The Night of the Swarm

roles.

And nothing happens. The night grows dark and chill. Hours pass, the gunnery crews crouch drowsy by their weapons. Rose paces, stem to stern. I too am on deck and waiting, for what I cannot say.

It comes at six bells, three o’clock in Rin’s blessed morning. But it is not the attack we fear. No, it is only the swallows again, swooping down for another group of ixchel. This time the exodus begins on the quarter-deck, not the forecastle. Men start to race there, who knows why. I hear bellows from the soldiers in the lead.

I’m halfway to the bow but make a run for it. I see Ott far ahead. ‘Alive! ’ he’s shouting. ‘Take them alive! Catch them, sweep them up, you slow-arsed dogs! ’

When I draw near I see that Talag has come from ashore without his minders, and with a much larger flock of birds. On the quarterdeck, hundreds of ixchel are waiting to leap into their claws. They are earnest and grim. No sense of victory here. Every last man and woman is armed to the teeth.

The Turachs have nets. Someone — Ott, Rose? — has commanded them to prevent this exodus, lest we find ourselves holding no hostages, and thus no cards. But the ixchel have mostly slipped through our fingers. Maybe a dozen get nabbed, or crushed underfoot¹⁹, but the bulk of the clan flows straight up the rails and rigging, like beads of oil drawn magically skyward, and the urgent swallows pluck them and make off across the bay, with Talag circling, shouting them on.

Ere they vanish I catch one glimpse of his face. For an instant I think he is disfigured: something (an ear, an eye?) has surely been ripped away. Then I realise it’s nothing physical. It’s his confidence that has ruptured, his certainty. And that is a thousand times crueller in Lord Talag, that colossus of pride. He is still fighting, still leading his people somewhere, and furiously, but the reason behind it is gone.

Monday, 9 Fuinar 942.

Marila has come running. The Green Door has appeared on the mercy deck, and Felthrup’s mind cannot be changed. We are to meet there at once, to bargain with a creature of the Pits.

25

The Flight of the Promise

25 Halar 942

Her figurehead was a white horse, and its flowing mane swept back in delicate whorls along the prow. Thasha sat beneath it on the little platform that fronted the keel. Dawn light on her face, salt stinging her eyes. Before her was a spread of countless islets, drops of wax on the vast blue cloth of ocean. Thasha was murmuring a song that had come to her in a dream. Leheda mori che gathri gel, leheda mori aru. A melancholy song, she imagined. A song of farewell.

The Promise was a swift, sleek three-master. Like the selk who built her, she somehow conveyed the presence of another world, or perhaps a version of this world governed by subtly different laws. There was a stillness about her, even as she rose and plunged on the waves. Her sides were painted silver, her masts and spars of a pale white wood such as Thasha had never seen. Her crescent sails were the blue-white of the mountain peaks behind them. Yet all these colours shifted slightly with the changing sun or clouds, as if the Promise were trying to blend in, to vanish against the sea and sky.

You know what we’re facing, don’t you? Thasha asked the ship in silence. You know we’re a rabbit among wolves.

She was far too small for the Ruling Sea. But Nolcindar, who captained her, had assured the travellers that she was ready for any waves to be found here in the Island Wilderness — and as fast as any boat in Bali Adro.

Just as well, Thasha had reflected, for the Promise was no fighter. There were gunports, but no guns: the selk had long ago chosen lightness over force. But the crew looked forceful enough: twenty selk and twenty dlomu, the former from Nolcindar’s band, the latter fishermen from the tiny villages that were all the barren coast could support.

The fishermen were a restrained, self-conscious lot: Thasha had yet to see one smile. The presence of Prince Olik left many speechless with awe, but the selk affected them even more profoundly. They were indebted to the people of Ularamyth for some deed long ago. Thasha gathered that it was this debt that had saved them, for when they looked at the humans the fishermen’s looks grew dark.

‘They are what they seem,’ Prince Olik had explained. ‘They are human beings, such as the oldest among you may recall from childhood. You need not fear them.’

‘We do not fear them,’ said the leader of the fishermen. ‘But two days ago the Platazcra was here, with a warship many times larger than the Promise. This was no surprise: they often snatch our ablest sons for crew, or for darker work in Orbilesc. But this time they had another purpose. They spoke of tol-chenni who had recovered from the plague: human beings who could think and talk, like men. They swore they were unnatural, and aided by criminals and traitors from Masalym.’

‘Such names the mighty have always given their enemies, and always will,’ said Kirishgan.

The fishermen went on staring. ‘Tell them the rest, Jannar,’ growled a voice from the back of the crowd.

Their leader’s face was grim. ‘We were told,’ he said, ‘that should we aid the tol- chenni, or even fail to keep them here, that we would all be killed, after seeing our children burned alive.’

Silence fell. Prince Olik and Lunja bowed their heads in shame.

‘Those prepared to issue such threats will also be prepared to act on them,’ said Nolcindar. ‘I am sorry we came to you in this way. Of course, you must try to keep us, and we must fight and flee you, who have been our brothers so long.’

The dlomic fishermen had bristled.

‘You do not understand,’ said their leader. ‘They have tortured us already, robbed us of our children, poisoned the very fish we eat. But things were different once. We came here starving, out of the Wastes of Siralac, and food appeared at the margins of our camps, and medicines that saved our children. We settled here, and in two years there were nut-trees sprouting in the clefts of the headlands, and fruiting vines. Whose gifts were those, Nolcindar? And when we were besieged, who came to us with blue steel burning, and put our enemies to flight? We are poor, and our numbers have dwindled, but we will never break faith with the selk. Your boat is waiting as it ever has been, in that cove no Imperial eyes have ever seen.’

Their plan, it appeared, was to abandon their villages before Macadra’s forces could return. Thasha did not know how they would flee — by land, by boat? — or what havens they might find when they arrived. Nor did the fishermen themselves know where the Promise was bound.

Safer that way, Thasha mused. Any of us could end up in Macadra’s hands.

It had not been easy to escape the Coves. The fishermen had sent out scouting vessels, and placed lookouts on the headlands, peering into the darkness of the Gulf. For six hours the Promise had stood ready, every soul aboard waiting tensely for the all-clear signal. When at last it came they raced to their stations, and the ghostly vessel glided out from the dark cliffs and swept north by starlight.

The Gulf was not actually empty; it was never empty, this close to the Imperial heartland. There were large vessels to the south, and beyond them a fell light over the shore, as of a bonfire of poisonous things. Another pool of light, due west, was so large that Thasha took it at first for an army encamped on an island. Then (her stomach lurched) she saw that the island was moving, crawling southwards like a monstrous centipede over the waves. Glowing shapes wheeled above it, and sudden flares like heat lightning illuminated its flanks. She did not know it then, but she was looking at the same Behemoth that had attacked the Chathrand, groping its way back to Orbilesc to fill its maw again with coal and slaves and sailors.

Eleven days had passed since their depature from Ilidron. Behind them lay the charted islands, claimed by