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 last 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 sovereign-less 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.

  In the first part of the morning of the next day, Sesto heard voices arguing in Silvaro’s cabin. There was no doubting the voices belonged to Silvaro himself and to Roque, the master-at-arms. Sesto didn’t dare approach. He sat down with his back to the base of the mainmast and waited. Ymgrawl sat down beside him. Long-limbed and scrawny, Ymgrawl just folded himself up into a sitting position. He took out a tanner’s knife with a hooked tip and began cutting away at a yellow-dry whale’s tooth.

  ‘They’re arguing,’ said Sesto at length.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Do they often argue?’

  ‘Thou knowst as good as I. No two better friends on the seas.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Ymgrawl fixed Sesto with his narrow, flinty stare. ‘The Butcher Ship. Roque can’st credit this to be the truth. Too easy, saith he.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Butcher. ’Tis a monster. Like a force of creation. Roque saith it would not threaten for supplies. It would as like raid and burn and take its will.’

  ‘Then what is it we hunt?’

  Ymgrawl shrugged.

  The freeport of Santa Bernadette was said to be the last living place in the island chain, though Ymgrawl boasted he knew of others. It was at least the last place of any real size. They came upon it in the heat of the afternoon. Across a bay, twinkling with bright, reflected sunlight, lay the inner curve of a dense, green island. Between sea and jungle lay a stripe of whitewashed buildings.

  The bay was too shallow even for the Safire, so they cast out anchors at the mouth, and three armed boats were prepared and lowered.

  It was a long, sticky row to the shore. Sesto travelled in the lead boat with Luka, hearing the bare-chested ratings around him grunt and pant as they heaved to the stroke call. Sesto watched Luka prime and cock a pair of wheel-lock pistols and a short-muzzled caliver, and began to wish he’d brought a deal more than his rapier. Maybe his little Arabyan gun would have been a good idea.

  They beached and dragged the longboats up onto the gritty sand. At Roque’s gesture, men drew swords and pistols, and scurried forth up the head of the beach towards the stucco shacks and limed buildings that drowsed under the hem of date and palm.

  ‘There’s none here on it,’ reported Fanciman, one of the armsmen, returning to Roque.

  The master-at-arms had crouched down, touching a dark patch on the sand. He sniffed his fingers. ‘Wet with lamp oil,’ he said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Sesto asked.

  ‘’Ware those huts!’ Roque shouted, rising. The men up the beach, about to burst into some of the dwellings, paused.

  Sesto hurried after Luka and Roque as they crossed to the nearest building. It was an old blockhouse, built of timber and mudbrick, its white plaster crumbling.

  Luka pushed open the door with the snout of his caliver. The wood-planked door, gnawed away at the edges by the ministry of sand and sea, creaked in a little way and stopped. Luka was about to nudge it again, when Roque raised a hand.

  The Estalian crouched low to the side of the doorway and made the others stand back as he prodded the door the rest of the way in with his sabre’s long blade.

  The gunpowder boom scared birds out of the trees and its echo rolled up and down the warm air of the beach.

  Inside the hut, a blunderbuss had been set to a chair and its trigger tied with fishing twine to the door bolt.

  ‘A trap,’ said Roque, examining the makeshift weapon.

  ‘A trap for what?’ mused Silvaro.

  Outside, a thin rattle of gunfire sounded.

  They ran out of the hut. Bullet-balls and short-haft arrows were pelting down the beach from both the north and south ends, coming out of the trees. Already, three of Luka’s landing party had fallen, wounded. There was a heavier boom from some field piece, and a geyser of sand vomited up from the ground not ten paces from where Luka and Sesto stood.

  ‘To arms! To arms!’ Roque shouted.

  Sesto heard a soft, clicking rush. Flames licked along the beach edge in a line, growing into a furiously burning wall. The oil Roque had scented was a fire-trap dug into the ground. Someone had carefully – desperately, Sesto thought – prepared this welcome.

  Another cannonball whizzed overhead and cracked wide the gables of the blockhouse they had entered.

  ‘Manann’s mercy! I’ve had my fill of this greeting,’ Luka growled. ‘Into cover!’

  One of his men, obeying blindly, ran into a hut and was blown in two by the fowling piece strung to its door. Three more ran ill of a covered pit between two huts. The stretched, sand-covered canvas snapped away beneath their weight and plunged them into a staked darkness. Their howls were almost unbearable.

  From the cover of the trees, men charged them. Dozens of men, carrying spears, hatchets and machetes. Their skins were black, and white skull marks had been daubed on their faces, aping the look of King Death himself. They howled and ululated, and beat on drums and copper kettles. Sesto thought them quite frightening. They had the pirate landers pinned on a narrow stretch of beach between the huts and the crackling wall of fire.

  ‘Damn this…’ roared Luka. He raised his caliver and fired at the first savage who came running at him. The blast walloped the man over onto his back. Luka cast the caliver aside, and drew his pistols, greeting the next two assailants with similar fates.

  Roque, his voice brooking no disobedience, brought the Reiver party into a knot, forming two walls that faced each head of attack. A salvo of locks crackled and puffed white smoke, and skull-faced men dropped hard onto the sand.

  Then blades came out and it came down to steel.

  Luka, the largest man on the beach, was raging with temper now. He drew his curved shamshir and a stabbing dagger and hurled himself at the line of charging foemen.

  ‘With him! With him!’ Roque shouted.

  Sesto drew his rapier, trembling with fear, and dashed out after Luka.

  He met a man coming at him with a woodaxe, little more than a hatchet, and stuck him clumsily through the throat. Then he felt rather bad about it. For all his howling and warpaint, the man had seemed more scared than he was.

  Luka and four of his most thuggish retainers – Fanciman, Tall Willm, Saint Bones and Saybee – led the brunt charge into the straggled southern line of attackers, and gave fearful account. Luka ripped a man open with his shamshir, then impaled another on his dagger. He kicked at a third, then slashed at him once his sword was free. Tall Willm gutted a man with his sabre. Saybee, the massive lee helmsman, swung a double-toothed axe forged in the Norse lands and felled two men like trees. Strung around with various flint- and wheel-lock pistols on ribbon loops, Fanciman seemed never to need to reload. Saint Bones, his devilish rapier dancing, sang Sigmarite hymns as he slew.

  To the north hand, Roque did the lion’s share of the bloodletting, flanked by Tortoise Schell and Pietro the Hoof, two of his favoured armsmen.

  And that was enough.

  The attackers broke off and scattered, fleeing up the beach to both compass points. Their ululating had become howls of fear. They left weapons, drums and kettles on the sand behind them, along with twenty-four dead or dying men, six of which Luka alone had dealt with.

  The Reivers themselves had lost three, with four more wounded. One of the wounded was a man dragged, bloody and wailing, out of the stake-trap. Some of the stakes came with him, stuck through his legs. The hot afternoon stank of blood and sweat. Flies buzzed around them, suddenly swarming from the damp, leech-haunted forest beyond the huts, drawn by the reek of fresh blood.

  ‘One lives yet,’ Roque announced as some of his men dragged a bleeding, shivering savage to face Luka.

  The man was thrown to the ground at Luka’s feet. He didn’t dare look up. A pistol ball had shredded his right ear and blood was pouring out of the mangled flesh onto the sand, where the drops quivered proud like rubies before slowly seeping in. Sesto could see that where the man’s dark skin had been smudged away, his flesh was as pale as any mainland Tilean’s.

  Luka shook his head and knelt down to face the man, who whimpered and tried to turn away.

  ‘You thought we were the Butcher Ship, didn’t you?’ Luka sighed.

  XIV

  The sun sank fast, as it does in the tropics, and a cool ocean snap blew in across them, spurring the last dregs of smoke off and away from the glowing, glassy embers of the oil trap. A thin crescent moon came out, sharp as a claw extending, and stars lit their tiny lamps. In the dark foliage of the island forest, nocturnal insects began to thrill and peep and knock.

  Sombre and half-hearted, kerchiefs tied around their mouths, the landing crew dragged the bodies of their enemy into a stack at the northern tip of the beach. No formal words were made, but some of the men came, one by one – Saint Bones, Fanciman, Pietro the Hoof, Roque – and muttered things to the dead, casting coins or rings or other trinkets into the heap.

  Wards of protection, no doubt. The Reivers were cut-throats, but this action had a sour taste.

  Once the moon had cleared the tossing silhouettes of the island’s trees, Luka took a flaming torch from Saybee and threw it on the heap.

  The flames burned bright white with heat, yellow with fat.

  Sesto walked as far away from the pyre as he could get.

  Down by the south end of Santa Bernadette’s beach, he discovered Roque, alone, drinking from a flask of jerez.

  ‘A bad business,’ Roque said, aware of Sesto in the night shadow behind him. He held out the flask.

  Sesto took a sip. The sweet, heavy-fortified wine tasted like silk.

  ‘Mistaken identity,’ the Estalian mariner went on, looking out into the sea, watching the waves roll up in gentle curls along a sandy waterline made glassy by the moonlight. Little red crabs scuttled and jumped on the mirror of sand, their calliper claws leaving marks that lasted just a heartbeat before the next sudsy curl smoothed them over.

  Roque took the proffered bottle back. ‘This Butcher. He makes butchers of us all.’ Roque suddenly knelt and twisted the flask down upright in the dry sand to stop it upsetting. He leaned forward and washed his hands in the breakwater. It was too dark to tell if there was any blood on them, too dark to see if any was scrubbing off. Sesto was sure the act was essentially ritual. Or at least the contrition of a man’s unhappy soul.

  Roque had not been right since the dreadful night on Isla Verde. Only Sesto and Sheerglas knew that the fiend Gorge had rejected Roque for having spoiled blood. They had not spoken about it.

  To his dying day, Sesto would believe there was nothing more terrible to witness than a self-avowed killer trying to make amends for his own sins.

  ‘I heard you argue,’ said Sesto nervously.

  ‘Then your ears are as big as the fool-boy Gello’s!’ Roque snapped.

  ‘Forget I spoke, sir,’ Sesto said, and turned away.

  ‘Sesto!’ Roque called. He got up, recovered his flask, and hurried to the young man’s side.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forgive me, sir. I forget myself in a gentleman’s company. It has been a long time since–’

  ‘Since what? Since you were at court, Señor Santiago Della Fortuna?’

  ‘Yes. That is perhaps what I meant.’

  ‘So you are that man? That famous discoverer?’

  ‘Sesto, Sesto… That man is long dead, years dead. That man is also here. Make of that riddle what you will.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I have sworn not to tell it. I… Let me just say, I travelled wide, made my name and fortune, and then pushed my luck against the fates of the fickle oceans too far. In Lustria, in that abominable land. Such things I saw… The scaled ones… they–’

  He took a deep swig.

  ‘Five years I was lost. Five years I will not speak of. It was as a low oar-slave on an Arabyan corsair galley that Luka found me. Found me, saw my worth… the man who stands before you on this beach tonight was born again, whole, at that moment. All that he had been before was melted away and lost.’

  Sesto pursed his lips. ‘You argued with Luka today.’

  Roque nodded. ‘We stalk the wrong prey. There is a tyrant ship out in the waters of the islets, but not a butcher. And today we–’

  He fell silent.

  ‘I killed a man today,’ Sesto said.

  ‘Three myself, and none deserved it. If you killed, Sesto, you know this pain. The Butcher’s taint makes even the best of us brute killers.’

  The notion surprised Sesto somewhat. That curious pirate code again, no doubt. The notion that there were degrees to which one could be a killer.

  The balefire burned on at the far corner of the beach. Nearer to the huts and shanties, driftwood bonfires had been built and lit. Their crackling heat and parched smoke billowed around the huts and drove off the night flies and mosquitoes.

  Luka had a bellyful of wine in his skin, and sat morosely at a plain timber table in the main hut. ‘Dead for a peso octo, all of them,’ he muttered as Roque and Sesto came in. ‘Dead by our hand for trying to stay alive.’