The Night of the Swarm

makes you fall in love with the one you touched. And that one lures you away from the others and kills you. They got half a dozen of us that way.’ He looked at Pazel for a moment, then plunged on. ‘It happened to me again, you see, with another sort of woman. Just one touch. Only she didn’t want to kill me. She was saving my life. And the love was real. I mean, Pitfire, I don’t know that there’s any other sort of love.’

‘What about the murth-girl? Do you still think about her?’

‘Oh, not at all. That was just a charm, just a little confusion. Magic can’t change the heart, Pazel. They told me that in — well, in a place where they know about such things. And I found it out myself, the hard way. Trust me: if it lasts more than an hour, it’s real.’

He looked over his shoulder, then leaned close to Pazel and said, ‘You remember Thasha, don’t you? Thasha Isiq? The one who stayed on the ship?’

Pazel spoke very carefully. ‘I remember her just fine.’

‘They say she’ll come back one day. From the land of the dead.’ Neeps’ eyes were moist. ‘Lunja, my woman Lunja, won’t be coming back. But if she did-’

He broke off Pazel wanted to embrace him. They looked away from each other, suddenly abashed. ‘I have no idea why I’m talking to you,’ said Neeps.

‘Because you’re a good bloke, that’s why.’

‘Lunja made me a better one. She made me larger, you see. She made room in my heart. And that’s better for everyone, I guess.’

Marila stood wrapped in a blanket under the starlight, bedraggled and enormously pregnant. ‘Hello, tarboys,’ she said sleepily, as Neeps pulled her close. ‘What took you so long? They got tired of waiting. They’re running a loop out there somewhere, and coming back for you, Pazel.’ She yawned. ‘I don’t know why they’re crossing in the middle of the night.’

‘You didn’t have to get up,’ Pazel said.

‘I wanted to,’ she said simply. ‘Oh, and Ramachni sent you a package; it’s already aboard.’ She looked at him, thoughtful. ‘He cares a lot about you. Why is that, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘We have friends in common.’

It was too vague an answer for Marila, but this time she merely shrugged. ‘Be careful out there, will you? The world is stranger than you think.’

‘That’s hardly possible,’ he said. ‘All right, then. Good luck with that school.’

They smiled. Long ago Marila had admitted that she wanted to start a school for the deaf. The dream was still with her, and Neeps, it appeared, had begun to see the possibilities as well.

Pazel looked at Marila’s round belly. ‘What about a name?’ he asked. ‘Have you chosen one yet?’

They hesitated, glancing sidelong at each other. ‘It’s strange, really,’ said Neeps. ‘We’re agreed that if it’s a girl we’ll call her Diadrelu, after a friend who died. But if it’s a boy — well, that’s the odd part. We chose one. We both remember making a decision, and being very sure. But we can’t for the life of us remember what it was.’

‘It was such a good name,’ said Marila, looking at him earnestly. ‘So good we don’t want to talk about any others, just yet. We’re still hoping we remember.’

Pazel looked at her with wonder. ‘I hope so too,’ he said at last.

‘Well, here’s your boat,’ said Neeps, a bit relieved, as a sleek little clipper drew alongside. ‘Goodbye, Pazel. If you ever make it out Sollochstol way, you’ve got friends.’

‘I’ll remember,’ he said. Then he took their hands and held them a long while, until he knew he had made them uncomfortable. On the clipper, a man was shouting. All aboard who’s coming aboard.

‘Thank you for everything,’ said Pazel, and let them go.

He spoke as little as possible to the men on the clipper. He did not look back to see if Neeps and Marila were still standing by the rail. They were bound for the Outer Isles, and it seemed likely that he would never see them again. At the moment the thought was more than he could bear.

The package was heavy. Inside, he found a purse of gold: fine gold cockles from the wreck of the Chathrand, a bit of the fortune that Sergeant Haddismal had saved. The purse did not a fortune make, but it was enough to live on, frugally, for a few years at least. There was also a sharp knife, and some clothing. At the bottom of the crate, wrapped carefully in oilskin, lay Thasha’s copy of the thirteenth Merchant’s Polylex.

When he did begin to speak to the men, he learned at once why they were crossing by night. They were freebooters, smugglers, dodging the new tariff collectors of the Crownless Lands. ‘These upstarts have got nothin’ on the old Arquali Inspectorate,’ said one of the men, cheerfully. ‘We’ll have some good years here, before they learn our tricks.’

‘And there must be scarcity, too?’ said Pazel.

‘Oh, aye, lad, scarcity!’

‘So higher prices, higher profits for you.’

‘Right on the kisser!’ laughed the man. ‘You talk like you know the trade. Do you drink as well?’

He took a drink. They were the happiest people he had seen since Ularamyth. Pazel was almost beginning to enjoy himself when his mind-fit struck.

The freebooters scratched their chins. They set him up on the fife-rail, where everyone could watch him babble and moan. Pazel could not tell whether they thought him possessed, but if so, they worried less about having a devil aboard than the attention it might bring in Ormaelport. They conferred awhile, then gave him a wineskin and locked him in the hold. Pazel wished he could thank them. When he drank, his legs gave out, and he knew he had been drugged.

Days later, when he came to his senses, he was far from the city of his birth. The clipper was running north along a foggy coastline. New freebooters were aboard, and one of them evidently outranked the captain, for he had taken over the man’s cabin, and could be heard inside, with a woman. Each time the man laughed Pazel found himself staring at the door.

Later that morning, the man sent for him. Pazel was shown right into the bedchamber. There in blue pajamas, beside a rosy-cheeked woman Pazel had never seen, was Gregory Pathkendle.

He was older — so much older! All the hair that remained to him was grey. Still his eyes were bright with mischief as he beckoned Pazel to take a seat.

‘Pazel Chadfallow, is it?’ he said, making a face, as though the name tickled the back of his throat. ‘Afflicted with some permanent magic, they tell me? Well never mind, my daughter’s just the same.’

‘Which daughter’s that, love?’ said the woman.

‘I don’t mind a man with problems he owns up to,’ said Captain Gregory, ‘but there’s one thing I can’t abide. Can you guess what it is?’

‘Domesticity?’ said Pazel.

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘No sir, I can’t guess.’

‘Boasting, that’s what,’ said Gregory. ‘So I have in mind to find out if you were boasting when you told my boys you knew your way around a ship.’

He drilled Pazel for some ten minutes concerning sails and rigging and the standard etiquette of the sea. Then he asked Pazel about his surname.

‘I knew a Chadfallow. He was a doctor, and a great man, although he was too close to the Usurper in Etherhorde. He was one of the most powerful men in Alifros, in his time. Do you know the man I’m speaking of?’

‘Ignus Chadfallow,’ said Pazel uneasily. ‘I knew him. I’m his son.’

The woman burst out laughing. But Captain Gregory just looked him up and down. Pazel found himself remembering certain mornings when the woman beside Gregory had been his mother, and the window behind the bed had looked out on plum orchards. There had been mornings when this man made griddle-cakes, or took Pazel out to edge of the Highlands to spot foxes and deer. A small, sweet life. A life he’d never thought would end.

‘Hush your cackling,’ Gregory told the woman. ‘The lad didn’t lie about his sailing smarts; why should he lie about his father? And even the noblest among us may sew a few wild seeds.’

‘You’re proof of that.’

Gregory kissed her. ‘Even dry old Chadfallow had a passionate side. I happen to know that for a fact.’ He