The Night of the Swarm

‘The usurper in Etherhorde does not love you, men of Arqual. Magad the Fifth has never learned love, though he demands it everywhere. Once he tried to love me, the aunt who raised him as her own. But his father was the Rake, the beast who tried to drown his mother, while she still carried Magad in her womb. The Rake, who through slander and mutiny drove me, his sister, away into exile, killed my husband and my sons. The Rake, who through his hatred at last drove Magad’s mother to walk into a smithy in Etherhorde and procure a bowl of bubbling lead and gulp it down.’

Maisa raised her hands as if to demonstrate. Long fleshless fingers, swollen knuckles, veins. But her gaze was hawklike as she studied them, and not a man aboard drew breath.

‘Hear me now. It is hate that has poisoned our lives. Magad is evil, yes, but his evil began as a canker, and that canker was born of hate. My brother taught his son to hate. When they drove me from Arqual, Magad was still a boy, too frightened and confused to know lies when he heard them. And years later, when he understood his father’s betrayal, Magad was still too weak and frightened to reform himself. But he lashed out, and slew his father, and so doubled the hatred he felt for himself. He squats now upon my throne in a deathsmoke-stupor of self- loathing, and lets the Secret Fist decide the fate of Arqual. Decide your fate, my soldiers, and the fate of those who would bear your name, if only you were there to raise them. And there are those at work in this world for whom even the Secret Fist is but a tool, and Arqual a chip to be wagered in a larger game. I speak of sorcerers. This is their war, not Arqual’s. They seek victories more scorched and savage than the vilest dreams of Sandor Ott. To them, each of you is but a pinch of black powder. You exist only to be burned. They are very clever, these plotters. But none of them was clever enough to kill Maisa of Arqual, and now their chance is gone.

‘I am an old woman,’ she went on. ‘I am sick to death of pride and status and deceit. But I would fight for your children, who will love you as children should. Who in peacetime will sit upon your knee and adore you — parents, providers, builders of a world worth living in.

‘Home, family, the bounty of love: they have all been denied you through hate. We need not fight the Mzithrin again. We need not seize the Crownless Lands. This war was sparked by Arqual’s smallest minds, in loathing of an enemy that no longer matters. An enemy that is only sailing against us because we have played cruelly on its fears.’

She paused, coughed, swallowed. Perhaps she was having trouble with her voice. But when she spoke again it was as clear as before.

‘I have been trying to convince you, of course. I am finished now.’ Then she reached for Isiq’s hand, and raised it high, and all who looked saw the lamplight dancing on a great bloodstone ring on the admiral’s finger.

‘ This man I did not have to convince,’ said Maisa. ‘He came to me with the same purpose, the same fire. They betrayed him too, finest soldier of the finest navy in all the world. They tried to kill him and his only child — the Treaty Bride, Thasha Isiq. He has taken up my banner again. And I have taken him as my prince.’

There was an involuntary roar. Then Isiq spoke for the first time, booming, ‘Silence in the ranks!’

Maisa dropped Isiq’s hand. She stepped forward, unguarded, and gazed at them with neither fear nor hope.

‘ That was well done: you have just obeyed an order from your Fleet Admiral. But look again: he has no power, unless you choose to give it. And I am the same: without your pledge I am nothing. If you stand with me, you stand with the Arqual we were all taught to cherish, and one day this fragile world will thank you. Have no doubt: it may be our only reward this side of heaven. I cannot promise victory, but I can promise my soul. I am Maisa, your Empress, and in no thing shall I ever deceive you. But you must decide whether or not to believe me — and you must decide here and now. Choose well, men of Arqual. You hold the very world in your hands.’

With that the Empress dropped her eyes. The crew held so still that Isiq heard the waves sucking and sloshing among the fog-hidden reefs.

Then a young lad stuttered: ‘M-Maisa!’ and the dam burst, all of them taking up her name and cause and not a soul holding back. In the men’s eyes Isiq saw a brilliant excitement, a hunger, an alertness to hope. By the Tree, he thought, they’ve been waiting for her all these years.

On the Slave Terrace, the crowd grew massive and disorderly. A few youths lobbed stones into the stockade where the Arquali soldiers were waiting to die. No one was quite in charge, but word leaked out that a boat had been dispatched from the Nighthawk with the rebel leadership aboard. The citizens of Ormael waited, grumbling.

Nothing could have prepared them for that moment, however. For it was left to Isiq himself, the most hated man in Ormali history, to declare the city not reconquered, but free.

He spoke from atop a fish crate. Sturdy enough, but it teetered underfoot.

‘Six years ago I burned this city,’ he shouted over the mob. ‘Do not forgive me. I do not want forgiveness I have yet to earn. But with what days are left to me I shall right all the wrongs I can, and fight the villains who led me to that crime. I was a fool to follow them — a fool and a coward. It was a son of Ormael who proved this to me at last, when he refused to bow before me. I punished that boy. I hated him for speaking the truth. He told it anyway, and in his courage my own liberation began.

‘Your freedom, people of Ormael, is no man’s to give. But in the name of Arqual and my Empress, I bow to that freedom, now and for evermore.’

The cheers were not for him, but they were deafening all the same. Isiq waited grimly for them to subside, then spoke to them once more.

‘Magad the Fifth will never bow to your freedom,’ he said. ‘He will try to steal it back, as he stole the Ametrine Throne from Empress Maisa. He will send great forces westwards to destroy this rebellion. Some will abandon him and join us. Most will not. Today we are like the little dog who nips the tiger. If the tiger turns and catches us, we die. We must be swifter. We must dodge and bay — bay loud and long, for all Alifros to hear. We must call a pack out of the forest, and stay alive until it comes.

‘How long must we run? I do not know. But I know this: we cannot protect you, not yet. If we stay we will only bring about your certain destruction. The best favour we can do for you now is to leave, to draw Arqual’s fire away from Ormael, and to harry the tiger from the bush. I do not ask for your aid. That is not my right-’

He broke off, abashed, and struggled down from the crate. This time the cheers did not come. Isiq marched stiffly away through their staring eyes, feeling less a liberator than a cheat. The little dog was running. Ormael knew better than most what to expect from the tiger.

At the back of the crowd, Suthinia waited for him. She was hooded and veiled, lest anyone recognize the wife of the second most hated man in Ormael, Captain Gregory. She bowed at the waist, but her dark eyes stayed on him.

‘Well done, Prince Eberzam.’

‘I hear your irony, vixen,’ he muttered.

‘By now I should hope so.’

She was laughing at him, behind that scrap of silk. Oh, but he wanted her. Day by day his wanting grew, and her utter unreachability did nothing to cool the fire. It had grown so unbearable that he had nearly asked Maisa to send her back to Gregory, or to King Oshiram’s court in Simja. How could he, though, when Suthinia had become his most trusted friend?

How could he, for that matter, when her mage-craft brought him visions of Thasha? True, they came only through the dreams of Neda Pathkendle, and were clouded and cluttered and rarely about Thasha at all. But Suthinia walked in those dreams, and Neda was sensitive to her presence, and would even answer questions, now and again. Once Suthinia had sought him out at dawn, half-dreaming still, and placed a bomb in his hands:

‘It was your daughter who killed him, killed Arunis. She beheaded him with Hercol’s sword.’

Of course he’d had no choice but to marry the Empress. Tactically, it was a master stroke: now the restoration of Maisa, instead of fracturing the military, could be seen as a chance to exalt it as never before, by giving it a foothold in the royal family itself. And unlike a widow, a married couple could make any willing Arquali their child in the eyes of the law. They could reach into the populace and pluck out heirs.

And if his daughter was restored to him? It could happen, by all the Gods. Thasha herself could