Yelping in stifled agony, Alberto Long fell down on his knees.

  ‘Like I said, you picked the wrong side.’

  ‘For the love of Manaan,’ Long replied, blood bubbling at his lips. ‘Make it quick.’

  Swinging his shamshir like a scythe, Luka Silvaro obliged.

  Curcozo’s dirk stabbed down, but suddenly he reeled away. Something had smashed into the side of his head and removed his left ear. Released, Sesto fell. Curcozo staggered away, blood streaming down his thick neck, and found himself facing the boucaner Ymgrawl.

  ‘I left you for dead!’ Curcozo cried.

  ‘Not as dead as thee might have liked,’ Ymgrawl said, and hacked at Curcozo with his cut-less. The bleeding master mate blocked frantically with his dirk.

  There was a crack, and a pistol ball missed Ymgrawl’s head by a tiny fraction. Ymgrawl turned and, with his left hand, hurled his tanning knife. It impaled Guido through the right shoulder. Guido Lightfinger screamed and fell, dropping the wheel-lock pistol he had just discharged.

  Kazuriband left the wheel and ran at Ymgrawl, sweeping with a double-fullered, Kang dynasty dao that had been his father’s before him. Ymgrawl ducked and leapt back, avoiding the next stroke, and clashed his little cut-less against the edge of the big Cathayan sword. He stroked low, then high again, and menaced Kazuriband’s loose left quarter guard, forcing the helmsman to tighten his arms and parry short.

  Then Ymgrawl feinted cleverly, drew his blade tight in, and delivered a thrust that punched the cut-less through Kazuriband’s neck. Ymgrawl yanked the blade free and the helmsman fell on his face.

  A big fist hit Ymgrawl on the side of the head and knocked him onto the deck. Two more savage punches followed, forcing him to curl up into a protective ball. Curcozo kicked the cut-less away and wrapped his meaty fingers around the boucaner’s throat, throttling the life out of him.

  Ymgrawl fought and kicked, but the bigger man was all over him, impossible to dislodge. Curcozo’s fingers tightened, and Ymgrawl began to feel the cords of his neck buckle and collapse.

  There was a solid impact, metal forced into meat and bone. Curcozo’s grip suddenly slackened, and he toppled away from Ymgrawl. The boucaner sat up, wheezing and coughing, and saw the chisel sticking out of the back of Curcozo’s skull.

  Ymgrawl looked up at Sesto.

  ‘I’m the one supposed to be protecting thee,’ he gurgled.

  ‘Well, consider that an act of gratitude,’ Sesto smiled.

  Blade in hand, Luka reached the poop deck, just as Casaudor led the charge up the opposite stair. But the fight was done and over. The bodies of Kazuriband, Curcozo, Vinegar Bruno and the lee helmsman were draped across the bloody deck. Sesto was pulling Ymgrawl to his feet.

  Luka crossed to them and shook Sesto by the shoulders.

  ‘Gods of the deep, but I’m glad to see you!’

  Sesto smiled. A lesser man might have thought Luka only interested in reserving his reward, but there was a look in his eye, a genuine happiness that Sesto was still alive.

  ‘I knew you’d come,’ Sesto grinned.

  Luka laughed, and got up onto the rail, waving his arms at the Lightning Tree. ‘Cease fire! Cease fire and hold!’ he yelled.

  On the high stern deck of the Lightning Tree, Luka saw Jeremiah Tusk wave back, and give orders to his men.

  ‘May I kill him,’ Casaudor asked, ‘or do you want that honour yourself?’

  Luka looked around, and saw that Casaudor had his blade edge against Guido’s throat. The master of the Lightfingers was on his back, a long knife stuck through his right shoulder. There was a look of abject fear in Guido’s face.

  ‘That’s mine,’ Ymgrawl said, and wrenched the tanning knife out of Guido’s shoulder. Guido wailed in agony.

  ‘Don’t kill him,’ Luka said quietly.

  ‘By all the daemons of the sea, you’re not going to give him yet another chance, are you?’ Casaudor cried.

  ‘No,’ said Luka. ‘He’s used them all up. But he got the sea to lie for him, and before he dies, I’ll know how he did it.’

  XXVI

  Burning, the Demiurge was cut free. Sobbing clouds of black smoke from its hull, it drifted away from its conquerors, and listed into the swelling waves. Already, it was low in the water, the sea having flooded in through its ruptured hull. Unguided, it bellied away for half an hour, its starboard side tipping slowly towards the sea line. It tipped again, and the black smoke gushing from it suddenly extinguished itself, and was replaced by a rapid rush of vapour, as sea water met fire, and created steam.

  Rolling away across the heaving grey sea, the barque slumped further, its masts leaning out, draping the water with torn canvas and dragging ropes. A huge litter of debris washed out behind it, falling and rising on the waves: pieces of wood, scraps of kindling, clothes, the private possessions of the dead crew, bodies and Vinegar Bruno’s tambour.

  Just before evening set in, the hull finally gave way. A melancholy splintering sound echoed across the waves, and the Demiurge folded up, timbers collapsing under stress. It took less than three minutes for the mighty barque to sink beneath the waves, leaving nothing except a seething blot of air bubbles bursting where it had been.

  ‘Well, Guido,’ Luka said. ‘You cheated me or you cheated the sea. One or the other. I want to know how you did it.’

  Pale, weak from loss of blood, Guido simply shook his head.

  They were on the foredeck of the Lightning Tree. The sun was setting, the seas had eased greatly, and there was little in the way of chop. The Safire lay off their port quarter.

  ‘We’ll test him again,’ Luka said. He glanced over his shoulder at Jeremiah Tusk, Casaudor, Sesto and Ymgrawl.

  ‘If you must,’ Tusk replied and clapped his hands for the work to be set.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Sesto said. ‘I know how he did it. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m sure I know.’

  ‘So tell me,’ Luka said.

  Tusk’s men had secured the board to the side rail of the Lightning Tree. There was no need to summon the eaters this evening. The blood and the bodies in the water from the brutal fight had brought them in, in their hundreds. Looking over the rail in the fading daylight, Sesto watched them churn and fight in their frenzy.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Luka asked him.

  ‘No, but can you think of a better explanation? The sea itself would never cheat you, Silvaro. It must have been Guido’s handiwork.’

  ‘We’re ready!’ Honduro cried.

  ‘Bring him forward,’ Luka said. Guido was manhandled to the rail and set up on the end of the board.

  ‘What?’ he cried defiantly. ‘Will you not bind my arms? Mask me?’

  ‘Not this time,’ Luka said. ‘You’ll simply walk the test, eyes open. You can do that, surely?’

  Guido glanced down at the threshing, moonlit waters, waters that churned with eater-fish.

  ‘Go on, now,’ Luka said.

  Guido began to edge his way along the plank, his arms splayed out to keep his balance. His footsteps became timorous and careful.

  ‘Hard, isn’t it?’ Luka called. ‘I mean, without Vinegar Bruno’s beat to keep you informed.’

  ‘What?’ Guido gasped, wavering.

  ‘That’s how you did it, isn’t it? Bruno and his drum. His rowdy-dow-dow. The beat of it told you where you were. How much board there was left. That’s how you cheated me.’

  ‘In the name of holiness, Luka, I don’t know what you mean!’

  ‘Oh, I think you do, Guido.’

  ‘Please, brother! For you are my brother when all other things are aside! Show me mercy! Show me mercy now!’

  Luka looked at Tusk and Casaudor. Then he turned back to stare at Guido halfway along the plank. ‘Mercy. It is the name Honduro has given to this fine axe.’

  ‘What?’

  Luka stepped forward and raised the huge, curved Arabyan axe Tusk’s master mate had leant him. With one hefty blow, he severed the plank at the rail end.

  The rest of the board, and Guido, dropped into the black water.

  Guido screamed. He went under and then surfaced, and screamed again. The eater-fish closed around him, scything in, their fins cutting the water.

  One of them took him down. Dark blood frothed the surface.

  ‘And that’s an end of it,’ Luka said, handing the axe back to Honduro.

  Guido suddenly surfaced again, screaming and flailing. The water around him was black with blood. Eater-fish swung in, taking chunks out of him.

  ‘He hangs on to life, that one,’ Tusk remarked.

  ‘Get me a pistol,’ Luka said.

  ‘Wait… oh gods,’ Sesto exclaimed, clutching Luka’s arm. ‘Look!’

  The water all about Guido was suddenly frothing and swirling. Like a whirlpool, like a maelstrom, it was twisting and lapping so fiercely the Lightning Tree rocked.

  ‘Oh dear Manann…’ Sesto gasped.

  Open jaws burst up through the whirlpool, thrashing the waves back. They were huge, as massive as the bow of the Demiurge. Scaly, brown, wide open, they displayed teeth the size of cut-lesses. Rising out of the monumental foam, the jaws spread wide, swallowing Guido and several of the eater fish into its maw. The last any of them saw of Guido Lightfinger was his body bursting apart as the massive jaws closed.

  ‘Mother mine!’ Belissi wailed. ‘Mother, mother mine!’

  For so it was.

  XXVII

  The gigantic beast slumped back into the sea, like the face of a glacier sliding into the polar flow. The impact of its colossal snout kicked up a great whitewater impact that rolled both the Lightning Tree and the Safire violently to port. Men tumbled and pitched across the decks, for most had been so stunned by the monstrous vision that they had not been braced to hold on. Belissi was screaming and cowering, but his voice was just one of many rising in fear and frantic prayer. Panic had seized almost every soul, even the hardest and the most robust.

  The beast raised its snout again, jaws wide and chomping at the frothing water. Then it slipped low. At the rail, Silvaro gazed at its great bulk, a scaled, brown shadow in the churning, sunset sea. It was like a crocodile in form, but giant flippers drove it forward in place of legs. It was at least the length of the Lightning Tree itself.

  ‘’Ware!’ Luka bellowed. ‘It’s going under us!’

  The deck vibrated with a dreadful impact, and they could hear the grind and scrape of the beast’s horn-plated back against the Lightning Tree’s bottom.

  ‘Get cannon!’ Luka yelled. ‘Train guns upon it as it surfaces!’

  ‘Against that?’ Honduro screamed back. ‘Our biggest culverin would not even make a mark!’

  ‘Then what? What?’ Luka shouted. Except for the wildest stories, he had no idea that any creature so large dwelt upon the face of the world.

  Mother mine, curse that fond name, rose again between the Lightning Tree and the Safire. The tumult of its surfacing threw spray across both decks, washing men off their feet with such pressure, they clawed at lines to hold on. The poor Safire, dwarfed by the creature’s mass, broached wildly, dipping her masts down towards the sea and all but capsizing. Luka saw men tumble off into the waves.

  He ran across the pitching deck and began to struggle to reload the nearest swivel gun on the port rail. It was hopeless, but he was damned if he was just going to stand by while the beast devoured them.

  Ignoring the beleaguered Safire, the monster swung back towards the Lightning Tree, as if it knew somehow that poor Belissi was hidden upon that vessel. The snout struck against the ship’s side like a battering ram, and there was an angry crackle of timber. The whole ship lurched to starboard, its tonnage knocked against the grip of the sea by the massive blow.

  Holding onto a ratline, soaked through, Sesto saw Belissi. The old carpenter, struggling to keep upright, was hobbling towards the port rail.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sesto shouted.

  ‘I must offer myself,’ Belissi cried back. ‘Give myself to Mother mine so that she might spare the rest of you!’

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ Sesto answered, but from the look on the faces of the desperate crewmen around, this was an idea they were heartily in favour of.

  ‘Belissi!’

  The carpenter was almost at the rail, but the beast struck again, shivering the hull with another titanic strike, and Belissi lost his footing and fell. He got up, clawing to grip at the rail and pull himself over.

  ‘No!’ Sesto yelled, and lunged at him. They grappled.

  ‘Let me go!’ Belissi shouted. ‘I must do this!’

  ‘No, I say!’ Sesto replied. Belissi wrestled and shoved at Sesto, trying to break his grip. ‘I won’t let you do this!’

  ‘Please! I must!’

  Belissi managed to wrench himself free from Sesto’s grip. Frantically, Sesto threw a punch. He had no wish to injure the old man, but it was all he could think of. His fist caught Belissi’s chin and cracked him down onto the deck. Sesto grabbed his unconscious form and began to drag it back across the soaking planks, volumes of spray crashing down upon them both.

  Sesto looked up at the rail as he struggled, and saw the vast maw of the beast opening wide as it rose up to rip a chunk out of the Lightning Tree’s side, and them with it.

  ‘Luka! Stop that nonsense and help me!’

  Luka turned from the swivel gun and saw Tusk struggling across the deck. The old pirate lord was clutching a large golden box in his arms.

  ‘Luka, help me stay upright!’

  Tusk was facing the rail, and the immensity of the rising beast. Luka grabbed him and steadied him as he let go of his walking stick and opened the box. Tusk let the box fall, and held up its contents in both hands.

  It was a tooth. One, single tooth, but it was huge. It matched in size any of the long fangs in Mother mine’s grin, but where they were the long, dagger-shaped teeth of a reptile, this was flat and triangular in shape. Ancient, grey, pitted and worn, it was precisely like the saw-edged tooth of an eater-fish. But what scale of eater-fish had ever filled its jaws with teeth like that?

  Gold wire had been wound around the tooth, and strange runes etched onto its surfaces. It was as wide as a man’s chest and as long, at the tip, as a man’s forearm and hand. Tusk had to hold it with both hands, like a shield or a salver, his bone-hook notched around one corner. He raised it high and brandished it at the great beast. Luka fought to keep them both on their feet.

  For long seconds, striking the sea into great troughs with its giant paddles, Mother mine raised its head and neck above the water to threaten the near-swamped Lightning Tree.

  Then it closed its baleful yellow eyes and slipped back, like an avalanche, into the sea, sliding down out of sight.

  Slowly, the tormented waves began to calm.

  Tusk lowered his arms, and with Luka’s help, leant against the nearest firm cordage for support. He was exhausted. Luka took the heavy tooth from him.

  ‘Place it back in the casket,’ Tusk said. ‘Please, with care and due reverence.’

  ‘What is it?’ Luka asked, marvelling at the thing in his hands.

  ‘The Bite of Daagon, it is called,’ Tusk replied. ‘An amulet. I won it from a corsair in an action off Copher. A potent talisman against the devils of the water, as you see. Even a beast like that likes not to glimpse the teeth of that which would menace it.’

  ‘I would not like to see the manner of monster that other monsters fear,’ Luka said.

  ‘None may live any more, not even in the deepest places. The Bite is very old. But the other devils remember its like. It wards well against evil.’

  Luka placed the tooth inside the casket and, with a shudder, closed the lid.

  The tumult slowly calmed away, though the open sea was still brisk and heavy. By the time full night had fallen, the men cast over the gunwales in the incident had been recovered from the ocean. Miraculously whole from the swell they came, for the arrival of Mother mine had driven all the eater-fish from that stretch of brine.

  As Honduro and Casaudor attempted to light the deck lamps and rally some semblance of order amongst the Lightning Tree’s rattled crew, Sesto helped Luka conduct Jeremiah Tusk down to his cabin. The old man was pale and breathing hard, as if greatly exercised by the grim events.

  His cabin was in more disarray than usual, for many objects and pieces had been tumbled onto the deck by the violent shaking of the ship. Sesto placed the golden box on a bench, and hurried to trim the lamp-wicks, looking around in quiet wonderment as he did so. Silvaro helped Tusk to a seat, then poured him a reviving shot of rum.

  ‘I’d prefer tea,’ Tusk said, ‘but there’s no time for boiling water now. Rum will do.’ His hands were shaking as they took the heavy lead glass. ‘I am most fatigued. See, Luka? I told you the fire had gone. I’m getting too old for this game.’

  ‘I’ll not hear such talk,’ Luka said.

  The pair sat in the yellow lamplight and conversed for a time, while Sesto quietly inspected the marvels of the room. Slowly, Tusk’s vitality seemed to return a little.

  ‘So, where are you for now, Luka?’ he asked.

  ‘Back to Aguilas, to see what shape my poor Rumour is in.’

  Tusk nodded. ‘You told me about Guido’s treachery, but not about what business had taken you to Aguilas in the first place. Hardly a port friendly to men of our stripe.’

  ‘Friendly enough,’ Luka said, ‘to a man who bears letters of marque and reprisal.’

  Tusk stared at Luka for a moment, and then burst out into such a fit of wheezing laughter that both Luka and Sesto feared for his continued respiration.

  At last, the splutters subsided. Tusk wiped his eyes. ‘So the Hawk himself has taken letters? A privateer! Surely, this is a world turned upside down!’