The Night of the Swarm

plain sight? If the latter occurs there will be a new fear stalking the Chathrand, and Marila and I will be questioned savagely, perhaps even by Ott.

As for Felthrup, he has promised us that he will not budge from the stateroom. ‘They meant to kill me as soon as I complied with their demands,’ he said, ‘and then they’d have tried to kill the ones I named — kill you, Mr Fiffengurt, and dear Marila, expectant mother though she is! So terrible, so mean! And we do not even know what they will do when we reach Stath Balfyr.’

‘You were brave, there, Ratty,’ I said. ‘And brave to go to them, in their stronghold, on a mission of peace.’

He gazed up at me from his little basket, puzzled. ‘They have never believed me,’ he said. ‘All I ever wanted was a good conversation.’

12

Loyalty Tests

15 Modobrin 941

Eberzam Isiq awoke to the laughter of the witch. She was in the next cabin, Gregory’s cabin, and so was Gregory himself. Isiq could hear them plainly; the interior walls on the Dancer were as flimsy as the rest of the boat.

Twilight, the Gulf flat and still. They stood becalmed off the Haunted Coast; the last stage in their journey to the Empress would happen in the dark. Isiq was obeying an old dictum of the Service: When there is no task before you, your task is sleep. He’d been a champion napper since his tarboy days; he could sleep through combat drills. So why had Suthinia Pathkendle’s laugh woken him so easily, cutting through his sleep like a knife through muslin? She was laughing at her husband’s yarn, something about a dog and a dairy maid. At Isiq’s bedside, the dog from Simjalla City gave a low, offended growl.

‘Did you hear that? “Lazy cur”, indeed! Lazy notions about all things canine, more like.’

Suthinia laughed again, and Isiq experienced a moment of ridiculous jealousy. They were sounding very much like a couple, that former couple. And now they had apparently retreated to the captain’s tiny chamber to wait for nightfall.

The dog stared in the direction of the voices. ‘Every time he speaks of someone low or despicable, it’s “The dog!” or “That stinking dog!” Well you’re no rose garden yourself, Captain. You smell like old socks, dead fish and someone’s nappy shaken together in a bag.’

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said the little tailor bird, standing in the open porthole. ‘In fact I think he’s fond of you. He beamed when you told him you wanted to come aboard. Only don’t expect too much of him. He’s not an educated man like our friend Isiq.’

The dog scratched behind an ear. ‘If he says “lazy cur” once more. I’ll give him a mouthful of education.’

Isiq sat up and groped for his boots. ‘Dog,’ he said quietly, ‘you know human nature, and how to survive on human streets. That is fine knowledge, and hard-earned to be sure. But you know nothing of life at sea. There is a code we must keep here, because it governs our own survival. Respect the captain, even a captain you hate — and never speak idly of rebellion. It will be no idle day if ever you are forced to stand by such words. Now let’s get above.’

Nothing had changed on the topdeck save the light, which was failing fast. The clipper was surrounded, as before, by mist: great rafts of white mist, so thick in places that one could imagine parting them like curtains. They were famous, these mists of the Haunted Coast: ambulatory mists, Gregory had called them. And it was true that they seemed to wander this part of the Gulf like flocks of sheep, independent of the winds and one another, capricious in what they obscured or revealed.

Just as well that they had anchored six miles out. For when the mists did part, one could catch a glimpse of the sprawling graveyard between the Dancer and the shore. Men had perished here in untold numbers — upon the jagged reefs, the shifting sandbars, the countless rocky islets that loomed suddenly out of the mists. The rumours were many and fantastical: rip tides so powerful they could tear a ship free of its chains. A black mould in the seaweed that turned one’s flesh to grey slime that sloughed off the bone. And sea-murths, naturally, directing all these calamities, and more.

He looked down at the grey-green waters. Sea-murths, right below them? Half-spirits, elementals, a people of the depths? Could they have provided the “help” Thasha had spoken of, when Pazel and the other tarboys probed these waters for the Nilstone? Were they the guardians of the Coast?

Isiq believed in murths, but only in the way he believed in the monstrous sloths and lizards whose skeletons graced the museums of Etherhorde: creatures from long ago, creatures who had made way for the advance of humankind. Yes, strange beasts remained in Alifros; he had seen a few in the Service, in the more distant stretches of sea. But here, sandwiched between the Empires, so close to the world’s busy heart? He didn’t like to think so. It made civilisation appear fragile, like a scrim that might fall at any time. But something kept sinking those ships. Something more than wide reefs and poor seamanship.

He stood and watched the dying light. He could still hear the booming of guns, distant and sporadic; the massive engagement had concluded one way or another. He thought of the wreckage and the death behind them, the corpses in the water, the poor sod or two (or ten or twenty) lost overboard, still breathing at this minute, still clutching at a fragment of his ship.

So familiar, so shamefully comforting. War was a state of affairs he understood — a state he liked, admit it, for the razor it took to social pretence: minced words, delicate non-promises, games of maybe and speak-with-me- tomorrow. Not in wartime, not for soldiers. You lived or died by your good word, by the trust you generated, by aspects of character that could not easily be faked.

But did he have the character of a peacemaker? When this righteous fire burned out, would he be emptied, useless as an old gunner, the kind who retired with weak eyes and weaker hearing and any number of fingers blown off over the years? Before the Chathrand sailed, he had told Thasha that even old men could change. That he had become an ambassador and would work for a better Alifros. That he had, once and for ever, hung up his sword. He had underscored the point by thumping the table and turning red in the face.

‘Peaceful out here, ain’t it?’

Gods of death, there was a boat alongside! A slender thing shaped like a bean pod. A canoe. Just two men aboard her, large ruffians, grinning like boys. They had glided out of the fog in perfect silence.

‘Bosun!’ snapped Isiq.

‘Don’t shout, Uncle,’ said the second man. ‘Didn’t Captain Gregory make that clear?’

He had, of course: no shouting, no loud noises of any kind. In short order Gregory himself appeared, still buttoning his shirt. The newcomers touched their caps, and Gregory answered with a nod and his wolfish grin.

‘You rascals. Not dead yet?’

‘Can’t die when we owe you forty cockles, can we, sir?’ said the man in front.

‘Forty-two,’ said Gregory. ‘Interest.’

‘What’s moving today, Captain?’ asked the other.

‘No goods,’ said Gregory, ‘but there’s a package for you about here somewhere, I expect.’ He twinkled at them, then turned to Isiq. ‘Get your things, old man, and be quick. You’re going with Fishy and Swishy here.’ He pointed at the men. ‘Fishy here’s a Simjan, rescued from a felonious past by our brotherhood. Swishy’s a halfwit from Talturi.’

‘Those aren’t our real names,’ said the Simjan.

‘And your passenger here has no name, see, so don’t ask him,’ said Gregory. ‘Keep calling him “Uncle”, that will do. And see that he stays out of trouble all the way to the Hermitage. Your word as gentlemen, if you please.’

Hermitage? thought Isiq.

The newcomers looked him over dubiously, but they gave their word. Then Gregory smiled and declared that their ‘Uncle’ had just paid off their debt, and Mr Tull came forward with a bundle of tobacco for each.