The Night of the Swarm

sensations one was powerless to forget.

He raised the flagon, then paused and removed a small object from his mouth. It was a glass eyeball, beautifully rendered. Yellow and black, orpiment and ebony, arrow-slit iris of a jungle cat. A leopard, to be precise: the symbol of Bali Adro, this Empire twice the size of Ott’s beloved Arqual, if the dlomic freaks told the truth. They’d handed Rose the taxidermed animal (sunbleached, moth-gnawed, deeply symbolic in some way he cared nothing about) just hours before the ship’s departure from Masalym. A gesture of goodwill to let a human captain hold the carcass, during those last hours in port. No matter the captain’s own concerns. No matter that he loathed all things feline, beginning with that vile Sniraga, purring even now beneath his bed.

He drank; Ott circled. In Rose’s closet, Joss Odarth was snickering about modern naval uniforms.²

Monster. Fool. You have blinded the Leopard of Masalym. So the freaks had shouted, and of course it was true. The first eye had come loose when he’d handled the carcass a bit too roughly, clubbed the topdeck with it in fact; the second he’d pried out with a spoon. Thinking all the while of the Tournament Grounds, where his crew had been imprisoned, and from whence twenty-three men had escaped one panicky night into that great warren of a city, and never returned.

Damn your soul for all eternity, Ott! Whatever you mean to do, get on with it!

Rose squeezed the eye in his sweaty fist. He had tossed the leopard ashore when the mooring-lines were freed, just as tradition demanded. And they’d caught it, those dlomic mariners. They’d even cheered a little: the tail had not brushed the ground, and that meant splendid luck. Then they’d noticed the missing eyes and stared in horror at the departing ship. Rose had grinned and popped the eye into his mouth. He had traditions of his own.

He would keep it; there was power in a little theft. One day it would gather dust on his mantel, declaring with its stillness that this was a mantel, in a house without ladderways or a brine reek from the basement, a house that never rolled or pitched or pinwheeled; Gods, how he hated the sea.

Nonsense, nonsense. A frog could not hate the mud that made him; a bird could not hate the medium of the air. He was fatigued; he needed protein; where in the Nine Pits was Teggatz with his tea? He put the eye back in his mouth. Better to keep it there, clicking against his molars, studying his tongue, watching his words before they left his-

‘Riding pants!’ said Sandor Ott.

Rose inhaled the eye. His face purpled, his vision dimmed. The old killer sighed and bent him double; then came a stunning blow between his shoulders. The eye shot from his mouth, and the hated cat, Sniraga, chased and batted it across the floor.

‘Now sit up.’

Rose did not sit up. He was thinking of the augrongs, Refeg and Rer. It was just possible that he could oblige the huge anchor-lifters to kill Sandor Ott, battering through a wall of Turachs, lifting the spymaster, breaking him over a scaly knee. But what if the Turachs killed the augrongs instead?

‘Kindly look at me when I am talking,’ said Ott. The captain stared hard at the floor. Vital to resist, vital to deny: if he caved in on small matters, the larger would follow.

‘Boots,’ Ott snarled. ‘Buckskin gloves. A spare belt buckle, a fifth of rum. Powdered sulphur in your socks. A little whetstone for your axe. But the pants, Captain: they tell the whole tale. They’d been altered that same afternoon: bits of leather trim were still in Oggosk’s sewing basket. The hag stitched them especially for you, with thick pads in the seat, lest that treacherous arse develop saddle sores. You truly meant to go through with it. To abandon your vessel, your crew. To run off with Hercol and Pathkendle and Thasha Isiq.’

‘Only to the city gate,’ said Rose. ‘Only until I was sure we’d seen the last of them.’

‘And for this you kept the witch up all night sewing pants?’

Rose sat up heavily. ‘They’re not idiots,’ he said. ‘They had to believe I meant to join their daft crusade.’

Sandor Ott stopped pacing directly in front of Rose. He put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a small lead pillbox. He held it close to the captain’s face.

‘These?’

‘Sulphites,’ said the captain, ‘for my gout.’

Ott extracted a pill, crunched it in his mouth. He turned and spat on the polished floor.

‘Waspwort,’ he said, ‘for altitude sickness.’ The spymaster’s gaze was very cold. ‘You were going with them over the mountains. It was no bluff at all.’

Rose dropped his eyes. ‘It was no bluff,’ he said.

‘I am empowered by His Supremacy to punish you with death,’ said Ott. ‘You were given command of the most crucial mission in the history of Arqual, and you tried to shrug it off and flee. That is criminal dereliction of duty. Your life is justly forfeit.’

‘We both know you’re lying,’ said Rose. ‘Emperor Magad gave you into my service, not the other way around.’

‘Have you believed that all along?’

The captain’s face darkened. ‘I am the Final Off shore Authority,’ he said.

‘Treason nullifies such authority,’ said Ott. ‘You would do better to concentrate on providing reasons I should want to keep you alive. For at the moment, Captain, I have not a one.’

His hand shot out, seized the captain’s own. Then he pointed to a short scar, healed but plainly visible. ‘How did you get this?’ he said.

‘From that miserable Sniraga,’ said Rose, flicking his eyes towards the cat.

‘Stop lying to me, bastard. That’s the mark of a blade tip. A sword, I think. Who the devil lunged at you with a sword?’

‘It was the cat, I say. Have a look at her claws.’

Ott shook his head in disappointment. He turned and walked to the gallery windows, swept the curtains aside. Grey daylight flooded the chamber, refracted through a haze of cloud. It was midmorning but the sun could have been anywhere — high or low, east or west. They were in the shallows of the Ruling Sea, two days out from Masalym, running west along the endless length of the Sandwall. Running for their lives.

‘Our relationship,’ said Ott, ‘must proceed henceforth on a new footing, or death alone can be the result. And speaking of death, three mutineers remain at liberty among the crew. It would be better if you dispensed with them, rather than I.’

‘That matter is decided for now,’ said Rose. ‘I have suspended their punishment. There were mitigating factors.’

Ott shook his head. ‘For certain crimes there is no atonement. You will hang them.’

Rose erupted to his feet. ‘What are you proposing? To hang a pregnant girl from the crosstrees? To hang the quartermaster who saw us across the Nelluroq alive?’

‘You condemned them yourself,’ said Ott. ‘And haven’t I heard you tell your officers that they must never issue a command they’re not willing to enforce? What is the difficulty? The girl Marila is nothing: a stowaway who fell in with Pathkendle’s gang, and spread her legs for one of them. Fiffengurt’s skills are redundant, as long as you’re alive. And Mr Druffle is a tippling buffoon.’

‘He claims he was too drunk to know that he’d been brought to a gathering of mutineers,’ said Rose.

‘Is that one of your mitigating factors? Go ahead, extend that reasoning to the entire crew. Amnesty for drunkards. Pickle yourself before you challenge my command.’

Rose’s mouth twisted. The spymaster looked caught between amusement and outrage. ‘You can’t have gone soft?’ he demanded. ‘You, Nilus Rose? The man I watched strangling Pazel Pathkendle in the liquor vault? You, who sent a boatload of men ashore to pick apples, then sailed away and abandoned them at the approach of a hostile ship?’

‘My hand was forced. As you would know if you had not been imprisoned.’

‘But I was imprisoned, Rose — and once freed, I dealt with those who had imprisoned me, and rid the ship of them.’

‘That remains to be seen.’

‘You’re splitting hairs, now,’ said Ott. ‘Some of the crawlies fled into Masalym. Others we killed. They are gone, neutralised. That is how one deals with enemies, unless one prefers to be dealt with.’

He looked out through the curtains again. ‘I remember when you tossed a man from this window,’ he said.