The Night of the Swarm

like, into the waves.

The bowman pointed. Fifty yards away, two figures sat crouched on the wave-washed deck of the frigate, serpentine arms hugging knees. They were elders, a man and a woman. Just beyond them, Isiq saw delicate hands rise to grasp the timbers. A young murth-girl pulled herself up beside the other two. A strange beauty, Isiq thought, as she stared at the humans with wide green eyes.

‘Put one hand in the water,’ said the Simjan.

Isiq and Suthinia gaped at him. ‘Are you quite cracked?’ said the admiral.

‘No, Uncle, it’s the way,’ said the other, plunging in his hand. ‘Do it quickly, or they won’t let us ashore.’

Suthinia leaned away, terrified. ‘This is what Gregory was teasing me about. Jathod, I hate that man! No wonder he’s not here.’

The two elder murths slipped back into the water and vanished, but the young girl remained, watching them sorrowfully. Isiq muttered a curse, then put his hand in the water. ‘Come, Suthinia,’ he said.

‘You don’t know these creatures,’ she said. ‘You’ve never crossed the Ruling Sea. They’re a race of orphaned spirits. They’re the stepchildren of the Gods.’

‘They’re fussy, too,’ said the Talturin. ‘Put your hand in, lady. We’ve got nowhere else to go, unless we paddle out to sea.’

Isiq leaned forward and touched her shoulder with his free hand. She stiffened but did not pull away. She put her hand in the Gulf.

The four of them sat there, awkwardly balanced, and the canoe bobbed like a cork. Suthinia was trembling. Isiq felt like a fool. What did Emperor Magad have to fear from them, exactly?

Nothing happened for a time: the lone murth-girl stared across the water. Then it came: a touch, cold and otherworldly and electric. Small hands were gripping his own, turning them, feeling his swollen knuckles through the flesh. Suthinia jumped; they had touched her too. She started to shake and Isiq tightened his grip on her shoulder. What in Pitfire happened to her on the Nelluroq?

The murth-hands withdrew. ‘Done!’ said the Simjan, and Suthinia jerked her hand from the water and cringed. ‘No fear, Lady S, that’s all that’s required of us. A bit like signin’ for your pay, says Captain Gregory, or askin’ permission to board a boat. And the beauty of it is that the murths don’t let no one cross their territory but us freebooters. Captain Gregory struck a bargain, the wily old — Uch!’

A murth-man breached like a seal, right beside Suthinia. The witch did not cry out but flung herself away, and came close to overturning the canoe. The murth showed its teeth. It had a snow-white beard and solemn eyes, and shells adorned the raiment on its shoulders.

Suthinia was still flailing. Isiq threw his arms about her. ‘Be still! He’s not attacking!’ But even the smugglers were aghast; this was no part of the routine. The murth placed a glistening hand upon the gunwale, and spoke.

Everyone winced. The voice was part wooden ratchet, part shrieking albatross. The murth watched Suthinia expectantly, but the terrified witch just shook her head. Frowning now, the murth raised a finger to point at the sky.

‘Baaa. .’ The creature’s mouth and neck strained with effort. Now vaguely human, the sounds it produced came from deep in its stomach. ‘. . b-baaaaaa-’

‘Back?’ whispered the Simjan.

‘Baaaaaad. Baaaaaaad reeepestreeeeee.’ The murth raised his finger higher, still looking at Suthinia.

‘Bad what?’ asked the Talturin.

‘Yoooo…helllp. . weeee. . helllp. . or alllll. . m-m-muhh-’

‘Muh-?’

‘Muh-murrrrrrrrrr.’

‘Murth? Sea-murth?’

‘Murrrrrrd! Muuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!

‘Murdered,’ said Isiq.

The sea-murth pointed at him. Then he turned the pointing finger on himself, the others in the canoe, and finally swept his hand in a wide, encompassing arc.

‘Everyone,’ said Suthinia. ‘Everyone murdered together, by something from the sky.’

The creature nodded. ‘Yoooo helllllp,’ it repeated, and this time the words sounded like a plea. It submerged, and they saw no more of it. But as they paddled off, the young murth-girl still sat watching them upon the wreck, and now Isiq thought her green eyes were sad.

Isiq smacked his forehead, and bloodied his fingers by the deed. The Crab Fens. A mystery hell-hole, unexplored by Arqual’s navy, hidden behind the death-trap of the Haunted Coast. Isiq had imagined a short journey up a tidal stream, then a hidden deep-water vessel with the Empress in the stateroom, surrounded by Tholjassan guards. But as they rode the swell in among the bulrushes and black trees, the Simjan remarked casually that he hoped they’d arrive in time for dinner. ‘No one dines this late, surely?’ said Isiq. The man looked back at him, confused. Then he smiled. ‘I meant dinner tomorrow night, Uncle. And that’s if we hurry, and there’s not a squall.’

Isiq feared it would be a torturous trip. His knee was on fire and he could not straighten it, and the night was frigid, and he had nothing to do with his hands. But things turned out much better than he expected. The canoe had impressed him already among the corals and shipwrecks; here in the Fens it proved a revelation. It cut water like a knife, turned like a damselfish, skimmed through shallows where a rowboat would have run aground. And when the stream narrowed and the insects found them, the two men sprang into action, rearranging their cargo and urging the passengers to lie flat. Blessed relief! His leg was straight at last! He passed the tailor bird to the Simjan; the creature was fond of any man who, like ‘friend Isiq’, had done battle with deathsmoke. Then the young men stretched a kind of cheesecloth over the top of the canoe and secured it at both ends, leaving themselves exposed but protecting Isiq and Suthinia from the insects, or the bulk of them.

To call it undignified was an understatement: Isiq had to rest his face on the canoe’s damp and grimy floor. Suthinia’s back was to him. When he turned over and brushed her foot by accident, she kicked.

‘Stay clear of me, you old mucking lizard!’

‘Madam Suthinia!’

‘Go to sleep! This night’s going to be rotten enough without any of that!’

Isiq almost laughed. Sleep was out of the question. His mind was galloping, intoxicated. They had probably gone ten miles already, and would cover fifty or sixty more at this rate. Sixty miles into the Fens! That meant the Empress wasn’t underestimating the threat posed by Sandor Ott. It meant she had some grasp of what it took to stay alive.

‘He visits whores,’ said Suthinia, apropos of nothing.

Isiq made a sound of polite surprise.

‘These days he scarcely bothers to hide it. Maybe that’s better than expecting me to say nothing, to pretend not to notice what he does. Still, I hate him. I’ve hated him since the day we married.’

Isiq’s heart was hammering. He said, ‘What I saw did not look like hate.’

‘He’s a lecher and a pig,’ said Suthinia. ‘But it’s something, you have to admit — making peace with the sea-murths, enjoying their protection, winning free movement through this land.’

‘He made the peace? Gregory, personally?’

‘On behalf of his beloved freebooters, of course. Little by little, year after year. He went about it like a child, but somehow it worked. He would toss sacks of gold among the shipwrecks, and glass jewellery, and beads. He’d put his face close to the water and shout, “Presents for the maneaters! Go ahead, play dress-up! None of us will laugh. And we’re not thieves, or colonists, or even fishermen. We’re just orphans like you.” And he’d walk, Eberzam — walk from Cape Coristel, thirteen days up the beach, and then just sit in the shallows and call out to the murths, sing to them.’

‘Sing?’

‘Love songs and praise songs, drinking songs, and he’d say how much more he respected them than human beings. He didn’t even see one for the first four years. And if they heard him they surely didn’t understand. They didn’t speak a mucking word of any human tongue.’

‘But they do now?’