Ship of Smoke and Steel

by Django Wexler

  “Alive.” I force myself to lift the canteen and drink. “Where are we?”

  “A hospital run by someone named Sister Cadua. She has a lot of experience with powerburn, they say.”

  In the past, when I’d overused my power, I’d had to suffer through the aftermath alone. On a ship full of mage-born, I suppose the problem would be a bit more common. Though a horrible thought occurs to me—

  “She’s not a ghulwitch, is she?”

  A shadow passes across Meroe’s face, and she shakes her head. “Just handy with a mushroom poultice.”

  I let out a relieved breath. Having Kuon Naga’s ghulwitch messing around with my insides is enough for me for one lifetime.

  “The others are more or less all right,” she goes on. “Ahdron needed some stitching up. The Butcher’s people took them back down to the pack cell, but I convinced them someone ought to stay here with you.”

  “I’m surprised they care about me one way or the other.”

  “I think the Butcher would have been happy to leave you to rot,” Meroe says. “But everyone’s been talking about what you did, so she couldn’t just ignore you.”

  “What do you mean, what I did?”

  “The thing you killed was called a blueshell,” Meroe says, grinning. “Apparently they’re pretty rare, and not the sort of thing people fight all by themselves, even Melos adepts. The story’s all over the place.”

  “Wonderful.” I set the canteen aside, trying to figure this out. Having a reputation might help, but it’s only going to make the Butcher angrier. “How long has it been?”

  “A day and a half.”

  I groan, and pull myself to a sitting position. “You’ve been here the whole time?”

  “More or less,” she says. “We’re still under guard, so I’m not allowed to wander around.”

  “You should have let them take you back to your cell.”

  “I didn’t want you to be alone when you woke up,” she says.

  I give a sigh, which hurts. “You—”

  “Besides, you’ve saved my life twice now,” Meroe says.

  “Maybe you should be a little more careful with it,” I tell her. “What were you doing taunting that monster?”

  “Getting it away from Berun, of course,” she says. “He was scared out of his mind, and it was coming right at him.”

  “Berun is scared of everything.” I wince at another ripple of pain. “He’s useless.”

  “Which means I should let him get eaten by crabs?”

  “If you have to.” I shift awkwardly as she glares at me, and I try hard not to roll my eyes. Aristos. “Listen, Princess. You may have grown up in a happy fairy tale, but this is reality. You think Berun would jump in front of a crab to help you? He’d run for it, and more power to him.”

  “Don’t talk about how I grew up like you know anything about me,” Meroe snaps. “You came and rescued me, didn’t you?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons.” Even if I’m not quite sure what they are at the moment. “Don’t get the wrong idea about me.”

  “What idea would that be?”

  I grit my teeth. “That I’m a good person.”

  She crosses her arms and sniffs. “Small chance of that.”

  “What’s this?” a voice says from the doorway. “A lovers’ tiff?”

  I tense up, and Meroe turns. The rag curtain parts, and a slim figure enters. The newcomer has an Imperial complexion, with a long, wild half head of hair dyed bright purple and flopped over the other, shaven half. A boy, I assume at first, but I quickly correct myself; she’s a woman, close to my own age, though with no chest and only the slightest of curves about the hips. She’s dressed in the colorful silk that seems so common on Soliton, and her broad grin has a touch of madness about it.

  “Hello, fresh meat,” the newcomer says, without taking her eyes off me. “You’re Isoka, is that right?”

  “I am,” I say, cautiously. “Who are you?”

  “They call me Jack,” she says, with a shallow bow. “Wide-eyed Jack, Quick-Fingered Jack. Mad Jack, if they don’t fancy living much longer.”

  “Do you work for the Butcher?”

  Jack giggles. “I wouldn’t stoop to bowing to that oversized turd if I was reduced to begging in the street. No, I serve the most honorable Zarun, and gladly. He has heard of your exploits, you see, and wishes to buy you a drink.” She brushes past Meroe, leaning forward on the bed, a little too close to me. “Are you game?”

  “We can’t leave,” Meroe says. “One of the Butcher’s people is keeping watch outside.”

  Jack turns to her as though seeing her for the first time. “Was keeping watch,” she says. “Now I rather suspect he’s scuttled off with the purse I gave him to enjoy his good fortune. But may I ask who you’re supposed to be?”

  “Meroe,” I say. “One of my pack mates. She’s new to the ship, too.”

  “More fresh meat,” Jack says, licking her lips. “How delightful. She’s welcome to join us, of course. But hurry, hurry. Zarun gets so sad when he’s kept waiting.”

  “What about the Butcher?” I say.

  “Leave the Butcher to me,” Jack says. Her eyes are a bright sapphire blue, not a common color in the Empire. “What say you, Isoka, slayer of crabs? A drink?”

  Options. As usual, not enough information. Zarun wants something, obviously. Going with her might anger the Butcher, but I think I’ve burned that bridge already. So what’s left to lose?”

  I glance at Meroe. “I could use a drink.”

  Jack bounces again and claps her hands, smile growing even wider. “Lovely. Let’s, then.”

  * * *

  I get dressed—my clothes have been cleaned but are still torn and ragged—and stretch, working out the residual ache of powerburn. Whoever Sister Cadua is, she does pretty good work, because I feel better than I’d expect to after that bad a fight. I join Meroe and Jack outside.

  Jack leads the way, with an odd gait that’s halfway between walking and skipping. There’s another metal corridor with doorways on either side, and another curtain at one end. Jack hurries ahead, and I’m about to follow when Meroe grabs my elbow.

  “Isoka, what are you doing?” she hisses.

  “What does it look like?”

  “She wants you to meet with Zarun,” she says. “You remember what he did when we came aboard? That little girl?”

  “I’m not likely to forget.”

  “Then maybe,” Meroe says, “this isn’t a person we should be getting friendly with.”

  I pull my arm away from her, irritated. This is what I was worried about—I saved her life on a whim, and now she thinks we’re sworn companions.

  “First of all,” I tell her, “it’s not we. I am going to meet with Zarun. You can do what you like.”

  Meroe stares, as though I’d slapped her. Her expression tears at something in my chest, but I push the feeling down ruthlessly.

  “Second,” I go on, “if you want to survive here, I promise you’re going to have to do a lot nastier things than have a drink with someone who chops off little girls’ heads. Zarun has power here. If I can use that to help myself, I will. I don’t care if he slaughters his way through an orphanage.”

  For perhaps the first time in our acquaintance, Meroe seems at a loss for something to say. I give her my best nasty smile, and try to take some pleasure in the way she flinches.

  “I’m just trying to stay alive, Princess,” I say. “You might want to think about doing the same.”

  Jack clears her throat, an exaggerated harrumph. She’s standing by the open door, one arm extended like a faithful servant welcoming the master home. I turn away from Meroe, certain she’ll follow. Where else does she have to go? And, indeed, after a few moments I hear her footsteps on the deck.

  I’m prepared for a lot of weirdness when I step outside—if Soliton has taught me a lesson so far, it’s to be ready for strange things.
What I’m not prepared for, apparently, is sun, and I take a half step back, eyes watering. As my vision clears, I discover we’re standing in the center of a slanting shaft of sunlight, streaming down from an irregularly shaped hole in a metal roof several hundred feet overhead.

  In front of me there’s a—street, I guess you’d have to call it, if you can have such a thing aboard a ship. Sister Cadua’s doorway is embedded in a wall that stretches off in either direction. Ahead is a much larger space, cluttered with small, ramshackle buildings that are definitely not part of Soliton’s original design. They’re made of anything and everything—sheets of rusty metal, draped cloths, pieces of chitin, even slabs of what looks like dried mushroom. Some could be dignified with the title of “shack,” while others are barely more than tents or lean-tos. The “street” is just a long, crooked area kept clear of obstruction, leading roughly from Sister Cadua’s to a huge tower rising in the middle distance.

  Overhead, a metal roof is supported by curved girders. Big chunks of it have rusted out, leaving ragged-edged holes that look up into a bright blue sky. That sight makes my throat thicken, just a little—it’s surprising how quickly you get to miss the sky, when you’re stuck in darkness. Patches of sunlight slide gently over the makeshift city, dappled by clouds.

  “Where are we?” I ask, as Jack beams in the light and spreads her arms like an eager impresario.

  “These are the Upper Stations,” she says. “The highest deck. Home to the market, the officers, and the most successful packs.”

  “Where do the rest live?”

  She glances at the floor. “Down below. There’s the Middle Deck, and then the Drips.”

  The Drips sounds about right for where Pack Nine is locked up. I have a dozen other questions, but Jack is already moving again.

  “Come, come!” she shouts. “We are expected, slayer of crabs. It wouldn’t do to be late.”

  Jack caroms down the street like a puppy, rushing from one source of excitement to the next. In front of the shacks, people have set out sheets covered with small items, and I realize this is the market she mentioned. It’s not much of a market, truth be told—the morning fish market in Kahnzoka would have swallowed it a hundred times over—but, again, not something I expected to find on a ship at all.

  The items for sale are a curious lot. Some I understand—meat, mushrooms, plants that might be seaweed, armor plates and polished bones and a hundred other pieces of creatures worked into useful objects. But there are also things that could not possibly have been made aboard ship: china plates and crystal goblets, jade statues and silk dresses, fine things from all over the world. They’re strewn around, casually, with no regard for their actual value. A delicate silver-inlaid egg with the gleam of real gold sits amid coils of seaweed rope and broken pieces of metal decking; a purple kizen fringed with pearls worth a king’s ransom sits unfolded and unregarded beside a pile of carved bones.

  “Where does it all come from?” I mutter.

  Jack, to my surprise, answers. “Offerings,” she says. “The Captain just wants mage-born children, but not every port knows he’s so choosy. So they put their treasures in the boats with the sacrifices, and the angels leave them lying around topside. Our scavengers creep out and collect them in hopes of making a trade.” She gestures at a young boy sitting by a collection of polished chimes. “The officers get their pick of the lot, of course. This is the dregs.”

  The dregs: gold and silver and silk. But, of course, it made sense. If you truly accepted that you were stuck aboard Soliton and were never going to leave, what good was a fortune in gems and precious metals? I wonder how much treasure there is aboard the ship, and whether Kuon Naga knows it’s here. All the more reason for him to send me to claim it all for the Empire. Anger flares hot and bright in my chest, and I pause for a breath to get it under control.

  More interesting than the trinkets for sale, now that I’m looking, are the people. There are quite a few around, sitting by the displays, visible in their small dwellings, or walking up and down the street. By Kahnzoka standards, it isn’t a crowd—I could swing my arms without hitting anyone, which is unheard of on a busy street in the Sixteenth Ward. But the crew of Soliton make up for their lack of numbers with sheer variety. As I’d already observed, they come from every nation around the Central Sea—Imperials, Jyashtani, icelings, southerners, and still others I can’t place at all. There seems to be no accepted standard of dress. Everyone simply wore what they pleased, either re-creating their native style from the strange blend of trash and treasure or making up something new with what they had at hand.

  The one common element is that there are no kizen, nor the billowy robes wealthy Jyashtanis sometimes wear, or any other costume that might get in the way in a fight. Almost everyone carries at least a knife, which isn’t so different from back in the Sixteenth Ward, but a good number have larger weapons, too. No one seems to throw a second glance at a sword, hatchet, or even battle-axe. And, I remind myself, there’s every possibility that many of these people, like me, don’t require a weapon to be dangerous.

  Seeing them all sends my thoughts in an unpleasant direction. Small as the market is compared to bustling Kahnzoka, it’s still more people than I’d imagined—hundreds, maybe thousands, living here long enough to build something like a city. The sheer number gives some credence to Zarun’s claim that escape from Soliton is impossible. If there was a way, surely someone would have found it.

  No. I grit my teeth. I’m not giving up yet. Tori is waiting for me.

  And even if escape is impossible, I’ve already learned something critical. Soliton has a Captain. That means it can be controlled, which means it can be stolen.

  If going through with Naga’s mad plan is the only way to get back to Tori, then I’ll do it. Crazy or not.

  Then, once Tori is safe, I’ll come back for him.

  I brood for a few moments, then shake my head. Whatever the plan is, I need more information. As we walk in Jack’s erratic wake, a few more common elements come to my attention. In spite of their differences in origin and dress, the people of the great ship are very similar in age. There’s no one who looks much younger than twelve, and no one older than their mid-twenties. There also seem to be more women than men. While costumes might vary, groups who walk together often share a color or a look, which reminds me of Kahnzoka street gangs.

  Packs. Or clades, I remember. The personal gangs of the officers. I make a mental note to learn the colors and symbols, so I can tell who’s a friend and who’s an enemy.

  From time to time I look back over my shoulder and make sure Meroe’s still with us. She’s staring around as wide-eyed as I am, fascinated by the market and its people. When she catches my eye, though, her open face goes cold, and she looks away.

  I ignore the little twist in my gut. She’ll get over it.

  “No lollygagging!” Jack says, waving to us with both hands. “Come, come. Time for shopping later. Now is the time for drinking!”

  She spins on one heel and gestures ahead. A wider clear space on the deck is set up with dozens of tables and chairs, ranging from battered hardwood antiques to makeshift bits of decking and scrap metal. A small crowd of crew are eating and drinking from similarly mismatched plates and mugs, while a few younger children in gray tunics hurry back and forth fetching more. The rough street we’d been following intersects another here, and a large shack apparently serves as bar and kitchen.

  “Welcome to the Crossroads,” Jack says. “Best watering hole on Soliton. Only such, in truth, but ‘best’ has a better ring to it, I think. And now for the promised drink, and introductions.”

  Bemused, I follow Jack, feeling oddly at home here. It reminds me of Breda’s, where everyone went armed, but there was a vague agreement that serious fighting should happen elsewhere. Meroe follows a few steps behind, torn between her anger at me and her desire to stay close. Before long, I’m attracting attention, crew whispering and pointing in my direction. Apparently m
y fame precedes me.

  A bulky Jyashtani man at a table near my path gets up, glowering down at me. His lip twists into a dismissive sneer I find all too familiar.

  “You’re the fresh meat,” he says. “Killed a blueshell all by yourself, did you?”

  I pause, shrug.

  “She killed it,” Meroe says, to my surprise. “I was there.”

  “Sure.” The man snorts. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you found a dead blueshell and you’re looking to impress everyone your first day aboard. That it, eh?”

  He matches my gaze, weaving slightly. Drunk. I wonder how much trouble I’d be in if I just killed him. Probably quite a bit, but I’m still tempted. A quick twist, inside his reach, a thrust to the throat, and that would be the end of it.

  Meroe probably wouldn’t like it. No sooner does the thought occur to me than I chase it away. What does it matter what Meroe would like?

  I force myself to break eye contact, ceding the stupid pissing contest, and hope that’s enough to placate him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him take a step forward, and I get ready to kill him after all. Then Jack steps between us.

  She’s not intimidating, at least physically. She’s shorter than me, and while my frame might charitably be described as “wiry,” Jack looks like you could break her in half over your knee. But her wide, mad eyes meet the drunk’s, and he recoils like he’d touched a hot coal. Whatever he saw there, it’s gone by the time Jack turns around, grinning and leading me by the hand across the courtyard.

  Another woman steps in front of us, and Jack breaks away to jump into her arms. She’s one of the oldest I’ve seen on Soliton, maybe twenty-five, an iceling with broad shoulders and a solid, muscular build. Her long blond hair hangs in a spreading curtain past her shoulders, and her clothes are practical leather, layered with crab shell. There’s a sword at her hip, a short, ugly thing whose grip is stained from long use.

  Jack wraps her arms around her neck, and kisses her like none of the rest of us are watching. I blink, startled. Jack presses her thin, androgynous body against the iceling woman’s ample curves, and I find myself looking away, feeling uncomfortable.