! You won’t just kick ’em in!”

  Ott was crawling nearer. Then climbing to his feet. When he moved into Rose’s fixed angle of view he looked like a walking corpse. In one hand he held the shattered teacup by the handle, extending his little finger, ladylike. There it was, the grin. He turned the cup in his quivering hand, then drew the sharp edge once, swiftly, over the captain’s jugular. Blood burst out in a torrent, but Rose himself stayed rigid as he died. After a moment, professionally curious, Ott nudged him slightly, and the captain fell like a tree.

  Now Sandor Ott had very little time. He seized the linen tablecloth and tore it into strips. The first he tied, mercilessly tight, above the wound on his arm. The second he doused with gin from Rose’s cabinet. Strong, antiseptic gin. He wiped his face with it, hissing with pain. He splashed more gin on his wound.

  Crack. They were axing the doors. Ott cursed and hurried back to Rose. He found the padlock key quickly enough, but what was that round thing in his vest pocket? He drew it out, and gasped at the weight in his hand. Then he saw what he held—and for the first time since childhood, experienced a moment of undeniable fear.

  The Nilstone.

  The Nilstone?

  The black thing lay there in his hand, a pulsing orb, a tiny black sun. How was this possible? What had Arunis made off with, if not the Stone? Had the mage spirited it back aboard, somehow, through his control of Uskins? And why wasn’t it killing him?

  Crack!

  No time. Leave it or take it. Decide.

  Ott took it. Then he turned and staggered to the door.

  “Leave off with that axe!” He wiped the knob with great care, then slid the bolt. Men poured into the room, Turachs, common sailors, Fiffengurt the traitor, Haddismal the loyal fool. All screaming like children. As if blood were something beyond their experience. As if murder were the exception, not the rule.

  “The captain’s dead! The captain’s dead!”

  “The madness came for him,” said Ott. “Sergeant, where is your field kit? I need bandaging.”

  Haddismal raised his eyes from the carnage. He stared at Ott. Everyone was staring at something.

  “What’s the matter?” said Ott. “You can see what happened here.”

  “Can we?”

  “The mind-plague took him. I heard sounds of violence, and came in to find him thrashing his steward. The man was still breathing, and I tried to revive him. Rose stabbed me while my back was turned, yet I bested him. Two dead. Very simple. Get me those bandages, dullard! Why do you—”

  He froze. Against the far wall of Rose’s cabin lay a woman of some twenty-five years: naked, motionless, her hands and face soaked with blood.

  Night Gods. The cat. The hag’s horrible cat!

  “Who is she?” said Haddismal. “A passenger? I’ve never seen that woman before.”

  “Did Rose kill her too?” said Fiffengurt. “Why didn’t you mention her, Ott? Mr. Ott?”

  But the spymaster was already running. Their shouts exploded behind him: Commander Ott! What is it? Stop him, bring him back! For the first time since childhood, Ott felt inadequate to the moment. He had looked at that gory beauty and found himself without his best and oldest weapon, the winning story, the necessary lie.

  “She must have been mad as well,” said Haddismal. “Look at her. Even her feet are soa
ked in blood.”

  Fiffengurt just gazed at the carnage. Their captain dead, and stiffer than a week-old corpse. The steward with his head facing backward. And a third victim, a naked woman no one could identify, though Fiffengurt began to think he had seen her before.

  “I’m not sure anyone here was mad,” he said.

  “You calling Sandor Ott a liar?”

  Fiffengurt knew better than to answer. He brought a sheet from Rose’s bed to drape over the woman. But when he drew near, she sprang to life, hissed at him, and scurried on all fours under the table.

  28

  Reunion

  12 Fuinar 942

  300th day from Etherhorde

  “That, my dear selk, is a Bali Adro exclusion flag,” said Prince Olik, training the telescope on the bay, where the Chathrand sat at anchor. “A warning, in other words: Keep a safe distance.”

  “We shall do so,” said Nólcindar. “Stath Bálfyr is unchanged, then. A lovely bay one must not enter, an island where no landing is allowed.”

  The Promise was three miles offshore, sweeping north past the mouth of the bay. It was almost noon, but the east wind was frigid, and now it looked like rain. Thasha gazed at their beloved Chathrand, and felt a stab of irony: twenty-eight days racing to meet her, and now that they’d finally arrived she was warning them off.

  “Not an ixchel in sight,” said Hercól, who had the only other telescope. “Perhaps they have all gone ashore, somehow. In any case, Lord Talag has proved himself a genius—of a sort. He said he would bring the Great Ship here, and he has done it. However deranged, the plan was a strategic miracle.”

  “But a heartless one,” said Ensyl, anger darkening her voice. “All of us have paid dearly for his dream. I only hope our brethren find happiness there.”

  “More flags,” said Hercól. “One is white with two red bars. Another, blue with a white half circle.”

  “Arquali pennants,” said Pazel, taking a turn at the scope. “Two red bars: that’s Enemies near. And the other is—damn, I’m forgetting …”

  Thasha cast her mind back—so very far back, almost another life—to her days sitting in the family library, poring over her father’s books. “Ambush,” she said at last.

  “Ambush! Right.” Pazel gave her a private smile. He had mocked her sailing-savvy once. That too was a lifetime ago.

  He looked again through the telescope. “She’s been in a firefight. Look at the cathead. Scorched.”

  “To the Pits with your cathead,” said Neeps, “don’t you see any people?”

  “Yes,” said the prince. “The deck is busy with sailors. Human beings, and a few dlömu—my loyal Masalym guardsmen, they must be. Have a look for yourself, Mr. Undrabust. Perhaps you’ll spot your wife.”

  Neeps pounced on the telescope. Thasha watched his face, and knew in short order that Marila was not on the topdeck. She glanced at Pazel: he looked almost sick with frustration. To be stopped this close to the Chathrand!

  Still, things were much better than they’d feared. Day after day, Ildraquin had whispered to Hercól that Rose was motionless, and what was more likely to account for that than a wreck? To find the ship whole and apparently seaworthy should count as a miracle. The ixchel, or some other “enemies,” might be holding them prisoner, but at least they were alive.

  “There’s that old rotter Latzlo,” said Neeps, “and Swift and Saroo, by the Tree! But where are the officers? Where’s Captain Rose?”

  “I still say we should circumnavigate the island,” said Corporal Mandric.

  “There is no other harbor,” said Nólcindar, “and by the time we return to the mouth of this bay we may find Macadra guarding it.” She raised her telescope again. “They have not been boarded, unless those who boarded have come and gone. The men on deck are not starved or sickly. But I believe they are sick with fear. Shall we try mirror-signals? If there are real sailors among your guard, Prince, they will know the Maritime Code.”

  “Look there!” cried Neda, pointing.

  From the deck of the Chathrand, flashes of sunlight were leaping: short, measured, steady as a ticking clock. “They are one step ahead of us,” said Kirishgán. “Let us answer quickly.”

  A silver platter was fetched from the pantry, and Nólcindar angled its polished face at a halfway angle between the zenith of the sky and the Chathrand. She adjusted the angle again and again, until a pause in the Chathrand’s signals told her that contact was established. She waited, and the flashes from the bay resumed. Now the pattern was more complicated. After a moment Nólcindar frowned.

  “I know codes of Bali Adro, Thudryl, Nemmoc and beyond, but I do not know this one. I expect it is a human code out of the North.”

  “It’s the Turach cipher!” said Corporal Mandric, squinting. “That’s one of my mates! Here, give me that trinket, Captain. Rin help me, it’s been so long—”

  Mandric was indeed out of practice, and the roll of the ship did not help matters. Time and again he interrupted the Chathrand with flashes from the silver platter, muttering: “Repeat, repeat, you jackass, that’s not right, it can’t be—”

  Letter followed doubt-ridden letter. With excruciating slowness, words took shape.

  BOULDERS—FROM—CLIFFS—REEFS—NORTH—NO—EXIT—NO—ENTRANCE—HELP

  The flashes stopped. The travelers looked at one another. “Strange, but useful,” said Hercól. “At least we know something of the nature of the trap.”

  Mandric pointed at the clifftops. “There’s your boulders.” Thasha saw that it was true: the cliffs were strewn with great loose stones, giving the whole ridge a shattered look.

  “And reefs north,” said Pazel. “Do you know, I think they mean the north side of the inlet to the bay. Look at all that choppy surf.”

  “I fear you’re right, Pazel,” said Ramachni, studying the waves. “Well, then: reefs on the north side, boulders from the south. Little wonder the ship cannot escape.”

  “The Chathrand is ten times our size and draft,” said Nólcindar, “but reefs are reefs, and the Promise will never clear them.”

  “What about landing a boat on the north side, there beyond the inlet?” said Neeps. “You can see that the island narrows down to a strip.”

  “You may be onto something, lad,” said Prince Olik, looking again through his telescope. “The spot is both low and narrow: those palms are barely above sea level.”

  “We could run that strip in minutes,” said Neeps, “and be swimming to the Chathrand before anyone knew.”

  “We could swim from right here,” said Lunja. “Three miles is nothing for a dlömu.”

  “Nor a selk,” said Kirishgán, “but rocks can sink swimmers as well as boats, and the north beach too may be guarded. And once we board the Chathrand, how do we help her escape?”

  The others glanced furtively at Ramachni, and the mage saw their glances and sighed. “My powers will not be enough to save the ship. One or two boulders I might turn aside, but not a hail of them. And I cannot lift the Great Ship into the air—not even my mistress in her prime could manage such a feat, save with the power of the Nilstone.”

  “I could protect them, maybe,” said Thasha.

  The others looked at her sharply. “That is yet to be proven,” said Hercól, “and besides, you are not aboard.”

  “I can swim that far.”

  “Don’t be daft, Thasha,” muttered Pazel.

  “I’m not,” said Thasha calmly. “This isn’t like that night at the Sandwall. There’s something waiting for me on the Chathrand. Something Erithusmé knew could help us.”

  Hercól and Pazel turned away, and Ramachni’s eyes told her nothing. Thasha knew he would have to listen sooner or later. For months they had all been sheltering her, trying to shield her from outward danger, even as she struggled to set Erithusmé free. It was hard on Pazel, and all her friends. They were carrying her like a vase through the hailstorm; she was trying to shatter on the floor.

  Then, two days ago, she had overh
eard Pazel and Neeps whispering about some “other way.” She’d confronted them immediately. At last Pazel had yielded, and shared the mage’s words:

  Take Thasha to the berth deck, to the place where you used to sleep. When she is standing there she will know what to do.

  Some hidden power, available to her alone. Thasha felt like smacking the tarboys for keeping quiet so long; but it was love, after all, that had sealed their tongues. Love, and fear. “Erithusmé made it sound mucking deadly, Thasha,” Pazel had told her. “She called it a last resort.”

  Of course, that warning had not dissuaded her: it was high time for last resorts. Any doubt of that had vanished yesterday, when they woke to find themselves looking at the Swarm.

  You could spend a lifetime struggling to forget the sight. A black mass the size of a township, high in the clouds, possessed of will and purpose. It appeared too solid to be airborne, and it squirmed, like a muscle or a clot of worms. It had been moving along the edge of the Red Storm, pausing, charging, doubling back again, an animal prowling a fence. Looking for a gap, said Ramachni. Hungering for death, for the greatest glut of death anywhere in Alifros. Hungering for the war in the North.

  Is my father in the middle of that war?

  Thasha left the others arguing by the mast. The Swarm had vanished eastward yesterday, leaving a changed Promise in its wake: the humans and dlömu shocked and fumbling for words, the selk grim and philosophical. They had caught no sight of it today, but Thasha could still see the Red Storm, many miles to the north, a scarlet ribbon between sea and sky.

  Time barrier, she thought. We fight and fight on this side, but for what? A home we may not recognize when we get there. A future Arqual that’s forgotten us, or a dead one. Unless we too find a gap.

  Walking to portside, she leaned on the rail and stared at the wooded island. Seabirds gyred above the north shore; waves shattered on the rocks. She willed the place to open to them, somehow, to let them take their ship and their people and be on their way.

  You’ve won, Talag. You let your sister die and your only child go mad, but you’ve won. Your people are home. Don’t be so proud that you end up killing them, killing all the world.