The Night of the Swarm

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 mould 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, Hercol 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 honour 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 afterwards 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 kennelled 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 a 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 for ever 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 — and improperly near at that.

‘Quartermaster! What in the Nine smoking slag-furnace Pits are you doing here? 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 colour 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 swanlike 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 Balfyr, 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 Balfyr 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.