The Night of the Swarm

‘Come here,’ he said immediately. ‘Not you, Fiffengurt.’

The man stepped uncertainly onto the tarp. ‘Shall I help you up, Captain?’ he said. There was no hint of a snicker any more.

Rose raised his busy head and stared at the man. ‘You are close to Darius Plapp?’ he asked.

‘Mr Plapp’s been very good to me, sir, yes indeed! I try to do what’s expected of me — that is, always assumin’ it don’t get in the way of orders — of my duties, I mean, sir, my duties.’

Rose climbed laboriously to his feet. ‘Do not be alarmed,’ he said. ‘I am going to feel your muscles.’

‘What for, sir?’ asked the Plapp, as Rose squeezed his arms experimentally.

‘To be certain I do not need a blade,’ said Rose. He walked back to his deck and picked up a coiled leather cord. Turning, he held it out, as though for the man’s inspection.

The man shot me a beseeching glance. ‘What’s this all about, Captain?’

‘Order,’ said Rose, and struck him hard in the stomach. The man bent double, and Rose whipped the cord around his neck. It was over quickly. The steward and I wrapped the oilskin around the body and carried it below.

Darius Plapp went berserk, and had to be restrained by his own thugs, lest he hurt himself. Kruno Burnscove too was shocked at Rose’s escalation. He issued a startling order from the brig: not one of his men was to gloat, or laugh, or be anything short of professional seamen, until further notice. Rose himself carried on as if nothing had changed.

Druffle is correct: the gangs dare not touch him while their leaders are aboard. Besides, since the day we faced the Behemoth, there is a new air of mystery and fear about the captain. Fifty men saw him laid out on the topdeck, pronounced dead by Chadfallow, grey and motionless for a quarter-hour. And fifty men had seen him bolt to his feet and resume command. Even Sandor Ott has been put in his place, they are saying, because Nilus Rose simply cannot be killed.

Monday, 25 Halar.

Maybe not. But if he is immortal, Rose is alone in that distinction. The whole ship is rising; there is talk of a gang war. Kruno Burnscove has been stabbed to death in his cell.

15

The Editor Takes Certain Precautions

I am sorry to have denied you the pleasure of my insights. There has been a spot of difficulty with the chancellor, and it became needful to barricade myself in the library, and to write without pause. I scarcely need to mention that doing so is harder with each passing day. My hands are changing shape, my thumb resists bending like a thumb. I have broken two quills, spoiled countless sheets of linen paper. I have experimented with other arrangements, tying the quill to an outstretched finger. It works, after a fashion: I scratch fitfully at the page, like the cat who begs at my kitchen door.

I must send someone around to feed that animal, for I have not been home in a week. The day before my tactical relocation, the chancellor sent a messenger to my door. Reading from a scroll, the boy declared that I was to visit the head office ‘without hesitation’ (did he mean delay?) and to account for the ‘irregular conduct’ of which I had ‘made an unfortunate habit’.

Naturally I laughed. But I could not coax so much as a smile from the flat-faced boy. ‘Irregular conduct cannot be habitual — surely you see that?’ The lad only fidgeted, trying not to stare at me. I tipped him. He fled for his life.

That night I received a second message — this time from the Greysan Fulbreech Self-Improvement Society (of Delusional Imbeciles) — and tied to a brick that shattered a window. I slept through the assault (face down on my manuscript). The geniuses had chosen to attack my bathroom, and the brick landed squarely in the tub, and yesterday’s bathwater. Finding it the next morning, I dried the threatening note, and read what I could: PROFESSOR: IF YOU DO NOT ………WE WILL……WITH A MIGHTY…..OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE!

Not much of a narrative, to be sure, but far better than the alternate endings they continued to send me for The Chathrand Voyage.

I packed my notes, stuffed a bag with clothes, whistled up Jorl. The Young Scholars were waiting in the library tower, as on any morning, and we worked in peace for two days. Then I caught one of them — my favourite, as it happened — stuffing a copy of chapter sixteen into his underwear. An interrogation followed, and the sobbing Scholar at last confessed that the Fulbreech freaks were paying him handsomely for every page he smuggled out.

I dismissed them all. The next day I sent out messengers of my own, and interviewed several copyists from the village. The one I have retained is a mendicant preacher, whose faith decrees that he wear nothing but a loincloth. He stinks, but then so do I.

I have hired guards, too, and had no end of trouble with them. They are flikkermen, you understand. They took a week to find my residence, and then demanded payment in advance. We came to terms in the end, but they are disgruntled, and like to revisit the argument between themselves, with peevishness and poor diction, just outside my chamber. Nor were they happy to promise not to subject the library patrons to electrical shocks. They wish to see the long hair of the girl students standing up like quills on a porcupine.

No matter. Their weird physiognomy had the desired effect: I am free of visitors at last. The terrified cook leaves my meals on the staircase. The flikkermen bring them to me, and empty my chamber pots. I think my food offends their nostrils more than my bodily wastes, and given the declining standards at this Academy I begin to concur.

Since taking to the tower I have had no visits from the Fulbreech Society. I can see them from the window, though: huddling, conspiring. For a day they pressed leaflets into the hands of students, professors, groundskeepers, but the confused indifference these evoked must have demoralised them; now they sit and sulk. But they are not harmless. A few come from wealth. The society’s president, Mr My-Name-is-Not-Important, is one such child: his mother gave the school a courtyard full of statuary. Great marble heroes, chests jutting, weapons raised, regal faces spangled with sparrow droppings. The wretch’s passion runs in the family.

Did he truly wish to kill me, with that knife? I think not. If he wished for anything besides a release of fury, it was to punish me with a scratch. He and his fellow cuckoos need me to finish the tale — to their liking, of course. And they need my singular credentials to see that it is taken seriously. My name on their version of The Chathrand Voyage: that is how they think all this will end.

Irritatingly enough, I need them too.

The society, after all, detests one figure above myself — and I am not speaking of Passive Pathkendle. I mean the chancellor, the man who quipped that he would burn the Voyage if it contained any affront to ‘national pride’ (ask him what the phrase means; you will come away bewildered). He is a cowardly soul in almost every respect, but cowards with authority are more dangerous than crocodiles. Above all he fears embarrassment. Certainly a mad (not to say lycanthropic) professor emeritus who seizes a library tower and defends it with the humanoid equivalent of electric eels could prove embarrassing. Especially if said professor remained in said tower during a Donors’ Conference, such as the one that begins next week.

What could be worse? Many things occur to the imagination. The professor leaping from the tower in broad daylight. Or setting it ablaze. Or a siege by the Academy Police, and the chancellor’s name tied evermore to visions of slaughtered flikkermen, their bloody hands still sparking, their frog tongues lolling on the stairs; and the weird old prof curled in death around his manuscript.

Or worse yet: forbearance. The chancellor waits the madman out. The madman finishes his book and sees it published, and the incontrovertible verity of its claims is recognised by all thinking creatures. The donors, falling largely outside this category, rise up in savage denial. Talking rats! Dlomic atrocities! The towers of Bali Adro built by slaves! It will never do! Flag-fondling simpletons, they would prefer no history at all to one that complicates Our Glorious Past.