The Night of the Swarm

the cliffs, but they should still be able to pass inside with ease.

Fiffengurt so ordered. They sailed on, but the reports kept coming: reef outcroppings to starboard, deep clear water along the cliffs. With each report they nudged closer. Elkstem and Fiffengurt exchanged a look.

‘There’s no drift to speak of,’ said Elkstem. ‘We can tiptoe right in along the cliffs, if that’s what you want. She’s a beauty of a bay on the inside, that’s plain to see.’

‘Yes,’ said Fiffengurt, pulling savagely at his beard, ‘all the room in the world, once we’re past the cliffs. Not more than a half-mile to go.’

‘Only if you don’t mean to take us in, speak now,’ added Elkstem. ‘There’s still room to come about, but who knows for how long? What d’ye say, Graf? Steady on?’

Marila shook her head emphatically, but Fiffengurt did not see her. Or chose not to see her. ‘The captain’s word stands, Mr Elkstem. Take us in, and round off mid-bay with her ladyship facing the mouth once again. Then we’ll await Rose’s pleasure.’

On a single topsail they crept on, until the cliffs were sliding past them a mere sixty feet from the portside rail. Marila looked up. It was strange to be in the shadow of anything, here on the topdeck, but the rocky clifftops loomed four hundred feet above the height of the deck. Even the lookout high on the mainmast was staring up at them, not down. There were great boulders poised at the tops of the cliffs. Where they’ve been for thousands of years, she told herself. Pitfire, girl. It’s not as if the ixchel are going to throw them.

Nor did they. The half-mile passed, and soon they found themselves in as lovely a bay as one could ask for, holding steady on topgallants a mile or more from any point of land. Fiffengurt turned and smiled at Marila. She did not smile back. Together they went in search of Felthrup and Oggosk.

The rat was nowhere to be found. In the chicken coops, however, the birds were in a state of severe agitation. ‘Someone’s been here; the stool’s been moved,’ said Marila. ‘Egg thieves again, probably. Fine, we’ll go and see her alone.’

‘Marila, dear, d’ye really think that’s wise?’

‘If you don’t want to tell her, I will.’

Fiffengurt shook his head firmly. ‘Ah, lass, there’s no cause to be that way. I’ll tell her, don’t you worry.’ But there was a tremor in his voice.

They could hear Oggosk screaming from twenty yards, though they could make no sense of the string of names, dates, cities, ships and bodily fluids, all punctuated by crashes and wordless shrieks. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ whispered Fiffengurt.

‘Something about a letter,’ said Marila. ‘One of those crazy letters to Rose that she says come from his dead father. Usually she just tosses them off, but this one’s different somehow. Felthrup knows more than I do.’

Glass shattered against the inside of her cabin door. ‘Dead!’ screamed Oggosk, within. ‘Caught by fishermen, washed up on beaches, stranded by the tide!’

Marila took a firm grip on Mr Fiffengurt’s arm.

‘Ninety-three years of bloated crab-nibbled corpses!’

Marila pounded on the door. Oggosk fell silent. After two minutes Fiffengurt said, ‘She ain’t going to let us in. We’d best try another time.’

He was smiling. Marila just waited. Very soon the door opened a crack, and one milky blue eye stared up at the quartermaster.

‘Well?’ she croaked. ‘What have you done now, you old piece of gristle?’

Fiffengurt cleared his throat. ‘Duchess,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’ve heard some of the debate concerning the name of this here island?’

‘It is Stath Balfyr,’ said Oggosk.

Fiffengurt smiled, fidgeting terribly. ‘Well now, m’lady, that’s quite correct. Only it happens that things are just a trifle more complicated than we hoped. It’s no cause for alarm, but-’

‘The island’s useless,’ said Marila. ‘Ott’s papers were forged by the ixchel. Stath Balfyr is where they came from, centuries ago, and they’ve tricked us into bringing them home. We don’t have course headings from here — they’re all fake. If we cross the Ruling Sea from this island we could come out anywhere in the North.’

Now she could see a bit of Oggosk’s mouth, which hung open like an eel’s. ‘What?’ said the old woman.

‘Oh, and the whole clan’s still aboard,’ said Marila, ‘the ones that we didn’t kill in Masalym, anyway. They’re going to do something and it will probably be terrible. Stath Balfyr is the only reason they ever came aboard.’

Oggosk closed the door again. Fiffengurt looked at Marila awkwardly. ‘I was about to say that, Missy. You beat me to it, is all. Well now, we’d best leave the duchess to mull this over, don’t you think?’

Before Marila could tell him that she thought nothing of the kind, the door flew open, and Oggosk emerged with her walking stick, which she swung with great force at Fiffengurt.

‘Traitor!’ she screamed. ‘Crawly lover! You’ve known about this for months, haven’t you? That’s why you look like you’ve swallowed a poison toad every time we mention Stath Balfyr!’

Fiffengurt backed away, shielding his head. ‘Duchess, please-’

‘Don’t speak to me ever again! Don’t look at me, you lying, worm-laden bag of excrement! Move! Walk! We’re going to the captain, and I hope he skins you alive!’

The corridor was wide and black. Felthrup looked up at the cargo stacked to either side of him: musty crates, huge casks for spirits or wine, clay amphorae nestled in rotting burlap, secured with ancient ropes. The air was chill, and the only light came from the chamber at the end of the passage, fifty feet ahead, where a single lamp dangled on a chain. The brightness of the lamp was slowly, steadily increasing.

‘Sweet heaven’s mercy! You’re here!’

The man’s voice also came from the chamber ahead, but Felthrup could see no sign of movement. He did not answer the voice, but crept forward along the edge of the cargo, keeping out of the light. The voice implored him to hurry, but he did not. Every instinct told him that he was in a place of unspeakable danger.

‘Where are you? Why don’t you say anything?’

Felthrup reached the chamber and drew a sharp breath. He was looking at a jail. Thick iron bars divided the room into cells: four cells, two on either side of the dangling lamp. He saw now that the lamp was an odd specimen of ancient brass, although it burned as brightly as any modern fengas lamp. The two cells on the left stood wide open, but the right-hand cells were closed. And in the nearest of these stood a young man in rags.

He saw Felthrup and put a hand through the bars: a gesture of joy or excitement, maybe, but Felthrup responded by leaping backwards.

‘No! No!’ cried the man. ‘Don’t be frightened! Please don’t run away!’ In the cell next to the ragged man there lay a corpse. It was curled on its side like a sleeper, its face turned to the wall. Indeed Felthrup might have taken it for a sleeper, if not for a glimpse of one hand, where bones protruded through a translucent layer of rotten skin. The rest of the figure was completely clothed: heavy coat, trousers, headscarf. Felthrup had no idea whether the thing before him had been a man or a woman.

‘It is too late for Captain Kurlstaff,’ said the man, ‘but not for me. Oh, please, come here and nudge open the door! There is no latch; enchantment alone prevents me from swinging it wide.’ Demonstrating, he took the door in both hand and shook it violently. When Felthrup jumped again he checked himself and smiled.

‘Forgive me. This is not my real nature. It’s just that I have been so long alone — Tree of Heaven, you don’t know how long!’

‘Tell me,’ said Felthrup, glad to hear that his voice did not crack. He was examining the man’s feet, for he had already discovered that he did not much care to look at his eyes.

‘My dear friend, you won’t believe it. This is the Vanishing Brig of the I.M.S. Chathrand, and I am its forgotten prisoner. It is a cunning and merciless invention: set but a foot inside one of these cells, and the door slams behind you, and cannot be opened from within — not ever. I have been locked in here since the days of the Black Tyrant, Hurgasc, who took the Great Ship and used her for plunder. My family opposed Hurgasc more bitterly than any others in the Kingdom of Valahren.’ The man lowered his voice, and his eyes. ‘He slew my brothers one by one and cast their bodies out upon the plain, where the jackals gnawed their bones. I wish he had done the same with me. Instead I was brought to this cell, in which no man may ever age, and left for all eternity.’

‘You do not age?’ asked Felthrup.

‘Nor sleep, nor tire, nor feel anything but a dull hunger that never abates. I lie still for years at a time. The