The Night of the Swarm

It was Thasha’s blanket.

He squealed, horrified, and ran blind along the edge of the loft. It was hers, unquestionably: the very blanket he and Marila had been sitting on not two hours before. The wreck was not some alien Chathrand from hundreds of years ago, manned by long-forgotten strangers. It was his ship, his people. They were the ones who had been marooned here, who had lived out their lives on this fingernail of sand.

‘Aya Rin! There are no Gods! Only cruelty and agony, endless suffering for all people, a mass of pointless woe!’

The curtain flew back, and Felthrup squealed again. Diadrelu’s brother, Lord Talag, stood before him, a hand on the pommel of his sword.

He looked as strong and fit as Felthrup remembered him at their first encounter; he had recovered entirely from his imprisonment by the rats. Yet he was changed, and not for the better. There was a raggedness about his hair and clothing. Deep lines creased his face, and his eyes were spectral. Felthrup had the impression that Talag was both studying him closely and somehow not seeing him at all.

‘Come here,’ he murmured.

Talag turned his back and walked away. The loft was nearly empty. There was a single chair, ixchel-sized, beneath the unglazed window; and a shape wrapped in oilskins about the size of a human’s toolbox against one wall, and nothing more. Talag went to the chair and looked at it in silence. His back was to Felthrup; his hands were in fists.

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that blasted magic wall is still intact? The whole ship is falling to pieces, washing out into the Nelluroq, and yet we still cannot enter the stateroom. My sister knew a way in, but I have not been able to find it. There could be bodies in that chamber for all we know.’

‘My lord-’

‘You are not vile, Master Felthrup. I know this. But you have come here for naught, and to your own misfortune.’

‘I have come with a warning,’ said Felthrup.

‘How benevolent of you,’ said Talag.

‘You may jest, my lord,’ continued Felthrup, ‘but I fear my warning is dire.’

‘Do you imagine we have abandoned all vigilance? We fled the Chathrand to avoid extermination, but some of us are always aboard. We know how she fares. How her crew’s hopes are drying to dust. We know too that she is hunted, and that if it comes to open battle, she will lose. I went aloft when the armada passed in the gulf. I saw the devilships of Bali Adro. If you think to inform me that our lives are yet in Rose’s bloodstained hands, do not bother. I know it all too well.’

‘Your people see what is before their eyes, Lord Talag,’ said Felthrup. ‘But the greatest peril is not aboard the Chathrand at all. Nor has it been, since Arunis took the Nilstone ashore.’

‘Your witch would have us believe that Arunis is dead.’

‘Dead he may be, yet the Nilstone remains. And you who had a hand in its finding: you too must bear a part of the burden, and help to cast the Stone out of Alifros.’

‘I played no part whatsoever in the finding of the Stone.’

Felthrup took a deep breath. He had forgotten how Talag lied.

‘You passed Ott forgeries that made this whole journey seem possible. Dri told us, my lord. Those chart headings, from Stath Balfyr to Gurishal: you invented them. Without you Ott might still be conspiring in Castle Maag, and the Stone might yet be hidden in that iron wolf at the bottom of the sea. And if the Stone is now taken by Macadra then we shall never get it back, for she will enfortress herself in the heart of Bali Adro as she works to unlock its maleficent-’

‘Felthrup, be still,’ said Talag, startling the rat with the plainness of his speech. ‘You will not persuade me, you know. We should never have paid attention to the squabbling of giants, their wars and sorceries and deceits. We use them, manipulate them. We are artists in that way. But we do not take sides in their intrigues. The ixchel know better, as a race, and have known for centuries. You should let me recount some of our legends, one day. They are nobler than anything you will find in giants’ books. And they warn us, rat: never collaborate, never lower your guard. If you do so, the giants will step on you. Every time.’

‘This is a new day, my lord. Ancient tales cannot show us the way forward. We must seek it ourselves.’

‘You want me to intervene, do you not? To force the ship about, oblige Rose to sail back and look for your allies on the Bali Adro mainland?’

Lord Rin above! thought Felthrup. Is he saying that he could?

Talag raised his eyes to the window. ‘I do not hate your Pazel Pathkendle, your Thasha Isiq,’ he said. ‘They saved twenty of my people from their own, on the day of slaughter in Masalym. But we are nearing Stath Balfyr at long last. I will not sacrifice the dream of our clan for their sake — even if there were hope of finding them alive. My sister became a partisan in their factional wars, and the results were catastrophic.’

Felthrup squirmed. Impatience was making him short of breath. ‘The catastrophe was brewing already,’ he said. ‘The choices of your noble sister prevented it from becoming absolute.’

‘My escape from captivity prevented that.’

Lies, always lies. And worst of all, lies told to persuade no one but the man himself. Turn and look at me! he felt like screaming. Stop talking to yourself! But all he managed to say was, ‘The Nilstone, the Nilstone is the danger.’

‘We are not a superstitious lot,’ said Talag, as if Felthrup had not spoken. ‘We do not worship idols, or gather in temples to praise beings none can see. And yet we are a people of faith. It is our faith that has kept us alive.’

‘Faith?’ cried the rat. ‘Gracious lord, what could possibly be more dangerous than faith? Did you not see enough of faith when you were held by Master Mugstur? Faith is for his kind, for the Shaggats and Sandor Otts of this world. Faith will kill you, if you let it.’

‘The word means something else to us.’

‘No, it does not,’ said Felthrup. ‘It means turning from what is plain to see. It means preferring stories to evidence — and this voyage has spread a banquet of evidence before you. I did not come to beg your aid for my friends’ sake, Talag! I came because we must help their cause or be killed. The Nilstone-’

‘Do not speak to me of the Nilstone!’ roared Talag, spinning on his heel. ‘I know its history as well as you! Giants use it to kill giants! And they will go on doing so, with or without it, as they have done through all the carrion-heap of their history! But there is a place in Alifros where they do not rule, and have not despoiled, and I am sworn to take my people there!’

‘Then proceed!’ squeaked Felthrup, hopping in place. ‘Carry on, advance! Be firm and exalted!’

‘Quit my presence, filth.’

‘But Stath Balfyr will be no refuge! There is no lasting refuge, here or anywhere. And we are filth, all of us, even you. You’re living filth!’

‘Saturyk!’

‘That is how they think of us — the powers who set Arunis and Macadra to work on this world! Can’t you see anything? Alifros is to be scrubbed! Sterilised like a ward before surgery! Aya!’

He leaped, and something whizzed past his head. Saturyk had flown through the curtain, wielding a heavy chain. Felthrup began to run, hysterical, and the ixchel man sprinted behind him. They made a wide circle around the room. Talag stood impassive by his chair.

‘Great Talag!’ shrilled Felthrup. ‘Such a wise, brave lordship! The true leader of his clan!’

More ixchel surged into the loft, shouting in their sibilant tongue. Felthrup leaped over one spearpoint and sprinted past another — why didn’t they just skewer him, a voice inside him wondered — and then the chair itself attacked him, or seemed to. He flipped over it, striking his head on the floor. He came to rest with his bad leg under him, agonisingly twisted.

Talag himself had thrown the chair. His foot was on Felthrup’s neck, and the tip of his sword was pricking the tender flesh of the rat’s inner ear. He leaned low, elbow bent for a downward thrust.

‘I choose to yield,’ said Felthrup.