‘Aye,’ said Roque, ‘you’ve not seen its like in the Old World, my friend. This is loot from the sands of Khemri, plundered from some dust-dry tomb. It’s ancient. Older even than the cities where you and I were born.’

  ‘Khemri…’ Sesto murmured.

  ‘This is Henri’s curse, Sesto. The fell cargo that he took from a damned treasure ship and, in so doing, damned himself and his men. The cursed grave goods of an ancient tomb king, his solace in the afterlife.’ Roque stroked a hand across the carved face on the sarcophagus lid. ‘You, old one, old king, this is your doing.’

  ‘How can you know this?’ Sesto asked, stepping forward.

  ‘Can’t you feel the malice radiating from this lustrous horde?’ Roque said. ‘Evil and magic, summoned by a dead thing who did not like how his eternal sleep had been disturbed. It’s the dry dust of the tomb, Sesto, the trickle of sand. It has been calling to me in my dreams.’

  Roque touched the scar on his shoulder, raw now from constant scratching.

  ‘Your dreams?’ Sesto said.

  ‘My dreams. My dry, ghastly nightmares. Contact with this unholy treasure made Reyno a daemon, and I’ve been connected to it ever since he marked me with his talon.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Sesto asked.

  ‘We break it. We destroy it. This gold, this matchless treasure, makes no man rich in anything except death. Help me.’

  Roque had picked up a golden-handled adze from the mounds of treasure nearby, and began to employ it as a crowbar to prise off the lid of the sarcophagus.

  ‘Are you sure we–’

  ‘Help me, Sesto!’ Roque cried, struggling.

  Sesto grabbed another adze and set in beside the master-at-arms. Together, they heaved and wrestled, splintering the gilded wood of the lid, breaking ancient seals of wax and resin.

  Slowly, slowly, the lid raised up. Foul dust billowed out from the dark cavity within, reeking of natron and embalming salts.

  The lid slumped over onto the hold floor with a terrible shudder of wood.

  The tomb king lay within, hands across his breast. Sesto had expected to see some hideously-shrivelled corpse, or dry, dusty mummifer, but the body that lay within seemed shockingly fresh. A boy, just a boy, no older than Gello. He was swaddled in linen wrappings that were as fresh and white as a summer cloud, and gold jewellery plated his forearms, chest and forehead. His skin, where it was exposed on his beringed hands and face, was pink and vital. His face was beautiful, dusted in gold, with extravagant lines of black around his sleeping eyes.

  Sleeping, Sesto shuddered. That was it. This long-dead thing seemed only to be sleeping.

  Roque reached out his hand and hesitantly picked up the amulet the tomb king wore across his chest, just above his folded hands. It was a heavy thing, fashioned in the shape of a winged beetle, the thick gold set with turquoise and ruby. The long, weighty gold chain dangled behind it as Roque pulled it free.

  Roque made a sweet, low moan. ‘This is it, Sesto. This is the talisman, the seat of power. Oh, it sings to me! I have heard it oft times in my dreams, fragile voices singing in a tongue I do not know, though I understand every word. This is the very essence of the curse.’

  Sesto nodded. ‘Then that is what we must destroy.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Roque said. He remained gazing at the amulet in his hands.

  ‘Roque? Sir?’

  The Estalian turned away. A sudden, dreadful alarm filled Sesto. He reached for his dagger, drew it out, but could not bring himself to plunge it into Roque’s back, even though every instinct told him he should.

  ‘Oh, Sesto,’ Roque said sadly. He turned back. The amulet was in his left hand. The dirk in his right had plunged deep into Sesto’s ribs.

  Sesto gasped. A vice of white pain clamped his mind. He fell back, the dirk still embedded in him.

  ‘Oh, Sesto,’ Roque repeated. He looked aghast and, if there had been any water left in him, he would have been weeping. ‘You failed me. If you see me wavering, I said. Wavering or hesitating. I begged of you, to make your strike sure and clean.’

  Sesto fell sideways against the sarcophagus and slid to the deck. Blood soaked his shirt around the dirk’s grip and ran out onto the boards. Against nature, the beads of blood began to stream counter to gravity, up the sides of the golden casket, and down within. The sleeping boy-daemon in the sarcophagus sighed gently.

  ‘What have you done?’ Luka Silvaro said, limping forward, his shamshir raised. ‘Roque, what in the name of the devil have you done here?’

  ‘Just what I am bid, Luka,’ Roque replied. Clutching the amulet in his left hand, he drew his fine sabre of watered Estalian steel.

  ‘No closer, old friend,’ he said.

  ‘Gods,’ Luka looked down at Sesto. ‘Gods, I offered you ivory for luck, Sesto…’

  Luka glanced back up at Roque and shook his head. ‘Friends, Roque? Friends. Comrades. That’s what this fell cargo feeds upon. That’s what it delights in undoing and damning. Henri, Reyno, you and I. The fine bonds of the code and good company, cut asunder by this madness that pits brother and ally against one another.’

  ‘Friends?’ Roque smiled. ‘Friendship? You think it cares about that? The tomb king desires nothing except blood and gold. Friendship is just something that gets in the way of that appetite.’

  ‘Then I’m another obstacle,’ Luka said. ‘Toss away your sabre and set aside that abominable trinket. Or come through me to leave this hold alive.’

  Roque slowly looped the golden chain of the amulet around his neck, scooping out his long hair to let it fall clear. The golden talisman now hung at his chest.

  ‘I can’t do that, Luka,’ he said. Already, Luka could see how Roque’s eyes were beginning to glaze, as if ice was forming across their surface to dull the colour of the pupils. His skin was beginning to stretch and wizen.

  Luka lunged forward, ignoring the lancing pain in his side. Their blades struck together and rang out, blow following blow, feint and riposte, lunge and parry. Sparks flew off from the razor-sharp edges.

  Luka Silvaro prided himself on his swordsmanship. He’d won every duel he’d ever found himself in, including some where he’d pretended to be a swordsman of lesser skill in order to goad an opponent into overconfidence. That had certainly been his tactic with poor Captain Hernan. Luka had wanted to make a point there, not slice the man to ribbons. But now he was sorely hindered by his awful wound.

  And there was one swordsman in the entire breadth of the sparkling Tilean Sea that Luka acknowledged to be his better with the sword. They had fought many times, and Luka had always lost, though only ever in practice sparring.

  Until now.

  Roque Santiago Della Fortuna was the most gifted swordsman Luka had ever met. The dance and feint of swordplay came naturally to him. He knew moves and parries that sword masters the length of Tilea and Estalia both would have gladly sold up their schools to learn. And his watered steel was the finest of weapons, far sounder, truer and sharper than Luka’s precious shamshir.

  Right from the start, Luka knew he was outmatched. But still he fought, putting every erg of effort and every iota of finesse into his furious rallies. He was determined that he would not lose, could not lose. He thought of Hernan, bested in swordplay, but still staunch and heroic to the bitter end, sailing his ship into the face of doom. Likewise Silke, and Tusk, Sesto, and even Reyno, most like.

  There came a time when skill itself was no longer enough. There came a time when a man had to learn from others about sheer courage and win out that way.

  What mattered most was not a man’s talent, or his handiness with the steel. What mattered most was his heart, and the fibre of his soul. Only that measure could truly win the day.

  Except here.

  Luka sallied forward, riding a low parry into a half-thrust, and almost speared Roque through the throat. But the Estalian slid aside, executed a long lunge that pinned Luka’s shamshir against the side of the sarcophagus, and snapped it below the hilt with a flick of his wrist.

  Luka stumbled back, trying to ward himself with the feeble broken sword, and Roque lunged furiously, driving the entire length of his sabre through Luka’s left shoulder.

  ‘Gods!’ Luka grunted.

  Roque ripped the sabre out, and Luka fell against the sarcophagus and sagged down.

  Roque hovered the tip of his bloody sabre at Luka’s left eye. ‘I’ll make it quick, old friend,’ he hissed.

  Luka spat at him.

  Roque pulled back his arm to strike. The golden amulet on his chest suddenly rose up, as if lifted into the air by some dark magic. Roque shuddered. His mouth gagged open, and white grubs spilled out.

  The amulet fell to the deck, its golden chain broken. What had lifted it off his breast was a full hand’s span of blade from a tanning knife.

  Ymgrawl dragged his long dagger out of Roque’s back, and the cursed Estalian fell over on his face.

  Luka looked up at Ymgrawl.

  ‘Too late for the pup,’ Ymgrawl said, glancing at Sesto’s body. ‘But not too late for thee, I trust?’

  ‘Help me up,’ Luka said. Ymgrawl heaved Silvaro to his feet. Luka was shaking, unsteady.

  He moved forward and picked up the fallen amulet.

  ‘Now we break this. Hammer it apart,’ he said. His voice trailed off.

  Luka could hear distant chanting, frail singing echoing in the air. A scent of musk and spices, the slow wash of funeral dhows upon a tranquil river. Priests and oxen, pipes, heavy drums, the odour of fresh basalt tombs, open for the last time. The setting sun. The racing stars. A huge pyramid, rising above the bend of the river. A thousand voices.

  The dry, dry grit of the piling sand.

  He felt thirsty. Parched.

  Blood, that’s what Roque had said. Blood. The tomb king was thirsty for blood. That was the curse it had put upon the Kymera, to kill, and kill, and kill again across the waters of the sea to find enough blood to slake its eternal thirst.

  And make it live once more.

  It was so close now, so close. Luka gazed at the boy in the casket, saw the rude health in his complexion. Just another few measures of blood to drink, and he would live again. And unleash his woe upon the Old World.

  Just another few measures. Ymgrawl, he would furnish plenty. And Casaudor and Benuto. Blood was blood. There was almost enough of it now. Gods, but it was hungrier than Sheerglas on a bad night. It wanted to drink up the world.

  ‘Luka?’ Ymgrawl said, staring at Silvaro, his bloody knife still raised. ‘Not thee too,’ he sighed.

  ‘Enough blood,’ Luka mumbled. ‘Enough blood. There must be enough blood, or it won’t awake from its endless sleep.’

  ‘Luka!’ Ymgrawl yelled.

  Clutching the amulet, Luka Silvaro staggered away up the hold steps, clambering up through the smoky bowels of the Butcher Ship to the deck. There, men and ghouls still fought in the swirl of the storm and the vile fog. As Luka stumbled across the corpse-littered deck, fresh blood flew up from the timbers and was sucked up into the golden amulet he clutched.

  In the hold, the boy-king’s eyes flickered open.

  Luka fell to his knees and struggled to the broken stern rail. He looked down at the amulet in his hands. It belonged to him. It needed him like he needed it, like an addiction, like a true love. The yearning was unbearable.

  ‘Thirsty?’ Luka said to it. ‘Are you thirsty?’

  Yes, hissed the fragile voices. Down in the hold, the boy-king’s mouth moved and echoed the word.

  ‘Drink this,’ said Luka Silvaro, and hurled the amulet out, away from the stern rail, into the fathomless water of the Golfo Naranja.

  XXXIV

  With a terrible wailing, as if the distant, fragile voices in Luka’s head were now projecting out of each and every dry mouth, the ghouls collapsed. The red light faded away, like a mist curling off at dawn, and the Kymera became a rotting black shell.

  The bodies of the fallen ghouls, clutching their cut-lesses and pikes, shrivelled away, like the last ash from a fire at cold daybreak. Just a blackened, soaked and worm-riddled ark now, the Kymera began to founder. Its decayed masts fell, its rotten lines snapped and shredded.

  ‘Luka?’ Casaudor said, coming to his side.

  ‘The curse is lifted,’ Luka wheezed. ‘The Butcher is dead.’

  ‘You men! Help the captain up here!’ Casaudor yelled. Tende stumbled forward, and Saint Bones and Benuto.

  ‘I’m fine!’ Luka said, rising. ‘Get to the Rumour. Cut her free before this bastard sinks away.’

  The Reivers ran to the port side, hacking away the lines and grapples, and leaping across the Rumour’s gunwales.

  Luka turned and saw Ymgrawl behind him. The boucaner was holding Sesto’s body in his arms.

  ‘Does he live?’ Luka asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Ymgrawl nodded.

  ‘Can we save him?’

  Ymgrawl closed his eyes and shook his head.

  ‘Take him! Take Sesto here!’ Luka yelled. ‘Get him aboard the Rumour and get Fahd to see to him.’ The Arabyan cook was all that passed for a surgeon on the Reivers’ ship.

  Men ran forward and took Sesto’s limp body from Ymgrawl.

  ‘Where are thee going?’ the boucaner asked.

  ‘To slice the Lightning Tree free,’ Luka said. ‘She does not deserve to be dragged down with this accursed hulk.’

  Luka limped away across the pitted, smoking deck. The boards under his feet were wet-black and decaying, and he stepped over mutilated corpses and damp scatters of bones and rusted armour.

  Luka yanked a boarding axe out of the deck and started to hack away the grapple lines and stays that bound the Lightning Tree to the Kymera. He ignored the shooting pains in his side and his shoulder.

  Water, cold and fast, began to bubble up through the Kymera’s hatches. The deck dipped. Luka cut away the last lines and leapt across onto the Lightning Tree. He looked back and watched as the Kymera sank straight down into the tide, water filling its guts and weighting it, dragging it into the measureless sound.

  From far below, there came a scream, choked off, as from a tyrant boy-king, who had woken from eternity to find himself drowning in the deepest pit of the ocean.

  The scream died away. The dark water frothed and churned.

  Luka limped across the Lightning Tree’s perilously-slanted deck. Smoke streamed through the air, and the heavy rain doused the last of the fires. There were bodies all about, tangled on the deck, cut to ribbons in the terrible fight.

  Luka saw Honduro, dead with a cut-less through his heart. A score more at least. The carrion birds were closing in.

  He found Tusk.

  The old man had taken a pike though his gut, and he’d bled out on the quarter deck.

  He was still alive, just.

  ‘Luka?’

  ‘Jeremiah, you old dog. You came back for me.’

  ‘I was concerned. A matter of three times, and I was worried I had not matched them.’ Tusk’s voice was tiny and distant.

  ‘You’ve matched them all, and over again. I could ask no more of you.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, then,’ Tusk said. ‘I’ve no bloody more to give.’

  Luka bowed his head.

  ‘Did you get him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Butcher, Luka. Did you get him?’

  ‘We got him, Jeremiah.’

  Tusk slid back. He reached into his bloodied coat with his good hand.

  ‘One thing, Luka, for you, now all I have is gone and done. Take it.’

  Luka took the blood-wet fold of parchment.

  ‘Do what I could not,’ Tusk sighed. ‘Get out of this business.’

  Luka was about to reply, but Tusk’s head rolled sideways. He was gone.

  Tucking the parchment into his sash, Luka ran for the side. The Lightning Tree, as if sensing its master’s demise, was shaking and jolting. Planks burst and timbers tore away. In a terrible death-rattle of sundering wood, the Lightning Tree, scourge of the Tilean Sea for so many years, sank away into the flood.

  Luka Silvaro dived headlong from the rail.

  XXXV

  It was a bright, hot day, with a free wind, the last they would probably have before the winter. Luka Silvaro limped onto the poop deck of the Rumour, trying not to test the stitches Largo had sewn into his wounds.

  Tende was at the wheel, with Benuto at his side. Casaudor smiled as he saw the master approach.

  ‘To Aguilas?’ Luka asked.

  ‘In this chop, just a day,’ Casaudor said.

  Luka nodded. ‘Stay on, friend. I’ll be below.’

  ‘Sir,’ Casaudor said. ‘What of us now?’

  ‘Trust me,’ Luka replied. ‘I’ll never see the Reivers wrong.’

  Luka thumped into his cabin, limped across the deck, and all but fell down in his seat. His wounds ached monstrously. Blood seeped out between Largo’s fine stitchwork.

  ‘Oh, Sesto,’ he sighed to himself. ‘What are we to do? We’ve pulled the stroke your father wanted from us, and set the seas free from the Butcher’s ire. And all for what? A promise of an amnesty? A reward? It seems so hollow now the seas are open. Such a desperate effort, and for what?’

  The cabin remained silent.

  ‘I said, for what?’ Luka repeated.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sesto, hauling himself up on his cot with a stifled groan. ‘I didn’t realise you were speaking to me.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Luka. ‘Just thinking aloud.’

  ‘Will you sail us homeward now, to Luccini? To collect your price?’ Sesto asked, wincing at the pain from his slowly-healing wound.