There was a taste of spices in his mouth, the flavoured meats and sausage of the governor’s table. He remembered the meal now, the heat, the cloying damp of the night. He had no memory whatsoever of making his way back to the harbour, let alone returning to the Rumour and his bed. The Estalians deserved respect for the potency of their wines.
A sobering anxiety abruptly washed through him. He had no memory of returning to the ship, because he had not done so. Without even opening his eyes, he knew he was still on dry land.
Sesto struggled upright. The room he was in was so pitch black he could not even estimate its size, but from the heat, and the stridulation of the crickets outside, he felt sure he was still in the governor’s mansion house. The sounds of snoring breath around him told him he was not alone.
He tried to feel his way around, and bumped into first one and then a second prone body. Neither one roused. Then his hands found the edge of a sideboard cabinet or a table, and from there, the wall. He picked his way along the wall to a corner, then along again until his fingers settled on the metal latch of a door. Cautiously, he drew it open.
The hallway outside was gloomy, but tapers burned in brackets towards the far end, and he started to be able to see his surroundings. He pushed the door open wider and began to resolve features of the room he had woken in. It was a state room of some size, furnished with low chairs and two chaise longues. The Reivers, who had come with him to the banquet, were sprawled about the room, on the floor, lolling on furniture, all sleeping soundly. What was this? Had they all imbibed so much the governor’s men had thrown them in this room to sleep it off?
Sesto realised he was mistaken. He counted the sleeping shadows again. Not everyone was here. There was no sign of Small Willm, Runcio, or one of Silke’s crew.
Silvaro lay nearby, and Sesto shook him to wake him, to no avail. But for his low, raspy breathing, the captain was as limp as death. Sesto tried to wake Silke, and then Roque and Vento. Not a man of them would respond.
Sesto went back out into the hallway, and at once heard approaching footsteps. He pulled the door shut, and slipped into hiding behind an embroidered arras. Immediately, he felt foolish. Why was he hiding when there was no real cause to suspect danger? He reached to touch the hilt of his sword, so that the metal might give him good fortune. His scabbard was empty. His knife had gone too.
Now he had cause. If all this was innocent, why had his weapons been taken from him?
Figures approached, marching urgently. It was Ferrol, and four of his guardsmen. They carried oil lamps. They opened the door of the stateroom and went inside. Sesto had to strain to hear them speak.
“What about Silvaro?” one of the men seemed to suggest. Sesto couldn’t hear all of Ferrol’s answer. Part of it ran “…says he’s sick of pirate salt… like mongrel dogs… thoroughbred Estalian…”
There was movement, and then the guard party emerged from the room, dragging Roque and Zazara, Estalians both. Ferrol closed the door and went off down the corridor behind the men and their slumbering loads.
Sesto took off after them, following at a cautious distance. The windows that he passed revealed to him that night was still on the island though, from the pale edge of it, dawn was not too many hours away.
Ferrol and his men disappeared through the great doors into the banquet hall. Sesto followed, pausing to unhook a pair of crossed sabres that hung on the wall beneath an Estalian roundel. His hosts had wanted him weaponless, so caution suggested a weapon would be good to have.
He reached the doors. They had been left ajar, and he was able to peer in.
What a sight he saw. The musicians and servants had long since departed, but the banquet had not been cleared. Tables of plates and half-eaten fare had been pushed back and dishes piled up. Seven men of the colonial guard, black clad and comb-helmed, stood around the walls of the room, both watching and waiting.
Emeric Gorge stood in the middle of the room. He had stripped to the waist, his arms and upper body as pallid white as a stinging jelly. His back was to Sesto, and his arms down at his sides. A guardsman knelt at his right hand and another at his left, as if each was kissing the backs of Gorge’s hands in ritual homage. Roque and Zazara, sleeping still, lay near the doorway.
Small Willm, Runcio and the man from Silke’s crew lay in a heap at the far end of the room. Somehow, the limpness of their bodies told Sesto they were more than asleep. Even a slumbering man does not relax and fold so completely.
“Enough!” said Gorge, and the two men rose, wiping their mouths on black handkerchiefs. As Gorge turned, Sesto saw with horror that his inner wrists were wet with blood.
“Another!” he said. Two guards moved from the wall and scooped up Zazara. They dragged him to Gorge, and held him up as Gorge pulled the Reiver’s head back by the hair and held a small crystal bottle under his nose.
Zazara woke, coughing and spluttering. He looked around, bemused, not really comprehending his surroundings. The guards let him stand.
Gorge stoppered the crystal bottle and set it aside on a table, then walked back to the blinking, woozy Zazara.
“Estalian,” he murmured. “A better vintage…”
Gorge seized Zazara by the upper part of the left arm and the hair, and wrenched his head aside so his throat was exposed. Gorge’s widening mouth was suddenly full of long, sharp teeth, like a wolfhound or a striking snake.
Zazara cried out briefly as Gorge clamped his bite down into the Reiver’s neck. He shook, but Gorge would not let go. Zazara convulsed. Sesto watched with total revulsion and a rising terror. He saw little, macabre details. Gorge’s thin, pale frame was at odds with his grossly swollen pot-belly. Zazara’s feet twitched because he was actually held off the ground by Gorge’s great strength.
Gorge released the Reiver and Zazara collapsed. Blood ran down the governor’s chin. The guards picked up Zazara’s corpse and threw it with the others.
“Better,” said Gorge, his words slurred by the great teeth that pushed out his lips. “Quickly, the other now. The noble one.”
Outnumbered as he was, Sesto could not just look on anymore. Two guards were dragging Roque towards the governor.
Gripping his sabres tightly, Sesto backed up to crash open the doors.
XII
He was struck such a blow from behind that he burst the doors open anyway, and sprawled onto the floor. He’d lost his grip on both the swords. When he reached out to snatch at one, a black boot pressed the blade firmly to the flags.
Ferrol stood over him. “One woke early,” he said.
“I had a notion that one had not supped as much of the red lotus as the rest,” murmured Gorge. He smiled down at Sesto and the smile was terrible. “Welcome to the feast, gentleman. I will be with you shortly.”
Gorge turned away and woke Roque with a sniff of the crystal bottle. The master-at-arms jolted awake, and struggled at once with the men holding him. They kept him pinned tightly.
Gorge yanked Roque’s head over by the hair, and lunged at his throat Roque howled as the monster’s bite ripped into his neck.
But the feasting did not go as before. Gorge suddenly lurched away, retching and spitting, coughing blood out onto the floor. The men released Roque and he fell to his knees, clutching at his wounded throat.
“What is it? My lord?” Ferrol asked, hurrying to Gorge’s side.
“This one has filth in his blood! Vile pestilence! Like sour milk or turned wine!” Gorge retched again, and a great measure of noxious blood spattered across the tiles.
All attention was on the governor. Sesto reached out again for the fallen sabre.
“You should be careful who you bite,” mocked a voice from the shadows. Like a phantom, Sheerglas melted into the lamplight, his black robes swirling around him like a piece of the night itself.
Gorge turned to face him. His men drew their rapiers.
“I could smell you in the town,” said Sheerglas. “Your stink is everywhere. It has been hard, hasn’t
it? Thirsty times for you and your little coterie of servants.”
“Who are you?” Gorge asked.
“One who knows,” replied the master gunner. “How long have you ruled here, daemon-kin? Longer than any other colonial governor, I’ll be bound. Those portraits in the hall. They’re not your forebears, are they? They’re you in other ages. You, and your legion of consorts.”
Sheerglas took a step forward, and some of the guards moved in around him. Sesto heard several of them growl, like dogs facing off against a rival male.
“It must have been so easy,” Sheerglas murmured, keeping his gaze on Gorge. “A constant traffic of merchants and visitors, a town packed full of strangers. Every ship that came brought fresh liquor to quench you. But the traffic stopped, and you were forced to break your own rules. You had to find your nourishment from the local population exclusively. And my, your thirst has left them weak and drained. Much longer, and Porto Real would have started to die. Hurrah, then, for a ship! Fresh blood at last.”
Gorge had stopped spitting blood out. He raised a bony finger and pointed at Sheerglas. “Kill him,” he said.
The guards rushed Sheerglas.
Sesto leapt up, recovered both sabres, and ran to Roque, who was kneeling still, and shaking with pain. But he had seen the business well enough.
“Can you stand?” Sesto asked.
Roque snatched one of the sabres from Sesto and stumbled determinedly towards Gorge. Sesto ran with him. They plunged their blades into the backs of the two guards who had remained at the governor’s side. Death blows.
But they didn’t die.
They turned, eyes dark beneath the brims of their silver comb helmets, and swung their rapiers at Roque and Sesto.
Somehow, Sheerglas had not fallen under the weight of the men who had rushed him. Indeed, like a shadow, he seemed to separate himself from them, sending several tumbling to the ground. He had drawn no weapons. A bladesman rushed him, and Sheerglas sidestepped, catching the wrist of the thrusting sword-arm and breaking the elbow joint with a savage upward blow of his other hand. The guard screamed and fell back, and Sheerglas took the Estalian rapier from his hand, drifting around like smoke to engage three more of the black-garbed soldiers. Sparks flew from the flickering blades.
“Their heads!” Sheerglas yelled above the din of steel. “You cannot slay them unless you take their heads off their shoulders!”
Sesto, driven back almost to the door, parried the whipping strokes of the guard and dodged aside as fast as he could. The guard’s sword tip struck the wooden door and stuck for a second.
Sesto whirled and parted his neck. The man fell. There was a sudden, sharp stench of burning. By the time the body hit the ground, it was nothing but boots, rotting black clothes and a rusty comb morion filled with dust.
Half revolted and half delighted, Sesto ran forward and lopped the head off the guard engaging Roque. Again, brimstone corruption seared the air as the man became ashes.
“My thanks,” said Roque. Together, they turned and laid into the soldiers attacking Sheerglas. The master gunner had already dispatched two of them. “Keep them busy,” he hissed. Before Sesto could question the remark, Sheerglas had again flickered out of view, slipping into the shadows. He reappeared like a swirl of mist in front of Gorge. Sheerglas tossed away his borrowed sword and threw himself at the governor. They grappled furiously. Sesto heard the devilish snarling again.
He and Roque were miserably hard-pressed. Five guardsmen still remained, including Ferrol. Sesto was not the greatest swordsman in the world, and Roque was slowed by his injury. Only fury and fear kept them fighting the blades away. Roque managed to turn a rapier aside and sweep his sabre into a throat. Another of Gorge’s deathless followers found the dust of the grave at last. But now Ferrol was onto Roque and driving him back.
Sheerglas and Gorge struggled on. With inhuman force, Gorge threw the master gunner across the hall, and he crashed into some of the trestles, shattering dishes and cascading platters onto the floor. He leapt straight back up, vaulting into the air so his black robes billowed out like a bat’s wings, and came tearing back down onto Gorge, throwing him sideways. The governor’s pale body demolished another table and overturned two chairs.
Gorge recovered as swiftly as Sheerglas had done and pounced at the master gunner. The leap was far further than any mortal man could have managed. He tore into Sheerglas, fangs wide, and brought him over into a further row of feast tables. Bottles smashed, wood splintered. A pewter beaker clattered to the floor and rolled away.
Sesto cried out as a blade ripped across the back of his hand, and another tore a long gash in his cheek. He parried furiously. He and Roque could not hold the swordsmen off any longer.
Sheerglas threw Gorge over onto his back and sprang on him, pinning him for a second.
“Bastard!” Gorge rasped.
“Fiend!” Sheerglas replied. He seized a snapped leg strut from one of the broken trestles and rammed it down into Gorge’s chest with both hands.
Gorge screamed. His mouth opened so wide that his lips tore. Poisonous, rotten light shone out of his throat, out of his eyes, and out from around the stake through his chest. He thrashed violently. Then in a flash of flame, like a misfiring cannon, he exploded and disintegrated.
One by one, the Estalian guards burst apart like smoke, their empty clothing and armour falling to the floor. Ferrol was the last to go.
Silence. Nothing but the smell of mausoleum dust.
Roque and Sesto backed away, panting. They looked at Sheerglas. He rose to his feet, and let ash spill out between his fingers.
“It’s done,” he said. “Take the bottle there and wake the others.”
Roque limped to the table where Gorge’s crystal bottle stood and picked it up. He looked at Sheerglas for a long moment, then hobbled out of the room.
Sesto followed Sheerglas out into the entrance hall.
“We owe you thanks,” he said.
The master gunner shrugged.
“I say it was lucky that you came ashore tonight. Lucky you picked a straw. You don’t often leave the ship, do you?” Sesto asked.
“Once in a while,” said Sheerglas.
“Why tonight?”
“Same as all of us. I was in search of clean drinking.”
He looked back at Sesto and gestured to the bloody gash on his cheek. “You should bind that.”
“It’s only a flesh wound.”
“I know. But it’s also tempting.”
Sheerglas walked away. In the great mirrors of the hallway, Sesto saw only himself reflected.
XIII
The sea air was cool, and they had made fair going but, in the lea of the land, the islands were heady and humid: jungle-draped cones that trilled with birdcalls and the ratchet of insects.
Around nameless rainforest atolls they meandered a snaking course. Luka Silvaro knew every tideway and channel by heart, with no need of a chart or waggoner. The Southern Littoral of Estalia had been his particular hunting ground of old. When he had been a pirate, not a privateer, that was.
“This is where the treasure ships would come,” he told Sesto, late one afternoon while they stood on the stern deck of the Rumour. The sky was turning coral red in the west, and seabirds chased and wheeled in their wake. Fahd had just cast a bucket of slops over the rail. “They would be tired and breathless from the ocean crossing, like sprint horses run too hard, too long. Their bellies would be heavy. Lustrian gold, Arabyan spice. Here, they had a choice. Sustain their sprint another eight days, running a straight line east all the way to Tilea, or rest and water in these southern islands.”
“What measure of good did that do them, if the likes of you were out hunting for their souls?” Sesto asked.
“Plenty,” replied the former pirate lord. If he’d sensed any rebuke in Sesto’s remark, he made no show of noticing it. “In the early days, they would run straight. Running the jaws we called it. On the last of their vittals and the las
t of their man-strength, they’d break backs for Luccini or Miragliano, hoping to give us the slip. Those were the days of the big pirate ships, you understand. Sixty-pair guns, eight hundred tonnes. Sacadra the Jinx, Bonnie Berto, Banehanded Ezra. The pirate lords of legend, Manann spare their souls. In open sea, a black flag could spy a treasure galleon from twenty-seven miles… and vice versa. It was a game of chase and stamina, one the heavy treasure ships often lost, more often than not.”
Luka Silvaro paused and toyed with the fat gold ring around his little finger. “So the prey learned to come in close to the shore and work up into the islands.” He made no bones of the word “prey”. It was quite matter of fact. “In amongst the islands, they were harder to spot, and they had a chance to draw breath and reprovision after the arduously long crossing. Working their way through the islands—threading the teeth, it was called—they could choose when and where to make their break into open sea. It improved their chances.”
He patted the polished rail of the Rumour affectionately. “That’s why, in this modern age, we prefer the slighter hunting ships. We have learned to stalk the islands, and spring upon the prey in lagoons and shallow bays while they are watering. It is a trick the corsairs have learned too. Their galleys could never catch a four master galleon fat-yarded in a blow.”
They were now nine days south-west of Porto Real, in amongst the last thickets of green islets before the bony reaches of the bare, dagger atolls that spiked out to the end of Known Land and heralded, like a shattered archway, the great, dark oceans of the mysterious west. Sesto knew well the blood was up now, the hunger for the hunt. It was like old times for Silvaro and the rogues who had shipped out with him before.
Three times they had put in at cove settlements along the island chain. A boucaners’ enclave, a small Estalian port town and a sovereignless fishing village. In each one, the story had been the same. The Butcher Ship was close by. This was the heart of its hunting ground. Every few weeks or so, its great, ruddy-hulled, scarlet-sheeted shape would sail into the little harbours and train guns. Sometimes a warning cannonade would be fired. The locals, in fear of their lives, were forced to load up every ounce of provision and clean water they had to hand and row it out as ransom for their continued existence.