Ship of Smoke and Steel

by Django Wexler

  * * *

  For a girl who grew up on the docks, I haven’t spent very much time in boats. My gaze was always landward, to the walled wards of Kahnzoka rising tier after tier on the hill. The sailors who flooded in and out of the harborside taverns and restaurants were a crude lot, and they’d only interested me when I could relieve them of their coin.

  Now, as I leave Kahnzoka probably for good, I find myself regretting not spending more time out on the water. The city, my city, which had always reminded me of nothing so much as a bloated animal corpse teeming with ants, has a certain beauty to it from the harbor at night. Lights march up the slope of the great hill, marking the ward walls in a regular grid, while smaller lamps are scattered between them like earthbound stars. Along the docks, the lanterns twinkle as they’re eclipsed by the forest of masts.

  There are six Immortals in the boat with me, four rowing and two keeping watch. It’s just possible I could escape. I can swim, and the harbor is calm. I could probably surprise the guards, kill one of them, jump overboard, and hope they can’t find me in the dark. But then I’d be racing them to shore, betting that I can pull myself out of the harbor and get to the Second Ward to grab Tori before word gets back to Naga. No chance.

  Naga’s “take control of the ship” scheme is obviously crazy. But he’s given me a year. All I need to do is find a way off Soliton before then and return to Kahnzoka without him finding out about it. Then I’ll extract Tori and disappear. I have contacts, money salted away, favors owing. I can beat him.

  Assuming I can get off the ship. Assuming I survive the first few hours on the ship, that it isn’t some monster out of legend that devours its sacrifices whole.

  Even in summer, it’s cold out on the water. I shiver and wish this were over with.

  The farther out we go, the more the fog closes in. The lights of the city are a vague blur behind us now, and the stars overhead are invisible. Even the steady splash of the oars is muffled, like we were wrapped in an enormous blanket. There’s no longer any sense of movement, as though time has been suspended. I wonder if this is what oblivion is like, the non-life that waits for the wicked after they die. Just endless nothing, alone in the darkness forever.

  I’m not alone, though. The head Immortal, a slim woman under the black armor and chain-link mask, sits ahead of me and concentrates. It would be hard to see in daylight, but there are lines of power around her head, faint streams of yellow energy circling her in constant, liquid motion. Yellow is Sahzim power, the Well of Perception. She mutters to the other guard, at the tiller, directing our course with her enhanced senses. I wonder what she sees.

  It takes me a moment to realize we’ve reached our destination. There are no lights, no shouted greetings. Just a dark wall rising out of the water in front of us, as though we’ve come to the edge of the world. The oarsmen turn our little boat, bringing it side-on to the barrier, which extends upward and in both directions as far as the lantern’s light reaches.

  The head Immortal reaches out and slams her fist against the wall. It makes a hollow, metallic sound, like a gong. I wonder if Naga was lying to me all along, because this can’t be a ship. It’s too big, too dark, and it sounds like it’s made out of metal. You can’t make a ship out of metal; metal’s heavy. It would sink, right?

  The term “ghost ship,” which I’d used so blithely a few hours ago, comes back to me. I shiver again.

  For a while, there’s silence. Then a demonic screech echoes down through the fog, like some enormous bird of prey. It’s followed by a rattle of chains. I picture an army of the damned, bound and fettered with spectral steel, descending—

  There are no ghosts, I tell myself. Dead is dead.

  What finally lurches into view is a cage, lowered on a rusty iron chain. It comes down a bit astern of us, stopping a few feet above the water. The oarsmen push our little boat up beside it, and I can see that the door is open. It’s big enough for three or four people to sit in, though not tall enough for them to stand. Thick, rusty iron bars are spaced only a few inches apart.

  “Get in,” the head Immortal says to me. Her voice is harsh, flat. It’s the first she’s spoken.

  Last chance for a daring escape. But all six of them are looking at me now. I get to my feet, unsteady on the shifting deck, and take hold of the bars of the cage. It sways under my weight. I lift myself in, carefully, the cage rocking and squeaking on its chain. The head Immortal shuts the door and throws an iron bolt, then slams her hand against the vertical wall again with a boom. A moment later, the screech is repeated, and the cage begins to rise.

  My heart starts to race, and I wonder if I’ve made a horrible mistake. Maybe I should have taken that last chance, however thin it might be.

  I wait, sitting in the center of the cage, trying not to move, since every shift of my weight sets it swinging. The boat below me grows smaller, its lantern a single speck of light, and then it disappears into the fog. Total darkness envelops me, but I can hear the rattling of the chain, and feel the lurch in my stomach that means I’m still moving upward.

  Finally, there’s a hint of light. It’s a gray, rotten light, not torchlight or a lantern. I can see a sharp edge, the top of the endless wall of darkness. Along the edge of the wall are figures, enormous things made of pale rock. The Jyashtani build statues to their heathen gods, humans with the heads of animals, but these are more like creatures out of some horrible nightmare. The closest one has a roughly equine body, with six legs all of different sizes and shapes. One wing emerges from its back, twisted and misshapen, and the head sitting on its thick neck looks almost human, but distended by an enormous bird’s beak. The one beside it looks like a snake with human arms and legs emerging from its body at random.

  And running over all of them is a gray light, a faint miasma that surrounds them completely. It shifts and swirls like part of the fog. It has to be magical energy, but it looks like nothing I’ve ever seen. The cage keeps rising, passing above the twisted creatures, and looking down I can see a line of them stretching off into the dark.

  There’s a sound, too. A susurrus of voices, down at the edge of hearing, mostly covered by the rattle and screech of the rusty chain. When it stops, though, just for a moment, I can hear them.

  —“kill me kill her kill me kill her—”

  —“around and around, push push push, one more time—”

  —“make it stop; oh please make it stop—”

  —“skin left on the bones—”

  —“my baby you can’t have her; she’s mine to eat—”

  “Blessed One.” I haven’t had much use for prayer in my life. But now I squeeze my eyes shut and beg. “Blessed One and all the heavenly hosts.”

  Another screech, thankfully banishing the voices. The cage swings sideways, and I open my eyes in time to see the edge pass underneath me. I’m over a flat surface, now, what I can only assume is the deck of the ship, though it looks like more metal. At the edge of my vision, the gray lights swirl, and something moves. Something big. My heart hammers.

  Then there’s darkness below me again. An opening in the deck, ragged edged, like a wound. The cage descends with another screech, the hideous statues passing out of sight. There are walls all around me, now, and I realize I’m being lowered into a pit.

  * * *

  The bottom of the pit is lit by actual lanterns, their wan glow welcome after the weird gray half-light. I can see dim shapes around the edges, crouching in the shadows. The cage comes to a halt about a foot above the deck, swinging slowly back and forth and spinning on its chain. I look around and guess there are a half-dozen people, but none of them seem to want to get close.

  “Someone let the lakath out!” a voice shouts, from above me. It’s a man’s voice with a heavy accent I can’t place. As the cage spins, I see one shape detach itself from the wall and come toward me. A young woman, about my age, with very dark skin and tightly braided hair. Her eyes are wide with fear, but she comes forward with slow, deliberate st
eps, and grabs the cage to stop its spinning. She struggles for a moment with the rusty bolt, then gets it free, and the cage door swings open with a squeal. The woman takes several quick steps back, with the air of someone who has just unleashed a wild beast.

  I edge out of the cage and take a deep breath as soon as I’m standing on solid ground. My stomach lurches a little before settling down. It’s hard to believe that I’m on a ship—the metal deck under my feet feels steady as bedrock. I wonder, again, if Naga has played some kind of trick on me.

  Focus, Isoka. I draw a slow breath, let it out, pushing back against the fear. Whatever those things were up above, they’re not down in the pit with me. I look around at my new companions. The girl who freed me wears a strange outfit, a long green dress in a style I’ve never seen, with asymmetric silver bands around her arms. She’s not an Imperial—by her skin, I’d guess she was from the Southern Kingdoms, about which I know almost nothing. What she’s doing in Kahnzoka harbor I have no idea.

  Behind her, in the corner of the room, a large young man in rough leather stands in front of a girl in a kizen. The girl is younger than me. The boy has a fresh bruise on his forehead and a split lip. He looks like a low-ward brawler, a type with which I’m intimately familiar. He’s sizing me up the same as I’m doing to him, and when our eyes meet, he bristles, like a dog’s hackles rising.

  Another young woman in the next corner, huddled in on herself. Her cheap, colorful wrap and gaudy makeup mark her as a streetwalker, one of the lowest rungs on the city’s tawdry ladder of prostitution. Her garments are torn, and her makeup is smudged with blood where she’s been beaten. Completing the group, in the last corner, is a scrawny boy with flyaway hair and threadbare clothes. He looks on the edge of panic.

  Not a dangerous group, I assess. The southerner is an unknown, and the brawler could try something. The other three don’t seem like a threat. Then I remember Naga telling me that they only send mage-born to the ship, and change my mind. If these are the latest sacrifices, which seems likely, then they can all touch the Wells. Which means I can’t afford to ignore any of them.

  I raise my hands, and attempt a smile. My heart is still beating hard against my ribs.

  “Hello.” Because, really, what in the Rot do you say at a time like this?

  The brawler cuts me off, stepping forward and pointing with one hand, the girl clinging to the other.

  “Are you the one who brought us here?” He has a thick low-ward accent. “Where in the stinking Rot are we? What do you want with us?”

  “I didn’t bring you here,” I tell him. “I just—”

  “Don’t rotting lie to me!” he roars.

  “She came down in the cage,” the southerner says, her voice very soft but distinct. She speaks fluent Imperial with a lilting accent. “I think she was brought here like the rest of us.”

  “Then—” the young man begins. He’s interrupted when the cage rises again, the screech and rattle of its mechanism drowning all speech. It passes upward, out of sight. A lantern appears, high overhead, and then several more. I can see the square room we’re in has walls about fifteen feet high and above that is a metal catwalk with a railing. There are people up there, dozens of them, but the lanterns are aimed down at us, so they’re nothing but faceless shadows. I hear laughter and shouting I can’t understand.

  The streetwalker starts to cry. I turn in a circle, shielding my eyes against the lights. There’s something that looks like a ladder, hanging from the catwalk, but not quite low enough to grab with a running jump. I glance at the brawler, thinking that I might be able to make it if I stood on his shoulders, but that’s as far as my plan gets.

  Someone jumps from the catwalk. He falls fast, and then magic crackles and flares around him, the pale blue of Tartak, the Well of Force. It halts him in midair a few inches off the ground, and then he drops lightly onto his toes.

  He has the copper skin and dark, curly hair of a Jyashtani, with high, sharp cheeks and shockingly blue eyes. I guess he’s a few years older than me, perhaps twenty, with an athlete’s build. His costume is outlandish, even by foreign standards. Jyashtani traders in the market usually wear loose white robes with tight black skullcaps, but this young man has cream-colored silk trousers embroidered with a blue-and-green design, a broad red sash at his waist, tied in an elaborate knot on his hip, and a dark shirt that doesn’t fit, half-exposing one shoulder. There’s a sword at his belt, a straight-bladed Jyashtani weapon. His hair hangs loose, longer than any Imperial man would wear it, brushing the nape of his neck.

  “Greetings,” he says. His Imperial is good, but not perfect, with the classic Jyashtani rasp. “Welcome to Soliton. My name is Zarun. I’m going to explain a few facts to you, so pay attention. You’ll be here the rest of your lives.”

  5

  Zarun looks at me first, then at each of the others in turn. I wonder if he’s assessing them for danger like I did. Certainly he doesn’t show any fear. His lips are slightly quirked, as though he finds us vaguely amusing.

  “Where in the name of the Blessed is Soliton?” the brawler says.

  “Soliton is a ship, not a place,” Zarun says, turning to face him. “And you are all now part of its crew. The Captain is in command, and the officers, including me, carry out his orders. You, in turn, carry out ours.” His smile broadens. “Is that understood?”

  “To the Rot with that.” The brawler steps forward, shaking off the grip of the girl behind him. “You’re going to let us off right now.”

  “Oh, I don’t advise trying that,” Zarun says. “You saw the things at the rail when you were brought on board? We call them angels, and they serve the Captain. They take a dim view of crew trying to leave.”

  My skin goes cold. Were those twisted things alive? I remember the gray ripples of magic, the voices, and shiver involuntarily.

  “I’m not asking again,” the brawler says. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, here.”

  He holds out a hand, and fire shoots up from his palm in a twisting column. Myrkai, the Well of Fire. I’d seen touched doing conjurors’ tricks in the market, but nothing like this, and I have to work to keep my own power in check.

  “Your Captain isn’t here right now, is he?” the brawler says, the fire lighting his face. “So either you let us off, or I—”

  Zarun moves fast, almost too fast to see. Bands of pale blue energy whip toward the brawler. The magic grabs both of the boy’s hands, solidifying into glowing manacles of solid force that yank his arms up and apart. Power flares on Zarun’s right arm, and I feel a sympathetic tug in my chest. Green Melos energy bursts out, forming a long blade like my own. In a single smooth motion, Zarun steps up to the brawler and slams the Melos blade into his chest, green lightning crackling from the impact.

  For a moment, no one moves. The brawler’s eyes have gone very wide, and the fire in his hand fades to embers and disappears. He tries to breathe, coughs, and spits blood. Zarun steps back and the Tartak fetters disappear. The brawler collapses like a broken puppet.

  The girl behind him screams and runs to his side. I throw a quick glance around the room; the streetwalker is hiding her face, and the skinny boy is on his knees, his trousers damp with piss. The southern girl is staring at the spreading pool of blood as though it is the only thing in the world, her wide eyes very white in her dark face.

  “Duro,” the brawler’s girl wails. “Duro!” I didn’t get a good look at her earlier, but she can’t be more than thirteen. Her kizen is soaking up blood.

  “I’m sorry.” Zarun looks down at her, still smiling. “There’s always one who needs a demonstration.”

  “You…” The girl looks back at him, face twisted with rage and loss.

  “He was your lover?” Zarun says, cocking his head.

  “He’s my brother,” she spits at him. “I’m going to kill you, you rotscum, you filthy—”

  “I see,” Zarun says. “And is there anything I can do to change your mind on that subject?”


  The girl’s eyes are full of fury. She thinks she’s being mocked. “I will; I swear it!”

  “I believe you.”

  He spins, blade hand extended, then straightens up. There’s a thump as the girl’s severed head hits the wall. Her body collapses on top of her brother’s, her blood pumping across him.

  The southern girl gives a little shriek, and the others all look away from the carnage. I catch Zarun looking at me, and realize I was the only one who didn’t flinch.

  “This is a good lesson,” Zarun says, in a thoughtful tone. “Here on Soliton, we mean what we say. If you tell someone you’re going to kill them, be prepared for them to take it seriously.” He lets the Melos blade fade away, and barks some foreign words into the darkness above us. Ropes fall, dark shapes swarming down them. “Bind them and take them to the Butcher!”

  * * *

  Our hands are tied behind our backs, and we’re led out of the pit by a hidden door, escorted by at least a dozen armed people. The crew of Soliton are a mismatched bunch, drawn from every nation I’ve ever heard of and quite a few I haven’t, men and women both, all young. Perhaps half are Imperials or Jyashtani, but there are a surprisingly large number of icelings, people from the Ice Kingdoms to the north of the Central Sea. They’re all large and broad shouldered, with blond or brown hair and pale, almost colorless eyes. It’s no wonder the first Imperial explorers thought they were ice spirits. Too uncivilized to trade in Kahnzoka, they survive on whaling and piracy.

  There are four of us left: the streetwalker, the boy who stinks of piss, the southern girl, and me. My wrists chafe against the scratchy rope as we walk through an endless series of corridors, the way lit by lanterns carried by the crew. It feels more like an insect warren than a ship, every surface made of metal, streaked with rust. Here and there, something grows from the walls, irregular flat discs like shelf mushrooms, but the crew hurries us onward before I can take a closer look. They seem to know where they’re going, but by the third or fourth junction I couldn’t have found my way back to the pit for all the gold in Kahnzoka.