The Night of the Swarm

Isiq turned aside and muttered in Gregory’s ear: ‘Are we truly to visit the Empress in a hollow log, like savages?’

‘Savages!’ said Gregory. ‘That’s blary perfect. We depend on such ignorance from Arqualis, don’t we lads? Now grab your things, duffer! I won’t tell you again.’

Isiq had few things to grab. His weapons from Oshiram, his boots and jacket, the purse of gold that was presumably forty-two cockles lighter than when he came aboard. The dog and the bird watched him anxiously.

‘I would welcome your companionship,’ he told them, ‘but I do not know what is to come. If you go with me now there may be no chance of your returning to Simja for a very long time. Nor can I be sure that the ones who will receive me are — how did you put it, Tinder? — educated. They may not know how to relate to woken beasts.’

His words added greatly to their distress. ‘I will go with you regardless, friend Isiq,’ said the tailor bird at last. ‘My brainless darling has forgotten me, as she does every spring. Let her nest with someone else, someone better suited to matrimony. I have other things on my mind.’

‘And I will stay on the Dancer,’ said the dog, ‘if you will ask Captain Foulmouth to return me to the city at his earliest convenience. The witch has said enough about your cause to make me want to help. But Simjalla is the place I know. Her streets, her smells, her gossip. That is where I can be of use to you, if anywhere.’

‘Then go well,’ said Isiq, scratching his muzzle, ‘and see that you don’t bite the captain.’

‘No promises,’ said the dog.

On deck again, Isiq faced the great indignity of needing to be helped into the canoe. His knee did not want to support him on the rope ladder, and the crew had to improvise a sling and ease him down the Dancer’s side. Isiq knew he was scarlet. He thanked the Gods that Suthinia had stayed below, and then felt perfectly desolate because she had. Apparently he was unworthy of a goodbye.

Gregory leaned down the side, trying not to smile. ‘You’re a force of nature, Uncle,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet again, I’m sure of it.’

‘On the battlefield,’ said Isiq, ‘if we live that long. Today I can only thank you for your deeds. They were strange but well executed.’

Gregory humbly dipped his head. ‘Need a job done, call a freebooter,’ he said.

On an impulse, Isiq tossed the purse of gold back up onto the Dancer. ‘Take what you need to rebuild your house,’ he said.

Gregory looked abruptly chagrined. ‘Oh, as for that-’

‘He took it already.’

Suthinia was there, bending to snatched the purse from the deck. She was wearing her sea cloak, and a headscarf of fine black lace, and before Isiq’s startled eyes she threw one leg over the rail. Astride it like a jockey, she looked her husband in the eye. Isiq knew he should turn away, but didn’t. Suthinia moistened her lips.

‘Hopeless,’ she said.

The captain grinned. ‘We figured that out a long time ago, didn’t we?’

‘Not us, Gregory. Just you.’

‘Now that is unfair. From a woman in your position.’

‘There’s only one position you care about.’

She leaned nearer, eyes half-closed; she placed a hand on his chest. ‘Brush your teeth, next time, darling,’ said Gregory. Suthinia turned away, furious, groping for the ladder with her heel.

They sat like cargo in the bottom of the canoe, the witch and the admiral, enemies and allies. Suthinia, in front, gazed fixedly at the Talturin in the bow. Isiq’s knee ached. He wondered if he could ask her to soothe it with a touch, as she had done the night they met.

Then he heard her spitting oaths, soft and venomous. Perhaps later, he mused. Perhaps in a week.

The young men paddled in silence. They did not aim for shore but zigzagged in the growing darkness, as though pursuing a wayward thought. The Gulf was still remarkably flat. It was very weird, to be gliding soundless among the fog-blanketed shipwrecks, the coral knobs and giant fist-like rocks. The men showed no fear of the shipwrecks, and threaded a course so close among them that Isiq could have leaned out and touched the rotting hulls.

‘We’re no closer to shore than when we started,’ said Suthinia, breaking her silence at last. ‘Are you lost, or is this a tour of the Haunted Coast?’

The young men glanced at each other, suddenly uneasy. ‘We’re not lost,’ said the Simjan, who sat aft. ‘Just waitin’ on the signal.’

‘Whose signal?’

The men shuffled uneasily. ‘I imagine they have more secrets to guard than the one Gregory asked for, Lady Suthinia,’ offered Isiq.

‘How piercingly clever you are.’

She had a knack for asphyxiating conversation. They glided on. A crescent moon began to wink at them between the clouds. Isiq put a hand to his vest pocket, felt the trembling of the tailor bird. The distant cannon had stopped booming at last.

They were passing between a reef and the black shell of an Arquali frigate when Suthinia asked suddenly, ‘Will you start again with the deathsmoke?’

At the bow, the Talturin fumbled his paddle. Furious, Isiq gripped the sides of the canoe. How dare she. In front of strangers. If she knew what the fight had been like! The months of terror, the racking pain, the mind squeezed in a tourniquet, squeezed like bread in a fist. . And to think that this poisonous witch had inspired fancies in him. Longings. That he had imagined them together, someday, when the fighting was done. He should tell her to go rot in the Pits.

‘No deathsmoker ever intends to start again,’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘That’s right, Uncle!’ said the Simjan. ‘But to answer your question, Lady Suthinia: I don’t know. I look for the Tree of Heaven every night, and send my prayers up to Rin. Two good months I’ve had, but you know I’ve kept off the drug this long before.’

Isiq stared into the darkness, abashed. The witch had not even been speaking to him.

‘You must stay strong for your little ones,’ said Suthinia to the addict. ‘Come see me at the Hermitage, as you did last year.’

‘Oh, Lady-’

‘Don’t thank me yet; the charm may not help. And it will not, unless you fight on.’ She twisted about now, pulling the headscarf back to let her see the Simjan. ‘You will fight on, I’m certain. You’ll make us all proud, and what’s more you’ll win your own pride back — with interest, as Gregory would say.’

Isiq wished someone would strike him in the face. He had nearly exploded at this beautiful witch. Even now she had the courtesy not to notice, not to mock his error; why had he imagined her cruel? She had not been cruel, she had been honest. As bluntly honest as any warrior, any man.

‘Oppo, m’lady,’ said the Simjan, his voice close to breaking.

By the Gods, thought the admiral, I want this woman in my life.

Then he saw the child on the reef.

It was a boy, and it was sitting on the just-submerged coral, staring at them. When the next swell came it rose to its feet. It stood no taller than a man’s knee. It had arms and legs and eyes and fingers, yet nothing could have been less human. In the moonlight its flesh was the colour of old pewter. Its face, so much like an infant’s, sported a mouth full of pointed teeth. The boy-creature’s limbs flexed in ways no human limbs could, as though they were not jointed but ribbed like snakes.

Suthinia made a small sound of fright.

‘Don’t worry, m’lady,’ said the Simjan, ‘that’s what we were waiting for.’

‘It’s a murth!’ she said.

‘Of course. A sea-murth. They’re in charge here, you know.’

The little creature made a clicking sound in its throat. Isiq thought it looked angry, and then thought that he was a fool even to speculate on its emotions. Suddenly the murth bent at the spine and flipped backwards, otter-