Ship of Smoke and Steel

by Django Wexler

  There follows one of those timeless moments that could be an instant or a thousand years. It’s dark, and warm, and smells of spoiled meat. My leg no longer hurts, but I can’t feel anything below my knee, which I suspect is a bad sign. In spite of the heat of the hammerhead’s bulk all around me, I feel cold, which probably has to do with the rate at which blood is leaving my body.

  Now what, Isoka? Going to die now?

  This admonition manages to get me wriggling forward. But the hammerhead’s mouth is almost fully closed, and the most I can do is put my hands on its teeth. Prying its jaws apart is beyond my strength, and I can’t even think of trying to resummon my blades.

  Rot.

  A shudder runs through the hammerhead. For a moment I think it’s going to get back up, and then its jaw levers open. Meroe is standing in the gap, breathing hard, arms trembling.

  “Isoka!”

  She reaches past the rows of needle teeth and grabs me under the arms. I scrabble weakly, trying to help her, but only push her off balance. She stumbles back, and I end up in her lap as she sits down heavily. I’m soaked with a mix of hammerhead blood and my own, my skin caked and sticky with the stuff, and Meroe frantically brushes it off my face.

  “Isoka!” she says. “Hang on. I’m going to find a bandage.”

  I almost laugh, because I need a hell of a lot more than a bandage. It comes out as a cough. Some ways off, I hear Berun shout, and Ahdron swearing in his own language.

  “I have never seen something so crazy,” he says. “Is she all right?”

  “Of course she’s not rotting all right!” Meroe shouts. “Get over here and help!”

  “I—” Ahdron says.

  Berun cuts him off. “It’s moving!”

  There’s a crunch of twisting metal. I manage to raise my head.

  The hammerhead’s dying tumble took it close to the edge of one of the holes in the deck, and Meroe and I are still lying beside it. We’re several yards away from the hole, but the deck beneath us is flaked and pitted with rust. The hammerhead, which had been lying still, begins to thrash, clear fluid spraying wildly from its mouth, legs twitching in uncoordinated spasms.

  “Run,” I gasp at Meroe. She won’t let me go.

  One of the monster’s mindless tremors lifts it off the deck as its back arches. It slams down with a tremendous crash, hundreds of pounds of flesh hitting the rusty, rotten deck. There’s a scream like a dying giant as a whole section of metal warps under the impact, supports giving way with a rapid pop pop pop. Plates of rust at the edge of the gap flake away, and then the deck beneath me tilts as one end dips toward the abyss.

  The hammerhead begins to slide as it thrashes, and its weight pulls the deck down farther. I feel Meroe lose her balance and fall, then start to skid toward the edge. I grab her wrist, but I have no strength, and nothing to hang on to. Metal rasps at my clothes as the deck dips again, becoming a ramp leading into darkness.

  Someone is screaming. Possibly me. The hammerhead goes over the edge, flailing aimlessly. I reach out with my free hand, trying to get a grip, but the ragged, rusty deck only shreds the skin on my fingertips. When we reach the gap, I try again, bloody palm grabbing for the edge of the deck. It crumbles in my grip, and we’re falling.

  I pull Meroe close, wrapping myself around her, putting every scrap of my energy and will into summoning my Melos armor. Then I close my eyes, knowing it won’t be enough.

  10

  The same dream. The angels cluster around me, a mass of twisted, monstrous shapes, their voices overlapping, indistinct, but full of madness and terror. It’s like they want something I don’t know how to give them, pressing against me in their need until I want to scream.

  “… Isoka?”

  A human voice, barely audible above the babble. There’s a figure behind the angels, visible in glimpses, outlined in soft gray light. Wavering, indistinct, but still familiar.

  “… oka … listen … something…”

  Hagan?

  I always dream of the people I’ve killed. Even when I’m dead, apparently.

  * * *

  Am I dead?

  I don’t feel dead. But that may not mean much.

  I open my eyes, and see the stars.

  * * *

  In Kahnzoka, between the city lights and the ever-present haze, we don’t often see the stars. But while I’m not an expert, I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to be moving, and that none of them should be green, red, or blue.

  “I don’t think I’m dead.” I say the words aloud, as an experiment. They come out as a raspy whisper, but I can hear them.

  If I’m not dead, where am I?

  That’s enough to bring it all back, and I close my eyes, throat working.

  Rot. Rot, rot, rot, Blessed’s rotten balls in a rotting teacup.

  Okay. That’s enough of that. Focus.

  I open my eyes again and try sitting up. Somewhat to my surprise, I manage it easily, though my head spins for a moment. I’m in no immediate pain. The light of the stars isn’t much to see by, so I run my hands along my leg, searching for the wounds left by the hammerhead. While my trousers are torn and squishy with blood, my skin is smooth and unbroken underneath. The bone that I felt shatter is in one piece.

  This whole scenario is unpleasantly like waking up in Kuon Naga’s custody. But then I’d only been beaten, not half bled out and dropped off a cliff.

  I ignite one of my Melos blades. Energy sizzles out of my wrist, a solid wedge of white-green power. It doesn’t cast much light, but it’s better than nothing, illuminating my immediate surroundings in a ghostly, flickering green. By Melos light, I can see that I’m sitting on fine white sand, which stretches away in all directions, its small hills and undulations casting long shadows. A few steps off, a dark shape is huddled in on itself.

  Meroe. I roll over and stumble in her direction, Melos blade held aloft like a torch.

  She’s lying on her side, breathing softly, her features slack. The sand around her is disturbed, and I guess that she crawled a short distance. I kneel beside her, searching her for injuries. Her left leg is obviously broken, crooked underneath her at a bad angle, and there are strange dark lines running across her. Charred marks, marring her clothes and skin.

  Powerburn. I was holding her when we hit the ground. My armor must have flared, trying to protect both of us. But if the backlash was strong enough to burn her, it should have cooked me into roast beef.

  Her skin is hot to the touch. She needs water. So do I, for that matter. Meroe’s pack is nowhere to be found, but my canteen is still on my belt. I pull the stopper and tip the water gently into her mouth, but it’s barely more than a couple of swallows. I swear quietly and get back to my feet, raising my blade higher.

  There. The green light gleams off a rippling surface. I shuffle in that direction, sand sliding away from my feet. It turns out to be a fairly large pool, flat and black in the darkness, reflecting my glowing blade and the stars overhead. I kneel at the edge, put my hand in, and take a cautious sip.

  It’s freshwater, thank the Blessed, sweet and cold. Ahdron said that drinking the standing water would make me sick, but I’m going to have to risk that, because I don’t see another alternative. I hold the canteen underwater until bubbles stop rising, then gulp greedily, letting more of the water run down my neck into my sweat-and blood-soaked shirt. When the canteen’s empty, I fill it again, and stand up to take it back to Meroe.

  And then stop. My reflection stares back at me, dimly, from the surface of the pool, and there’s something … wrong. I bend closer, dropping the canteen, and wait for the water’s surface to settle.

  My breath catches in my throat. There’s something wrong with my face. Markings, like graceful, curving strokes of a pen, cross it in a pattern from below my right ear up diagonally to my hairline. They look like a series of curves written in deep indigo, each intersecting the tail of the next, sometimes branching and recombining. It runs down onto my neck, and from
there onto my torso. I pull my shirt up, frantically, and spot more of the strange marks, swirling crosshatches running over my breasts and down across my stomach. Now that I’m looking, I can see more on my legs, through the gaps in my trousers left by the hammerhead’s teeth. The marks seem particularly dense where it bit me, the flesh turned almost solid blue.

  What in the Rot?

  I stand still for a moment, trying to breathe, mind racing. There are gangs in Kahnzoka that tattoo their members, but it doesn’t look anything like this. The only thing I can remember bearing anything similar is a mark like a green and red stain that marred the right shoulder, under the skin, of an old man in the Sixteenth Ward. He was an auxiliary for the Legions, as he tells the story, and took an iceling spear to the shoulder. The wound festered, and he would have died if one of the legionary healers hadn’t tended it. But the healing—Ghul healing—hadn’t been perfect, leaving the strange colors.

  And then everything falls into place. The marks, and why I’m alive.

  Meroe is a ghulwitch.

  * * *

  A moment later, I’m standing over her, Melos blade still burning, breathing hard.

  She’s a ghulwitch. No wonder she didn’t want to tell the Butcher what her Well was. I put my life on the line to help her, and she was lying the whole time.

  No wonder the King of Nimar was so eager to discard his princess. He must have found out that she’s an abomination.

  My blade hovers over Meroe’s still face, the point an inch or two from her cheek. She reached into my body with her magic, changed me. Blessed only knows what she did aside from leaving marks on my skin. There could be tumors growing in my brain, or insects nesting in my intestines, ready to chew their way out. She could have turned my fingers to claws, my eyes to fungal growths.

  Melos energy spiders out, lightning crackling from the tip of the blade and dancing across her features before earthing itself. Killing her would take less than a heartbeat. Monster. Abomination. Her kind created the Vile Rot, and came close to destroying the entire world.

  She must be strong. Certainly no mere touched, to heal me as she did. A well-trained talent might have managed it, but who could possibly have trained Meroe? She must be an adept, a full-fledged Ghul adept, the one thing every nation around the Central Sea agrees must be destroyed at birth. If I put my blade through her skull, I’d be doing the world a service.

  I close my eyes for a moment, and see Hagan’s face. I’ve killed better people than this creature, for far worse reasons. For practically no reason at all. The girl in the gambling den begged for her life, my blade at her throat. I stabbed her through the ribs, right to the heart. A quick death.

  Shaking, I put my foot on Meroe’s shoulder, roll her onto her back, and put the tip of my blade below her breast. Another fork of green lightning arcs, raising a thin string of smoke where it burns her shirt.

  So she saved my life. So what? I didn’t ask her to. She didn’t ask if I’d rather die than have her muck around inside me with her tainted hands.

  Rot rot rot.

  I see her standing up to the Butcher. Her face, blood running down her cheek, as she continued her calm appeal after the first blow. She must have known it wasn’t going to get her anywhere, but she had to try, and she wasn’t going to beg. When I saw that, I thought …

  Rot. I can’t do it, can I?

  I let my blade fade away and clench my fists, staring down at this beautiful girl, this abomination who’d kept me alive and done who-knew-what else. I feel a scream bubbling up inside me, rage and fear mixed in an acid brew, and I turn away from her before it can work its way out. I start walking, feet shuffling the sand, no idea where I’m going except away.

  The white sand seems to go on forever. After a while, my eyes adapt to the faint light—the “stars,” far above, are the same colored lights I saw from above in the Center. We really are in the Deeps, the part of the ship Ahdron said nobody ever comes back from. Which is just rotting wonderful.

  Though I can see a little, I still hear the crab before I catch sight of it. Sand crunches as its feet come down in a complex eight-legged rhythm, moving steadily closer. I turn to face it, and make out a silhouette. It’s smaller than the blueshell, but still taller than I am, an ovoid central body hanging from eight multi-jointed limbs. No claws on this one, and its hide is bright orange, speckled with silver.

  I could run, as I could have run before. But I don’t. I turn to it and ignite my blades, green light washing over the sand. The scream I pushed away refuses to be contained any longer. It tears at my throat as I charge.

  Long after the creature has collapsed, I continue my work, severing each leg in turn until the body lies on its back, stumps flailing.

  “I,” I tell it, “have had. Rotting. Enough.” Power crackles across my armor as I plant my foot on it. “You hear me?”

  It answers me with a hiss, not that I was expecting anything else. I let one blade fade away and summon the armor-piercing spike I used against the blueshell. It takes form, slowly, my right hand hot and sparking with green energy. I punch down, driving the spike into the crab’s carapace, and let all the power go. It floods into the creature’s body, sizzling through it with a sound like meat hitting the frying pan. All its stumps twitch at once, strobing with actinic lightning, and then it goes still and dark.

  “Enough,” I whisper, breathing hard.

  I don’t have time to waste here. I have an appointment with the Captain, and it’s time to get to work.

  It’s not hard to follow my tracks back to Meroe. It’s a little harder to make the walk with all eight of the crab’s severed limbs tucked under my arms, but the smell wafting up from where my power cooked it is appetizing, and I have a feeling we’re going to need all the food we can get.

  11

  By the time Meroe wakes up, I’ve made some progress.

  First I splint her leg. It doesn’t seem like a bad break, in the sense that the bone isn’t actually sticking out anywhere. More than that is beyond me, but I know enough to straighten it and strap it to something firm. A length of crab-shell works quite well. For straps, I’ve sacrificed most of my trousers, hacking the tattered cloth off above my knees.

  She gasps and shudders as I pull her leg straight, then relaxes when I tie the straps tight. I trickle water into her mouth for a while, then get to work on the crab meat. Cooking with my Melos blades is not an ideal process. I manage to sear the meat by holding it close to the crackling green energy. The middle of each strip still feels raw, but it’s the best I can do, and I devour a few. In spite of the preparation, it’s palatable. As to whether it will make me sick—as with the water, no other options seem to be available, so we’ll find out.

  I cut some thinner strips and sear them a little more thoroughly, hoping that will help them keep longer. I’ve got most of one leg carved when Meroe groans, and her eyelids flutter. I let my blades disappear and station myself at her side.

  Her eyes open, and find mine immediately. We stare at each other for a long moment.

  “I’m not dead?” Meroe says.

  “You know, that was my first question as well,” I tell her.

  “And?”

  “You’re not dead. We’re in the Deeps.”

  “My leg hurts.” She shifts, and beads of sweat pop out on her forehead. “Really hurts.”

  “It’s broken. I’ve got it set as best I can.”

  “Oh.” She swallows. “I thought it might be.”

  “Do you think you can drink some water?”

  She nods weakly, and I hand over the canteen. She finishes it, then looks up sheepishly.

  “Sorry. I probably should have saved that.”

  “There’s more,” I tell her. I set the canteen aside and pick up a strip of meat. “Food?”

  Another nod. She pops the crab meat into her mouth and chews thoughtfully, watching me out of the corner of her eye. Tension is thick in the air, and for a moment I feel sorry for her. After all, how do yo
u ask someone if they’ve figured out you’re a ghulwitch?

  “Isoka—” she starts, after the second strip of meat.

  “I know,” I tell her, tapping the line of blue marks across my face.

  “Oh.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I could feel you dying and I’d never done anything like it before, but I wanted to save you, and I just…” She shakes her head, not looking at me. “I didn’t know it would leave marks. I don’t really understand anything.”

  “I was dying?”

  She nods. “We hit hard. Your armor protected us some, but not enough. And the powerburn was … bad. You’d lost so much blood already.…” She swallows again. “I was just lying there and I could feel you slipping away. And I didn’t…” Meroe looks up at me, brown eyes shining. “I didn’t want to be alone. That’s what I was thinking. I’m an awful person, Isoka. You were dying and all I could think was, oh, gods, I don’t want to be alone down here.”

  There’s a long pause. Meroe presses the heels of her bandaged palms into her eyes, scrubbing away the tears.

  “So you’re a ghulwitch.” I hesitate. “A Ghul … adept.”

  “I … think so,” she says. “I’ve never tested my power.”

  “Why not heal yourself?”

  She shakes her head. “It doesn’t work. Believe me, I’ve tried. I can’t affect my own body.”

  I’d heard that was true for ghulwitches, but I’d never met one to ask before. Looking down at Meroe, battered and crying, I found it hard to square her with the monstrous stories everyone tells.

  “Does anyone else know?” I ask her.

  “Not anymore.” She takes a deep breath. “When I was little my keeper was a servant named Gigi. She was the one who noticed my power. I had been playing in the garden, and the plants were … strange.”