The Night of the Swarm

man, we’ll have to make them listen, won’t we?’

Isiq made no reply. It was of course quite possible that they were going nowhere, that Maisa was long dead, that Gregory and his wife were lunatics. More likely they were just fools, used to trickery and luck, and the successes available to the bold in a place as chaotic as the Crownless Lands. Gregory was known as a dogged fighter and a slippery eel. But his fame had been earned in peacetime, and this was war again, Gods forgive us, Imperial war.

She might also be alive, but senile and hopeless. That would be a joke to Ott’s liking, to kill her sons before they could grow up and menace him, and leave the broken mother to rave and wither and divert the energies of those who might oppose the usurper — to concentrate them behind a single, hopeless symbol of what they had lost.

Of course the woman they were rushing to meet might simply be an impostor. None of these people had seen Maisa before her fall, and the Empress had suffered few to paint her portrait: ‘That nonsense can wait,’ she’d said in Isiq’s hearing, ‘until we finish this war.’ The admiral smiled. An impostor, wasn’t that likely? Some card sharp of an actress, washed up, nothing left to lose. What better role to play than that of long-lost Maisa, the answer to the dreams of desperate men?

The brig fired a warning shot. ‘They outgun you, Captain,’ said Isiq.

‘As we have no guns, that’s sure to be true.’

Isiq shook his head. Luck was like deathsmoke: start relying on it, and your soul gets lazy, until you can’t recall how you ever did without it. Then one day it’s snatched from you. Prayer stops working; the Gods tire of your flattery. The scales tilt; you slide into the abyss.

But not today, Gregory Pathkendle. Madman or gambler, you’ll not lead us to our deaths. His eyes slid surreptitiously about the deck. It was true; the men had all stowed their arms elsewhere. But he, Isiq, still had the dagger from King Oshiram, and the stiletto he’d killed a man with the week before. I don’t wish to, Gregory. I like you and your people. But I’ll do it, by all the Gods. I’ll put my hand on the scales.

‘Have you seen Tholjassa in winter?’ asked Gregory suddenly. ‘Horrific place. The sea fog blows in and freezes, inches thick. You take a chisel to your doors to get them open. I saw a monk pull the bell for morning service and his blary hand froze to the chain, Rin blast me if I lie.’

‘Of course it’s a lie,’ said Suthinia. ‘You’re never up in time for morning temple.’

‘Just for that I might really take you there, Suthee. How about it, Isiq?’

The admiral just shook his head. Gregory was bluffing: the Dancer would never reach Tholjassa, not with the light provisions they had aboard. Nor had Gregory made any hint that such a three- week voyage lay before them. Where in Alifros were they going, then? Some river north of Coristel, winding back into the Fens? Some island cave? Or could Gregory possibly mean to sail further along the shore?

Isiq started at the thought. Further along meant the Haunted Coast, a three hundred-mile nautical graveyard, the place ships went to die. No law held sway there, and no naval commander would dare take his boats among those shifting sandbars, those rip currents and sudden, enveloping fogs. Smugglers braved its waters, and pirates certainly, but the Haunted Coast harvested its share of those maniacs as well. Treasure seekers simply never left alive.

With one infamous exception, that is. Arunis had pulled the Nilstone from those waters, and escaped with his life.

And the sad truth was that the tarboys had helped him — unwillingly of course. Pazel and Neeps Undrabust had been Arunis’ captives, and the mage had dropped them into those waters to seek the Stone or drown in the attempt. Pazel, amazingly, had succeeded. Isiq had questioned the tarboys about the affair, but found them both (and his daughter, for that matter) strangely averse to talking of that particular day. ‘Pazel had help,’ Thasha had told him when pressed, and Isiq knew somehow that she was not referring to the other divers, or the mage.

The Haunted Coast. It made a horrid kind of sense. Isiq knew for a fact that Gregory sailed there: it was the only place on the mainland still open to freebooters, the only place not yet beneath the heel of Arqual or the Mzithrin. Hardly surprising, that: it was the devil’s own shoreline. Like many naval commanders, Isiq had seen it from a respectful distance. He never wished to see it again.

‘New colours on the Arquali ship, Captain,’ shouted the bald man with the hoop earrings, snapping. ‘Three diamonds — and a red stripe below, by the Tree!’

Three diamonds: Strike sail and hold position. One red stripe: Obey or expect to be fired on. He glanced at the bald man. What had he expected in the middle of a firefight? Sail on, and Rin speed your journey?

Captain Gregory was laughing. ‘Take in one reef, boys; let’s not make it too easy for them. Now tell me, Admiral: where’s the man in charge of this fleet?’

‘Squadron, sir. And I’d imagine he’s in the vanguard, third or fourth position. If I had to guess, I’d try for that great bear of a cruiser with the gilded stern.’

‘The Nighthawk,’ said Gregory. ‘Fine and dandy! That’s our new heading, bosun. Now get below with you, Isiq. Tull here will tell you what’s what.’

He gestured at the bald sailor with the earrings. The man stepped forward, sour-faced, and subjected Isiq to an insolent examination. ‘Can he keep his mouth shut, Captain?’ he demanded.

‘I can if I’m given a reason,’ said Isiq.

The man’s eyes pouted. He turned and led Isiq down the ladderway, past the galley and the lightless berths. The door at the end of the passage was narrow as a cupboard. When Tull opened it a rank smell leaped out at them.

‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘There’s flies, too. Step in there and give me your pants.’

‘My. .?’

‘You heard me, strip ’em off. And be quick, old man, I’m not here to make merry.’

He tugged irritably at Isiq’s arm. Isiq whirled, slammed him hard against the wall, set his his elbow to the grubby neck.

‘Explain yourself,’ he said.

Tull was suddenly meek. ‘It was the skipper’s idea. He says you’re to play a wounded man, a goner. I’m to strap the blubber on your leg is all. And to bandage your head and neck. And you’re not to talk, nor sit up, nor do nothing but point at your throat and gurgle.’

Isiq hesitated. He was a guest on Gregory’s ship, and the instinct to respect another captain’s authority ran deep. But he had come to doubt his instincts, the ‘standards of the Service’, his lifelong crutch.

There was no help for it, though. He was in these smugglers’ hands. He released Tull and unbuckled his belt.

The ‘blubber’ was a hideous masterpiece: a thick, stinking sleeve of boar flesh, rotting in places, bloody everywhere, and clearly the source of the stench that filled the Dancer’s tiny sickbay. When Tull slid it over his naked leg, Isiq feared he might vomit. The thing mimicked the swelling of a diseased limb. Mid-thigh it bore a ragged wound, clotted with dry black blood. Tull provided him with a coat as well — filthy, partly burned — then helped him to lie back on the boat’s one sickbed. He dressed the false leg in soiled bandages, then moved on to Isiq’s head and neck. When he was finished only the admiral’s mouth and left eye remained uncovered.

‘Your captain’s a whorespawn,’ said Isiq. ‘Why didn’t he tell me this was the plan?’

No comment from Tull; but when Isiq had lain still awhile, Gregory himself ducked into sickbay and made a brief inspection.

‘Perfect! You stink like a butcher’s privy.’

‘You rotter.’

‘Suthinia made a joke, can you believe it? “He shouldn’t gripe; when they snuck him out of the King’s residence he played a corpse in a coffin. He’s moving up in the world.” Not bad, eh? Here’s a bloody rag for you.’

‘How thoughtful.’

‘Cough into it when they ask you to speak. But perhaps they’ll only ask you to nod and the like. Remember, you’re one Lieutenant Vancz of the I.M.S. Rajna, sunk three days ago by the Mzithrinis.’