The Night of the Swarm

lamp springs to life for visitors; otherwise I lie in perfect darkness. For centuries, my friend. No one comes here any more.’

‘But someone used to?’

‘Oh, very rarely — and when they come, fear masters them, and they flee like cockroaches. But you, woken rat! You’re braver than any human ever was!’

Or more foolish, thought Felthrup.

‘But open the door, open the door!’ cried the man. ‘I will tell you my whole sorry tale, and show you other secrets of the Chathrand. Did you know that there was gold aboard, hidden in many places?’

Felthrup knew it perfectly well. He gazed back along the corridor. The Green Door stood ajar, but the light of the lamp was so bright that he could barely see it.

‘You don’t trust me,’ said the man, his voice taking on an air of desperation. ‘Gods below, it is almost funny! Little rat-friend, do you know why my family ran afoul of Hurgasc? Because we sheltered woken animals like yourself. The Tyrant had a wild superstition that they were his defeated enemies, returned to life in bestial form. Madness, but that did not stop him from killing every woken animal he could. We gave refuge to scores of them in our family estate. I was raised by such creatures! But for every good man there are five who burn with jealousy merely because he is loving, and they are not. One day some mucking dog informed on us, and Hurgasc stormed the estate, and we fled to the wilderness to begin our life as rebels.’

‘And this Vanishing Brig, who made it? What is it for?’

‘The shipwright-mages of Bali Adro made it, sir — dlomu and human beings and selk, all working together in those days. No doubt they intended it for noble purposes, but they are all gone, and the ship has had so many lives and owners since. There is no escape from these cells save death — and that is what most choose.’ He gestured at the corpse. ‘Kurlstaff there broke his pocketwatch, and swallowed the pieces, glass and all, and so made his escape. Others did so before him, and their bodies were at last removed. Now then: will you not be bold, and free a friend of your kind? I tell you I was imprisoned for nothing. Why, I was never even accused!’

‘That has just changed,’ said Felthrup. ‘I accuse you of lying.’

The man looked up sharply. Felthrup’s nose twitched with irritation.

‘Some of “our kind” read,’ he said, ‘and among those few, one at least reads history. The Chathrand was built five hundred years after the slaying of Hurgasc. To be precise, five hundred and three. And Valahren — well, really. In Hurgasc’s time the name did not exist; it was Valhyrin, and would remain so for centuries, I believe. And when Hurgasc ruled in Valhyrin, “our kind” did not exist at all, for the Waking Spell that created us had yet to be cast.¹⁴ But if woken animals had existed then, and your family had loved them so keenly, you might possibly have lost the habit of referring to those you despise as mucking dogs. And now good day.’

He would have liked to walk with dignity from the chamber, after such a speech. But in fact he was still terrified, and so he ran. The prisoner watched him, statue-still. Felthrup was halfway back to the chicken coops before he broke his silence.

‘Your quest is doomed, Felthrup Stargraven.’

Felthrup skidded to a halt.

‘The Polylex has taught you a little. But it yields its wisdom slowly, does it not? Too slowly to help you save this world. I can do better, for a price.’

Felthrup turned and looked back into the chamber. The voice had not changed, and the lamp burned on as before, but the figure he saw by its glow was not a man.

Nilus Rose sat at his desk with the curtains drawn. Propped before him was a small, ornate picture frame, which he had just rummaged from the bottom of a drawer. It was a portrait of three young women: the two eldest seated, the youngest standing before them. All three beautiful, distracted, docile as sheep. They wore identical gowns: the straight and formless gowns in which wealthy Arqualis draped their daughters, before sending them to temple, or to bridal interviews.

They were quite obviously sisters. Behind them stood a man with a broad chest and choleric expression; a man old enough to be their father; a man any casual observer would have identified as Rose himself. In this the observer would have been deceived, but not entirely wrong: the figure was Captain Theimat Rose. He was indeed a father — but to Nilus, not these women. They were his concubines, his slaves. His father had not bothered to conceal his intention to wear them out, one after another, until their usefulness as childbearers and his pleasure in them were alike exhausted, and then to find some other place, far from his sight, where they could age.

The eldest, Yelinda, had ruined the lives of all three. Poor island women, they had nonetheless had freedom of a limited sort, until Yelinda fell under the sway of a sweet-voiced, gentle-faced man from Ballytween, who promised all three sisters jobs in a wealthy household in the Crownless Lands, and instead deposited them in the Slave School on Nurth. They were spared the long tutelage in servitude meted out at the school, however. A young captain by the name of Theimat Rose, having just come into money by some swindle or other, grew excited at the thought of possessing sisters, something none of his peers could boast of. He had bargained for all three, and the price he settled on became another boast, though he tended to lie about their pedigree.

Before they reached Mereldin Island and the Rose estate, Theimat informed them all of the shape of their future. Yelinda would be shown to the world as his wife, though he had no intention of actually marrying her or otherwise bestowing any semblance of rights; the younger sisters were henceforth mere cousins that he had taken into his household out of charity. They were never to leave the estate, nor to speak to anyone save the peasants who worked it; they were to bear him sons, one apiece, and to spare him even the sight of any girl-child who might be born into the household. During his absences at sea they were to dedicate themselves to prayer, and later the raising of his children. He would not tolerate noise, sloth, disagreeable odours, despondency, laughter, tears, the presence of cats or imperfect table manners. He promised to sell them separately, and ‘into households that will make you appreciate what you have lost’, if they should displease him.

Upon arrival he showed them a weedy spot outside the garden wall. It was where his own father had buried the bodies of two slaves. ‘They tried to run,’ said Theimat. ‘Very foolish, on so small an island.’

Mereldin Island had some eight thousand inhabitants, and most of them appeared to owe money to Theimat Rose, including the Imperial governor and the Templar monks. His estate sprawled over a quarter of the island; his web of trade stretched over the whole of the Narrow Sea. Those who did not fear him found him useful. For the daughters there was simply nowhere to turn.

Nor did he soften with the years. Once he beat Yelinda for setting his evening rum on his desk without a coaster. After Nilus was born the man found the child’s eating habits revolting, saying that he did not properly chew his food. But the more Nilus attempted to focus on the task the less he managed to please his father, who grew infuriated by the boy’s cowed expression and stolid, terrified chewing.

One morning, when his son was four, the captain set a fist-sized mass of raw xhila- tree rubber in a dish in front of Nilus and told him to put it in his mouth. The boy obeyed, with some difficulty. The rubber was acrid and burned his gums. ‘Now,’ said the captain, ‘you may practise chewing to your heart’s content. But it will go very badly for you, Nilus, if you dribble or spit before I give you leave.’

He emphasised the point by placing a claw hammer on the table. Nilus began to chew, and found at once that the evil taste was mostly beneath the rubber’s surface; very soon his mouth was aflame. His father sat at the far end of the table, doing his weekly accounts. The rubber stiffened the harder Nilus bit down, but if he stopped chewing for a moment his father looked up with fire in his eyes. Nilus knew that weeping would bring greater punishment than dribbling or spitting, and so he chewed, and swallowed when he could no longer avoid it, and sat very straight in his chair.

When the sisters noticed the boy’s distress Theimat ordered them all to the outdoor kitchen, which is where they were usually banished when he did not wish to see them. After twenty minutes the boy’s stomach began to hurt and his thoughts became wild and confused. After sixty his jaw hurt so badly that he tried to distract himself by driving a fork into his leg. Sometime thereafter he began to fight down vomit. That was when his father’s looks began to show some interest. At length the man put down his pencil, lifted the hammer and drew near. He watched Nilus begin to choke, raised the hammer when it appeared he might spit. Nilus did not spit but tried to swallow the whole mass of rubber, and failed. He fell to the ground, the world darkening around him, and then his father took another fork and pried the sticky mass out of his throat.