The Night of the Swarm

sixty, eighty explosions, double broadsides, two ships lacerating each other at close range, and chaser fire on the margins. Gregory ran forward, shouting for his telescope, though it was a bit too soon to see the fighting.

They were near the mouth of the harbour, Simjalla City dwindling behind them, the western headland rising fast on the port bow. The little two-master creaked and wallowed. Dancer: her name seemed almost cruel. A light clipper, she might have had some simple beauty in her prime. Today she looked one storm away from the salvage yard. Her deck was bowed. Her mainsail had a stitched-up tear as long as Isiq’s leg.

A blur of wings: the little red tailor bird was circling him, panic-stricken. ‘Is it war, Isiq, are we going to war?’

He held up his hand, and the woken bird touched down for an instant, its wings still churning the air. ‘Not on this vessel,’ said Isiq. ‘Through it, perhaps, but that is for the captain to decide. All the same, you should stay below.’

‘But the sounds-’

‘Are nothing, as yet. Say that to yourself, each time the guns go off: it is nothing, it is nothing, it is still nothing. Let that be your task: to say it until it feels true. You must master that racing heart, Tinder, if you’re to help in days ahead.’

The bird quieted a little. He was proud to be needed. Proud also of the name Isiq had given him: Tinder, fire- starter, the one whose patient friendship had fanned the dark stove of Isiq’s memories back into a blaze.

‘The dog is more frightened than I,’ said Tinder.

‘Have him do the same,’ said Isiq. ‘Go on; I’ll visit you presently.’

Tinder flew below, and Isiq looked back over the stern, one final time, at the city of Simjalla. A laugh escaped him: a laugh of pain and amazement. The Dancer stood almost exactly where the Chathrand had, six months ago, when Isiq first looked on that lovely city, her white sea wall and hilltop groves, her modest spires and the lush green mountains behind. Isiq had looked out from his stateroom window, then. He had arrived as Ambassador of Arqual, ended the next day as a prisoner of Arqual’s spy service. He had lain for nearly two months in a dungeon forgotten by the citizens above, in unspeakable darkness, worshipping a glow between the locked door and the door frame, a light so faint he could barely see it with his eye pressed to the crack. And the rats: he had beaten those bastards, a swarm of gigantic, thinking rats that had boiled out of that dungeon and nearly destroyed the city from within. He had fought them with his hands, his feet, his wounded mind; and he had lived because he had to. Because there were bigger rats to kill.

Of course he had also lived because the King of Simja, Oshiram II, had not wished him to die. He had misjudged Oshiram: he knew that now. At their first encounter he had thought the young king a dandy, a spoiled child of the forty years’ peace Arquali soldiers had purchased with their blood. But a dandy would never have taken on the Secret Fist. A dandy would have shunted him into an asylum to die a quiet death. Or packed him onto the first boat out of Simja, heading anywhere. Good luck Ambassador, don’t write, don’t remember us if you please. A dandy would not have obliged his own doctor to treat such a hazardous patient, nor given him a fat purse of gold, nor smuggled him out through the spy-infested streets to the cottage where Captain Gregory waited to receive him, along with his radiant ex-wife, Suthinia.

Rin keep you, Oshiram of Simja.

That had been over a week ago. Gregory had planned to sail the very morning after Isiq appeared at his doorstep, and had raced off in the night to make arrangements. Isiq had stayed up talking to Suthinia, whom the dog and the bird knew simply as “the witch”, and everything he learned about her was fascinating. She was indeed a mage, though not a mighty one. She had given Pazel his Language-Gift, and the terrible fits that came with it. And she had come over the Ruling Sea to fight Arunis, with a great company that had been almost entirely slaughtered.

Isiq had gone to sleep at last upon a quilt on her floor. Less than an hour later Gregory shook him roughly awake. There was no sign of Suthinia.

‘What is it? What is it?’

‘The mucking Secret Fist,’ said Gregory, shoving Isiq’s boots onto his feet. ‘They’re raiding the house across the street. Get up, move, or we’ll be dead in seconds.’

They fled by the back door, careening like a pair of clumsy thieves. Flames danced in an upper window across the avenue. Down a short alley they dashed, then turned and ran flat out for several long city blocks, the dog racing ahead to check the corners. At last Gregory let them pause for breath in a doorway.

‘Why were they across the street?’ Isiq demanded, gasping.

‘Because it’s my house,’ said Gregory. ‘That hovel we put you in was Suthee’s.’

They’re still apart, then. Isiq despised himself a little for the elation he felt.

‘And also,’ added Gregory, ‘because someone’s ratted on me, told the Fist that I had human cargo to move. I help the odd debtor escape from Simja, before your good king’s bailiff can lock him up.’

‘Why does the Secret Fist care about debt-dodgers?’

‘They care about me,’ said Gregory. ‘Just a little, fortunately. But a little attention from those bastards-’

‘I know.’

Gregory winced. ‘Yes indeed, your pardon. Credek, this used to be so easy! I tell you, since Treaty Day my job’s been nothing but a headache.’

‘Why is that?’

The smuggler glanced at him over his shoulder. ‘Because a long time ago I gave my name to one Pazel Pathkendle — my name and precious little else. And rumour has it that on Treaty Day Pazel did a splendid job of pissing off the Imperial Spymaster.’

So did I, thought the admiral.

As if divining his thought, Gregory added, ‘They weren’t looking for you, Isiq. If they knew you were alive I couldn’t do a thing for you. No one could, not even the king.’

‘All the same, I am sorry about your house.’

Gregory shook his head. ‘Suthee told me the place had too many windows. I do hate it when she’s right.’

They moved on, turning at the next corner, creeping in the shadow of a high brick wall. Another turn, and they were in a narrow lot, stepping through trash and reeking puddles, until at last they reached a padlocked gate. Cursing, Gregory rattled it, again and again, looking back fearfully the way they’d come. Then soft footsteps, young feminine fingers on the iron bars, and a woman’s elfin face smiling through them, warily.

‘Rajul!’ said Gregory. ‘We’re not here for you — for any of you. This is the man I spoke of, the one you’re to ask no questions about. Give me that key, girl. He will pay you more than handsomely.’

They had stowed Isiq in a dovecot on the brothel roof. Utterly safe, perfectly wretched. The cooing of the birds indistinguishable from the moans of clients in the chambers below. Eight frigid, lice-bitten days, and he didn’t mind any of it. He had a pact of sorts with the Gods of Death: those cruel, unfashionable Gods, the ones the monks called ‘hermits in the hills’. They would let him live each day so that he might amuse them with greater folly the next. If they had let him perish in Queen Mirkitj’s dungeon, they’d never have seen him fight the rats. And if he died here of some dove-shit disease — oh, the sport they’d be missing, the spectacle!

The women brought him food and water and bad wine, and left with his gold. Isiq dared not sit near the window, but he could lie on his stomach and raise himself on his elbows, peeping down at the port district, and a stretch of land beyond the city wall. He saw the little Simjan fighting fleet — aging, third-rate frigates of forty or sixty guns, some of them built in Arqual itself — gamely holding the mouth of the bay. He saw the little charity ships built by the Templar monks, rushing to the docks with wounded civilians. He saw the wrecking crew at work on the Mzithrini shrine.

King Oshiram had told him about the shrine. The Babqri Father had been killed there, just after Treaty Day, and to the Mzithrini way of thinking such an illustrious death made the place unclean, from the first drop of blood until the end of time. The Mzithrini delegation had abandoned Simja. Now, months later, they were paying Simjan labourers to tear the once-holy shrine apart, and to cast the stones into the sea.

They had still been at it, that chiselling, hammering mob, when Gregory and two of his officers had come for Isiq, declaring it time to make a run for the Dancer. Gregory had thanked the presiding madam with a shameless kiss. Once aboard the vessel, Suthinia had glared at Gregory, and even more so at Isiq, who had brought peril on them all.