City of Stone and Silence

by Django Wexler

  “But you understand—”

  “I understand.” I peek at his mind again, guilty and fascinated, and feel that brassy sincerity. He really means it. “You know it’s not going to be anything grand, right?”

  “I understand that. Now I do, at any rate.”

  “Half of what I do is … laundry, cleaning, that sort of thing.”

  “I may not be very skilled at that,” he says earnestly. “But I can learn, I swear it.”

  “Well.” I scratch my cheek in a show of consideration. “I suppose I can ask Grandma if she has any use for you.”

  I’m unprepared when he reaches across the table and grabs my hands. I nearly leap backward, but he’s already bowing his head in thanks, his eyes sparkling.

  “You won’t regret it,” he says. His hands are warm, larger than mine, skin smooth and free of calluses. I hold still for a moment longer, then pull away. My cheeks are very warm.

  “Let’s hope not,” I say. “Now. First lesson, apprentice.”

  “Yes?”

  I grab a dumpling with my chopsticks and pop it into my mouth, and it practically explodes with warm, fatty flavor. “Eat your dumplings before they get cold.”

  8

  ISOKA

  “I was only twelve years old when my clan was destroyed,” Catoria says. “Two of my wicked uncles had conspired against the Emperor’s peace. My father, the youngest son, had nothing to do with it, but the Emperor ordered our family torn out root and branch. My mother took poison, as did my older sister. My father met with the Imperial Guard when they arrived, to beg for my life, and for that the Emperor’s marshal rewarded him with a painful death in the dungeons. I expected to die myself. Instead I was imprisoned with two dozen of my relations, children and teenagers, mostly cousins from the lower branches of the family.

  “Some of us thought we were going to be exiled, as an act of Imperial mercy. Others guessed the Emperor had devised an even more gruesome fate for us. I suppose both were correct, in a way. One foggy summer night, the Guard drove us in a sealed wagon down to the docks.”

  “And rowed you out to Soliton,” I guess.

  She inclines her head. “Indeed. You all shared that experience, so I don’t need to explain the conditions aboard the ship. When we arrived, Soliton was empty of human life, though we found plenty of scraps and ruins. We huddled together in the lower decks, hiding from the crabs, only slowly learning to hunt. Few of us had any experience using our Wells in combat.”

  Aristos. I manage to keep the thought to myself. They work so hard to keep mage-blood in their family lines, and then do rot-all with it. It’s hard to hold on to my scorn, though, seeing the sorrow on Catoria’s face.

  “I was the heir to the Cresos clan,” she went on. “My uncle’s families had been exterminated, and so I was the last survivor of the main line. My cousins defended me as best they could, and though some of them gave their lives, little by little we established ourselves. As Soliton passed through the Southern Kingdoms and the Waste, more sacrifices came aboard, and they agreed to serve the clan in exchange for our protection.

  “Later that year, however, another large group came aboard somewhere in Jyashtan.” Her voice went hard. “They called themselves the Minders, and at first they refused any offer of cooperation. There were even fights between us, though we kept apart. Other Jyashtani sacrifices joined them, and soon there were two growing communities.

  “From Jyashtan, Soliton’s path took it north and east, into the lands of the icelings. More sacrifices came and they split between the two groups. But there was one among them, a girl named Silvoa. She…”

  Catoria pauses, swallows. I can feel Meroe nearly bursting with unasked questions, but she manages to restrain herself.

  “Silvoa brought us together. She came to me and to Gragant, the Minders’ leader, and showed us the folly of our feud. She was … persuasive.” Again, that very slight smile. “We agreed to work together, under her leadership, and we gained the upper hand over the crabs. Some of my family even started to talk about finding a way off Soliton, back to Kahnzoka, to revive the clan.”

  “Did you find a way past the angels?” I say, trying not to sound too interested.

  Catoria shakes her head. “Silvoa had some ideas. But things changed before we could try any of them.”

  “Changed how?” Meroe says.

  “Silvoa started hearing … voices.” Catoria pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath. “I didn’t believe her at first. We fought. It wasn’t until later that she … convinced me. She said that Soliton itself was talking to her, and it wanted us—”

  “To find the Garden,” I say, grimly.

  “Yes.” Catoria gives a satisfied nod. “I suspected as much when Veldi told me so many of you came ashore. You have someone who can hear the voice of the ship, too.”

  “We do,” I say. Shiara catches my eye, silently urging caution, and I stop there.

  “Then I imagine you know what happened. We and the Jyashtani fought our way forward to the Bow, and Silvoa led us into the Garden and closed the doors behind us. Sometime later the ship passed the Vile Rot, and we heard the crabs going mad outside.”

  It sounds like they’d had a considerably easier time of it than we did. Part of that was down to the Scholar trying to kill everyone in his mad bid to seize control, of course, but if we’d set out earlier, I wonder how many more might have been saved. Another thing I wouldn’t have cared about, before.

  “We arrived here, at the Harbor,” Catoria says, “and the angels forced us off the ship. When we reconnoitered inland, we encountered Prime’s monsters, and they began to harry us by night. Silvoa led us to shelter in one of the great ziggurats, and the angels began to deliver food from the fields. Eventually we explored the rest of the city and found the second empty ziggurat, along with the one inhabited by Prime. We pushed his creatures back, and for a while it seemed…”

  She trails off, her face pinched. I notice one sleeve of her kizen is wrapped in her fist, fingers squeezed tight.

  “Silvoa had a theory,” she goes on eventually, when none of us break the silence. “In each of the great ziggurats there’s a … she called it an access point. A room studded with metal bars and pipes. Silvoa said she could talk to the city there, the same as she could talk to Soliton.”

  I thought of the chamber where I’d fought the Scholar, deep within the Garden, full of the metal conduits that conducted Eddica power through the ship like blood through a body. There were other places I’d been able to feel the flow, but never so strongly as in that room.

  Here, in the Harbor, I’d felt nothing of the kind. Only the vast current of energy from Soliton into the city was visible at all, and even that felt distant, obscured. Certainly my attempts to touch it with my own power had been fruitless. I’d wondered if the city functioned in the same way as the ship—it apparently had angels of its own—but …

  “After visiting the two ziggurats we could access,” Catoria says, “Silvoa thought that if she could only reach the third, the city would … recognize her. Accept her as its master. I don’t fully understand what she wanted, but she insisted she had to go to Prime’s fortress. I tried to convince her it was too dangerous.” Catoria lets go of the twisted loop of silk and looks down at her hands.

  “I begged her not to go, and in the end she agreed. She agreed.” The girl pauses again. “But Gragant talked to her while I was asleep, and convinced her to try. He and some of his Minders went with her, and some of my men as well. Silvoa was certain that she could speak to Prime, negotiate with him.” Catoria shakes her head. “Only Gragant returned. Silvoa and the rest died there, at the hands of Prime’s creatures. Just as I’d said they would.”

  “Did he tell you what happened to them?” Meroe says. “Or who ‘Prime’ actually—”

  “He claims he saw little,” Catoria spits. “The guilt, I imagine, was too much for him. He betrayed me, and he betrayed Silvoa, whom he’d sworn to serve. I do not … wish to s
peak of him.” She clears her throat. “The Minders left us soon afterward, taking up residence in the other great ziggurat. Since then, we’ve waited for Soliton to return. It’s been five years. The first four times, no one disembarked. I suppose no one survived the passage of the Rot. But now you’ve come.” Her smile widens, becoming a little more genuine. “Swear loyalty to the Cresos clan—to me—and you can join us.”

  * * *

  “Well?” I ask Meroe. “How much of that do you believe?”

  “That is … a good question,” Meroe says.

  We’re standing against the wall of one of the large chambers, where most of the crew has settled. Shiara is helping supervise the distribution of the Cresos clan’s gifts to the crew. In addition to the food, there are blankets and rolls of mottled, tightly woven cloth. I wonder if that comes from the angels, too.

  Our crew gather around eagerly. Catoria’s people open the sacks, distributing large, round fruit with hard rinds, which they demonstrate how to crack to get at the sweet, grape-sized seedpods. There are berries, also unfamiliar-looking but delicious, and some kind of yellow tuber. Cookfires are hastily kindled for these, along with the barrels of fish, and the smell drifting over to us is unbearably delicious.

  Meroe is eating a stone fruit, a bit like a plum but with an apple’s firm flesh, with the careful delicacy I would expect of a princess. I’ve already torn through a bowl of berries and one of the hard-shelled things, and I’m working on a second, wiggling the pods out of the shell and popping them into my mouth, then spitting out the small, hard seeds.

  “Something doesn’t add up,” Meroe says. “Literally add up. Catoria said Soliton delivered them five years ago.”

  “Veldi said the same thing.”

  “But Soliton didn’t come here five years ago. It was still sailing around the Central Sea. You and I weren’t onboard yet, but plenty in the crew were.”

  I frown. “The Scholar said the oldest people in the crew had been there more than fifteen years.”

  “Right. And obviously Soliton didn’t go past the Rot in all that time, and it certainly didn’t stop here and throw everyone off.”

  “So Catoria’s lying,” I say.

  “She doesn’t sound like she’s lying,” Meroe says. “She sounds … I don’t know.” She looks away, uncertain.

  “What?”

  “Lonely.” Meroe sighs. “Maybe I’m just seeing a little of myself there.”

  “She seems to have plenty of people around.”

  “They’re retainers and servants. Believe me, it’s not the same.” Meroe shrugs. “Anyway, I don’t think she’s lying to us deliberately. But she may be confused.”

  “She says Soliton comes here every year,” I mutter. “But obviously it can’t be doing that, since we know people who’ve been on it for years.”

  Meroe’s eyes widen. “Could there be more than one ship? You saw the docks.”

  “Blessed help us. One of the things is bad enough.” I shake my head. “Kuon Naga seemed certain there was only one, and he would know, if anyone would.”

  “Then maybe Catoria is wrong about how long it’s been,” Meroe says. “Veldi says there’s no seasons here, so maybe what she thinks is a year is…”

  She trails off, and I can see why. “Twenty years? Someone would notice that. She says she was twelve when she was picked up, and she looks younger than me.” If it really had been five years, that would make her my age. I had guessed her at closer to Tori’s. “She’s sure as Rot not thirty.”

  “She may be older than you think,” Shiara says.

  Shiara glides over, graceful as always. In one hand she holds three skewered, blackened fish, from which a fantastic smell is rising. She hands one to me, and I tear into it with my teeth. It’s unseasoned and unevenly cooked, and still the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It’s amazing how a couple of hard days without food change your perspective.

  Meroe takes her fish and pulls it apart with her fingers, popping white slivers into her mouth. Shiara follows suit, which makes me feel like a barbarian, as usual. For now, though, I’m too absorbed to worry about it, sucking scraps of meat from the thin, flexible bones.

  “What do you mean?” Meroe says, between bites.

  Shiara pauses before answering. She’d remained silent through Catoria’s story, which is typical of her. Of the old Council—Zarun’s easy smile and casual violence, Karakoa’s bluff honor, the Butcher’s cruelty and pride—Shiara is the one I understand the least. Since we came to the Garden, she’s worked with me and Meroe without complaint, but I still know almost nothing about her. From manners and appearance, at least, you’d think she was Imperial highborn, but something makes me doubt it.

  “I remembered where I’d heard the name Cresos,” Shiara says now. “I knew it sounded familiar.”

  “And?” I mumble, licking my lips. My fish is mostly bare, and I already want another.

  “It was in a history book. The Cresos clan plotted treason against the Emperor, but they were discovered and exterminated.”

  “That matches what Catoria said…” I begin.

  Meroe is quicker on the uptake, as always. “When were they exterminated?”

  “In the reign of the current Emperor’s revered grandfather, if I’m remembering correctly,” Shiara says, with surprising calm. “At least eighty years ago.”

  “Eighty years?” I manage.

  “Probably more like a hundred,” Shiara says. “I don’t have the exact dates, but I remember a little about the period. That was a dangerous time for the Emperor. He’d just lost a war against the Jyashtani, and the nobles were restless.”

  History has never been an interest of mine, so I focus on the matter at hand. “How can Catoria have gotten to the Harbor a hundred rotting years ago?” Something awful occurs to me. “Blessed’s balls. Is she even rotting human?” If corpses could walk, then maybe—

  “I thought so,” Meroe mutters. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Some kind of sense, anyway—”

  “Please enlighten us if you have any idea what’s going on,” I snap, then take a deep breath. “Sorry.”

  Meroe’s shaky smile is reassuring. “Okay. I don’t know how any of this is possible, but I’m just thinking aloud. If nobody’s lying, and there aren’t multiple ships, then somehow time has gone rotten.”

  Shiara raises one eyebrow. “That would explain things.”

  “Gone rotten how?” I say.

  “What if it runs differently under the dome? One year passes in here, and twenty years pass outside. So for Catoria Soliton comes by every year, but outside—”

  “And they think it’s normal,” I say, struggling to stay ahead of her, “because they only spent a year on the ship before it came here.”

  “Five years for them, a hundred years for us,” Shiara says. “Soliton came and went four times, gathering sacrifices all the while. But none of those groups had an Eddica user so none of them could find the Garden. They must have all died at the Rot.”

  “I’ve never heard of any Well that could affect time,” Meroe says, thoughtfully. “But the city is powered by Eddica energy, the same as Soliton, and obviously we don’t know half of what that can do. So I can’t—Isoka? Is something wrong?”

  I’m already turning away, fighting a rush of acid from my stomach. Meroe calls after me, but her voice is dull through the roaring in my ears. Before I realize it, I’m running back toward the chamber where we’d left Catoria.

  One of her men is on guard in the doorway, but she gestures him aside when I arrive. He gives me a suspicious look, but steps back, and Catoria herself gets up from her blanket to greet me.

  “Lady Isoka,” she says. Apparently I rate a “lady,” somehow, which would have made me laugh under other circumstances. “Have you considered my offer? I hope our gifts—”

  “Soliton,” I growl, and she stops, taken aback.

  “Yes?”

  “How long does it stay?” I almost can’t force myself to a
sk the question. “When it arrives, every year, how long before it leaves again?”

  “It varies,” Catoria says, nonplussed. “A week, at least.”

  My panic recedes a fraction. I have a little more time. But—

  If Meroe and Shiara are right, and time runs differently in the Harbor, then the window I thought I had to rescue Tori is rapidly closing. One day inside equals twenty outside. In one week, five months will pass—even with Soliton’s speed, I would be hard-pressed to make it back to Kahnzoka in time after that. Two weeks, and Tori might be suffering Kuon Naga’s imaginative torments before I even make it out of the harbor.

  I’d known the sand was hissing away in the hourglass. I hadn’t realized there was a hole in the rotting thing.

  “Has anyone tried getting back on board?” I ask Catoria. “What about the other ships?”

  She shakes her head. “A few of the Minders tried to board Soliton, the first time it returned. The angels kept them off, though they didn’t harm anyone. And the other ships are wrecks. We explore them sometimes, to look for old treasures, but there’s nothing else aboard but crabs.” She cocks her head. “You want to go back, don’t you?”

  I nod, breathing raggedly.

  “Silvoa thought it was possible,” she says, voice turning hard. “But she was wrong. Soliton has stranded us here, Lady Isoka, and it means for us to stay. I suggest you come to terms with that.”

  I fight the urge to say something nasty, and turn away.

  * * *

  Later, I assemble the Council.

  With the sun setting, Catoria and her entourage have departed. Meroe saw her off with appropriate diplomacy, promising an answer to her generous offer at a later time. Catoria, in turn, promises to deliver more food. Harak has also departed, apparently unafraid of traveling alone back to his order by twilight. I wonder what his Well is.

  The four of us come together in the room where we interviewed Catoria, sitting on the same blanket. They’re sitting, anyway. I’m too anxious for that, pacing back and forth while Meroe repeats what Catoria told us for Zarun’s benefit, along with our later speculations.