The Night of the Swarm

said.

Rose moved on, and the ghost-captains trailed in his wake. At last he stood before the Green Door, padlocked as he had ordered. He set down the chest and fumbled in his pocket. From the start of his career Rose had never once dispensed a key without retaining duplicates himself. He freed the locks and let the chains fall away.

The dangling lamp sputtered to life as he approached. Kazizarag stood as before in the centre of the room, his gold eyes seeking Rose. This time the demon was silent, as though he knew (and perhaps he did) that taunts were the last thing he needed tonight. But he grinned at the captain, a wide sly grin full of teeth.

Rose dropped the chest and stared him down.

‘You can have the gold,’ he said. ‘All of it, and the other treasure as well. As Final Offshore Authority it is mine to dispense with. I give it to you.’

‘If.’

‘If you will swear not to seek it until the ship meets its death. A death you will not hasten.’

‘You are not much of a bargainer tonight,’ said the maukslar. ‘I cannot leave the vessel until the Chathrand’s keel is cracked, and her blood spills, along with all the magic that courses through her. Only then will this prison release me.’

Rose glanced back at Kurlstaff, who stood uneasily at the threshold. The other ghosts had not dared to enter. ‘What about our prison, Rose?’ demanded Kurlstaff. ‘When the ship sinks, will we go to our rest? Or will we rot for ever along with the carcass of the ship? Ask him, ask him!’ Rose faced the maukslar again. ‘The woken rat,’ he said, ‘tells me you can look through the walls of this ship as though they were glass.’

The demon just waited, gazing at him.

‘Everywhere, that is, save the stateroom. The latter, I assume, is guarded by a magic stronger than your own. Arunis could not pierce it either. The chamber is off limits to magical probes. We could even be hiding the Nilstone within it, could we not?’

‘You could, but I know better.’

‘The question is, does she?’

‘What are you driving at, Captain?’

Rose ignored the question. ‘The rat also said you claimed you could make a hen’s egg glow like the sun.’

‘Easily.’

‘Could you make it burn, though? Burn with death-energy, throb with curses like an altar of the damned? Could you make it so black that it swallows light the way you swallow gold?’

The maukslar stared at him, fascinated and appalled. ‘Lunatic. You are asking for a second Nilstone. Of course I cannot make such a thing, any more than I could lay new foundations under this world. And if I had such power, I should never offer the Nilstone as a gift. Not to you, not to Macadra. Not even to my mortal father, the Firelord who spawned me in his house of fear.’

Rose shook his head. ‘I do not want another Nilstone. Only a counterfeit copy. Something Macadra will sense at a distance, and take for the real item.’

Once more the demon grinned. ‘A decoy, you old wolf?’

‘A lure,’ said Captain Rose.

‘For her, eh? For the White Raven. Nilus Rose, you are unpredictable, and that is the highest compliment I can give. A counterfeit: why not? But you would have to provide some solid artefact. I cannot anchor such a spell on thin air.’

Rose nodded. He put a hand into his coat and withdrew a small object that glittered in the lamplight. It was the glass eye of the Leopard of Masalym, the good luck charm on which he’d nearly choked.

The demon studied it appraisingly. ‘That will serve,’ he said. ‘But now we come to it: what will you give me?’

‘The gold is not enough?’

‘I have answered that question already.’

‘Your freedom, then,’ said Rose.

‘My freedom!’ spat the creature, enraged. ‘And what truth-telling oath will you take, king of swindlers? Do you know how many have come here through the ages — sailors, officers, tarboys, third-rate wizards, lovers seeking a trysting-place, assassins with bodies to hide? Do you know how many have promised me my freedom, Captain — sworn they would open the cell, right away, never fear — if only. If only I will grant them this, cure them of that, spread the secrets of eternity before their nibbling little minds. You are all the same. You strike poses. And when you have taken much from me, you walk out that door, and spend the rest of your lives not thinking about the prisoner you left in the dark.’

Still Rose’s gaze was implacable. ‘Do I look like them? Do I look as though I have time to waste?’

The maukslar blinked, conceding the point.

‘I will free you, Avarice,’ said Rose. ‘The world is rife with demons, chained and unchained. The mischief you add will not be decisive.’

He waited. The maukslar gazed at him with the focus of a tiger watching its prey.

‘Give me the bauble.’

‘I will not accept a poor imitation,’ said Rose. ‘Do not forget that I have seen the Nilstone close at hand.’

‘My arts will not disappoint you. Give it here.’

Rose held the eye closer, but not close enough. He asked several further, pointed questions, and the maukslar, hungry in an entirely new way, spat out the answers like seeds. Then he made the demon recite his oath, and his name, just as Felthrup had done. Kurlstaff was still here, death’s witness: the bond would presumably hold. Rose tossed the glass eye through the bars-

The maukslar leaped like a dog, caught the glass eye in its teeth, and swallowed it.

‘You stinking fiend!’ cried Rose.

The maukslar threw its head back and moaned. Gnarled hands clawed at its stomach. Its body twisted like toffee; its head spun around upon its neck. Then the neck unwound with a snap, the belly heaved, and the monster vomited something onto the floor of the cell.

Rose hissed. Even Kurlstaff shielded his ghostly eyes. It was the Nilstone. Perfect in its blackness, horrible in the waves of power it flung out in all directions. It lay there, silently throbbing, an exact duplicate of that shard of death on which the fate of Alifros so strangely hung.

The maukslar nudged it with a taloned foot. ‘It will not fool her, or any mage, if they summon the courage to touch it. Nor will it do anyone grievous harm. You may lift it and take it away.’

‘But from a distance?’

‘It would fool its very maker. And when Macadra draws near — within a few miles, say — it will call to her.’

‘A few miles! Is that all?’

The demon shrugged. ‘You did not ask me to improve on the Nilstone.’

Rose ran his fingers through his beard. ‘No, I did not. And it is better this way. For perhaps she knows the true stone well.’

‘She saw it wielded by Erithusme,’ said the maukslar, ‘and since that day it has haunted her dreams.’ Then the creature gripped the bars of the cell, and its voice grew soft and deadly.

‘Rose. . ’

The captain felt an unfamiliar kick inside his ribcage. His own heart. His tongue, too: all wrong, the way it cowered against the roof of his mouth. He looked for Kurlstaff. The ghost was fleeing down the passage with a swish of tattered skirt. The maukslar’s teeth were showing. Rose pulled open the door.

Not everyone heard it, and most who did thought that they dreamed. A strange dream, a dream that was pure sound. A whoop, a wild cry that made eyes snap open all over the ship. Was it man, dog, steam whistle? No one could be sure, for in the very act of opening their eyes the sound had gone. No one was moved to investigate. A