Ship of Smoke and Steel

by Django Wexler

  Two Tartak adepts from Karakoa’s clade pull scrap metal out of the way, straining visibly as they wrap the barrier in blue light. As soon as there’s a clear space, crabs start to squirm through. Scuttlers, at first, and other small monsters that the hunters spear or fry. Then, once the gates open, larger beasts. A hammerhead, a pair of blueshells, even a shaggy. Others I don’t recognize.

  I’d never seen a real hunting pack take on a crab. It makes me realize how makeshift Pack Nine’s efforts had always been, how much I’d relied on my own powers to handle things. Even tired, the packs operate with efficient teamwork, Tartak bindings holding their targets in place long enough for Myrkai fire to blast through their armor.

  In places there’s a flare of green, a Melos blade, but not often. I’d always known Melos is one of the less common Wells, but I’d never really appreciated the difference it made, how it set me apart. Zarun and Karakoa are the only full-fledged Melos adepts apart from myself. They stride through the fight like glowing green gods, rending and breaking.

  Eventually, the mass of crabs on the other side of the door thins out. The packs advance, pushing onto the long bridge that arcs into the great void of the Center, fighting their way toward the first of the big support towers. We follow in their wake, through a horrible landscape of twisted flesh and scorched chitin.

  Most of the mangled pieces lying around us belong to crabs, but not all. A young man lies impaled on a blueshell’s claw, which in turn has been severed at one of its armored joints. The top half of a pretty young woman lies faceup, wearing an expression of blank surprise, her body below the hips trailing off into a red smear. I recognize Attoka, one of Zarun’s pack leaders, only by her white-blond hair; the rest of her is so tangled with the corpse of a many-limbed crab that I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

  Somewhere behind me, there are retching sounds. One of the youngest starts to cry.

  Thankfully, we leave the mess of bodies behind as we make it onto the bridge. Only a few dead crabs line the way, and we push those over the side. The rear guard contracts as the last of the column pushes through the door. The entire population of Soliton, minus those we left behind and the bodies that line the way, is now trudging across the long, narrow bridge, hanging in the darkness above the Deeps.

  * * *

  “I’m telling you,” Zarun says, “I can’t ask my people to push any further. They’re barely on their feet as it is.”

  “We’re all tired,” says Karakoa. “But—”

  “We can’t stop here,” Meroe says.

  We’re on the broad ring around the first support pylon. The entire crew doesn’t fit, of course, so they spread a little way back along the bridge. Packs watch the rear, and other bridges that lead from this circular platform off into the darkness. The officers, along with me and Meroe, are meeting on the far side of the pylon, out of easy earshot.

  I can see the tiny flecks of gray light moving up and down, just under the metal skin of the pillar. Part of what the Scholar describes as a great machine, like a pipe for magic instead of hot water. When I put my hand against the metal, I imagine that I can feel the prickle of the energy on my skin. But it’s weak, here, not enough to try to contact Hagan.

  “This is a fine spot,” Zarun says. “I may not be as well-read as our ‘military expert’ here, but I can see this place will be easy to defend.”

  “It’s not about defense,” Meroe says. “It’s about water.”

  They all look at her.

  “We have maybe three days’ worth of water,” she says. “Here in the Center, there’s no way to get more.”

  She’d explained the problem to me, before we left. Soliton’s crew collected water from where it gathered on the decks after rains, then strained and boiled it to make it safe to drink. Here in the Center, where there are no decks, only bridges and platforms, there’s nowhere for water to collect. Far below in the Deeps, we’d found a pool, but I knew better than to suggest we try to repeat that journey.

  “So we have to reach the Garden before we run out,” Meroe goes on. “That means we have to push on as far as we can before we rest. There will be other platforms we can defend.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.” Zarun scowls. “We’re the ones going up against the monsters.”

  “Zarun.” Karakoa puts a hand on his shoulder. “She is right. We can press on a few more hours. It will be easier, on the bridges.”

  Zarun looks up at the big Akemi and sighs. The two of them turn away, and Shiara follows. The Scholar taps his cane on the deck, looking at me.

  “At some point, of course,” he says, “you’ll have to direct us to the Garden.”

  “When we need direction, I will.” I match his questioning stare. “For now, all we need to know is that we keep going forward.”

  “As you say.” He rubs his bad leg and grimaces. “Don’t push too hard, Princess.”

  When he’s gone, I lean back against the pillar. Meroe settles herself beside me, our shoulders touching.

  “How are you doing?” she says.

  “Keeping up, so far.” I put my hand against my bandages. “It’s not enough. I should be helping.”

  “You know what Sister Cadua said,” Meroe chides. “This much walking is bad enough.”

  “I know. Rot. I just feel … useless.”

  “You’re not. You’re—”

  “The Deepwalker.” I growl. “What good is that doing anyone?”

  “They’re watching you.”

  “They’re watching me limp along like an old woman.”

  She turns to face me. “Isoka—”

  “I know. I know.” I keep looking off into the darkness. In the distance, colored lights shift, ever so slightly, and flicker.

  * * *

  Meroe is going over some kind of plan with Shiara and the Scholar. I sit with my back to a support pylon, my breath ragged. I should eat something, but the thought is nauseating.

  We don’t have a “camp” in any real sense of the word. No tents, no fires, just a mass of people stretched out on a hard metal deck. Myrkai adepts conjure a few lights. Some people chew on dried meat or mushrooms, but most are too tired to eat.

  The rest of my pack have drifted in nearby. Jack, her dapper suit torn and bloodied, lies with her long limbs curled into a tight ball, her head in Thora’s lap. The iceling woman has a hand on her partner’s shoulder, stroking her with gentleness surprising for her size. Aifin sits down beside me, sweat running freely down his face. He takes a long swig from his canteen, then looks over at me.

  I gesture, You okay?

  He blinks, reaches for the slate that hangs at his belt, then thinks better of it and just gives an exhausted shrug.

  I’m drifting into a doze when someone else sits down opposite. It’s Zarun, looking more haggard than I’ve ever seen him, dark bags under his eyes as though he’s taken a beating in a bar brawl. I watch him through hooded eyes, and wait for some banter, a superior grin, or a not-terribly-subtle double entendre. But he just stares at me, until I stir slightly.

  “What?” I say.

  “Your princess,” he says. “She doesn’t stop, does she?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “Freeze and rot.” He lets out a long sigh. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired.”

  A week ago, he would have added except after our lovely evening together, of course, or something similar. I hesitate, then say, “Your packs have been doing well.”

  He nods, bleakly. “Did you know Ghelty? About your age, five foot tall and skinny as a twig, but rot, what a fighter. She was right in front of me, fighting a scuttler, and a blueshell came up behind her. I shouted something, but she just … missed it. Too tired. Rotting thing cut her to bits. I killed it afterward, but what good does that do?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and somewhat to my own surprise I mean it.

  “Meroe was right,” he says. “She made the right decision, and people are dying anyway.”


  “Believe me.” My chest feels tight. “She knows.”

  “Ghelty used to dance,” he says. “She was such a proper little thing, most of the time, but if you got a couple of drinks into her she’d dance, and it was—”

  “Can I ask you something?” I say, hoping to change the subject.

  “What?”

  “That … shield you make, with your Melos power. How do you do that?”

  “It’s not hard,” he says. “Just try to picture the armor opening out, like a flower. It takes a lot of energy, though.”

  “Did someone teach it to you?”

  “Jarli.” He shakes his head. “God, I wish she was here.”

  “Did she teach Karakoa the sword he uses?” I raise my hand. “Half the time my blades just scratch the surface of crab shell, but he cuts right through it.”

  “Good trick, isn’t it?” Zarun grins, and looks like his old self for a moment. “He’s a Myrkai talent, you see. Never uses it to throw fire around, but he spreads that energy through his Melos blade. The heat helps it cut clean.”

  I’d never heard of two Wells being combined like that, even in people who could use more than one. Though it wasn’t much help to me, since I didn’t have even a touch of Myrkai.

  “Glad he’s on our side.”

  “Me too.” He cocks his head. “Are you angry with me? For using you against the Butcher?”

  “I probably should be, but I’m too tired. Are you angry with me for stealing your dredwurm’s eye?”

  “Let’s call it even.”

  “I did seduce you.”

  “Is that how it went?” He gives a crooked grin. “Well. I didn’t mind. If we live through all of this…”

  He makes a vague but nonetheless obscene gesture. I can’t help but laugh.

  * * *

  I wake up in the morning—if it is morning—to find Meroe huddled beside me, her head resting on my shoulder. She looks so carefree, sleeping, that for a while I don’t move.

  The second day’s march goes much like the first. At the head of the column, the hunting packs flush out the crabs and cut them down, a never-ending fight that leaves more and more crew stumbling away injured. Sister Cadua and her assistants can provide only bandages and crab juice, then a pat on the back as the pack members return to the fight. In the rear, the attacks are less intense, but we still have to stay on guard.

  Fortunately, the center of the column is relatively safe. The youngest crew gather there, and the injured, and those whose Wells are too weak to be any use in a fight. It’s where I’m walking, too, when a long, red leg slips up from underneath the bridge and plunges into the crowd.

  The farther we’ve come, the less familiar the crabs have been. The scavengers have names for some of them, but we’ve come far enough that there are creatures even they have never encountered. This one is certainly beyond my own experience, a towering, spindly giant of a thing with eight legs, each only as thick as my wrist but several times longer than I am tall. Far above us, they support an oval body, shaggy with brown fur. A central mouth bristles with fangs.

  The air fills with screams as the thing swings itself up. It must have been nestled against the underside of the bridge, somehow patient enough to wait until the front line had passed it before attacking. Smart, for a crab, or maybe just lucky. Either way, it’s waded into the most vulnerable part of our line, with anyone who can fight several hundred yards away behind a mass of panicking people.

  The bridges aren’t the safest place to panic, either. Some sections of a rickety metal railing remain, but most are long since rusted away, leaving nothing between us and a sheer drop. As the young and the injured flee from the red-armored crab, they pack together, pushing the crowd dangerously close to the edges.

  Near me, I can see a girl Tori’s age fall to her knees. Her shouts are inaudible under the general panic, and before she can get up someone kicks her in the side, sending her sprawling toward the drop. The crab takes another step forward, and the crowd surges, shoving the girl over the edge.

  Once again, I’m moving before I’m conscious of making a decision, sliding toward her as she overbalances and begins to fall. Her hands claw at the unyielding metal, desperately, and I go down on my stomach and grab her wrist before she disappears forever into the dark. The weight of her nearly jerks my shoulder out of its socket, and her nails dig into the back of my hand, drawing blood. She swings sideways, scraping my arm against the edge of the bridge. I get her in my other hand out just before my grip gives way, and start to heave her back up. Muscles clench and strain in my chest and back, and on my stomach I feel the pop of a stitch giving way. A hot gush of fluid dampens my shirt.

  I manage to get the girl back on the bridge. She clings to my hand even after her feet are back on solid metal, and I have to pry myself away. More screams draw my attention back to the crab, which is chasing the mass of people pressing toward the rear of the column. Its furry body dips down, like a bird taking fish from the water, and snatches a boy out of the crowd. He shrieks as it lifts him high into the air, hanging from its underside, long, flexible mandibles slowly closing around him.

  The only accessible parts of the thing are its legs. I ignite my blades and charge, but a swing against the armored limb only produces a long scorch mark on the red plate. Even driving a spike into that armor isn’t going to help, not from here, which means there’s nothing for it. I jump, gripping the leg in both hands, and start to climb.

  The crab takes notice when I pull myself up past its second joint. It pauses in its slow ingestion of the screaming boy to shake its leg, like a dog with a burr. I do my best burr impression and hang on. The crab raises a second leg and tries to scrape me off. I grit my teeth, letting its taloned foot press against my armor, the familiar crackle of Melos power raising heat on my back.

  At least my armor works again.

  Another body length and I’m close to the screaming boy. I grip the crab’s leg between my thighs, freeing my hands, and reignite my blades. I don’t dare simply cut him free—we’re high enough above the bridge now that the fall would be dangerous—so I go for the crab’s body, punching my glowing green weapons into the furry mass. The core of the thing is surprisingly small, and much softer than its legs. It twitches with each strike, and the blood that bubbles out is disturbingly close to human red. I focus on where its legs meet its body, and before long the creature is leaning sideways, wobbling closer to the abyss.

  The boy’s leg is close enough to grab. I dismiss one blade, take hold of him, and deliver a final strike to the crab’s core with the other weapon. It staggers, its jaws spasming, and lets the boy drop. I let go at the same time, pulling him close to me as we fall, wrapping my body and my Melos armor around him as I once wrapped Meroe for a much longer plummet.

  This fall is thankfully brief. We hit the bridge hard enough to knock the wind out of me, a spray of green sparks earthing themselves in the metal all around us. Above me, the red crab weaves drunkenly, then collapses, its body tumbling over the side of the bridge, followed by a tangle of legs.

  The boy on top of me is still screaming, which means he can’t be too badly hurt. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about myself. There’s a lot of blood around us, and I think it’s mostly mine.

  * * *

  I don’t quite pass out, but the rest of the day goes by in a blur, a shifting mass of visions that change whenever I blink.

  Someone carries me. Or several people. I think it’s Thora, at first, but later it seems like Zarun. I can hear the roar of Myrkai fire in the distance, and shouted commands, as though my ears were stuffed with cotton.

  Meroe walks beside me. That’s the one constant. When we stop for a while, she pulls up my shirt to change my bandages, which are soaked alarmingly red. I try to say something to her, but it comes out as a croak, and she shushes me.

  Sometime in the afternoon, I fall asleep. When I wake up, we’re on another support platform, with a spiral stair wrapped around the c
entral pylon. Everyone is sprawled on the deck again, so the day’s march must be over.

  My head is clearer than it’s been since the fight, though I still feel as weak as a kitten. I look around for Meroe, and find her nearby, carefully pouring water from a skin into a larger clay jug.

  “Could I…” My throat is dry, and I swallow. “Could I have a drink?”

  “Isoka?” Meroe looks up, and her face is like a punch in the gut. Her eyes are red from crying, and every line of her speaks of exhaustion. Nevertheless, she hurries over, the half-full waterskin glugging in her hand. “Here. Be careful.”

  I drink, wincing with every swallow. I can feel the pressure of bandages, and the wet squelching when I move tells me I’m still bleeding. That seems … bad.

  “You were supposed to stay out of it,” Meroe says, while I drink. “Sister Cadua warned you.”

  “Nobody told the crabs.” I finish the skin. “No one else was close enough.”

  “Isoka, please.” She closes her eyes. “I know you want to help. But if you do this again, you could die. And if you die, I…” She swallows, and continues in a more level voice. “If you die we won’t have any way to find the Garden.”

  “I can’t just hide when a crab is eating people.” I pull myself up a little, grimacing at the pain. “They’re only here because I told them it would be safe.”

  That’s the difference, I realize, even as I say the words. Back in Kahnzoka, if monsters had been tearing the Sixteenth Ward apart, I would have gotten as far away from it as possible. The ward boss didn’t have a responsibility to defend the ward, only to enforce the rules. The only promise I’d made was the promise of pain for those who’d stepped out of line. But here—