The Night of the Swarm

Rose shook his head. ‘Sandor Ott. He will move against me if I give such orders without explanation. And if he learns the truth about Stath Balfyr, he will kill everyone who knew and said nothing. I do not know if Haddismal’s men will side with him or with me, but the odds are in his favour. As he told me once, treason nullifies a captain’s powers. He will cry treason, and the Turachs may choose to believe him.’

‘We’d have to hide in the stateroom,’ said Marila.

‘Yes,’ said Fiffengurt, ‘until he starved us out.’

‘We will have to come up with another reason for leaving,’ said Chadfallow.

Rose gave him a withering look. ‘In this whole, enormous Southern world, Ott has taken an interest in just one place: Stath Balfyr. He believes this island to be his gateway for attacking the Mzithrin, for stabbing Arqual’s enemy from behind. Nothing else interests him. Tell me: what reason for abandoning it will he accept?’

‘Perhaps if he thought we were mistaken,’ said Chadfallow, ‘if he believed that Stath Balfyr were really that island to the southeast-’

‘He has studied the same charts and drawings that I have, and he is no fool,’ said Rose. ‘He knows where he is. And he will skewer anyone who tells him a less-than-perfect lie. Now be quiet.’

He still leaned on the table, head cocked to one side, brooding. Finally he stood and walked to the wine cabinet and drew out something that did not look like wine. It was a large glass jar of the sort that Mr Teggatz had once used for lime pickle and other condiments. Rose brought it back to the desk and slammed it down before them.

Marila screamed. Fiffengurt and Chadfallow turned away, quite sickened. Inside the jar, floating in a red- tinted liquid, was the mangled body of an ixchel man. The left arm and both legs had been torn away, leaving only shreds of skin. The abdomen too was torn open, and the head was a ruined mass of hair, skin and fractured bones.

‘Sniraga brought this one to Oggosk a fortnight ago,’ said Rose. ‘I hoped it was a rebel from the clan, one who had stayed aboard when the others deserted us in Masalym.’

‘Sniraga killed one of the ixchel who attacked Felthrup,’ said Marila, with tears on her brown cheeks.

‘Belay that snivelling,’ said the captain. ‘I have moved beyond sparing your lives and am trying to save them. When Ott asks me how I learned the truth about Stath Balfyr I shall display this crawly. He will be angry that I did not let him take part in the supposed interrogation — but not as angry as he would be to learn that the real source was you, and that you hid the truth for months. If he should learn that, I will be unable to protect you. Throw yourselves over the rail, or take poison if the doctor can provide it. Anything quick and certain. Do not fall into his hands.’

From the bed, Oggosk was moaning: ‘Nilus, Nilus, my boy-’

‘We are finished here,’ said Rose. ‘Quartermaster, you will begin preparing a landing party, just to keep up appearances. My countermanding order will reach you in a few hours’ time. As for you, Doctor, I hope your investigations may yet save a few of us from dying like beasts.’

A fine hope, thought Chadfallow now, but very possibly in vain. For the hundredth time he tried to focus his thoughts on Uskins. What stone had he left unturned? Diet? Impossible; the man ate the same food as any officer. Habits? What habits? If needling others and gloating at their misfortune counted as habits, well, the man had broken them at last. Sleep? Average. Drink? Only to impress his betters, when they too were drinking. Lineage? A peasant, from a crevasse of a town on the Dremland coast, though he had claimed noble birth until an old friend of the family exposed his charade. Abnormalities of blood, urine, faeces, hair follicles, ocular secretions, bunions, breath? No, no, no. The man had been remarkable only for his malice and ineptitude. Remove those and he was painfully normal.

As the victims mounted, Chadfallow had started going without sleep. He questioned Uskins repeatedly about his interactions with Arunis, whom Rose had commanded him to observe for some weeks. The first mate recalled no telling moments. Arunis had never touched him, never tried to give him anything, only grunted when Uskins delivered his meals: ‘I was beneath his notice, Doctor,’ he’d said, ‘and for that I shall always be grateful.’

And their capture in Masalym? Uskins had been sent to that awful human zoo, but so had eight others from the ship, including Chadfallow himself. They were never separated in those three days, which Uskins had spent largely hidden in a patch of weeds. He was mentally frail before the plague struck, certainly. But on the Chathrand that was hardly a distinguishing trait.

At his wit’s end, Chadfallow even turned to Dr Rain. The old quack at least let him talk without interruption, and this helped Chadfallow sort his observations into mental drawers and cabinets. Rain took it all in gravely, and then sat quietly doodling in the corner of sickbay, face to the wall: the living emblem of a doctor’s pledge to do no harm.

Hours passed. Chadfallow heard the order go out: To your posts, lads: the captain don’t like this bay after all. So it was dusk already; they were leaving with the tide. He stared at Uskins’ answers to his questionnaire, the words swimming before his eyes.

‘I know!’ Rain shrieked from his corner (Chadfallow gasped; he had forgotten the man was there). ‘Uskins was already a dunce! You’ve said so, you called him a puffed-up buffoon. Well, what if intelligence is the trigger, and the first mate didn’t have enough? What if the plague couldn’t sense any mind in there to attack?’

Chadfallow’s mind leaped, clutching at the idea. He wondered if he had not voiced it to Rain himself, and forgotten it in the fog of exhaustion. Then the flaws in the theory began to pop like gophers from their holes.

‘The plague did attack him, Claudius,’ he said. ‘Uskins did lose his mind; he simply got it back again. And the plague has claimed others of dubious intelligence. Thad Pollok of Uturphe answered to “Dummy”, according to his friends. He lost a finger by placing it in the mouth of a moray eel. Just to see if he could.’

Rain looked thoughtful. ‘I would never do that,’ he said.

A sound at the doorway: Mr Fegin was hovering there, hat in hand. ‘Another victim, Doctor,’ he said. ‘A lad from Opalt. He was ninety feet up the mainmast, and he started howlin’ like a blary baboon. They had a time of it, getting him down in one piece. He bit a lieutenant on the ear.’

‘Off we go!’ said Rain, reaching for his grubby medical bag. They examined each and every new victim, of course. Or rather Chadfallow did, while Rain mumbled trivialities.

Chadfallow massaged his eyelids. ‘Might I ask you to take a first look?’ he said. ‘I might just be getting somewhere with Uskins, and want to read a while longer.’

It was a bald lie, but Rain did not argue. He glanced at the papers spread across Chadfallow’s desk. ‘We could draw a little of his blood, and inject a drop into everyone aboard.’

‘I’ll consider it,’ said Chadfallow.

‘Or take away his scarf.’ Rain slouched out the door. Chadfallow sighed, staring at a vial of the first mate’s urine and wondering what else he could do to it.

Then he turned in his chair, blinking.

Scarf?

He stood up and went after Rain, who had only reached the next compartment. ‘What the devil are you talking about? What scarf?’

‘Haven’t you seen it?’ said Rain. ‘That old white rag of his. Threadbare, filthy. He keeps it under his shirt, but it’s always there. He clings to that scarf.’

Rain chuckled and moved on, but Chadfallow stayed where he was, transfixed. A white scarf. He fetched his own bag from sickbay and made for Uskins’ cabin.

The Chathrand was once more nearing the mouth of the bay: outbound, this time, with the reefs to portside and the cliffs towering high over the starboard bow. Fiffengurt had relieved Elkstem at the wheel; the sailmaster had gone to the chart room to consult Prince Olik’s sketches and notes. It was easy sailing once again: if ever a bay were made for smooth ingress and egress, it was this one at Stath Balfyr.

Nonetheless Fiffengurt was sweating profusely. Sandor Ott was at his side.

‘A crawly in a pickle jar,’ he said. ‘Preposterous. This is all a sham, Fiffengurt. Another delaying tactic, in the service of your insane devotion to the Pathkendle crowd.’

‘It ain’t my order,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘Aloft there, mizzen-men! Is that a close-reefed sail, by Rin? Look sharp, or I’ll send a tarboy up to teach you your trade!’

‘Tell me what is really happening,’ said Ott.

‘We’re preparing to thread a needle between reefs and rocks, that’s what. And you’re making it blary