The Night of the Swarm

winked at Pazel. ‘There’s a past behind every man, ain’t there, my boy?’

Pazel signed on with Gregory’s freebooters that very day, and in the two years that followed he saw more of the Northern world than he had on all his years on merchant vessels. With his new shipmates he camped in bogs and salt marshes, danced with Noonfirth courtesans, smuggled arms, liquor and living men across the battle-lines. He was aware that he had realised his oldest dream: to sail with the man he’d always believed to be his father. But that had been a childish dream. Gregory’s passion for ribald jokes, for helping orphans, for bedding women whose languages he didn’t speak and whose very names he confused: all that had been carefully hidden. Pazel only now began to know the man.

Gregory’s friendship with the Empress was something more than strategic: he had despised Arqual even before it invaded his homeland. He took countless risks for Maisa’s rebels, whether by sharing intelligence in secret letters or hiding swords in sacks of meal. ‘I’m no idealist, Pazel,’ he confided once, ‘I just know how to pick the winning team.’

Pazel hoped Gregory was right, but doubted anyone could be sure. Maisa’s rebels had yet to launch a single raid on Etherhorde. Still, defectors continued to join her ranks, and the noose about the capital was tightening. After one bloody week in springtime, Ulsprit fell. Pazel was there in the city when Maisa rode through as a liberator, waving from an open carriage beside Prince Eberzam Isiq. Pazel was surprised to see a little bird swoop down and land on Isiq’s shoulder. Prince Eberzam turned it a blazing smile.

But if Gregory had aged, Thasha’s father was actually venerable, and Maisa was almost ancient. Her iron will was apparent in every glance, but her frame was skin and bone, and her hands shook as she waved. And for the first time Pazel wondered who, if anyone, these two were grooming as an heir.

That night Gregory did not come back to the ship, and the next day they sailed for Dremland without him. As Ulsprit dwindled on the horizon, the bosun let it slip that Gregory had stayed behind for a woman.

‘Of course he did,’ said Pazel. It had happened before: Gregory leaving his ship in other hands, arranging passage with friends or fellow schemers, rejoining them in some distant port. But the bosun said that this woman was a special case. ‘They were married once, you see. She was his wife.’

‘His wife? His wife Suthinia?’

‘Aye, the witch. So he’s told you about her, has he?’

Pazel looked back at Ulsprit. It was hard to find the words. ‘I know about her,’ he said at last.

In Dremland, late at night, he wrote a letter to Gregory and slipped it under his door. Then he bundled his things into his hammock and slipped onto the dock. He had forged papers and fine seamanship, and thirty languages to his name. He’d spent less money than he’d earned in Gregory’s service. He knew how to get along. How was never likely to be a problem, he decided. The harder questions were where, and why.

He went on wandering. Now and then he took a drink. There were times when his loneliness rose up and seemed to smother him, and other times when he recalled Ramachni’s words on Gurishal, and felt glad, and was determined to hold on.

He bribed his own way across the battle-lines and walked the streets of Etherhorde, and stood in front of the old Isiq mansion on Maj Hill. That upper window, her bedroom. That garden, where Herco1 taught her to fight. Then he found his way to Reka Street, and was admitted to the Physicians’ Temple, and lit a candle for Dr. Ignus Chadfallow, and stayed there in silence for a time.

By evening he was anxious to be gone: too many women in Etherhorde looked like Thasha Isiq. He fled to Uturphe, and grew drunk on Uturphan brandy, and stumbled into the flikkermen’s quarter in a daze. The flikkermen chased him, cracking their whips, until they realised he was cursing them in their own language, flawlessly. At once they grew affectionate, and fed him raw river eel, and never wanted him to leave.

The next month he stopped in Simja, and visited the taverns there, and listened to the sailors’ gossip. To his amazement, he heard them speaking of the Shaggat Ness.

‘What’s that?’ he said, breaking in. ‘You have that wrong, surely? The Shaggat’s dead.’

‘Oh, the father, aye, on Gurishal. But this is his son, lad. On Bramian. Ain’t you heard? The Usurper raised him like a pet snake, with thousands of his crazies, up a big river in the jungle. He even built them a fleet. And the Shaggat’s boy sailed off just like they wanted, to make war on the Mzithrinis. It was all according to plan.’

‘Somebody’s ugly plan,’ his friend added, with a belch.

‘Until one day the son wakes up and says, “It’s over. My father the Shaggat is dead. I am going home to set the white monkeys free.” And he turns his fleet around and sails back to Bramian, and sets up a kingdom on that riverbank, and starts to bring the tribals into his fold. The island’s full of savages, you know. And the poor old Secret Fist! They can’t take Bramian back from him. They don’t have the manpower these days.’

Seaside taverns were better than the Polylex, Pazel decided. A day later he heard an even stranger rumour, concerning Gurishal. As planned, the Mzithrinis had paraded the body of the Shaggat Ness before his worshippers, and that had crushed their spirits, all but destroying the faith. But on Gurishal too a new cult had arisen: the Shaggat Malabron. A scepter-wielding madman with the powers of a sorcerer, who was quickly taking control of the great island. At his side he was said to keep a strange, foreign counsellor, an old man with scars and a wolfish grin.

Pazel sighed, and drank up. They had killed one Shaggat, but two had taken his place.

At long last he made his way home to Ormael. The city was rank, crowded, penniless, beautiful. He saw his own home, with kindly-looking strangers behind the windows and mewling cats in the yard. He walked up into the plum orchards and helped himself to a plum. He sat in the late afternoon sun and closed his eyes and knew an hour’s peace. He thought that love had nearly killed them all but love had also saved them, more times than he could count.

Later that year he bought a passage to Opalt. He had no clear purpose in going there, except to lose himself in bustling Ballytween, one of the greatest cities of the North. In the flood of strangers’ voices, he thought he might not hear the one voice that followed him everywhere. And that would bring relief, of a kind.

Things did not go as planned. On his first walk through the port district, he saw a public house called Annabel’s. The place was large and crowded, and he walked right by. But at the corner he paused, looking back at the bright doorway. Then he walked back and stepped inside and bought himself some ale and fritters at the bar. He was finishing his second pint when he saw Fiffengurt at a corner table, playing chess with Felthrup.

He took the table beside them, and started chatting when the opportunity arose. Captain Fiffengurt was the brother of the bar’s owner; he was also very drunk. Felthrup drank only water; he was intent on winning the game. But they seemed to like talking to him. They stayed, even as the crowd grew thinner, and Pazel bought them ale and food and asked them to tell their stories, and they obliged. By midnight they had forgotten the chess match, and were telling Pazel of the great waterworks of Masalym. By closing time they had brought him to the wreck on Gurishal.

‘I ran her clean aground,’ put in Fiffengurt. ‘But that wasn’t the end, was it, flatty? Oh no. We watched her from the meadows on the clifftops. Watched her swept away to perdition, and Lady Thasha still aboard. I still, still dream-’

He staggered away from the table, looking sick. ‘Why does he drink so much?’ Pazel asked.

‘You might too, Pazel, if you had lost five years of your life, and come back to find everything changed.’

Pazel looked down into his tankard: nearly empty. The rat had a point.

‘And Captain Fiffengurt has his sorrows,’ Felthrup continued. ‘Oh, he calls himself lucky, very lucky, to be here again with his beloved Annabel, and to know his dear daughter. They fled here from Etherhorde, during the worst part of the fighting. And it has been good for everyone: there are no beer-wars on Opalt, no breweries torched by rivals.’

‘What’s his worry, then?’ asked Pazel.

‘Anni married his brother, Pazel. Years before our return. She is quite fond of him; the man is a good husband and father. But the child is Fiffengurt’s. You must keep that last fact to yourself.’

Pazel rested his chin on his hand, and sighed. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’

‘Good,’ said Felthrup. ‘I have a feeling I can trust you. In fact I will now share a secret of my own. I mean to become a historian.’

‘Do that!’ Pazel slapped the table and laughed.

‘Ah, you are flippant, but I spend every day in the archives, here in Ballytween; it has become a second home. But there is something more. Where that voyage is concerned I have a special advantage. Do you know what