The Night of the Swarm

19

1 Fuinar 942

289th day from Etherhorde

Captain Rose looked at the body of the man he had killed.

Darius Plapp was hanging by a rope strung over the main yard. There was a fair swell this morning: the body swung like a pendulum, and the cloud of flies about him kept getting left behind.

‘Fetch a boathook, Mr Uskins,’ Rose said to the first mate, who was loitering behind him.

‘Oppo, sir. Justice is done.’

As he fell, Darius Plapp had jammed his fingers into the noose. The deed ran contrary to Rose’s frank advice to the man. It had delayed his death, of course, but only prolonged his suffering thereby. The hands were still there, tucked under the rope, as though Plapp were trying to button his collar. His mouth was wide open, as it had been during his final week of life, tirelessly proclaiming his innocence in the death of Kruno Burnscove.

The hapless fool. As though his fate had hinged on the question of innocence or guilt. All that had mattered here was prejudice, the story the crew could bring itself to believe. That, and the swift elimination of any possible rival to Rose himself. As rivals, the ganglords had neutralised each other. Alone, either one could have grown into a threat.

Uskins returned with the boathook, and Rose fished the hanged man near. Then he drew his sword with his free hand and raised it high. ‘Thus do we bury murderers and rebels,’ he shouted to the tense little crowd. ‘No prayers, no ceremony for a man who wished evil on us all.’

The rope parted at the first swing, and one more Etherhorder departed the Chathrand, far from home.

‘Have this line down from the yardarm, Uskins.’

‘I shall do it with my own hands, sir,’ said the first mate.

Rose turned and looked at him squarely, for the first time in a week. Uskins stood contrite, calm, well-groomed. He had not looked so well since Sorrophran, before his conflict with Pazel Pathkendle brought about his first disgrace.

Rose detested Uskins, counterfeit seaman and transparent bootlicker that he was. But what to make of this picture of health? Chadfallow could not explain it, though he literally followed Uskins about with a notebook, hoping for some clue, any clue, to help him fight the plague. Since their escape from the Behemoth nine men and two women had succumbed.

Eleven tol-chenni lunatics, eleven reasons for panic and revolt. The brig was half full of gibbering ape-men, and every time a messenger approached, the captain feared that someone else had succumbed.

Uskins might just hold the key to their survival; therefore Uskins would be tolerated.

‘Stay out of the rigging,’ he said, turning his back on the man. ‘Just have the mucking thing removed. Tell Fiffengurt to meet me portside. And send a boy with my telescope.’

Rose crossed the ship to the portside rail. When the telescope came he studied the island again. Dark, lush, horsehead-shaped. Some highlands, some sand, and plenty of fresh water giving life to those trees. More than that he did not know, although they had been in the island’s orbit for two days: it was extraordinarily difficult to approach. On its southern flank there were reefs within reefs; on the north there were offshore rocks, and rollers that began in shallows eight miles out.

The waves: Rose could hear the long thunder of their breaking even here, twenty miles away. That sound told Rose everything he needed to know. The waves were monsters. Beyond those rocks there were no more islands — only the endless, pitiless Ruling Sea, all the way home to Arqual, that fading memory, that dream. Stath Balfyr marked the end of the South.

There was but one possible landing: a bay on the eastern side. From a distance it appeared promising. The mouth of the bay might be rather narrow, but the colour suggested depth enough, at least along the southern cliffs. And once inside they could tack close to the south shore, and be hidden from the sea while the smaller craft went ashore. They could also put a lookout on the clifftops, where the view would be immense and unobstructed. If a vessel approached from almost any direction, save out of the Ruling Sea itself, they would have a minimum of eight hours’ warning.

All very straightforward. Yet something made Rose hesitate to send the Chathrand into that bay. He ordered a longitudinal run along the island’s southern shore, with every telescope in their possession trained on the island. The survey yielded few surprises. The woods were dense. The birds were many. A small shipwreck on a western beach might have been any two-master out of Bali Adro or Karysk or some other land; it was clearly ancient. There were no other signs of visitation.

Sandor Ott had been enraged by the delay, which came to nearly twenty hours. But when they at last returned to the mouth of the bay and Rose ordered a second, closer pass, the spymaster exploded. He barged into Rose’s quarters without knocking, and even appeared on the verge of lifting a hand against him, a thing that for all his bluster and threats he had never done.

‘It is Stath Balfyr, Rose!’ Ott roared. ‘The location is precisely as we expected, and Prince Olik confirmed. The shape of the bay is perfect. We have arrived. What is there to do but plot the course and set sail?’

Idiotic question. They would have to land, if only to cut silage for the animals and refill their water casks. And they needed to take a compass ashore to calibrate the binnacles,¹³ a task they had put off far too long.

‘Binnacles be damned!’ cried Ott. ‘You’re making excuses. You’re conspiring with Chadfallow and your treasonous quartermaster to keep us here as long as possible.’

Rose had taken offence. He could delay perfectly well without the aid of any man.

‘We found this island as much by chart and dead-reckoning as by the compass,’ he had conceded to explain (how his father would have raged: explanations, to a non-sailor and a spy!). ‘But there are neither charts nor landmarks on the Ruling Sea. If something we took on in Masalym has altered the pull of the compass needle by a mere half-degree, we could arrive many hundreds of miles off course — in the ice of the Nelu Ghila, for example, or in the centre of the Mzithrini naval exclusion zone. That would complicate your plans for the Shaggat rather more than an extra day or two of preparations.’

Ott had been right on a few counts, however. The island was Stath Balfyt, and Rose did wish to delay. But it would never do to admit to that wish, to Ott or anyone else aboard. For even if the spymaster were blind to it, the fact remained that the Chathrand was more imperilled now than when the Behemoth attacked.

The unthinkable had happened: both ganglords dead within a fortnight. Rose had played his only card in hanging Darius Plapp. Although they did not realise it yet, the gesture marked the end of his control of either gang. They could run riot, slaughter each other, take revenge for generations of bloodshed on other vessels, on this vessel, on the Etherhorde waterfront. And then there was the plague, from which no one could deliver them, and the fear that their enemies might yet catch up. The one thing that still could generate hope and cooperation was the prospect of a journey home. If the idea ever took hold that Rose was delaying that journey, not only his captaincy but his very life would be in danger.

Rose jumped. Sniraga was rubbing at his ankles. He bellowed at her, and the cat shot a few yards away and began to lick. That sound. How he hated it. Aloud, to no one, certainly not to the cat, he said, ‘Where the devil is Mr Fiffengurt?’

But of course the cat had nothing to do with the quartermaster. Her job was to escort the rodent, Felthrup, who even now was sidling up to Rose.

‘A delightful morning to you, Captain,’ he said, ‘and if I may, the Lady Oggosk entreats you to call on her at your earliest convenience.’

‘Call on her? In her cabin?’

‘She begs leave to inform you that she is hoping for a family communique.’

The rat was often nervous in his presence. Rose had no idea why, but it upset him like anything unreasonable. ‘Speak plainly or be gone,’ he said.

The rat squirmed. ‘She is pregnant-’

‘You’re deranged.’

‘Pregnant with anticipation, sir. Concerning the aforementioned epistle.’

Rose’s hands became fists. ‘I still have no idea what you are saying, and I forbid you to say it again. We are about to enter the port of Stath Balfyr. Tell Oggosk I am unavailable before this evening, six bells at the earliest.’

‘As you please, Captain. It is curious, however, that Lady Oggosk could be so grossly mistaken.’

‘Mistaken?’

‘She was certain you would take interest in this. . how shall I put it. . this necropaternal missive. But I shall not speak, I shall not! For it’s quite likely that I should fail to capture the ardour with which the duchess spoke. The exigency, in a word. Yes, the exigency.’

‘I would like to stomp you flat,’ said Rose.

Felthrup discovered an urgent need to be elsewhere. Rose watched him flee, thinking: necropaternal missive. A letter. From his father. Another lashing from beyond the grave.

‘Fiffengurt!’ he bellowed. ‘By the black Pits, where can the man be hiding?’

In fact the quartermaster stood just a yard to his left, waiting to be recognised. By his doleful expression Rose knew he brought bad news. ‘What has happened?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me at once!’

Fiffengurt took a slip of paper from his vest pocket, and passed it to the captain. Upon it were written three names. Two were sailors, Burnscove Boys. The third was a tarboy by the name of Durst. From the Kepperies, like Rose himself. He knew of that family, the Dursts. Utter indigents, for generations. Rose’s father had owned the land where they built their shanties.

‘The men were strangled,’ muttered Fiffengurt under his breath. ‘The lad’s still with us. . in a manner of speaking.’

Another plague victim. Rose crushed the paper in his hand. ‘Where were the murders done?’

‘No telling, sir. The bodies were stuffed in the forepeak. Old Gangrune found blood seeping under the door.’

Rose stood very still. Something else was the matter with Fiffengurt, but he had yet to grasp it. The man was normally transparent. During their first crossing of the Nelluroq, this quality had made Fiffengurt’s stab at organising a mutiny as obvious as a sandwich board hung about his neck. But there was a certain duplicity about him now. Something he was both itching to reveal and frightened even to think about.

Rose determined to have it out of him. He stared mercilessly, until Fiffengurt began to fidget and blink. Every one of his officers produced a background hum just by standing and thinking; they were the telltale noises of inferior minds. Rose leaned closer, cocked his ear. Fiffengurt leaned ever so slightly away.

‘Which is it?’ asked Rose.

‘Which is what, Captain!’ Fiffengurt all but screamed.

‘I want your opinion. Do we enter the bay at this time, or not?’

The quartermaster swallowed. ‘We don’t know if there’s seaway, Captain. The reefs-’

‘Blast the reefs. Assume that an approach is possible. Should we enter, should we attempt a landing there?’

Fiffengurt was sweating. He chewed his lips, preparing to mouth some idiocy. Rose lifted a warning finger.

‘I have you, sir. I do not wish to hear lies. You will come to a decision about what you wish to share with your captain, knowing his sacred responsibility to guard the life of this crew. No hiding, Fiffengurt. You will decide, and shortly. Agreed?’

The man was flabbergasted. He had prepared himself to withstand threats or violence, but not this. ‘Agreed, agreed, Captain. Thank you, sir.’

Rose nodded slowly. Then he passed Fiffengurt the telescope. ‘What are your thoughts on the Storm?’ he said.

Far to the north, a band of scarlet ran along the ocean’s rim. It stood about three fingers’ widths high and was paler than an old wine-stain on a linen tablecloth. But it did not vanish with the sunset, and at night it grew starkly visible, and filled the crew with fear. They had faced it once before, except for the dlomic newcomers. It was the Red Storm, Erithusme’s great spell of containment. A magic-dampening, curse-breaking barrier that had protected the North from the ravages of the plague for centuries, if Prince Olik was to be believed. It had not harmed them when they passed through it from the North: indeed it had saved them, by dispersing the Nelluroq Vortex, the whirlpool the size of a city. But now-

‘I’ve told you what I think, Captain,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘It’s still there. And that’s a wee problem for us.’

‘You trust Olik? Even in this preposterous business?’

Fiffengurt took a deep breath. ‘I might not have,’ he said, ‘if what he claimed about the Storm didn’t match so well with Mr Bolutu’s. . experience. They’d never met, Captain. They didn’t get together and conspire. Mad? Well certainly they could be. But neither one of them had a whiff of madness about ’em. And why would their stories match? Pitfire, they ain’t even two stories. They’re one.’

Rose stared at the red ribbon. A single story, but mad all the same.

‘One more thing’s clear to me, sir,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘The Storm’s much weaker than before.’

Rose looked at him sharply. ‘You noticed as well,’ he said.

Fiffengurt nodded. ‘Captain, you were still a prisoner when we came upon it the first time. But I watched it night and day. It burned like Rin’s own brushfire, sir. I tell you it’s a pale, frail thing compared to what it was.’

‘But not gone,’ said the captain.

Fiffengurt stared at the distant light as if wishing he could blow it out, snuff it like a candle, disperse it like smoke with his hands. ‘No sir, not yet,’ he said.

‘I will tell you something, Fiffengurt,’ said Rose, gripping the rail, ‘and may the Pit Fiends roast me for eternity if I speak false. This is my last voyage, my last ship, my last foray into any water deeper than my testicles. Should I somehow live through this I will commission a home in the high desert, on the edge of the Slevran Steppe, of the kind the savages make of mud bricks and straw. I will dwell there with a peasant woman to cook for me until I die.’

Fiffengurt nodded. ‘The desert will still be there, Captain.’

But precious little else, he might have added. For if they sailed into the Red Storm they would be carried into the future: that was the spell’s unavoidable side effect, the cost of protecting the North from the plague. Bolutu and his shipmates had been hurled two centuries forward. Their fate might not be so extreme: just one century, perhaps. Or eighty years, or forty. Long enough for every last person who knew them to die.

Rose glanced at Fiffengurt. Long enough for his Annabel to become a crone, if not a corpse. Long enough for their child to have passed through life without a father.

And what evil, in forty or eighty or a hundred years, would the Nilstone have worked, in Macadra’s hands or someone else’s? What if, as the ghosts insinuated and Oggosk feared, some terrible process had already been set in motion by the power of that Stone? That horror that had passed overhead, the thing they were calling the Swarm: what if the talking rat was correct, and it grew over Alifros like mould upon an orange? Would the Red Storm propel them into a dead future, a murdered world? If he yielded to Ott, would they sail straight into the very apocalypse that he, Nilus Rose, had been chosen to prevent?

Rose touched the scar on his forearm. It was that mark that bound him to the rebels — to Pathkendle, Undrabust, the Isiq girl, Hercol Stanapeth, Bolutu. He shook his head. Two tarboys, a girl in britches, a pig doctor, and a swordsman trained by Ott himself. There was no escaping fate. The Red Wolf had declared Rose one of that misbegotten number. Of course it was insulting company. And yet-

All his life Rose had known that he possessed a fate. For lack of anything better he had long assumed that fate was wealth, a business empire that would dwarf his father’s nasty little fiefdom in the Kepperies. Rose had pursued that destiny with single-minded efficiency, become notorious and indispensable, the captain who would stoop to anything for a price. He had moved Volpek mercenaries and secret militias, deathsmoke and weaponry and the contents of plundered estates. Emperor Magad had employed him thirty times without ever knowing his name. Once Rose had actually paid a huge sum to one of Magad’s toadies, merely so that the man would point him out to His Supremacy at a ceremony in honour of the Merchant Service. No list of his many deeds, no flattery: just a pointed finger, and his name in the Imperial ear. The man had done it, and as it happened Rose was standing near enough to catch the Emperor’s casual rejoinder:

‘Yes, yes, our delivery boy.’

To stand still and indifferent as the royal bastard sauntered on, and the snickers of his fellow captains began, was one of the harder moments of Rose’s life. Not long afterwards he had faltered, stumbling in the darkness of his father’s shadow. Too little graft and larceny and you were beneath notice, a sap, unfit to sit at table with the mighty. Too much and they would wash their hands of you, forget they had ever needed you, throw you to the pack of lawyers they kept kennelled behind the manse. When His Supremacy had taken away the Chathrand Rose had almost stopped believing in his fate.

Then Ott had come to speak to him about a possible mission in the east, and his world had expanded as the old killer talked. I did this, he thought. I made the Emperor take notice, and this is the result. They will give me back the Great Ship and I will use it to make them pay.

At the same time the voice of reason had told him that Ott was a lunatic, and any monarch who relied on him doubly so, and for a time that voice had prevailed. Rose had fled, but the lunatics had caught up with him and placed him in command. Soon thereafter the intimations of destiny returned with a vengeance.

Somewhere between Etherhorde and Bramian, however, a second change had begun. Rose had found himself infected with a strange notion. At first it had been a mere tease in the throes of sleeplessness: a shred of a dream, the whisper of a ghost. Later it became harder to ignore, and now it throbbed like a blister. What if his destiny was not power, nor even wealth? The idea was so foreign to him that it was hard even to contemplate.

Power, wealth: he had known both. And lost both. And won them again. Even now they were at his fingertips — and slipping through them, as though greased. The Chathrand was his, but could be snatched away by mutiny or enemy fire. In her walls were hidden millions in gold and precious stones; but out here they were useless, so much ill-stowed ballast, chunks of metal and rock.

What if his fate was somehow not primarily about him, but others? What if the name of Nilus Rose lived for ever because he chose (late but not too late) to use his power to alter the world? To redeem it, in a word.

Preposterous. A vanity of the first order. By the Pits, he had just hanged a man to keep up appearances! Still, the notion would not leave him. There was a wound in the world, a sinkhole into which all life would eventually be drawn. That wound was the Nilstone, and anyone who helped defeat it would never be forgotten. It was a pragmatic path to greatness — and the only one, probably, given the time he had left.

‘Delivery boy,’ he murmured.

‘Beg your pardon, Captain?’

Rose jumped. Fiffengurt was standing right beside him — and improperly near at that.

‘Quartermaster! What in the Nine smoking slag-furnace Pits are you doing here? Is it your function to lurk at my elbow like a catatonic? Say nothing! Go and alert the men: we will enter that bay at the tide’s turning. That is at one bell past noon, as you may possibly recall.’

Felthrup raced along the starboard rail with Sniraga creeping behind. His destination was Oggosk’s cabin, but first he planned to seek Marila at the chicken coops. They were once more full of birds: not the round, plump Arquali chickens, those indefatigable egg machines; but small, sturdy Bali Adro wood-hens, gifts from Masalym, with eggs the colour of a cloudless sky. Marila had taken to caring for the birds, and was not above pocketing an occasional egg (so very cool, sweet, viscous, gummy, sublime) for Felthrup himself. But the rat was not after eggs this morning.

The door was closed, but Sniraga’s caterwauls brought Mr Tarsel from his smithy to see what was the matter. Tarsel struggled with the outer door (knobs had vexed him since the day he allowed Greysan Fulbreech to treat his dislocated thumb) but opened it at last, and the rat leaped through before he could close it again. Tarsel cursed and shouted at him, but he had nothing to throw, and Felthrup did not stop to thank him, as he might have another day. Sniraga was left outside, wailing and scratching.

Felthrup hated the coops. They reeked like no other part of the ship. They had taken on some ducks, too, and even a few stranger fowl with swanlike necks and wattles below their beaks like globs of dough. These latter pecked at him, and their beaks were hard as hooves. All the birds grew hysterical whenever he drew near.

‘Marila! Hurry, hurry, I need you!’

But Marila was not here. Felthrup leaped onto the grain bin. He rubbed his paws together nervously. Better to wait. Lady Oggosk could not silence two as easily as one.

They had at last decided: Marila, Fiffengurt and he. They would break their silence about the ixchel and Stath Balfyr, tell the captain how he and Ott and the whole Empire of Arqual had been deceived. They might not believe it, and what could they offer as proof? But to do nothing as the ship glided into that bay — no, that was impossible. At Felthrup’s urging they had held out for peace as long as they possibly could. But that time was over. Talag had sent no emissary. He was, however, sending ixchel in ever greater numbers back to the Great Ship, with orders to kill him.

Felthrup had never seen one, but he had caught their scent. It was reason enough to put up with Sniraga. He was, after all, the only being on the Chathrand who could swear that he had seen an ixchel since the day Rose ordered their massacre. And he was the only one who knew the exact location of the magic doorway, leading to the island wreck.

The stink of this place, the miasma. It hurt his head, clouded his thoughts. He rehearsed his confession, before Rose and Ott: You were fooled. This island is the ixchel homeland. Your course headings are useless, a document forged with more care than ever you lavished on a forgery. You know nothing of where we will emerge when we sail north. Regardless of what the Red Storm does to us, we are blind and marooned.

He could imagine the explosion. One or both men would likely commit murder on the spot, and feel it was their right. Violence first; then reason of a sort, twisted and mangled to explain their deeds. And fury, always fury: that most sacred emotion in the human range. How to restrain that pair of bulls? Rose had proved willing to subdue the spymaster from time to time, but who would subdue Rose?

Only Oggosk. She would have to be there when they spoke. If they could not bring the captain to the witch, they would have to make the witch seek the captain. And soon. If they waited until Rose ordered a landing on Stath Balfyr it would be too late.

‘Bother the girl!’ Felthrup squeaked aloud. ‘Bother these birds and their mingled effluents! I will go alone!’

Then he saw it. Right there on the wall, between the ducks and the wattle-swans. Where moments before there had been nothing at all.

The Green Door.

Felthrup’s heart raced. So it is my turn at last.

Most of his friends had seen it already: that ancient, half-height door, with an opening lever so corroded one feared to seize hold of it at all, lest it break. The patch of wall it occupied was the only place in the chamber not blocked by a birdcage. Convenient, that. And even more convenient was the nearness of the three-legged stool. A few nudges and Felthrup would be able to reach that rusty lever, if he chose.

Felthrup stepped in front of the door and sat down. He could feel his pulse racing. Think. Do not panic. Do not be a rodent now. Enchanted, perhaps cursed, the door appeared in odd places throughout the ship, vanished quickly, and did not appear again for weeks. Most of the crew had never glimpsed it; a few, like Thasha and Chadfallow, had seen it multiple times, and the doctor even logged the sightings in a notebook. Ramachni had warned Thasha to keep her distance. But oddly enough, the mage had also told Chadfallow that the door must be opened, sooner or later. That to do so could mean the difference between triumph and defeat.

Which story to believe?

Felthrup pushed the stool close to the door. He leaped up. The door was so old that cracks had opened wide enough for him to insert a paw. He bent his eye to a crack but could see nothing. Apparently the space beyond was dark.

Then Felthrup heard the voice.

‘Help me!’

A chill passed over him. The voice belonged to a young man. It was shouting, but Felthrup heard it faintly, as though from a great distance.

‘Help me! For the love of Rin, don’t turn away!’

Should he answer? Should he run? Chadfallow had never mentioned hearing voices, and neither had any of his friends. Why was he, Felthrup, being singled out? Was it because he had already passed through the ixchel’s magic portal? Or because of where he ventured in his dreams?

‘Who are you?’ he shouted into the crack. But his voice set all the birds to squawking so loudly that he could hear no answer, if answer there was. Felthrup whirled and hissed at the birds, then realised he was making matters worse. Aya Rin! This will be the death of me. He leaned his weight on the handle.

It moved. Old hinges shrieked, and dust lifted around the edges of the door. Now Felthrup heard the voice more plainly. ‘Is someone there? Don’t leave me, I beg you! I’m a prisoner in the dark!’

Felthrup leaped down and pushed away the stool. He sniffed: the air from beyond the door was close, like a vault opened after centuries. Or a tomb.

He shouted his question again. When the birds quieted he listened. The man’s voice came again: ‘Save me! In Erithusme’s name I implore you!’

Erithusme’s name! Felthrup rubbed his paws together in a whirl. Don’t listen! Don’t be fooled, rodent! Go and find Marila and warn the captain of the ixchel threat.

In Erithusme’s name?

Felthrup wriggled inside.

Marila chased after the captain, fuming.

‘Listen to me, sir! Lady Oggosk is throwing a fit! rowing other things, too. Cups and books and ink bottles and little glass figures. You’ve got to talk to her before she kills somebody.’

‘She has my blessing, provided she starts with you,’ said Rose, plunging down the No. 3 ladderway.

Marila pursued him down the stair. ‘That’s not all, Captain. Didn’t you see Mr Fiffengurt? Didn’t he explain?’

‘Fiffengurt has nothing to teach me about that woman’s hysteria,’ he shouted. ‘Be gone, girl! I have no time for urchins, married or not.’

He charged across the upper gun deck, and Marila saw that two figures were waiting for him ahead: one was the leader of the dlomic sailors, whom Mr Fiffengurt called Spoon-Ears. The other was Dr Chadfallow. Both men looked worried and confused.

Rose barrelled past them, beckoning. They followed him past the forward cannon to the door of the little room called the Saltbox, which Rose had given the dlomic officer to make what use of he would. All three men rushed inside. The door slammed. Marila stood a yard away and stared at it, hands in fists. Men and dlomu passed her with nervous glances. She felt very small and primitive and pregnant.

The door flew open; Rose stormed out. Or rather he tried to, but found Marila blocking his exit, a furious, dishevelled, black-haired little demon staring straight up into his eyes. ‘I have to speak with you,’ she said.

Rose lifted her like a straw and moved her aside. Then he rushed off across the deck.

Marila shot a glance at the two men in the chamber. The dlomu was leaning on the table, shaking his head as though overwhelmed by something he had learned. Chadfallow looked almost physically ill. He snatched up his medical bag and ran out of the Saltbox.

‘What’s wrong, Dr Chadfallow?’ demanded Marila.

‘What isn’t?’ he replied, not looking back.

Marila ran to catch up with Rose. He was talking to himself, rubbing his hands against his shirt as though he had touched something loathsome. He even sniffed them as he reached the Silver Stair and began to climb. To her pleas for attention he made no response at all. When they emerged into the hot sun again he made straight for his own chamber beneath the quarterdeck.

Rose hurled open the door and walked through.

‘Keep her out!’ he bellowed to his steward. The man was reeling; the door had struck him in the face. Hobbling forward, he made a gesture for scaring pigeons.

‘Get on. You’re a nuisance. Always have been. Go make trouble for somebody else.’

‘You think there’s trouble now,’ said Marila. She turned on her heel and began the long march back to the forecastle.

At the mizzenmast she intercepted Fiffengurt, who was rushing aft. The quartermaster too looked as though he might prefer to avoid her.

‘You didn’t tell him,’ she said, accusing.

‘Tell who?’

Marila just stared.

‘Ah, no, that I didn’t,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘Captain Rose — well I couldn’t, you see. The timing wasn’t right.’

‘We’re out of blary time. We’ve been here for nearly two days. How long do you think they’re going to wait?’

Fiffengurt looked sheepish. ‘He was confiding in me, lass. He’s never done that before.’

Marila shook her head in disbelief. ‘You and I are going to Oggosk,’ she said. ‘We’ll bring Felthrup; he should be waiting for me at the bird coops. We can’t put this off any longer.’

But Fiffengurt said he could not possibly go with her until the ship was safely inside the bay.

‘How can you use the word safely?’ asked Marila, struggling to keep her voice down.

Fiffengurt too spoke in a strained undertone. ‘We’ll be no more blary vulnerable inside the bay than out. It ain’t the same as landing, my dear.’

‘I know the difference,’ said Marila.

‘’Course you do. Well, the main thing is, we’ll be hidden from any Bali Adro vessels, see? Give me thirty minutes; then you and I can have our little chat with the duchess.’

‘What if Rose orders you to put a landing craft in the water right away?’

‘That ain’t likely. Now go stand over there.’

Marila planted herself near the quarterdeck ladder, arms crossed, as Fiffengurt shouted at the sailors and Mr Elkstem worked the helm. The manoeuvre did not look challenging. The mouth of the bay was a mile wide. The Chathrand had come around in a gentle arc from the south, close to the southern headland, and once past it they could see the bay’s white, sheltered beaches, and stands of majestic palms.

But as they drew closer the forward lookouts sounded an alarm: whitecaps, which meant shallows, or perhaps another reef. ‘Topsails down!’ bellowed Fiffengurt, and very soon the Chathrand slowed to a crawl. A lieutenant came running from the forecastle: there was a reef, he reported, but it did not close off the whole of the bay. The southern third of the mouth appeared wide open. They would have to skirt nearer to the cliffs, but they should still be able to pass inside with ease.

Fiffengurt so ordered. They sailed on, but the reports kept coming: reef outcroppings to starboard, deep clear water along the cliffs. With each report they nudged closer. Elkstem and Fiffengurt exchanged a look.

‘There’s no drift to speak of,’ said Elkstem. ‘We can tiptoe right in along the cliffs, if that’s what you want. She’s a beauty of a bay on the inside, that’s plain to see.’

‘Yes,’ said Fiffengurt, pulling savagely at his beard, ‘all the room in the world, once we’re past the cliffs. Not more than a half-mile to go.’

‘Only if you don’t mean to take us in, speak now,’ added Elkstem. ‘There’s still room to come about, but who knows for how long? What d’ye say, Graf? Steady on?’

Marila shook her head emphatically, but Fiffengurt did not see her. Or chose not to see her. ‘The captain’s word stands, Mr Elkstem. Take us in, and round off mid-bay with her ladyship facing the mouth once again. Then we’ll await Rose’s pleasure.’

On a single topsail they crept on, until the cliffs were sliding past them a mere sixty feet from the portside rail. Marila looked up. It was strange to be in the shadow of anything, here on the topdeck, but the rocky clifftops loomed four hundred feet above the height of the deck. Even the lookout high on the mainmast was staring up at them, not down. There were great boulders poised at the tops of the cliffs. Where they’ve been for thousands of years, she told herself. Pitfire, girl. It’s not as if the ixchel are going to throw them.

Nor did they. The half-mile passed, and soon they found themselves in as lovely a bay as one could ask for, holding steady on topgallants a mile or more from any point of land. Fiffengurt turned and smiled at Marila. She did not smile back. Together they went in search of Felthrup and Oggosk.

The rat was nowhere to be found. In the chicken coops, however, the birds were in a state of severe agitation. ‘Someone’s been here; the stool’s been moved,’ said Marila. ‘Egg thieves again, probably. Fine, we’ll go and see her alone.’

‘Marila, dear, d’ye really think that’s wise?’

‘If you don’t want to tell her, I will.’

Fiffengurt shook his head firmly. ‘Ah, lass, there’s no cause to be that way. I’ll tell her, don’t you worry.’ But there was a tremor in his voice.

They could hear Oggosk screaming from twenty yards, though they could make no sense of the string of names, dates, cities, ships and bodily fluids, all punctuated by crashes and wordless shrieks. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ whispered Fiffengurt.

‘Something about a letter,’ said Marila. ‘One of those crazy letters to Rose that she says come from his dead father. Usually she just tosses them off, but this one’s different somehow. Felthrup knows more than I do.’

Glass shattered against the inside of her cabin door. ‘Dead!’ screamed Oggosk, within. ‘Caught by fishermen, washed up on beaches, stranded by the tide!’

Marila took a firm grip on Mr Fiffengurt’s arm.

‘Ninety-three years of bloated crab-nibbled corpses!’

Marila pounded on the door. Oggosk fell silent. After two minutes Fiffengurt said, ‘She ain’t going to let us in. We’d best try another time.’

He was smiling. Marila just waited. Very soon the door opened a crack, and one milky blue eye stared up at the quartermaster.

‘Well?’ she croaked. ‘What have you done now, you old piece of gristle?’

Fiffengurt cleared his throat. ‘Duchess,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’ve heard some of the debate concerning the name of this here island?’

‘It is Stath Balfyr,’ said Oggosk.

Fiffengurt smiled, fidgeting terribly. ‘Well now, m’lady, that’s quite correct. Only it happens that things are just a trifle more complicated than we hoped. It’s no cause for alarm, but-’

‘The island’s useless,’ said Marila. ‘Ott’s papers were forged by the ixchel. Stath Balfyr is where they came from, centuries ago, and they’ve tricked us into bringing them home. We don’t have course headings from here — they’re all fake. If we cross the Ruling Sea from this island we could come out anywhere in the North.’

Now she could see a bit of Oggosk’s mouth, which hung open like an eel’s. ‘What?’ said the old woman.

‘Oh, and the whole clan’s still aboard,’ said Marila, ‘the ones that we didn’t kill in Masalym, anyway. They’re going to do something and it will probably be terrible. Stath Balfyr is the only reason they ever came aboard.’

Oggosk closed the door again. Fiffengurt looked at Marila awkwardly. ‘I was about to say that, Missy. You beat me to it, is all. Well now, we’d best leave the duchess to mull this over, don’t you think?’

Before Marila could tell him that she thought nothing of the kind, the door flew open, and Oggosk emerged with her walking stick, which she swung with great force at Fiffengurt.

‘Traitor!’ she screamed. ‘Crawly lover! You’ve known about this for months, haven’t you? That’s why you look like you’ve swallowed a poison toad every time we mention Stath Balfyr!’

Fiffengurt backed away, shielding his head. ‘Duchess, please-’

‘Don’t speak to me ever again! Don’t look at me, you lying, worm-laden bag of excrement! Move! Walk! We’re going to the captain, and I hope he skins you alive!’

The corridor was wide and black. Felthrup looked up at the cargo stacked to either side of him: musty crates, huge casks for spirits or wine, clay amphorae nestled in rotting burlap, secured with ancient ropes. The air was chill, and the only light came from the chamber at the end of the passage, fifty feet ahead, where a single lamp dangled on a chain. The brightness of the lamp was slowly, steadily increasing.

‘Sweet heaven’s mercy! You’re here!’

The man’s voice also came from the chamber ahead, but Felthrup could see no sign of movement. He did not answer the voice, but crept forward along the edge of the cargo, keeping out of the light. The voice implored him to hurry, but he did not. Every instinct told him that he was in a place of unspeakable danger.

‘Where are you? Why don’t you say anything?’

Felthrup reached the chamber and drew a sharp breath. He was looking at a jail. Thick iron bars divided the room into cells: four cells, two on either side of the dangling lamp. He saw now that the lamp was an odd specimen of ancient brass, although it burned as brightly as any modern fengas lamp. The two cells on the left stood wide open, but the right-hand cells were closed. And in the nearest of these stood a young man in rags.

He saw Felthrup and put a hand through the bars: a gesture of joy or excitement, maybe, but Felthrup responded by leaping backwards.

‘No! No!’ cried the man. ‘Don’t be frightened! Please don’t run away!’ In the cell next to the ragged man there lay a corpse. It was curled on its side like a sleeper, its face turned to the wall. Indeed Felthrup might have taken it for a sleeper, if not for a glimpse of one hand, where bones protruded through a translucent layer of rotten skin. The rest of the figure was completely clothed: heavy coat, trousers, headscarf. Felthrup had no idea whether the thing before him had been a man or a woman.

‘It is too late for Captain Kurlstaff,’ said the man, ‘but not for me. Oh, please, come here and nudge open the door! There is no latch; enchantment alone prevents me from swinging it wide.’ Demonstrating, he took the door in both hand and shook it violently. When Felthrup jumped again he checked himself and smiled.

‘Forgive me. This is not my real nature. It’s just that I have been so long alone — Tree of Heaven, you don’t know how long!’

‘Tell me,’ said Felthrup, glad to hear that his voice did not crack. He was examining the man’s feet, for he had already discovered that he did not much care to look at his eyes.

‘My dear friend, you won’t believe it. This is the Vanishing Brig of the I.M.S. Chathrand, and I am its forgotten prisoner. It is a cunning and merciless invention: set but a foot inside one of these cells, and the door slams behind you, and cannot be opened from within — not ever. I have been locked in here since the days of the Black Tyrant, Hurgasc, who took the Great Ship and used her for plunder. My family opposed Hurgasc more bitterly than any others in the Kingdom of Valahren.’ The man lowered his voice, and his eyes. ‘He slew my brothers one by one and cast their bodies out upon the plain, where the jackals gnawed their bones. I wish he had done the same with me. Instead I was brought to this cell, in which no man may ever age, and left for all eternity.’

‘You do not age?’ asked Felthrup.

‘Nor sleep, nor tire, nor feel anything but a dull hunger that never abates. I lie still for years at a time. The lamp springs to life for visitors; otherwise I lie in perfect darkness. For centuries, my friend. No one comes here any more.’

‘But someone used to?’

‘Oh, very rarely — and when they come, fear masters them, and they flee like cockroaches. But you, woken rat! You’re braver than any human ever was!’

Or more foolish, thought Felthrup.

‘But open the door, open the door!’ cried the man. ‘I will tell you my whole sorry tale, and show you other secrets of the Chathrand. Did you know that there was gold aboard, hidden in many places?’

Felthrup knew it perfectly well. He gazed back along the corridor. The Green Door stood ajar, but the light of the lamp was so bright that he could barely see it.

‘You don’t trust me,’ said the man, his voice taking on an air of desperation. ‘Gods below, it is almost funny! Little rat-friend, do you know why my family ran afoul of Hurgasc? Because we sheltered woken animals like yourself. The Tyrant had a wild superstition that they were his defeated enemies, returned to life in bestial form. Madness, but that did not stop him from killing every woken animal he could. We gave refuge to scores of them in our family estate. I was raised by such creatures! But for every good man there are five who burn with jealousy merely because he is loving, and they are not. One day some mucking dog informed on us, and Hurgasc stormed the estate, and we fled to the wilderness to begin our life as rebels.’

‘And this Vanishing Brig, who made it? What is it for?’

‘The shipwright-mages of Bali Adro made it, sir — dlomu and human beings and selk, all working together in those days. No doubt they intended it for noble purposes, but they are all gone, and the ship has had so many lives and owners since. There is no escape from these cells save death — and that is what most choose.’ He gestured at the corpse. ‘Kurlstaff there broke his pocketwatch, and swallowed the pieces, glass and all, and so made his escape. Others did so before him, and their bodies were at last removed. Now then: will you not be bold, and free a friend of your kind? I tell you I was imprisoned for nothing. Why, I was never even accused!’

‘That has just changed,’ said Felthrup. ‘I accuse you of lying.’

The man looked up sharply. Felthrup’s nose twitched with irritation.

‘Some of “our kind” read,’ he said, ‘and among those few, one at least reads history. The Chathrand was built five hundred years after the slaying of Hurgasc. To be precise, five hundred and three. And Valahren — well, really. In Hurgasc’s time the name did not exist; it was Valhyrin, and would remain so for centuries, I believe. And when Hurgasc ruled in Valhyrin, “our kind” did not exist at all, for the Waking Spell that created us had yet to be cast.¹⁴ But if woken animals had existed then, and your family had loved them so keenly, you might possibly have lost the habit of referring to those you despise as mucking dogs. And now good day.’

He would have liked to walk with dignity from the chamber, after such a speech. But in fact he was still terrified, and so he ran. The prisoner watched him, statue-still. Felthrup was halfway back to the chicken coops before he broke his silence.

‘Your quest is doomed, Felthrup Stargraven.’

Felthrup skidded to a halt.

‘The Polylex has taught you a little. But it yields its wisdom slowly, does it not? Too slowly to help you save this world. I can do better, for a price.’

Felthrup turned and looked back into the chamber. The voice had not changed, and the lamp burned on as before, but the figure he saw by its glow was not a man.

Nilus Rose sat at his desk with the curtains drawn. Propped before him was a small, ornate picture frame, which he had just rummaged from the bottom of a drawer. It was a portrait of three young women: the two eldest seated, the youngest standing before them. All three beautiful, distracted, docile as sheep. They wore identical gowns: the straight and formless gowns in which wealthy Arqualis draped their daughters, before sending them to temple, or to bridal interviews.

They were quite obviously sisters. Behind them stood a man with a broad chest and choleric expression; a man old enough to be their father; a man any casual observer would have identified as Rose himself. In this the observer would have been deceived, but not entirely wrong: the figure was Captain Theimat Rose. He was indeed a father — but to Nilus, not these women. They were his concubines, his slaves. His father had not bothered to conceal his intention to wear them out, one after another, until their usefulness as childbearers and his pleasure in them were alike exhausted, and then to find some other place, far from his sight, where they could age.

The eldest, Yelinda, had ruined the lives of all three. Poor island women, they had nonetheless had freedom of a limited sort, until Yelinda fell under the sway of a sweet-voiced, gentle-faced man from Ballytween, who promised all three sisters jobs in a wealthy household in the Crownless Lands, and instead deposited them in the Slave School on Nurth. They were spared the long tutelage in servitude meted out at the school, however. A young captain by the name of Theimat Rose, having just come into money by some swindle or other, grew excited at the thought of possessing sisters, something none of his peers could boast of. He had bargained for all three, and the price he settled on became another boast, though he tended to lie about their pedigree.

Before they reached Mereldin Island and the Rose estate, Theimat informed them all of the shape of their future. Yelinda would be shown to the world as his wife, though he had no intention of actually marrying her or otherwise bestowing any semblance of rights; the younger sisters were henceforth mere cousins that he had taken into his household out of charity. They were never to leave the estate, nor to speak to anyone save the peasants who worked it; they were to bear him sons, one apiece, and to spare him even the sight of any girl-child who might be born into the household. During his absences at sea they were to dedicate themselves to prayer, and later the raising of his children. He would not tolerate noise, sloth, disagreeable odours, despondency, laughter, tears, the presence of cats or imperfect table manners. He promised to sell them separately, and ‘into households that will make you appreciate what you have lost’, if they should displease him.

Upon arrival he showed them a weedy spot outside the garden wall. It was where his own father had buried the bodies of two slaves. ‘They tried to run,’ said Theimat. ‘Very foolish, on so small an island.’

Mereldin Island had some eight thousand inhabitants, and most of them appeared to owe money to Theimat Rose, including the Imperial governor and the Templar monks. His estate sprawled over a quarter of the island; his web of trade stretched over the whole of the Narrow Sea. Those who did not fear him found him useful. For the daughters there was simply nowhere to turn.

Nor did he soften with the years. Once he beat Yelinda for setting his evening rum on his desk without a coaster. After Nilus was born the man found the child’s eating habits revolting, saying that he did not properly chew his food. But the more Nilus attempted to focus on the task the less he managed to please his father, who grew infuriated by the boy’s cowed expression and stolid, terrified chewing.

One morning, when his son was four, the captain set a fist-sized mass of raw xhila-tree rubber in a dish in front of Nilus and told him to put it in his mouth. The boy obeyed, with some difficulty. The rubber was acrid and burned his gums. ‘Now,’ said the captain, ‘you may practise chewing to your heart’s content. But it will go very badly for you, Nilus, if you dribble or spit before I give you leave.’

He emphasised the point by placing a claw hammer on the table. Nilus began to chew, and found at once that the evil taste was mostly beneath the rubber’s surface; very soon his mouth was aflame. His father sat at the far end of the table, doing his weekly accounts. The rubber stiffened the harder Nilus bit down, but if he stopped chewing for a moment his father looked up with fire in his eyes. Nilus knew that weeping would bring greater punishment than dribbling or spitting, and so he chewed, and swallowed when he could no longer avoid it, and sat very straight in his chair.

When the sisters noticed the boy’s distress Theimat ordered them all to the outdoor kitchen, which is where they were usually banished when he did not wish to see them. After twenty minutes the boy’s stomach began to hurt and his thoughts became wild and confused. After sixty his jaw hurt so badly that he tried to distract himself by driving a fork into his leg. Sometime thereafter he began to fight down vomit. That was when his father’s looks began to show some interest. At length the man put down his pencil, lifted the hammer and drew near. He watched Nilus begin to choke, raised the hammer when it appeared he might spit. Nilus did not spit but tried to swallow the whole mass of rubber, and failed. He fell to the ground, the world darkening around him, and then his father took another fork and pried the sticky mass out of his throat.

‘You will henceforth confine yourself to proper etiquette,’ said the captain, wiping his hands on a linen napkin and departing.

When he was gone the middle sister burst into the chamber and carried the boy away. She alone had disobeyed Theimat and snuck back into the house. This was not her first rebellion. Indeed for over a year she had been defying him in two respects: by attempting to get pregnant by one of the farm workers, lest he sell them off as defective childbearers¹⁵; and by studying witchcraft with the same man’s mother, crippled and nearly blind but still famous for what went by the name of ‘the Devil’s Calling’ among the island folk. Whenever Theimat was away at sea, this middle sister would make her way through the plantation to that verminous shack among the fever trees, where a nearly hairless monkey crouched in the shadows munching sugar cane, and the wind that sighed through the cracked walls and rotting floorboards spoke now and again in words. Sometimes she would bring Nilus, and ask the blind woman to speak about his future, which she learned by feeling the contours of his skull. To this day Rose could close his eyes and feel those rough hands, smell the woodsmoke and rancid butter on them, wince as they squeezed his temples.

The middle sister learned very quickly, and became very strange. Her name was Gosmeil. Three marriages and as many decades later she would become Lady Gosmel Pothrena Oggosk, Eighteenth Duchess of Tirsoshi.

The day Nilus was tortured at the dinner table, Gosmel resolved to murder Theimat Rose. She confided first in Biyatra (‘the Baby’), the youngest sister of the three. Biyatra too wished him dead, but she was fearful by nature and demurred. And when Gosmel went to Yelinda, the eldest daughter not only refused to participate but swore to denounce them if they ever again hinted at such an act. Yelinda had played the part of ‘wife’ in public a very long time, and as Theimat’s fortunes grew her own stature in the society of the island had increased as well. It grew awkward to beat her or terrorise her into perfect incoherence; he had even to dance with her at the Governor’s Ball. In the end Yelinda had come to believe in the lie herself, and to treat her sisters more like the impoverished cousins they were supposed to be.

Nilus believed as well. He had long since begun to call Yelinda ‘Mother’, and firmly believed that he had sprung from her womb. This certainty lasted well up into his fifties, when Oggosk punctured it with her usual tact:

‘She was supposed to be your mother, wasn’t she? Because you were the first-born, and she was the eldest. Theimat wanted things that way: orderly, shipshape. He took each of us whenever he liked, but he intended to dispose of us in order of age. Therefore Yelinda had a job to do. Therefore she’s your mother.’

‘But he was there, Oggosk,’ Rose had protested. ‘You all were.’

‘Pah. Your father left on a sea voyage before the pregnancy was two months old, and barely made it home by your first birthday. He never saw anyone’s belly grow fat, except his own. As for the rest of us, we let the story stand. If Theimat believed one of us had coughed up a son, out of order — well, poor Yelinda would have been shown up as useless, and sold in a fortnight.’

‘Then who was it, damn you? Which of you is my mother?’

Oggosk had cackled. ‘All of us. None of us. You’ll never find out from me.’

Whether or not Yelinda was truly Nilus’ mother, she had grown obsessed with being his father’s wife, and would never agree to murder. The stand-off lasted for years. In that time Gosmel’s powers as a witch increased. Very early she learned to hoard that power, rarely casting so much as a spell to keep the milk from turning. All the while, however, she was plotting another end for Theimat Rose.

By the time Nilus was ten, Gosmel was almost ready to act on her plan. Then a day came when Theimat raped the bride-to-be of a peasant who worked his land. The captain pronounced himself within his rights, claiming that the (illiterate) man had signed an agreement stating that his debts could be collected in a variety of forms, one of them being carnal. Biyatra had been friendly with the girl, and that evening she herself went to the barn for rat poison. Her courage began to desert her before she reached the house again, but Gosmel was ready for that. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, taking the jar of lethal powder. ‘Just keep Yelinda out of the way.’

But the Baby failed even in this. She did send for her eldest sister at the appropriate time, but when confronted by Yelinda she froze in terror at her own complicity, and could not make conversation or explain why she had called. Yelinda presently laughed and went her way — which happened to be to the liquor cabinet in the den. She poured Theimat’s evening cup of rum and took it to him in the library. Then, exercising the privilege of a wife, she returned to the den and poured a second glass for herself. Moments later Gosmel heard the violent choking sounds she had wanted to hear — but from two chambers, and two throats. She ran screaming for the den, and arrived just in time to watch Yelinda die with foamy spittle on her lips.

It was at this point that Nilus himself heard the noises and raced down the stairs in his pyjamas. His first sight was his father, in the hall outside the library, lying in an odd position with a hand on his throat. Frightened by this apparition, he turned away from the corpse and ran towards the other voices in the den. There lay his dead Aunt Yelinda, better known to him simply as Mother. Over her stood Aunt Gosmel, howling with tears. Then Biyatra appeared in the doorway behind Nilus, and Gosmel pointed at her and screamed that she had killed their sister.

‘I?’ shot back the Baby. ‘You bloody-minded witch! The only murderer in this house is you!’

Aunt Gosmel’s face had twisted in a spasm of hate. She raised her hand as though gathering some force, and then flung it at Biyatra, and with it the curse she had saved six years for their tormentor.

Rose laid the portrait flat. He heard Oggosk’s screaming long before she reached his outer door. There was little hope that the steward would turn her aside, and he did not. The greater surprise was that Fiffengurt and the girl Marila entered with her. No surprise at all of course was the red animal that snuck in with them: Sniraga, whose name meant ‘Cowardly’. Sniraga, who had once been Biyatra, the Baby. Who had become a cat three feet away from him, the worst fright so far in the life of a child who had already suffered fears aplenty. Who was first a sister, then a pet to this unbearable banshee of a woman standing before his desk and screaming ixchel, ixchel, of all absurdities. This repugnant crone who was as likely to be his mother as the one she had cursed, or the one they poisoned alongside his father.

‘I am not listening to you, Oggosk,’ he said wearily.

‘You mucking well should! You think their claim is so fantastic, so impossible?’

‘I think nothing one way or the other.’

‘It fits, Nilus, can’t you see? They came aboard for a reason. They’re not ignorant and they don’t ride any ship without a purpose. I told them — Glaya, I ordered this ugly swamp-rat of a girl to bring me the book! Stath Balfyr! It’s certain to be in the thirteenth Polylex! We needn’t ever have gotten ourselves into this unforgivable fix! And your afflicted quartermaster has kept the secret for months!’

‘I am the one who is afflicted.’

‘Hang them, Nilus! Give them to Ott!’

‘Snakes and devils, woman, can’t you be quiet!’

Oggosk struck the desk with her walking stick. The captain shot to his feet and leaned towards her, and the bellowing began to look dangerous. Fiffengurt and Marila backed away.

Then the adversaries stopped together, gaping.

‘What did you say, hag?’

‘I said that anyone who sets foot on shore will be killed. By crawlies, or some crawly trap. What did you say?’

‘That I have the plague,’ said Rose. ‘Chadfallow has confirmed the symptoms. In a matter of weeks my mind will be gone.’

Oggosk’s screams began again, but they were short-lived. She collapsed, and the two men carried her to Rose’s bed, while Marila ran for Chadfallow.

The creature in the cell was still looking at Felthrup, still waiting. Its head was as round and podgy as a newborn baby’s, and from the fat cheeks two small, deep-set eyes twinkled in sudden flashes of gold. Large ears like withered yams stuck out from its head. The creature wore nothing but a winding-cloth belted at the waist and tossed over one shoulder: that and many rings with enormous, multicoloured stones on its podgy fingers. The body too was fat, but powerful, like some wrestler who has endlessly indulged. But below its knees the creature’s legs became those of a monstrous bird, and ended in talons that rasped against the floorboards. Upon its back a pair of great black wings lay folded.

‘You are a demon,’ said Felthrup.

‘And what is a demon, pray?’

Felthrup said nothing. More than ever he wished to run, to leap out among the friendly chickens and ducks and wattle-swans, to slam the Green Door and never look for it again. The creature smiled. ‘Come here, and I shall tell you how you will die.’

‘No thank you,’ said Felthrup.

‘Your ship may well be sunk here at Stath Balfyr, and all of you drowned or murdered. If that does not come to pass you must either sail south into the death-throes of Bali Adro and the clutches of the White Raven, whom you call Macadra. Or you must continue north into the Red Storm, and be hurled into the future.’

‘But the storm is weak,’ said Felthrup.

‘Oh, very weak, compared to the maelstrom it was,’ said the creature. ‘But you are forgetting something far more powerful. You are forgetting the Swarm of Night. I cannot forget it, however. I was here when last it burst into Alifros. I saw it, fled from it, barely outraced it with my lungs bursting and my wings so strained I feared they would be torn from my back. That was at the height of a war more terrible than you can imagine, and the Swarm had grown monstrous, bloated with death. Today it is still an infant, no larger than the Chathrand. If you had lingered in the open sea another day or two you would have seen it.’

‘Again?’

‘It is prowling along the edge of the Red Storm,’ said the creature.

‘There is more killing in the Northern world than the Southern, currently, and like a moth the Swarm flies to the brightest candle. But it cannot yet cross the Storm without great harm to itself. And so it prowls, impatient, waiting for a gap to open. When that happens it will speed to the battlefields of the North, and feed, and grow enormous, blotting out the sun, and plunging the world beneath it into a perpetual, starless night. There will be no stopping it then.’

‘There is no stopping it at all, unless we get rid of the Nilstone!’ wailed Felthrup, throwing himself on the ground. His fear of the creature was subsiding as he thought of the greater doom facing them all. ‘We do not even have the Stone, and if we did we should not know what to do with it, and Macadra is using all that remains of her Empire’s might to find it. She may already have found it. She may have killed Lady Thasha and Pazel and all my friends! What do you say to that, you lying thing? What hope can you possibly give me?’

‘The only worthwhile kind,’ said the creature. ‘The kind that comes with knowledge. And here is some knowledge I will give you for nothing, as a token of my good faith. Macadra does not have the Stone. Your beloved Erithusme has it — or someone she travels with.’

‘My Erithusme?’

‘You call her Thasha Isiq.’

Felthrup sat up slowly, blinking. ‘Thasha is a girl of seventeen years.’

‘She is a mage of twenty centuries. The girl is a mere facade, like the one I showed you. But it is true that she has lost her powers. Otherwise she surely would have used the Nilstone, while she and it were still aboard.’

‘How is it you know of Thasha’s deeds? How do you know my name, and which island we have reached, and so much else?’

The creature gazed at him for a moment. Then he looked up, sweeping his golden eyes across the ceiling, and at the same time spreading his corpulent arms. The lamp darkened, but the walls grew bright — and then, with a brief shimmer, they became glass. Felthrup crouched in fear and astonishment: the floor beneath him was transparent, and the walls of the chamber, and all the walls beyond as well. The Chathrand surrounded them, but it was a Chathrand of flawless crystal. He could see through deck after deck, right up to the topdeck and the glass spider-webs of the rigging, the gleaming spires of the masts. He could look down all the way to the hold, and gaze through the crystal cargo and ballast into the waters of the bay. Only the people remained unchanged. He could see them in their hundreds, figures displayed in a jeweller’s shop: crossing invisible floors, climbing transparent ladder-ways, lifting glass spoons to their mouths in the dining hall.

The creature lowered his hands. The vision was gone. ‘You are correct, Felthrup Stargraven. I am a demon, though maukslar is a fairer term. And although I am a prisoner here, I am not helpless. Indeed I have powers that could be of great use to you.’

‘I know what comes of that sort of help,’ said Felthrup.

‘No, you know only what comes of helping sorcerers, though of course you never meant to help Arunis. But consider what will come of refusing help, when it is offered: of standing on purity to the bitterest, bleak end. Not only death. Not only a lost world — and what a jewel is Alifros yet, despite the wounds she has suffered — not just these, I say, but the knowledge that you might have acted, but chose fear instead.’

‘Was it Erithusme who imprisoned you?’ asked Felthrup.

The demon held very still. ‘Some things you will not learn for nothing,’ he said.

‘Can you strike others from that cell? If I turned to go, could you stop me?’

No answer. The creature was no longer smiling, but his eyes still twinkled gold.

‘If I were to bring you an egg from the chicken coop and roll it through the bars, could you make it float in the air?’

‘I could make it float, or hatch, or turn to silver, or glow like the sun. But none of those would help you.’

‘How would you help us, then?’

‘Free me from this cage, and I will tell you where the Nilstone must be taken, if you would expel it from Alifros.’

‘But we do not have the Stone. Can you bring it to us across the seas?’

‘Certainly I could. Let me out and I will fetch it.’

‘Along with all our friends?’

The demon laughed. ‘What do you imagine, rat? That I will fly here all the way from the Efaroc Peninsula with that party dangling beneath me in a blanket? No, you must finish the task without them. Hold them in your memory, but go on while you still may.’

‘So that is your counsel,’ said Felthrup. ‘To trust you, and abandon my friends.’

The demon shook his head. ‘You abandoned them when you sailed from Masalym,’ it said. ‘My counsel is that you face the truth. You are outmatched. Upon this ship you are a tiny minority, protected from execution by the whim of that lunatic Rose. You need new allies, for the old will not be returning.’

‘Liar!’ cried the rat. ‘You tell me Thasha lives, that they have recovered the Stone from Arunis, and that after this miracle, a smaller one cannot be achieved? I will not abandon them! I will not set you free to steal it from them! I have sound reason to doubt you and none at all to give you my trust! I do not even know your name!’

Resolved this time, he raced away down the passage. He could almost feel the glittering eyes upon the back of his head. At the threshold he nudged the Green Door open and smelled the blessed, natural stink from the coops. Then the demon shouted behind him:

‘Tulor.’

Felthrup looked back once more. ‘Tulor? Your name is Tulor?’

‘Another gift,’ shouted the demon, ‘and my last, to one who gives nothing in return. Go, and think of your choices — but do not think too long. Alifros is nothing to me. But for the likes of you it is everything. Where will you run on the night of the Swarm, Felthrup? Where do you think you can hide?’