The Night of the Swarm

6

14 Modobrin 941

243rd day from Etherhorde

‘Barley and rye,’ shouted Captain Gregory Pathkendle, stretching his arms up the halyard.

‘And a fair lady’s thigh.’

The five men hauled as one. They shouted the refrain philosophically, without a hint of arousal or mirth. Admiral Eberzam Isiq hauled too, sandwiched between the bald man with hoop earrings and the white-haired giant. For Isiq the work was agony: needles of pain danced from his heels to his spotted, shaking hands. And yet he hauled, and knew he bore a share (a paltry, old-man’s share) of the weight. The yard rose. The sail billowed out. Forty years, forty years since he’d worked a boat that eight men could handle alone.

‘Brandy and tea.’

‘And a fair lady’s knee.’

They hauled a third time, and a fourth. The topman kept the sail knife-edged to the wind. Spray doused the men on the line (cold spray; it was late winter in the Northern world) and the tarboy tossed wood shavings under their feet for traction. Isiq smiled, his mind as clear as his body was tortured. Nothing had changed, everything had changed. One day you’re that tarboy, insolent and quick. The next you turn around and you’re old.

‘Honey and bread.’

‘And a fair lady’s bed.’

‘To us all, brave boys, they will come to us all,’ sang Gregory, and made fast the halyard to the cleat. The men dropped the slack end; Isiq groaned and staggered away.

Before he had gone three paces Captain Gregory was on him, seizing the admiral’s hands and turning them palms-upward for inspection. The hands were rooster-red, the blisters already forming. Captain Gregory shot him an angry look.

‘Pace yourself,’ he said. ‘Torn hands don’t earn their keep.’

‘Oppo, sir,’ said Isiq, with just a hint of irony.

Captain Gregory didn’t smile. His finger jabbed Isiq smartly in the chest. ‘Get fresh with me, you old walrus-gut, and you’ll-’

Cannon-fire. Both men snapped to attention, twin hounds on a scent. By old habit Isiq found himself counting: sixty, eighty explosions, double broadsides, two ships lacerating each other at close range, and chaser fire on the margins. Gregory ran forward, shouting for his telescope, though it was a bit too soon to see the fighting.

They were near the mouth of the harbour, Simjalla City dwindling behind them, the western headland rising fast on the port bow. The little two-master creaked and wallowed. Dancer: her name seemed almost cruel. A light clipper, she might have had some simple beauty in her prime. Today she looked one storm away from the salvage yard. Her deck was bowed. Her mainsail had a stitched-up tear as long as Isiq’s leg.

A blur of wings: the little red tailor bird was circling him, panic-stricken. ‘Is it war, Isiq, are we going to war?’

He held up his hand, and the woken bird touched down for an instant, its wings still churning the air. ‘Not on this vessel,’ said Isiq. ‘Through it, perhaps, but that is for the captain to decide. All the same, you should stay below.’

‘But the sounds-’

‘Are nothing, as yet. Say that to yourself, each time the guns go off: it is nothing, it is nothing, it is still nothing. Let that be your task: to say it until it feels true. You must master that racing heart, Tinder, if you’re to help in days ahead.’

The bird quieted a little. He was proud to be needed. Proud also of the name Isiq had given him: Tinder, fire-starter, the one whose patient friendship had fanned the dark stove of Isiq’s memories back into a blaze.

‘The dog is more frightened than I,’ said Tinder.

‘Have him do the same,’ said Isiq. ‘Go on; I’ll visit you presently.’

Tinder flew below, and Isiq looked back over the stern, one final time, at the city of Simjalla. A laugh escaped him: a laugh of pain and amazement. The Dancer stood almost exactly where the Chathrand had, six months ago, when Isiq first looked on that lovely city, her white sea wall and hilltop groves, her modest spires and the lush green mountains behind. Isiq had looked out from his stateroom window, then. He had arrived as Ambassador of Arqual, ended the next day as a prisoner of Arqual’s spy service. He had lain for nearly two months in a dungeon forgotten by the citizens above, in unspeakable darkness, worshipping a glow between the locked door and the door frame, a light so faint he could barely see it with his eye pressed to the crack. And the rats: he had beaten those bastards, a swarm of gigantic, thinking rats that had boiled out of that dungeon and nearly destroyed the city from within. He had fought them with his hands, his feet, his wounded mind; and he had lived because he had to. Because there were bigger rats to kill.

Of course he had also lived because the King of Simja, Oshiram II, had not wished him to die. He had misjudged Oshiram: he knew that now. At their first encounter he had thought the young king a dandy, a spoiled child of the forty years’ peace Arquali soldiers had purchased with their blood. But a dandy would never have taken on the Secret Fist. A dandy would have shunted him into an asylum to die a quiet death. Or packed him onto the first boat out of Simja, heading anywhere. Good luck Ambassador, don’t write, don’t remember us if you please. A dandy would not have obliged his own doctor to treat such a hazardous patient, nor given him a fat purse of gold, nor smuggled him out through the spy-infested streets to the cottage where Captain Gregory waited to receive him, along with his radiant ex-wife, Suthinia.

Rin keep you, Oshiram of Simja.

That had been over a week ago. Gregory had planned to sail the very morning after Isiq appeared at his doorstep, and had raced off in the night to make arrangements. Isiq had stayed up talking to Suthinia, whom the dog and the bird knew simply as “the witch”, and everything he learned about her was fascinating. She was indeed a mage, though not a mighty one. She had given Pazel his Language-Gift, and the terrible fits that came with it. And she had come over the Ruling Sea to fight Arunis, with a great company that had been almost entirely slaughtered.

Isiq had gone to sleep at last upon a quilt on her floor. Less than an hour later Gregory shook him roughly awake. There was no sign of Suthinia.

‘What is it? What is it?’

‘The mucking Secret Fist,’ said Gregory, shoving Isiq’s boots onto his feet. ‘They’re raiding the house across the street. Get up, move, or we’ll be dead in seconds.’

They fled by the back door, careening like a pair of clumsy thieves. Flames danced in an upper window across the avenue. Down a short alley they dashed, then turned and ran flat out for several long city blocks, the dog racing ahead to check the corners. At last Gregory let them pause for breath in a doorway.

‘Why were they across the street?’ Isiq demanded, gasping.

‘Because it’s my house,’ said Gregory. ‘That hovel we put you in was Suthee’s.’

They’re still apart, then. Isiq despised himself a little for the elation he felt.

‘And also,’ added Gregory, ‘because someone’s ratted on me, told the Fist that I had human cargo to move. I help the odd debtor escape from Simja, before your good king’s bailiff can lock him up.’

‘Why does the Secret Fist care about debt-dodgers?’

‘They care about me,’ said Gregory. ‘Just a little, fortunately. But a little attention from those bastards-’

‘I know.’

Gregory winced. ‘Yes indeed, your pardon. Credek, this used to be so easy! I tell you, since Treaty Day my job’s been nothing but a headache.’

‘Why is that?’

The smuggler glanced at him over his shoulder. ‘Because a long time ago I gave my name to one Pazel Pathkendle — my name and precious little else. And rumour has it that on Treaty Day Pazel did a splendid job of pissing off the Imperial Spymaster.’

So did I, thought the admiral.

As if divining his thought, Gregory added, ‘They weren’t looking for you, Isiq. If they knew you were alive I couldn’t do a thing for you. No one could, not even the king.’

‘All the same, I am sorry about your house.’

Gregory shook his head. ‘Suthee told me the place had too many windows. I do hate it when she’s right.’

They moved on, turning at the next corner, creeping in the shadow of a high brick wall. Another turn, and they were in a narrow lot, stepping through trash and reeking puddles, until at last they reached a padlocked gate. Cursing, Gregory rattled it, again and again, looking back fearfully the way they’d come. Then soft footsteps, young feminine fingers on the iron bars, and a woman’s elfin face smiling through them, warily.

‘Rajul!’ said Gregory. ‘We’re not here for you — for any of you. This is the man I spoke of, the one you’re to ask no questions about. Give me that key, girl. He will pay you more than handsomely.’

They had stowed Isiq in a dovecot on the brothel roof. Utterly safe, perfectly wretched. The cooing of the birds indistinguishable from the moans of clients in the chambers below. Eight frigid, lice-bitten days, and he didn’t mind any of it. He had a pact of sorts with the Gods of Death: those cruel, unfashionable Gods, the ones the monks called ‘hermits in the hills’. They would let him live each day so that he might amuse them with greater folly the next. If they had let him perish in Queen Mirkitj’s dungeon, they’d never have seen him fight the rats. And if he died here of some dove-shit disease — oh, the sport they’d be missing, the spectacle!

The women brought him food and water and bad wine, and left with his gold. Isiq dared not sit near the window, but he could lie on his stomach and raise himself on his elbows, peeping down at the port district, and a stretch of land beyond the city wall. He saw the little Simjan fighting fleet — aging, third-rate frigates of forty or sixty guns, some of them built in Arqual itself — gamely holding the mouth of the bay. He saw the little charity ships built by the Templar monks, rushing to the docks with wounded civilians. He saw the wrecking crew at work on the Mzithrini shrine.

King Oshiram had told him about the shrine. The Babqri Father had been killed there, just after Treaty Day, and to the Mzithrini way of thinking such an illustrious death made the place unclean, from the first drop of blood until the end of time. The Mzithrini delegation had abandoned Simja. Now, months later, they were paying Simjan labourers to tear the once-holy shrine apart, and to cast the stones into the sea.

They had still been at it, that chiselling, hammering mob, when Gregory and two of his officers had come for Isiq, declaring it time to make a run for the Dancer. Gregory had thanked the presiding madam with a shameless kiss. Once aboard the vessel, Suthinia had glared at Gregory, and even more so at Isiq, who had brought peril on them all.

Now, as the little two-master picked up speed, Isiq looked across the water at the low hill where the shrine had stood. The work was finished, the shrine was gone; even the jade dome with its silver inscriptions had been given to the waves. Once defiled, for ever unclean. . can we ever hope to understand the Western mind? And without understanding, is there any hope of sharing Alifros in peace?

More cannon-fire, distant but steady. Isiq sat down against the wall of the quarterdeck, watching the young men scramble. No work for him now, except to stay out of their way. He stretched out his legs, rubbed the knee he’d wrenched during his escape from Simjalla Palace. The witch had touched him there, and the pain had lessened instantly, but now-

‘Legs in!’ barked Gregory, storming by. ‘Damned if the old man’s not a menace!’

Isiq folded his legs. Pazel’s father is a right bastard offshore. And just as well, just as well. Isiq would stand for any badgering, so long as men did their job. It was sloth and lies and clumsiness that could doom them, and those he would never tolerate in anyone again.

Of course he had no authority on this smuggler’s boat. But he had power. He looked at his feeble, mutinous hands. How fast it had come back: the power, the certainty of strength. The knowledge that he had one fight left in him, and that its outcome would determine the worth of his whole life.

All thanks to the witch and her astonishing news. Thasha is alive. On the far side of the Ruling Sea, and in danger — but alive, and trying to return. Pazel still with her, and Neeps Undrabust, and thank the good Lord Rin, Hercol. If anyone could protect her it was Hercol. And yet the witch appeared to believe that Thasha herself would decide the battle ahead, and who was Isiq to say that she was wrong? Thasha feigned death on Treaty Day. She fooled the sorcerer, fooled Sandor Ott. My blessed, brilliant girl.

But — a mage? A spell-weaver like Suthinia? The witch herself had said no, not like her. ‘Thasha’s power is unfathomable. Think of me as a little trembling flame, your daughter as a wildfire roaring on a hill. If only she has unlocked that power. If only she’s found the key.’

Slam, slam. Heavy guns, close action. Isiq heaved to his feet and gazed north, wishing his eyes could pierce the headland. On the other side of it men were dying, their bodies scorched or shattered. Isiq felt cold in his heart. The Third Sea War. Men were already calling it that. After soldiering away his life he’d turned to diplomacy, to peacemaking, his goal to prevent the ‘Third Sea War’ from ever becoming an entry in the history books to come. And here it was, breaking out around him.

No matter. It would not be like the other two. There would be no illusions, no despised Sizzy horde, no blameless Arqualis, no songs about the Blessed and the Damned. If he had his way, there would only be accounts of its brevity: the war that endured just a month, just that last sad week of winter — and many longer chapters on the peace that followed, Alifros renewed and hopeful, a spring rebirth.

For the witch had told him of a second miracle: the miracle of Maisa, Empress Maisa, rightful ruler of Arqual, the one to whom he’d sworn his oath. The one whose own nephew, the usurper Magad V, had vilified her and driven her into exile. An old woman the world had left for dead.

He had thought her dead too, and told them so. Gregory had laughed and pulled at his pipe. ‘You come with us, Isiq. You’ll see how dead she is.’

The witch had turned her eyes on him fiercely. ‘It was convenient, wasn’t it? To assume she’d died. Better to justify serving her pig nephew all these years.’

‘Things were never so simple,’ he’d objected. ‘Arqual needed a monarch; we had nearly lost the war. And we were told horrid things about Maisa. That she’d looted the treasury, corrupted children, taken flikkermen to bed. I was just a captain, then. It was decades before I caught a whiff of the truth.’

The witch had glowered at him. ‘Explain it to your Empress,’ she’d said.

The giant lumbered up to Isiq and held out a hand. Despite his pale hair he was not more than thirty, and probably younger. ‘We’re coming into the Straits of Simja,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to see, won’t you, Vurum?’

Isiq grasped the hand, and the giant raised him effortlessly. Vurum, Grandfather: the huge fellow had taken a liking to him.

The explosions quickened further. Isiq heard the giant muttering beneath his breath: ‘Fear rots the soul and gives nothing, but wisdom can save me from all harm. Fear rots the soul and gives nothing, but wisdom. . ’

The Seventh Rule of the Rinfaith. The man was trembling. Isiq reached up and seized his elbow.

‘Tell me the rest of the Rule.’

The giant stammered. ‘I shall. . I shall cast off the first for the second, and guard the sanctity of the mind.’

Isiq nodded. ‘Keep a clear head, and listen to your captain. When the time comes you’ll do him proud.’

‘Oppo, Vurum.’ The giant managed a shaky grin.

‘Where’s your sword, lad?’

‘Belowdecks, like everyone else’s. The captain doesn’t want us armed yet. We’re not supposed to look dangerous.’

‘In that case you’d better go about on your knees.’

This time the grin was wider.

At the bows Gregory stood beside the witch — shoulder to shoulder, husband and wife. Both swore it was over, a marriage doomed from the start and ended wisely, decisively, when Gregory ran off into the shadow-world of the freebooters, the smugglers of the Crownless Lands.

Pazel’s mother. And the love of Ignus Chadfallow’s life. Isiq had seen her that first night, outside her little house in Simjalla, but this was his first glimpse of her by daylight. She was tall and slender. Despite the chill her sea-cloak was thrown open, and her long black hair blew free in the wind. Isiq found himself longing to seize handfuls of that hair, to run his dry fingers through it, to hold it against his face. She was still lovely, and must have been heart-troubling in her youth. You’re an imbecile, Gregory. Whatever riches the man had earned, whatever freedom, whatever wild couplings with pirate girls or harlots on Fuln — he had walked away from that.

She turned and caught him staring. ‘M’lady,’ he said awkwardly, with a slight bow.

‘Murderer,’ replied Suthinia Pathkendle.

‘She’s startin’ to like you, Isiq,’ muttered Gregory, his telescope raised. ‘That’s more or less how she used to greet me, when I came home from abroad.’

‘When you came home,’ said Suthinia.

‘Every night or two I say a little prayer for Neda,’ Gregory continued. ‘The fates got it backwards with that girl — gave her my looks and Suthinia’s lovely disposition.’

‘And Pazel?’ asked Isiq. ‘Do you say no prayers for your son?’

Gregory and Suthinia both visibly stiffened. ‘Pazel’s never forgotten,’ said the captain, as Suthinia gazed hard at the sea.

Isiq too averted his eyes. It’s true then. Pazel is Chadfallow’s boy, not Gregory’s at all. The doctor had been in love with Suthinia Pathkendle all the years Isiq had known him. And he had been stationed in Ormael in the twenties, hadn’t he? Just when the witch must have conceived. Isiq stole another glance at the two of them. Watch your mouth, old fool.

‘She spies on their dreams, you know,’ said Gregory, earning a look of rage from his wife.

‘I did not know,’ said Isiq.

‘Oh yes,’ said the captain. ‘She has two vials of dream-essence, whatever that is, and when she warms them against the side of her face she can tell what they’re dreaming. She even entered one of Pazel’s dreams, and talked to him at some length. But it made his fits worse, and she had to promise not to do it any more.’

‘It’s none of his business, Gregory!’ hissed Suthinia.

‘She might still be able to speak with Neda — but then Neda’s gone and become a crazy priestess, and it mustn’t look good for a crazy priestess to have a witch for a mum. But Suthee looks and listens all the same. Because who knows? Maybe their dreams can give us some idea of where they’ve all washed up, and what they’re facing. Last night, for instance, she saw them floating down a river on a giant cow’s stomach — inflated, you understand — and doing battle with a — Pitfire!’

They had just cleared the headland, and there beyond it was war. Enormous, horrific. A great line of Arquali warships began a mile or two from beyond Simja’s rocky terminus and ran away northwards, bow to stern, bow to stern. And west of them, in a curving, swift-running line: the white ships of the Mzithrin. Both sides belching fire, selectively where the lines diverged, frantically where they neared. At the closest point the battle was an orgy of blackness and flame, the ships’ masts rising out of the gushing, enveloping smoke. The tarboy brought a second telescope: Isiq reached for it automatically, but Suthinia turned and snatched it; the scope was for her, of course.

Isiq squinted, shading his eyes. Plenty of death to go around. Ships on both sides maimed and burning, some limping out of formation, others helpless and adrift. A Mzithrini Blodmel was canted over on her beam-ends: fouled on a reef, most likely. Nearer at hand, an Arquali vessel was sinking fast, the decks awash, the men streaming out of her in crowded lifeboats.

Gregory pointed at the doomed ship. ‘That’s the Vengeance, I believe. One Captain Kesper. You know him, Isiq?’

‘I know him. And the Vengeance as well. I trained on that ship, by damn.’

‘Hmph!’ said Gregory. ‘Now Arqual will be wanting a Vengeance II. Maybe they can give it to Kesper’s son.’

Kesper, dying before his eyes! Isiq squinted at the line, wondering which of the young men he’d commanded were out there, dying in a battle that should never have begun.

‘Humourless old dog, Kesper,’ said Gregory. ‘Lend Isiq your scope, won’t you, Suthee, there’s a good girl.’

Suthinia gave her ex-husband a withering glance. The man liked to bait her; who wouldn’t? Nonetheless she slapped the telescope into Isiq’s waiting palm.

The carnage was worse than he’d thought. The Mzithrini were outnumbered but they had the wind, and their ships were smaller and faster. Where the Black Rags’ line bent closest to the Arqualis they were emptying their guns, one after another, then heeling about and running west. They were giving better than they got, and it was all the Arquali cruisers could do to hold the line.

Isiq felt his chest constricting. Just as well he’d bucked up the giant lad when he did. He was not sure he’d be able to manage it now.

‘Who is winning?’ asked Suthinia.

The captain and the admiral glanced at each other. ‘No one, I think, m’lady,’ said Isiq. ‘This battle is immense, to be sure, but it is just one battle, and little tactical change will come of it. The Mzithrinis cannot push east through the Straits, not with the heavy cannon on Cape Coristel, and the Third Fleet massed and waiting in the Nelu Peren. Nor can Arqual extend its reach far to the west. There is no base to hold, no part of the Mzithrin lands we can reasonably contest.’

Suthinia gaped at the carnage. ‘Do you mean to say the Arqualis will withdraw?’

‘Both sides, most likely,’ said Gregory, ‘after dark.’

‘Then why are they fighting?’ cried Suthinia. ‘Why did the Arqualis leave the Straits to begin with? What in the Nine Pits is this for?’

Huge and sudden flames from one of the Mzithrini ships: her powder room had exploded. A quarter of her portside hull simply flew out in burning fragments, a whirlwind of fire that raced horizontally over the water and across the deck of the Arquali warship that had bombarded her. The rigging of the Arquali ship bloomed bright orange; tiny figures leaped burning into the sea.

Gregory looked at Suthinia and shrugged. ‘Practice?’ he said.

Eberzam Isiq lowered the telescope. His hands were shaking. ‘You mean to run that gauntlet?’

Now Gregory was amused. ‘Not to your taste, old man?’

‘Tell me your mucking intentions, or send me below if I’m no use.’

‘My mucking intentions are to leave these poor sods behind by nightfall, to stay out of the crossfire and the lee shore and that blary boat-gobbler of a reef, to lighten your purse by three-quarters, to get close to the Arquali flagship — and incidentally you’d better find me that flagship — and finally, to be sure none of your ex-proteges see your face. So yes, I will be stashing you below, and not very comfortably, I’m afraid. Enjoy your liberty while you can.’

‘You are a pig, sometimes, Gregory,’ said Suthinia. ‘Enjoy that? Do you enjoy it when your mates in the Fens get slaughtered?’

‘It’s a pleasant morning all the same. Look at them clouds, Suthee. That one looks like a sheepdog.’

‘Go rot in the Pits. They’re his countrymen. You didn’t even ask if Kesper was his friend.’

‘Didn’t need to ask,’ said Gregory.

Isiq cleared his throat. ‘Your heart is kind, Lady Suthinia-’

‘Put your eye to that blary scope!’ she said. ‘Tell Gregory what we’re looking at. You’re the war-maker, and that’s your fleet.’

‘Alas for Arqual, that is merely a squadron.’

Suthinia’s eyes danced with fire. ‘You spent your life among those people. You must know something about them — something beyond how to make them tear defenceless cities apart.’

Isiq raised the telescope. Rin’s heart, that’s much woman. A few hours in her presence and he’d stopped craving deathsmoke. And who knew? A few days, if they lived that long, and the witch might cure him of missing Syrarys as well. Just as well that she despised him and all he stood for. There was no room for love in his plans.

So: northwards. Three impossibilities to choose from. You could tack west for hours, in plain sight, and hope the Mzithrinis give you the freedom of the waters they held. You could run between the opposing forces and be pulverised. Or you try to slip east of the action, between the Arquali line and Cape Coristel. And that option was at least as mad as the others. Yes, there was a fair mile between the battle-line and the sawtooth rocks of the Cape. But the wind was onshore, and would contend with the Dancer league by league, trying to drive her onto those rocks. Such a wind called for prodigious leeway: a good skipper would sail another eight or ten miles west, before starting his northward tack. Of course that wasn’t going to happen today: that whole Arquali squadron would have been better off eight miles west. The Black Rags were not letting it happen.

Gregory had them on a beam reach, sailing right into the slaughter. It was tactical, of course: you needn’t chase a boat that was coming straight for you. But soon enough he’d have to show his hand. They had to round Cape Coristel: Isiq knew no more than that. What cove or uncharted island or waiting boat they were making for neither Gregory nor Suthinia would reveal. Beyond the Cape lay the Chereste Sands, a long flat dunescape separating the Gulf of Thol from the vast, steaming Crab Fens. Isiq had guessed at first that they would make a landing there and trudge into the interior — but King Oshiram had heard that Arqualis were holding the Cape, with great guns hauled from Ormael, ready to blast any Mzithrinis who broke through the line. They would not put ashore on the Chereste Sands.

Could they be bound for Tholjassa? Maisa had indeed fled to that mountainous land, decades ago, with her two young sons. Naval gossip had confirmed it, along with the fact that Sandor Ott had pursued them, assassinated the children, brought them back to Etherhorde on slabs of ice as warnings to any future foes, royal or otherwise, of His Supremacy Magad V. Isiq had always assumed Ott had killed the mother as well. Halfway measures were not to his liking.

The cannon roared. They crept nearer the mayhem. Before them a Mzithrini ship dragged herself to shelter behind the line, trailing rigging, her foremast in pieces on the deck. Then Isiq saw what he’d been looking for. Behind the Arquali warships, lighter auxiliary craft were running the line, bringing fresh powder and replacements for fallen men. One of these, a sizeable brig, was trimming her sails afresh. Isiq pointed to her with the telescope.

‘Breakaway, Captain. They’ve been ordered to pay us a visit, sure as Rin made rain.’

‘We’ll be ready.’

‘Is that certain?’ asked Isiq. ‘You’ve never dealt with the navy until you’ve seen them on a war footing.’

‘What will they do to us?’ asked Suthinia.

Isiq looked at her. ‘Anything remotely useful in a fight they’ll appropriate,’ he said, ‘water and provisions included. Then they’ll turn us back to Simjalla, and they won’t listen to a word we have to say.’

The brig heeled round, and her sails began to fill. ‘They’re on intercept, true enough,’ said Gregory. ‘Right, old man, we’ll have to make them listen, won’t we?’

Isiq made no reply. It was of course quite possible that they were going nowhere, that Maisa was long dead, that Gregory and his wife were lunatics. More likely they were just fools, used to trickery and luck, and the successes available to the bold in a place as chaotic as the Crownless Lands. Gregory was known as a dogged fighter and a slippery eel. But his fame had been earned in peacetime, and this was war again, Gods forgive us, Imperial war.

She might also be alive, but senile and hopeless. That would be a joke to Ott’s liking, to kill her sons before they could grow up and menace him, and leave the broken mother to rave and wither and divert the energies of those who might oppose the usurper — to concentrate them behind a single, hopeless symbol of what they had lost.

Of course the woman they were rushing to meet might simply be an impostor. None of these people had seen Maisa before her fall, and the Empress had suffered few to paint her portrait: ‘That nonsense can wait,’ she’d said in Isiq’s hearing, ‘until we finish this war.’ The admiral smiled. An impostor, wasn’t that likely? Some card sharp of an actress, washed up, nothing left to lose. What better role to play than that of long-lost Maisa, the answer to the dreams of desperate men?

The brig fired a warning shot. ‘They outgun you, Captain,’ said Isiq.

‘As we have no guns, that’s sure to be true.’

Isiq shook his head. Luck was like deathsmoke: start relying on it, and your soul gets lazy, until you can’t recall how you ever did without it. Then one day it’s snatched from you. Prayer stops working; the Gods tire of your flattery. The scales tilt; you slide into the abyss.

But not today, Gregory Pathkendle. Madman or gambler, you’ll not lead us to our deaths. His eyes slid surreptitiously about the deck. It was true; the men had all stowed their arms elsewhere. But he, Isiq, still had the dagger from King Oshiram, and the stiletto he’d killed a man with the week before. I don’t wish to, Gregory. I like you and your people. But I’ll do it, by all the Gods. I’ll put my hand on the scales.

‘Have you seen Tholjassa in winter?’ asked Gregory suddenly. ‘Horrific place. The sea fog blows in and freezes, inches thick. You take a chisel to your doors to get them open. I saw a monk pull the bell for morning service and his blary hand froze to the chain, Rin blast me if I lie.’

‘Of course it’s a lie,’ said Suthinia. ‘You’re never up in time for morning temple.’

‘Just for that I might really take you there, Suthee. How about it, Isiq?’

The admiral just shook his head. Gregory was bluffing: the Dancer would never reach Tholjassa, not with the light provisions they had aboard. Nor had Gregory made any hint that such a three-week voyage lay before them. Where in Alifros were they going, then? Some river north of Coristel, winding back into the Fens? Some island cave? Or could Gregory possibly mean to sail further along the shore?

Isiq started at the thought. Further along meant the Haunted Coast, a three hundred-mile nautical graveyard, the place ships went to die. No law held sway there, and no naval commander would dare take his boats among those shifting sandbars, those rip currents and sudden, enveloping fogs. Smugglers braved its waters, and pirates certainly, but the Haunted Coast harvested its share of those maniacs as well. Treasure seekers simply never left alive.

With one infamous exception, that is. Arunis had pulled the Nilstone from those waters, and escaped with his life.

And the sad truth was that the tarboys had helped him — unwillingly of course. Pazel and Neeps Undrabust had been Arunis’ captives, and the mage had dropped them into those waters to seek the Stone or drown in the attempt. Pazel, amazingly, had succeeded. Isiq had questioned the tarboys about the affair, but found them both (and his daughter, for that matter) strangely averse to talking of that particular day. ‘Pazel had help,’ Thasha had told him when pressed, and Isiq knew somehow that she was not referring to the other divers, or the mage.

The Haunted Coast. It made a horrid kind of sense. Isiq knew for a fact that Gregory sailed there: it was the only place on the mainland still open to freebooters, the only place not yet beneath the heel of Arqual or the Mzithrin. Hardly surprising, that: it was the devil’s own shoreline. Like many naval commanders, Isiq had seen it from a respectful distance. He never wished to see it again.

‘New colours on the Arquali ship, Captain,’ shouted the bald man with the hoop earrings, snapping. ‘Three diamonds — and a red stripe below, by the Tree!’

Three diamonds: Strike sail and hold position. One red stripe: Obey or expect to be fired on. He glanced at the bald man. What had he expected in the middle of a firefight? Sail on, and Rin speed your journey?

Captain Gregory was laughing. ‘Take in one reef, boys; let’s not make it too easy for them. Now tell me, Admiral: where’s the man in charge of this fleet?’

‘Squadron, sir. And I’d imagine he’s in the vanguard, third or fourth position. If I had to guess, I’d try for that great bear of a cruiser with the gilded stern.’

‘The Nighthawk,’ said Gregory. ‘Fine and dandy! That’s our new heading, bosun. Now get below with you, Isiq. Tull here will tell you what’s what.’

He gestured at the bald sailor with the earrings. The man stepped forward, sour-faced, and subjected Isiq to an insolent examination. ‘Can he keep his mouth shut, Captain?’ he demanded.

‘I can if I’m given a reason,’ said Isiq.

The man’s eyes pouted. He turned and led Isiq down the ladderway, past the galley and the lightless berths. The door at the end of the passage was narrow as a cupboard. When Tull opened it a rank smell leaped out at them.

‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘There’s flies, too. Step in there and give me your pants.’

‘My. .?’

‘You heard me, strip ’em off. And be quick, old man, I’m not here to make merry.’

He tugged irritably at Isiq’s arm. Isiq whirled, slammed him hard against the wall, set his his elbow to the grubby neck.

‘Explain yourself,’ he said.

Tull was suddenly meek. ‘It was the skipper’s idea. He says you’re to play a wounded man, a goner. I’m to strap the blubber on your leg is all. And to bandage your head and neck. And you’re not to talk, nor sit up, nor do nothing but point at your throat and gurgle.’

Isiq hesitated. He was a guest on Gregory’s ship, and the instinct to respect another captain’s authority ran deep. But he had come to doubt his instincts, the ‘standards of the Service’, his lifelong crutch.

There was no help for it, though. He was in these smugglers’ hands. He released Tull and unbuckled his belt.

The ‘blubber’ was a hideous masterpiece: a thick, stinking sleeve of boar flesh, rotting in places, bloody everywhere, and clearly the source of the stench that filled the Dancer’s tiny sickbay. When Tull slid it over his naked leg, Isiq feared he might vomit. The thing mimicked the swelling of a diseased limb. Mid-thigh it bore a ragged wound, clotted with dry black blood. Tull provided him with a coat as well — filthy, partly burned — then helped him to lie back on the boat’s one sickbed. He dressed the false leg in soiled bandages, then moved on to Isiq’s head and neck. When he was finished only the admiral’s mouth and left eye remained uncovered.

‘Your captain’s a whorespawn,’ said Isiq. ‘Why didn’t he tell me this was the plan?’

No comment from Tull; but when Isiq had lain still awhile, Gregory himself ducked into sickbay and made a brief inspection.

‘Perfect! You stink like a butcher’s privy.’

‘You rotter.’

‘Suthinia made a joke, can you believe it? “He shouldn’t gripe; when they snuck him out of the King’s residence he played a corpse in a coffin. He’s moving up in the world.” Not bad, eh? Here’s a bloody rag for you.’

‘How thoughtful.’

‘Cough into it when they ask you to speak. But perhaps they’ll only ask you to nod and the like. Remember, you’re one Lieutenant Vancz of the I.M.S. Rajna, sunk three days ago by the Mzithrinis.’

Isiq started. ‘There was such an attack. Oshiram spoke of the Rajna; he said her sinking was the talk of the island.’

‘And well beyond. The real Vancz died, but they’re not to know that.’

‘Who was he?’

‘No one important. That’s the beauty of it, you see?’

A great volley of explosions shook the Dancer. This time Isiq heard the distant screams that followed. ‘I do not see, Pathkendle. How will all these shenanigans get you past the fighting?’

‘No time to go into it. Just lie still and keep quiet, and remember that you’re supposed to be at death’s door. This will all be over soon.’

He turned on his heel to go, then looked back sharply at Isiq. ‘And show Tull a little courtesy, won’t you? He’s good at what he does.’

The door closed. Isiq lay still, feeling his age, listening to Gregory bellow: Strike the mains, all hands assemble, no arms on your person if you please. Flies buzzed his ears. Suthinia opened the door and looked at him, amused. Then the smell of the place hit her; she gagged and fled. Isiq’s face burned. He felt as though she’d caught him at something naughty.

Not long thereafter Tull rushed in with a handbag, wearing some sort of gown, and proceeded to sit beside the bed with his eyes closed.

‘What in the nine putrid Pits-’

‘Hush,’ said Tull, swaying slightly.

‘Is that blary perfume?’

‘Burn ointment. For your leg, old fool. Now don’t distract me — I’m in character, like. Also, they’re here.’

It wasn’t a gown; it was a surgical bib, and the bag was a doctor’s. The man had removed his earrings, too. I’m out of my depth, thought Isiq.

His countrymen were abusive when they drew alongside the Dancer. They howled at Gregory: did he know how mucking fortunate he was they hadn’t blown his hull out from under him?

‘When Arqual tells you to strike sail, you strike it, dog! What were you blary thinking?’

Isiq did not catch Gregory’s answer, but the Arquali reaction was plain.

‘The commodore? You lying, pig-faced, dung-eating smuggler! Take this boat, Sergeant! You curs get down on your knees. Now, damn you, or we’ll shorten your legs with our broadswords.’

A great thumping and swearing followed. Men were leaping aboard the Dancer, the ladderways thundered with boots. The door flew open, and an armoured Turach stood there, dagger drawn. He screamed at Tull to get above with the other sailors.

‘My patient’s dying,’ said Tull.

Holding his breath, the marine plunged into the sickbay and dragged Tull out by the collar. ‘Lie still, Vancz!’ Tull cried as he went.

The next time the door opened it was Gregory and the Arquali captain himself: as young as he’d sounded, and as fierce. ‘Gods of death, is that man even breathing?’

‘Not for long,’ said Gregory. ‘I told you there was no time to waste. Darabik will skin us both if-’

Despite himself, Isiq twitched. Darabik? Purston Darabik? He started to rise, then checked himself and fell back.

‘There, you see?’ cried Gregory, making the best of Isiq’s blunder.

‘I see a half-corpse who knows the commodore’s name,’ said the Arquali. ‘We’ll need more proof than that, dog. Get me the letter you spoke of.’

Mr Tull wormed back into the chamber. He reached into Isiq’s bloody coat and removed an envelope. He held it up before the others. ‘Sir, he’s very poorly, very weak. I’ve done what I can, but that leg-’

Heavy fire, and a cry from the Arquali vessel. The captain snatched the envelope and tore it open. He glanced from the letter to Isiq and back again. Then he stormed out, with Gregory on his heels. Tull leaned close to Isiq’s ear and whispered, ‘You scared me silly. I thought you were going to get up and dance.’

He might have, too. Purston Darabik. Purcy! Was he commanding the squadron? They were old mates, same year at the Academy; Isiq had even courted one of his sisters before Clorisuela entered his life. So had half the navy, went the joke. Darabik was one of nine children; the other eight were girls.

There was a great deal more shouting, over the endless bombardment. The Arquali captain returned and asked if the patient could be moved. ‘Are ye trying to be funny?’ said Tull. ‘The man is gangrenous. He nearly bled to death on the Rajna, he’s burned, his spleens are granulated; he’s half delirious with pain. Move him! You might as well just stick him a few times and be done with it, you nasty-’

The commander slammed the door. Tull and Isiq sat rigid, listening. But they did not have to wait long for the orders to start to fly: Get up! Get this garbage scow underway! And stay in our lee, good and close, or we’ll put more holes in you than a blary bassoon — if the Mzithrinis don’t do it for us.

Isiq turned his bandaged head. ‘Spleens?’

‘Everyone’s a critic,’ muttered Tull.

They were underway again. The blasting of the cannon grew almost intolerably loud, and now the screech of flying ordnance reached their ears as well. He could smell the powder-smoke. From the topdeck, Suthinia cried out at something she saw. Vividly he imagined his arms about her, protective; then the image changed to her clawing at his eyes. To fall for a witch: Rin forbid. She might end up like Lady Oggosk, a mad crone in bad lipstick and jewels.

The flies lifted with each explosion. Tull mumbled about his ‘life as an actor’. Isiq reflected that it might do them no good whatsoever to find Darabik. His old mate was an Imperial officer at war. He, Isiq, was simply a mutineer, an enemy of Magad V, the man on the Ametrine Throne.

Eventually he realised that the battle noise had peaked and begun to fade. He waited; other Arqualis were hailing the brig, scandalised and doubtful: ‘You have the commodore’s what?’

At last the Dancer slowed, and a great shadow darkened the skylight. Isiq heard the groan of huge timbers, the voices of sailors two hundred feet overhead. They were alongside one of the warships, perhaps the Nighthawk itself. He heard the faint rattle of davit chains as a small craft was set afloat.

‘Concentrate,’ whispered Tull.

A new set of Turachs stormed through the Dancer. Gregory was questioned, insulted, abused; Tull was frisked, even Isiq was briefly inspected. ‘You’re Vancz?’ He answered with a croak. A soldier began to pluck at his bandages, and Tull flew into a convincing rage. Then a voice Isiq knew well — velvety, but somehow no less dangerous for that — spoke a single word, and the Turachs straightened and marched out. They thumped their spears in the passage, a formal salute. The door opened, and Purston Darabik stepped into the room.

Isiq did not breathe. The commodore was his own age exactly, but look at him: old, severe, impossibly eminent and grey. He flicked a hand at Tull. Wordlessly, the smuggler fled the room, and Darabik closed the door behind him. His turquoise eyes drilled into Isiq, and there was no doubt whatsoever. He was not deceived by Gregory’s flimflam, nor the false leg, nor the room’s withering stench. He knew who lay before him. His hand rested on his sword.

They had not always been friends. As boys in Etherhorde they had built rival forts in Gallows Park, and the raids with slingshots and clods of mud had been fierce, until they’d united against a larger gang from Hurlix Street. At the Academy, when Darabik learned that Isiq was courting his sister, he’d taken his prospective brother-in-law out for a brandy. ‘Take your time with the decision,’ he’d said, ‘but if you wound her honour I’ll knock your teeth out the back of your skull.’

Darabik crossed and uncrossed his arms. His eyes grew thoughtful; he rubbed his face. ‘Oh,’ he said, rather loudly. ‘Oh, Vancz, dear fellow. So be it, if that is truly what you want.’

Then, as Isiq lay dumbfounded, the commodore knelt beside the bed. His face had changed; a new light gleamed in the bright blue eyes. Leaning very close to Isiq’s ear, he whispered, ‘Admiral Isiq. You’re a blary magician. You’re alive.’

‘Purcy.’

‘Don’t move, sir. Don’t speak above a whisper. I dare not reveal your presence, not even to my closest aides. The Turachs would kill us in a heartbeat. I don’t know who’ll stand with us, yet. Not many. Not enough.’

‘What do you mean, stand with us?’

‘Admiral-’

‘Call me Eberzam, for Rin’s sake.’

Darabik nodded slowly. Eminence notwithstanding, he was nervous in the extreme.

‘I saw her, Eberzam. With my own eyes. Gregory’s her transport, and her go-between. I gather he has been for a decade.’

Isiq felt a tingling in his limbs. ‘Maisa,’ he said. ‘But Purcy, where is she, and what does she hope for? Has she an army, has she ships?’

‘Of course not! She’s in deep hiding, with her loyalists. And they are not many. Magad’s forces could snuff her like a match. The fact is, this is suicide. That she’s survived all these years is a blary miracle, but it can’t go further. We’re simply too few.’

Isiq studied him. Then he raised himself to one elbow, pulled the bandages away from his face, staring hard into the commodore’s eyes.

‘It will go further,’ he said. ‘You and I will see to that, when Her Majesty calls us to the task. It will go as far as Etherhorde, and the Chamber of Ametrine, and that chair that belongs to our Empress alone.’

Darabik met his gaze. A fierce delight shone in them suddenly. ‘You’re a mad bastard, Eberzam.’

‘You have no idea.’

Darabik glanced quickly at the skylight. ‘I can’t stay; it looks odd enough that I came at all.’ He looked down sharply at Isiq. ‘You’ve lost three fine women, Eberzam. I’m very sorry.’

Isiq shook his head. ‘Just one, just my dear wife. Thasha lives, Purcy. And Syrarys was a traitor. It was Sandor Ott who sent her to my household. She was poisoning me for years.’ Isiq hesitated. ‘With deathsmoke.’

‘Lord Rin above!’

‘I have beaten the drug.’ Isiq saw doubt in the commodore’s face, and added quickly, ‘How did Gregory convince your men to let me through? Who did he claim I was?’

Darabik’s mouth twisted slightly. ‘Who you should have been, Isiq. My brother-in-law. Only the way Gregory’s playing it, you’re mortally wounded, and desperate to get home to Tholjassa to see my sister one last time.’

‘Which of them went to Tholjassa, by damn?’

‘No one did. But I stopped telling the men about my sisters years ago. They only mixed the stories up.’

It was a grim effort at levity. Isiq smiled anyway, wondering why Darabik had never made admiral. The man had iron strength; his men both feared and loved him, and that was the navy ideal. He’d won more fights than the Lord Admiral, almost as many as Isiq himself.

‘Purcy, you’re losing ships out there. What’s the reason for this engagement?’

‘The reason?’ Darabik’s voice was suddenly bitter. ‘Does there have to be one, Eberzam? Officially, the Emperor and the Lord Admiral decided they had to know how serious the Black Rags were about holding the Gulf of Thol. Well, here’s a shocker: they’re mucking serious indeed. They’ll throw blodmels into the effort, they’ll launch waves of ships from the Jomm. You don’t have to be an old relic like me to guess that. You don’t need to have been in the last war personally. You could talk to old boys in Etherhorde; there are plenty of us around. I suppose you could even cross the street from the club to the naval library and read a Gods-damned mucking book. The Admiralty Review of the last war, for instance. Or the one before that. Of course there’s another way, Isiq — much grander, much more exciting. You can throw your advance squadron at the enemy like a fistful of dirt.’

‘Now you had better lower your voice.’

Embarrassed, Darabik collected himself. ‘I’m presuming a lot, aren’t I? Literacy in Naval Command. A disinclination to get your boys carved up. Arqual standing for more than bloody-mindedness and greed.’

This is why he’s still a commodore, thought Isiq.

‘You’ll be reprimanded if word gets back to Etherhorde. Letting a freebooter past your line of control. Even a well-known neutral, like Gregory Pathkendle.’

‘I’ll give it some thought,’ said Darabik, ‘after I save as much of my squadron as I can.’ He grew still a moment, looking hard at the admiral.

‘We wiped our plates with ’em, didn’t we?’

‘Who?’

‘That gang from Hurlix Street.’

Isiq nodded. ‘That we did, Commodore. It was a strong alliance we made.’

Darabik pressed his forehead hard against Isiq’s. ‘Gods above, let you be all that you appear. Let Maisa be strong and healthy; let others rally to her side. Because we can’t stay long in the shadows; sooner or later they’ll find us out. We’ve gone too far already, Isiq. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Isiq, ‘we’ve declared war on the Secret Fist.’

The commodore declared them non-combatants, bound for Tholjassa on a mercy mission, and the reconnaissance brig escorted them along the rest of the line. For ten miles they sailed untroubled, but at the northern edge of the engagement the Mzithrinis opened up with long-range fire. The brig shielded them, and lost a mast for her troubles. She slowed, and before Gregory could reduce speed to match her a lucky 32-pound ball skipped over the waves and split the Dancer’s port rail and crushed her only tarboy dead against the mainmast. Isiq had just shed his disguise, and climbed to the topdeck to find Gregory on his knees, head bowed, the youth’s bloody corpse in his arms.

By sunset the captain was telling jokes again, but his voice and face had changed. The whole crew felt it, and they sailed into darkness without banter or songs. At dinner Isiq sat alone with his bowl of rice and cod, until Suthinia appeared and sat across from him, stone-faced, with a bowl of her own.

‘That tarboy could not make conversation to save his life,’ she said, chewing. ‘But he was Gregory’s favourite all the same.’

‘In this little crew, you mean?’

Suthinia shook her head. ‘At sea Gregory has no favourites; he’s marvellous that way. The boy was his favourite child. Of some twelve or more. This one’s mother is with Maisa; she’ll be waiting for us when we arrive.’