Ship of Smoke and Steel

by Django Wexler

  “Glad to hear it,” I drawl. “And?”

  “Let’s cut the rot,” he says. “I saw what you did to the blueshell. We both know you and I are the only ones here who are worth a damn. I know you’ve got small reason to trust me, but if we can take down a hammerhead then even the Butcher is going to have to take notice. I need your help if we’re going to have a chance.”

  “You don’t have to ask for my help, do you? You just give the orders.”

  He swears unintelligibly. “I told you, cut the rot. You could have run for it and gotten away easily. I don’t know why you didn’t, but when it comes to the sharp end this time I’m asking you to stand by me again. It’s not going to be easy, but if we pull this off, we can get out of this rotting hole.” He gestures around. “We’ll move up to Middle Deck, poach a few decent pack mates, and get comfortable again. Pick our own battles. What do you think?”

  He seems earnest. Excited, even. He wants to get back into the officers’ good graces, and he thinks I’m his ticket. Whether he’s right I don’t know. I’m not sure he understands that the Butcher hates me more than ever.

  “If you’re asking whether I’ll fight,” I tell him, “then I’ll fight. But it would help if someone told me what a hammerhead was, and how you kill one.”

  “I’ll explain everything,” he says eagerly.

  “In the morning.” I yawn, looking out across the water again. The Moron hasn’t stirred. “I think I’d better get some rest, don’t you?”

  I feel him watching me as he walks away. He’s no different from Zarun, or Meroe for that matter. Even on a ship full of mage-born, apparently my skill set is unusual enough that everyone wants to take advantage of it.

  Which is fine. I can take advantage of them right back.

  Everyone on Soliton seems convinced that there’s no escaping the ship. If I assume for the moment that I believe them, that leaves one option to save Tori’s life—figure out how to deliver Soliton to Kuon Naga. The only lead I have is the Captain. I’m going to have to get close to him to find out more, and for that I’m going to need allies. Some of those allies will probably end up with a dagger in the back, of course. That’s the way these things work. I just need to make sure they don’t do the same to me.

  * * *

  I dream about angels, the twisted, alien shapes that haunt the ship’s rail. In the dream they’re clustered around me, like eager dogs gathering for a treat, except I feel like they’re trying to talk to me. Voices babble at the back of my mind, endlessly, unintelligibly. Someone is shouting in the distance, trying to cut through the chatter, but too far away to hear. The angels bleed gray light, which swirls around me, tiny specks of glowing dust trying to burrow through my skin.

  I also dream about Zarun, which is more explicable and considerably more pleasant. I kiss the taut muscle of his stomach while his hands run up and down my back. Zarun, I suspect, would not mind my scars. Unfortunately, this pleasant scenario means I wake up with an itchy, unfulfilled feeling that leaves me badly wanting to rut, or at least find a comfortable spot with some privacy and take care of things for myself. I don’t seem likely to get either, since Ahdron is already shouting for everyone to gather.

  We do, though in the case of the Moron it’s clearly more because Ahdron is holding our breakfast bucket than for any respect for the pack leader’s orders. Ahdron sets the bucket and a couple of loaves of bread in front of us, and starts to talk while we dip our bowls. Meroe sits beside me, and I catch her looking at me uncertainly. She doesn’t say much, for once. Berun sits as far as possible from Ahdron, shoveling bits of crab into his mouth between nervous looks up at the pack leader. The Moron eats in beatific silence, apparently ignorant of everything spoken.

  “The Butcher wants us to hunt a hammerhead,” Ahdron says. “Obviously that isn’t easy. She knows where one’s been feeding, which takes care of the first problem, but that leaves the issue of killing the rotting thing.” He shakes his head. “Normally you need a whole set of beaters, a Tartak adept to hold the monster down, and someone to carve a way through its thick skull. We’ve got … us. But we haven’t got a rotting choice if we want to eat, so we’re doing it.”

  Berun has frozen. “We can’t kill a hammerhead. Is she crazy?”

  “I think she knows exactly what she’s doing,” I say.

  Meroe shoots me a look. Berun tosses his bowl aside and starts to get up, and Ahdron’s voice cracks like a whip.

  “Coward! Sit down and shut up. You’re part of this, and if you try to run off gods help me I’ll burn you alive. Understand?”

  Berun sits, white-faced. The Moron, having finished his breakfast, sets his bowl down and wanders back to the shore. He plunges easily into the water, swimming out to his island in a few quick strokes.

  “Obviously he’s not worth anything,” Ahdron says. “But Coward, you’re Tartak. So we need you on this one.”

  “I’m n … not strong enough,” Berun says, looking at the floor. “I’m only a talent. I c … can’t hold a hammerhead.”

  “You can rotting well try,” Ahdron says.

  “Meroe saved you from the blueshell,” I tell him. “Now’s your chance to return the favor.”

  “I didn’t…” Berun looks at Meroe, then back at the floor. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be … I’m just not strong enough, that’s all.”

  “We’re not going to be able to do it the usual way,” Ahdron says. “We’re going to have to get it to come to us, instead of flushing it out with beaters. Meroe, that’s your job.”

  “How?” Meroe says.

  “By being bait,” Ahdron says. “When we start seeing signs the hammerhead is close, you’ll cut yourself and make some noise. That’ll bring it out, sure as winter.”

  “I don’t—” I start, but Meroe interrupts.

  “All right,” she says. “Then what?”

  “Then Coward here holds it. It doesn’t have to be for long; a few seconds will do.” He leans down and sketches an elliptical shape on the deck, then puts a couple of dots in the middle. “The only way to kill a hammerhead is to hit the heart or the brain. But they’re both too far inside to get to easily. So Isoka, I want you to go for the legs instead. Damage enough of them and we’ll slow it right down. Then I can take my time and blast it apart. May not make the best steaks for the officers, but they can go rot.”

  “It won’t work,” Berun moans. “I told you, I can’t hold it.”

  “Would you shut it?” Ahdron closes his fist, which ignites with a whoomph. “I swear, I’m going to—”

  “Let me talk to him,” Meroe says. “Please.”

  Ahdron glares at Berun, but he nods. Meroe takes the boy’s trembling hand and leads him away, speaking to him in a low voice. Ahdron rolls his eyes and starts on his own breakfast, ripping one of the tough loaves of bread in half.

  “So, the hammerhead,” I ask him, “does it have claws like the blueshell, or tentacles, or what?”

  Ahdron shakes his head. “Just a mouth. A big, wide mouth, full of tiny, sharp teeth.” He rips a hunk off the bread and chews with some difficulty. “Rotting gods. Would it kill them to bring it to us fresh?”

  “What do they make bread out of, anyway?” I tear a chunk from the loaf. “It can’t be flour.”

  “Mushrooms,” he says. “There’s a kind you can grind up like grain.”

  “Amazing,” I mutter. Crabs and mushrooms seem to be the two things Soliton has in abundance.

  Meroe comes back, with Berun in tow. To my surprise, the boy is looking more determined, his clenched fists still shaking slightly.

  “Well?” Ahdron says.

  “I’ll … try,” Berun says. “I don’t think … I mean…”

  Meroe touches his arm, lightly, and he looks up at her. I almost laugh out loud at the puppy-dog devotion in his eyes. He’s fallen for her, hard.

  “I’ll do it,” he says. “I don’t know how well it will work, but I’ll do it.”

  “That’s the spirit, Co
ward,” Ahdron says.

  I drift over to Meroe and lower my voice. “What’d you tell him?”

  “Just that I needed his help,” she says. “I talked to him instead of threatening him. It wasn’t difficult.”

  “And you think he’ll hold up?”

  “He gave me his word.”

  “Sure, because he wants you to rut him.”

  “He doesn’t.…” She hesitates, though if she’s blushing her dark skin makes it invisible. “All right, maybe he does. But still I think he’ll try to help.”

  “Boys have done stupider things for a pretty girl.”

  Meroe snorts. “You were the one saying you’d be happy to sleep with Zarun if it got you what you wanted.”

  “If it got me what I wanted. He’s not just a boy with a pretty face.”

  “Not just a boy with a pretty face. But he does have a pretty face.”

  I glance at her, and there’s a faint, mischievous smile on her lips. I smile a little, too. Trading barbs, in a strange way, makes me feel closer to her than anything else. It reminds me of Hagan and Shiro, standing on the street corner and swapping insults and improbable exploits.

  “What about the other boy?” she says. “The Moron.”

  “Not to my taste.”

  She rolls her eyes. “No, I mean, can he help?”

  “According to Ahdron, he never talks and doesn’t seem to understand anything anyone says to him.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t speak Imperial or Jyashtani.”

  “He looks Jyashtani.”

  “There are a lot of languages in Jyashtan,” Meroe says. “Especially in the south.”

  “You’d think he’d have said something, then, even if no one could understand him.”

  “I wonder if anyone’s tried.”

  Her thoughts on the matter are interrupted by the clang of the cell door opening. Haia is waiting for us on the other side with a mocking grin.

  “All right, Pack Nine,” she says. “Time to go down into the dark again.”

  9

  When Ahdron warns me about rattlers, I picture some kind of snake. This turns out to be almost completely wrong, and I find myself wishing he’d been a little more descriptive.

  These rattlers are spherical creatures a bit larger than my head, looking like nothing so much as a ball of rust-red needles. They move by rolling across the metal deck, their spines making a distinctive rattle-click sound. Two fleshy pink “feet” like stubby tentacles emerge from either end to give them periodic kicks, enabling them to move at high speed.

  And, I discover, to jump several feet off the ground with unexpected force. Three of the creatures had careened into the circle of light shed by our torches, then come at us all together. I step toward them, putting myself in front of the others as I ignite my blades. A blast of flame whips past my shoulder, blowing one of the rattlers into a spray of smoking fragments, but the other two keep coming. I get ready to slash the leading one in half, winding up and ready to swing, when the damn thing springs into the air with a quick thump of its foot against the deck. I try to get my other blade around in time but don’t make it, and it slams into my chest. Melos armor crackles, keeping the needles from my skin, and a wave of brutal heat rolls across me. The impact sends me reeling backward, and the rattler bounces away. It does a quick roll on the deck and starts coming back at us, ready for more.

  There’s a scream from behind me. It’s Berun, who’s down on his knees, clutching at his arm. The rattler that hit him skids to a halt farther on, and another bolt from Ahdron intercepts it and blows it to bits. I return my attention to the creature that bounced off me, which has gotten back up to speed for another try. Now that I’m expecting the jump, I’m ready for it, and my blade is in just the right place to slash the thing clean in half. The two pieces thump to the deck, oozing watery fluid and crackling briefly with green lightning.

  Meroe is kneeling beside Berun. The Moron, as usual, is nowhere to be seen now that the action has started.

  “Is he okay?” I ask.

  Before Meroe can answer, though, Ahdron points. “The rest of the pack is coming!” he says.

  I hear more rattle-clicks. A lot more, like a barrel full of knitting needles rolling down a hill.

  * * *

  At this point, we’re deep into the Center. Haia gave us a map, a crude, sketchy thing on a bit of torn cloth, and slammed the door behind us.

  Wherever they found the hammerhead, it’s much farther away than the Silvercap Garden, and much farther down. We descend several spiral staircases, walking along bridge after bridge until I’m thoroughly lost. The whole Center seems to be a mess of bridges, pillars, and stairs, some sturdy-looking with solid railings, others rickety and rusted, or infested by fungus. Far below us, strange colored lights shift in the dark, moving slowly into new constellations. Now and then, I catch a whiff of something that smells like the sea over the tang of rusty metal.

  A few small crabs, about the size of dogs, scurry away from our approach. The people of Soliton use “crab” to mean any of the monsters of the Center, but these look like the crabs I’m familiar with. Berun says they’re called scuttlers and they don’t attack humans unless they seem weak. I guess we look strong enough, because the scuttlers leave us alone, and we don’t run into any serious problems until we reach a wide bridge four levels down and the rattle-clicking begins.

  Rattlers, apparently, hunt in packs. I rotting well wish people would take the time to explain things.

  Apparently they hunt in big packs, too. At least two dozen of the red creatures roll out of the darkness, already moving fast, feet kicking out every few yards to push them ever faster. If I wait for them to come to us, they’ll knock me down and Meroe and the others will be easy prey. So I run toward them, angling diagonally across the bridge, slamming my boots hard against the metal deck to make it ring like a gong. Crabs are supposed to be attracted to sound, and the rattlers are no exception. They start to turn in my direction, the whole pack slewing around to come after me. The closest one jumps, and I slash it in two. Another Myrkai bolt sends a rattler careening off the bridge wreathed in flame.

  Then the rest of them have made the turn, and they’re jumping at me, too. I duck and roll out of the way as a half dozen fly through the space where I was standing, bouncing off the deck and spinning to come back at me. I cut another down as it gets too close, and feel a pulse of heat as one of them caroms off the backs of my legs. Three more jump, and I intercept one and duck another. The third catches me on the shoulder, hard enough that I stumble backward and land on my ass.

  “Ahdron!” I shout. “Now!”

  He says something in response, but I’m not listening. I curl up, putting my head down, and let my blades fade away as I put all the energy I can muster into my armor. It thickens, power crackling over me as the rattlers slam against me again and again. Their spines scrape against the solidified magic with a sound like blades on glass, green lightning arcing all around me.

  All at once, everything goes white, and my armor flares hot enough that I want to scream. There’s a rush of sound, like the whoomph of igniting oil, and then sudden quiet. A single rattle-click rapidly fades into the distance.

  I open my eyes and push myself to my feet.

  I’m standing in the middle of a huge patch of blackened deck. All around me are the rattlers, cooked to a crisp by the enormous fireball I was just at the center of. Ahdron is standing some distance off, arms folded, looking smug.

  I take a step toward him, stumble a little, and concentrate on breathing for a moment. Stray sparks of green light still shimmer over my clothes, earthing themselves on the deck and the dead rattlers.

  I don’t know if the things are good to eat, but they smell delicious.

  “If you could do that,” Meroe says, “why didn’t you just do it in the first place?”

  “For starters, it wears me out,” Ahdron says, grinning. “And it’s not very accurate. I needed them all together and well away fr
om us, unless you fancy getting cooked, too.”

  Meroe takes my arm, carefully, and puts it across her shoulders.

  “Here, lean on me,” she says. We start walking back toward the others. “Are you all right?”

  “Medium-rare, at worst,” I tell her, sucking in a breath. In truth, my limbs feel a little wobbly from the rush of power, but it’s passing. Momentary impacts and flames are easier on my armor than the sustained pressure the blueshell put me through. “What about you?”

  “I’m fine. I think something got stuck in Berun’s hand, though.”

  “That’ll be the needles,” Ahdron says. “The tips are barbed, and they break off. Let me see.”

  Berun whimpers and opens his hand. There are three long spines embedded in his palm.

  “Those aren’t in that deep,” Ahdron says. “There’s a trick to getting them out. It doesn’t hurt, if you do it right.”

  Berun stares up at him. “Do you know how?”

  He nods. “You have to hold very still, though. Take a deep breath. I’ll unhook them on three.”

  Berun grits his teeth, white-faced. Ahdron crouches and grabs the spines.

  “One,” he says, and then immediately yanks hard. The spikes come out, blood running freely from the cuts they leave behind. Berun screams and clutches his hand to his chest, smearing his shirt with crimson. Meroe jolts.

  “What are you doing?” she says.

  “He’ll be fine,” Ahdron says. “If that’s the worst injury we get today, we’ll count ourselves lucky.”

  “That’s still no reason to be—”

  “Realistic?” Ahdron smiles. “Come on. If these two can stumble a little further, there’s a pillar up ahead. It’ll be safer to rest there.”

  Meroe mutters something in another language. I gather it’s uncomplimentary. I wait, getting my breath back, as she wraps Berun’s hand in a bandage. She’s brought the sack of linen with her, along with a makeshift knapsack full of extra canteens and leftover mushroom bread from breakfast.