The Night of the Swarm

Teggatz, in his halting way, put the cap on the discussion. ‘Plapp, Burnscove — is it bad to have them aboard? Too bad! Nasty, icky, wash your hands. Only one thing could be worse.’

‘And that would be, Mr Teggatz?’

‘Not having them,’ he said.

Thursday, 14 Halar. A spot of embarrassment and confusion. The dlomic woman who spit the seeds that day caught me looking at her. She was kneeling beside a bucket, bathing her face and arms. I think it was the way her half-webbed hands held the sponge that made me stare. I’m sure I did not know I was doing it, though, until those sly silver eyes caught my own and held me like a predator for a moment. I turned away, reddening, and she mumbled something caustic that made her fellow dlomu laugh. Their eyes tracked me too, until I invented a reason to march swiftly amidships. She is lovely. Also hideous. Black skin and silver hair and bright eyes that can’t ever be read.

Friday, 15 Halar.

Of the two ganglords, Darius Plapp has generally distinguished himself as the stupider (a remarkable achievement). In a bar in Etherhorde, I watched him drop a fat purse before a stunning, green-eyed girl seated alone at a table for two.

‘It’s a blary crime, love,’ he said, ‘a peach like you, sittin’ there all neglected-like. Tuck that gold away, now, and come upstairs. I’ll tickle your sweet spot. Might even make you laugh a bit.’

The room fell suddenly silent. Plapp went on leering at her, a tomcat watching a bird. At last the girl did indeed tuck his gold away, gazing at him with disbelief. And then he found out why she was ‘all neglected-like’, when Sergeant Drellarek (‘the Throatcutter’) returned from the privy. Plapp’s departure was so fast it was almost a magic trick. I expect he gave her more laughs than he’d counted on.

As I say, no titan of intellect. Yet lately Kruno Burnscove’s been vying for his dullard’s crown. Tonight he and two of his heavies caught a Plapp sailor on the No. 4 ladderway. With the thugs keeping an eye out for officers above and below, Kruno backed the lad up against the wall and set his knife casually to his throat. He wanted to know what Darius Plapp had in mind once we were back safely north of the Nelluroq. Did Plapp mean to go on cooperating with Rose and Sandor Ott, even though they were leading us to Gurishal on a mission of no return? Or was he maybe thinking someone other than Rose might be better suited to taking the wheel?

I have this on good authority: Kruno Burnscove wanted to know if his rival was plotting mutiny. But did he truly imagine he’d get an answer? Of course the lad swore his ignorance backwards and forward. Burnscove pressed the knife harder against his flesh.

‘I know there’s an endgame coming, boy. What’s more, Darius knows I know. He expects someone to spill the gravy sooner or later, see? By talking now you’ll just be living up to his expectations.’

No use: the Plapp boy had no gravy to spill. His resistance must have irritated Burnscove. ‘You think I’m fooling with you?’ he said. ‘You suppose I’d think twice about gutting you like a fish? Don’t throw your life away, lad. Nothing old Darius might do to you compares with what you’re risking here and now.’

At that moment his goon on the lower stair gave a whistle that meant ‘officer approaching’. Kruno sheathed his knife, but he struck the lad a parting blow to the stomach that left him writhing on the stair. ‘You know what I think, boys?’ he said, as they hurried away. ‘I think that if these Plapps keep turning into monkeys, we’re going to have to chain the bastards up and keep ’em as pets!’

The second warning, from his man above, came too late. Burnscove rounded the corner, laughing at his own witticism. There, with folded arms, stood Captain Rose. For a moment no one moved, and in the silence Rose heard the wheezing of the injured man.

Burnscove is the captain’s equal in size and ten years younger, but that did not stop Rose from charging down the stairs at him with a roar. The ganglord should have committed decisively to some action: running like a coward, say, or fighting for his very life. I suppose he did neither, for when I arrived moments later (I was the ‘officer approaching’ from below) the captain was beating him with fists like wooden mallets, the blows knocking Burnscove against the wall with such force that he toppled forward again into the next piece of punishment, and the next. In desperation Burnscove pulled his knife again. Seeing it, Rose hit a new threshold of rage. Most men put distance from a knife by sheer (sane) instinct. Rose just smacked it from Burnscove’s hand. Then he seized the ganglord’s forearm near wrist and elbow and snapped the arm like a stick over his knee.

Burnscove fainted dead away. One of his underlings had fled already; the other vomited on the stairs. I was close to doing the same: Burnscove’s forearm made a right angle halfway down its length, and from the torn skin a bone protruded obscenely.

Still swearing like a Volpek, Rose dragged the man by his hair onto the lower deck and ordered the Turachs to throw his ‘worthless carcass’ in the brig. That is where Chadfallow straightened and splinted his arm, and that is where he remains. It is the first time either ganglord has been harmed or jailed since the journey began (save by the ixchel, who locked them up together, sensibly) and it is a deep humiliation for the Burnscove Boys. That, I suppose, is why Rose attacked the man himself. He, Ott and Haddismal are the only men aboard the ganglords fear. And blast me if Druffle’s ‘suppository’ isn’t turning out to be true. However maimed, Kruno Burnscove is still alive. He is trapped here, with nothing but thin cabin doors between him and a hundred Turach spearpoints. He cannot act against the captain, and neither can Darius Plapp. While the ganglords live, Rose has nothing to fear from the gangs.

Sunday, 17 Halar.

Felthrup has been stabbed. It was a light wound to his shoulder and he will certainly live; already he is hobbling around the stateroom, reminding us all that he has been through worse. More troubling is that his attackers were ixchel. They had secreted themselves inside a cannon on the lower gun deck. When Felthrup passed this evening they leaped down, crushing Felthrup to the deck and pinning him there beneath their swords.

‘Who have you told of our whereabouts, vermin?’ they demanded. ‘Speak quickly or die on our blades!’

Felthrup’s first response was to cover his eyes with his paws and beg the men to leave. ‘You’re in terrible danger,’ he said. ‘Trust me, run away!’ When this tactic failed, he began to chatter wildly about the difference between telling and implying. Still they pressed him, leaning into their swords. Felthrup then announced that he had come to the conclusion that time was ephemeral, and that no one could predict the shape tomorrow would take, or even the shape one would take on the morrow, by which he referred not only to one’s physical body (‘lest we forget the lesson of the caterpillar’) but also the values that define us, the ideas that will outlive us, the philosophies that pass like a germ from one mind to another, didn’t they think so, and how he had read incidentally that the philosopher who first argued that moral conviction was the signature of the soul had also called for an end to the persecution of ixchel, as well as a vegetarian diet, though he did in fact ask for pork on the night of his execution, but had to settle for lamb chops as a certain parasite had decimated the local hogs, and then one of the ixchel stabbed Ratty in the haunches just to make him shut up.

That was when Sniraga pounced. The great red creature had been trailing Felthrup at a distance, slinking in and out of shadows as cats will. Lady Oggosk has made her Felthrup’s guardian, and she never shirks that duty. But Felthrup too has made his wishes known these many weeks, talking to the red cat, scolding her, imploring her to be ‘peaceful and loving’. It’s a wonder the beast has not gone mad trying to square that circle. Fortunately for Ratty, his request only delayed her but so long.

The attack was lethally precise. The ixchel who had used his sword was bitten through the head and neck and died at once. The other one stabbed at her bravely. He was a better fighter by half than his kinsman, but all the same Sniraga hooked him with a claw and flung him high into the air. He came down fighting, but she rolled on her back and met him with four paws this time and mauled him badly. He only just managed to fight out of he grasp. Then he must have realised that his kinsman was dead, for her began to fight a blazing retreat. Sniraga let him go, crouching and hissing beside Felthrup, looking for further attackers.

None came, but Marila did. She had been expecting Felthrup, and came out at last to look for him. She took one look at rat, cat and ixchel body and let out a cry. Felthrup squealed that she must hurry and hide the corpse, but it was too late. Sniraga, knowing her guardianship was done for the time, took the ixchel in her jaws and sprang away.

What will she do with the body? Deliver it to Oggosk? Devour it? Toy with it awhile and leave the remains in