The Night of the Swarm

‘Don’t move, sir. Don’t speak above a whisper. I dare not reveal your presence, not even to my closest aides. The Turachs would kill us in a heartbeat. I don’t know who’ll stand with us, yet. Not many. Not enough.’

‘What do you mean, stand with us?’

‘Admiral-’

‘Call me Eberzam, for Rin’s sake.’

Darabik nodded slowly. Eminence notwithstanding, he was nervous in the extreme.

‘I saw her, Eberzam. With my own eyes. Gregory’s her transport, and her go-between. I gather he has been for a decade.’

Isiq felt a tingling in his limbs. ‘Maisa,’ he said. ‘But Purcy, where is she, and what does she hope for? Has she an army, has she ships?’

‘Of course not! She’s in deep hiding, with her loyalists. And they are not many. Magad’s forces could snuff her like a match. The fact is, this is suicide. That she’s survived all these years is a blary miracle, but it can’t go further. We’re simply too few.’

Isiq studied him. Then he raised himself to one elbow, pulled the bandages away from his face, staring hard into the commodore’s eyes.

‘It will go further,’ he said. ‘You and I will see to that, when Her Majesty calls us to the task. It will go as far as Etherhorde, and the Chamber of Ametrine, and that chair that belongs to our Empress alone.’

Darabik met his gaze. A fierce delight shone in them suddenly. ‘You’re a mad bastard, Eberzam.’

‘You have no idea.’

Darabik glanced quickly at the skylight. ‘I can’t stay; it looks odd enough that I came at all.’ He looked down sharply at Isiq. ‘You’ve lost three fine women, Eberzam. I’m very sorry.’

Isiq shook his head. ‘Just one, just my dear wife. Thasha lives, Purcy. And Syrarys was a traitor. It was Sandor Ott who sent her to my household. She was poisoning me for years.’ Isiq hesitated. ‘With deathsmoke.’

‘Lord Rin above!’

‘I have beaten the drug.’ Isiq saw doubt in the commodore’s face, and added quickly, ‘How did Gregory convince your men to let me through? Who did he claim I was?’

Darabik’s mouth twisted slightly. ‘Who you should have been, Isiq. My brother-in-law. Only the way Gregory’s playing it, you’re mortally wounded, and desperate to get home to Tholjassa to see my sister one last time.’

‘Which of them went to Tholjassa, by damn?’

‘No one did. But I stopped telling the men about my sisters years ago. They only mixed the stories up.’

It was a grim effort at levity. Isiq smiled anyway, wondering why Darabik had never made admiral. The man had iron strength; his men both feared and loved him, and that was the navy ideal. He’d won more fights than the Lord Admiral, almost as many as Isiq himself.

‘Purcy, you’re losing ships out there. What’s the reason for this engagement?’

‘The reason?’ Darabik’s voice was suddenly bitter. ‘Does there have to be one, Eberzam? Officially, the Emperor and the Lord Admiral decided they had to know how serious the Black Rags were about holding the Gulf of Thol. Well, here’s a shocker: they’re mucking serious indeed. They’ll throw blodmels into the effort, they’ll launch waves of ships from the Jomm. You don’t have to be an old relic like me to guess that. You don’t need to have been in the last war personally. You could talk to old boys in Etherhorde; there are plenty of us around. I suppose you could even cross the street from the club to the naval library and read a Gods-damned mucking book. The Admiralty Review of the last war, for instance. Or the one before that. Of course there’s another way, Isiq — much grander, much more exciting. You can throw your advance squadron at the enemy like a fistful of dirt.’

‘Now you had better lower your voice.’

Embarrassed, Darabik collected himself. ‘I’m presuming a lot, aren’t I? Literacy in Naval Command. A disinclination to get your boys carved up. Arqual standing for more than bloody-mindedness and greed.’

This is why he’s still a commodore, thought Isiq.

‘You’ll be reprimanded if word gets back to Etherhorde. Letting a freebooter past your line of control. Even a well-known neutral, like Gregory Pathkendle.’

‘I’ll give it some thought,’ said Darabik, ‘after I save as much of my squadron as I can.’ He grew still a moment, looking hard at the admiral.

‘We wiped our plates with ’em, didn’t we?’

‘Who?’

‘That gang from Hurlix Street.’

Isiq nodded. ‘That we did, Commodore. It was a strong alliance we made.’

Darabik pressed his forehead hard against Isiq’s. ‘Gods above, let you be all that you appear. Let Maisa be strong and healthy; let others rally to her side. Because we can’t stay long in the shadows; sooner or later they’ll find us out. We’ve gone too far already, Isiq. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Isiq, ‘we’ve declared war on the Secret Fist.’

The commodore declared them non-combatants, bound for Tholjassa on a mercy mission, and the reconnaissance brig escorted them along the rest of the line. For ten miles they sailed untroubled, but at the northern edge of the engagement the Mzithrinis opened up with long-range fire. The brig shielded them, and lost a mast for her troubles. She slowed, and before Gregory could reduce speed to match her a lucky 32-pound ball skipped over the waves and split the Dancer’s port rail and crushed her only tarboy dead against the mainmast. Isiq had just shed his disguise, and climbed to the topdeck to find Gregory on his knees, head bowed, the youth’s bloody corpse in his arms.

By sunset the captain was telling jokes again, but his voice and face had changed. The whole crew felt it, and they sailed into darkness without banter or songs. At dinner Isiq sat alone with his bowl of rice and cod, until Suthinia appeared and sat across from him, stone-faced, with a bowl of her own.

‘That tarboy could not make conversation to save his life,’ she said, chewing. ‘But he was Gregory’s favourite all the same.’

‘In this little crew, you mean?’

Suthinia shook her head. ‘At sea Gregory has no favourites; he’s marvellous that way. The boy was his favourite child. Of some twelve or more. This one’s mother is with Maisa; she’ll be waiting for us when we arrive.’

7

On Sirafstoran Torr

14 Modobrin 941

243rd day from Etherhorde

When he woke, Pazel could hear only ringing, as though a bell that never faded had been struck inside his head. He could feel the water sloshing in his ears, and imagined what Ignus Chadfallow would say. Three near-drownings in a single week. You’ll be lucky if your hearing ever returns.

It was dusk. Pazel was being carried up a steep hillside; the surrounding pines were low and dense, and the sharp smell of resin filled the air. He was clinging to the back of a slender being with olive-green skin and black feathers for eyebrows. A selk. Pazel had met one only the week before, in the temple of Vasparhaven, the first and only such encounter in his life.

The selk who carried him was a woman. She was strangely beautiful, though it was a severe kind of beauty, and quite unlike that of any human or dlomu. The other two were men. All three wore plain grey tunics. No shoes, no helms or armour. But on their belts they wore swords, long straight blades that glistened red in the dying sunlight, as though made not of steel but coloured glass.

‘Thasha-’

The selk woman looked back over her shoulder. ‘The golden-haired one is alive and well, friend human,’ she said. ‘Your other friends escaped as well. Be still now; it is not much further.’