Ship of Smoke and Steel

by Django Wexler

  “And Berun’s been making good progress with Thora,” Meroe says.

  “Speaking of progress.” I lower my voice. “Any luck?”

  “Not much.” She looks irritated. “People don’t write anything here. All the books are from sacrifices. There’s no records that I’ve been able to find.”

  “I don’t think the scavengers have brought back a printing press yet.”

  Meroe snorts. “Most of the people I’ve talked to don’t understand why I would care what happened twenty years ago, much less further back than that.”

  “But you haven’t found anyone old enough to remember?”

  She shakes her head. “No. The Scholar was right—there’s no one who’s been on board longer than Karakoa.”

  “There were people here, though. Scavengers find old gear all the time. So what happened to them?”

  “Maybe they just died out?” Meroe says. “It takes a lot of effort to keep the crabs out of the Stern. Maybe they broke through, and everyone died.”

  “Maybe.” But I find it unlikely. A settlement of ordinary people might be wiped out by crabs, but a town full of mage-bloods?

  “Isoka…” Meroe hesitates. “It’s definitely strange, but are you sure this is the right thing to be asking questions about? I thought we were trying to find the Captain.”

  “The two fit together,” I say. “If the people on the ship were wiped out somehow, what happened to the Captain? Did he die, too? If he did—”

  “Then someone on board eventually became the new Captain.” Meroe nods. “That makes sense.”

  “The succession is the important part,” I say. “If we can figure that out…”

  I trail off. We’ve always left the most important part of the plan unstated, as though speaking it aloud would make it clear how silly it is. But it’s there: one of us has to become Captain, if such a thing is possible.

  I’ve told Meroe that this is my plan for getting us off the ship. If it’s the angels that stop people from leaving and the Captain controls the angels, then the Captain and anyone close to him must be able to leave.

  I’d be the first to admit that it’s not a great plan. But it’s what I’ve got, until we get more information. The problem is, the only people who know anything about the Captain aren’t talking.

  We get our second helpings, and I happily dig in. Jack is talking to Attoka about how the romantic adventures of a mutual friend are going—not well, apparently—and I find my attention drawn to a conversation at the next table, where some of the less senior pack members have gathered.

  “And you believe it?” one boy says, with a thick Jyashtani accent. “Nobody can remember this happening before, but we asked the Captain and ‘everything’s fine; everyone just carry on.’” He snorts.

  “You think the Captain doesn’t know what’s happening?” a girl beside him says.

  “Don’t be stupid. But if the Captain told the officers, ‘Sorry about this, but I’m dropping you all in deep rot,’ do you think they’d tell us?”

  “Don’t know about that,” another young man says. “But I do know that some of the officers are worried. Word is Shiara’s been buying up food and storing it away. She’s got some kind of private fortress in the Drips.”

  “She’s always been a paranoid bitch,” the girl says. “Might not mean anything.”

  Someone behind me coughs politely for attention. I half-turn and find myself facing a tall, blond iceling girl, a few years younger than me, with a white robe and complicated braid that give her a priestly look.

  “Deepwalker?” she says.

  I raise an eyebrow. Given the evidence literally written on my face, the whole ship should be able to pick me out by now. “Yes?”

  “I serve the Scholar,” she says. “My apologies for the interruption, but he would like to ask if you could attend him this evening.”

  I look at Meroe to make sure she’s listening, then ask, “What does he want?”

  The girl bows her head. “He’s told me only that he has some information you might find to be of interest.”

  “That’s not very specific.” Meroe gives a little nod, though, and I sigh. “All right, why not? Where does he want to meet?”

  “He asked me to bring you to his observatory,” the girl says. “If you are not finished with your dinner, I will wait.”

  “Oh.” I look down at what’s left of my meal and find my appetite suddenly lacking. “Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose.”

  * * *

  The girl leads me out of the market, and somewhat to my surprise makes for the long staircase that leads from the Upper Stations to the open deck. We start to ascend, walking in a tight spiral, and it’s not many turns before I’m wishing we’d taken the cage up instead.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Erin,” she says. I wait a moment to see if she’ll offer anything else, but that seems to be all.

  “I thought the Scholar didn’t have a clade of his own,” I prompt.

  “He does not,” Erin says. “But he helped me and my sister Arin, and in gratitude we tend to his needs. He is a kind master.”

  There’s something off here—for one thing, this kind of quiet obedience seems antithetical to the other icelings I’ve met, women like Thora and the Butcher. Maybe there are different nations and cultures among the northerners.

  “And he lives up on the deck?”

  She nods. “He must be able to view the sky to do his work. You will see.”

  After more turns than I’m really prepared for, we reach the top, both of us panting slightly. The staircase rises through a circular hatch, letting out on to the rust-mottled outer skin of the great ship. It’s evening, and the sun is nearly to the horizon, lighting up a band of clouds in pinks and oranges. The eastern sky is already darkening from purple to black, and a few bright stars have appeared.

  In the darkness of the Council meeting, I didn’t appreciate how many structures there were on the ship’s deck. The Captain’s tower is the largest, rising like a great black spike at the Stern, but there are dozens of oddly shaped protrusions, cubes, half spheres, and stranger objects. Some have collapsed, undermined by rust, and others spill thick rivers of vegetation and fungus from the holes in their roofs. It reminds me that we’re beyond the defensive perimeter of the Upper Stations, here. This is the domain of the crabs, and I itch to summon my blades.

  “You’re perfectly safe,” Erin says. “The master understands the crabs better than anyone else on Soliton, and he keeps careful track of any dangerous ones whose territories might encroach.”

  “Good to know.” I keep looking around, just in case.

  She leads me to a large cylindrical structure, like half a barrel embedded into the deck. It’s several stories high, and the rusted holes in the sides have been patched with scrap metal and fabric. A small door at the bottom stands open, and Erin reaches it, then steps aside, gesturing for me to enter first. Beyond is warm, musty darkness, and I blink as my eyes adjust.

  The interior of the cylinder is a single large space, full of a bewildering array of chests, cabinets, desks, and dressers. It looks as though the Scholar has grabbed any furniture that might be useful to keep things in, in some cases stacking them on top of one another in unwieldy arrangements. The desks are covered in … junk, pieces of broken tools, metal fragments, sections of mushroom, and organic debris that must have come from dead crabs. There are bones, as well, human skeletons both fresh and yellowed with age.

  One set makes me pause for a moment. They’re dry and brittle looking, but still recognizably wrong, twisted and deformed. Limbs bifurcate where they should run straight, or twist into spirals. A skull bulges like it struggled to contain something growing within. Another, so small it might have belonged to an infant, has two extra eye sockets. These bones look older, but …

  “You’ve seen something like this before, haven’t you?”

  The Scholar is coming down another spiral staircase, this one wr
apped along the outside wall of the building, leading up to a second level that’s half rusted away. His cane raps on each step as he descends.

  “In the Deeps,” I say, cautiously. “There was a village, all ruined. The bodies there looked like this.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he says. “I wish you could have brought some back for study. You can never have enough bones, I say.” He reaches the bottom of the staircase and gestures at his bizarre collection with his cane. “Thank you for accepting my invitation.”

  “You said you had something interesting to tell me.”

  “I do.” He smiles, and pushes his glasses up his nose. “And I have reason to think you might be willing to listen, which is more than I can say for the others.”

  “What others?”

  “Our oh-so-wise officers.” He snorts. “Zarun and the Butcher can’t decide if they’re going to rut or kill each other, Karakoa can’t see past the next hunt, and Shiara cares only about herself. Whereas you, you have been asking questions.” He cocks his head. “At least, your princess has.”

  “I don’t—” I begin.

  “Don’t play stupid. These things get back to me, you know. And there’s nothing wrong with asking questions, at least as far as I’m concerned. Some of the others might not take such a benign view if they knew what you were really after.”

  “We’re just … curious.” I shrug. “We live on this ship, but we don’t understand it at all. And mostly no one seems to want to.”

  “Curiosity is difficult,” the Scholar says, tapping his way closer. “Better to fight out your little feuds, hunt the crabs, and try to forget about it, especially when the answers aren’t easily forthcoming.” He stops across from me, beside the desk full of bones. “You’ve been thinking about what I said at the audience.”

  “A bit,” I admit. “We know there were people on Soliton generations ago.”

  He taps the desk. “These bones are two hundred years old, give or take.”

  “But there was almost no one here fifteen years ago. Sometime before that, there must have actually been no one, except maybe the Captain.”

  “Very good.”

  “So something wiped everyone out.”

  “Exactly.” He gestures at the bones and other artifacts with his cane. “And I can tell you this. It wasn’t the first time. I’ve found fragments from a half-dozen generations. Never much, but enough to tell me people were here, and then that they weren’t. Over and over.”

  “And? What happened to them?”

  “I can only guess.” The Scholar sighs. “So few things get written down.”

  I chuckle. “Meroe was complaining about the same thing.”

  “And has she found any answers?”

  “Not really.” I shake my head. “Why are you telling me this? Just because I like to ask questions?”

  “Oh no.” He beckons. “Come upstairs. There’s more to the show.”

  Another set of stairs, my legs groaning in protest, keeping pace with the Scholar’s slow ascent. The second level of the tower is set well above the first, and covers only half the circular space, with a ragged-edged drop looking over the floor below. The stair reaches a landing and then continues upward, through a hole in another, more intact floor, the opening currently blocked off with a cloth.

  This level, apparently, is where the Scholar actually lives, inasmuch as there’s a large bed shoved against one wall like an afterthought. A table beside it is piled high with dirty dishes, which look as much like archeological specimens as some of the debris below. The rest of the space is devoted to more tables, all covered in carefully arranged trash.

  “Arin, dear,” the Scholar says. “Go and help your sister fetch water.”

  There’s a yawn from the bed, and a girl in a long white robe sits up, kicking back the sheets. She’s identical to Erin, except that her hair is loose instead of braided. When she sees me, she looks interested, but not alarmed. The Scholar says nothing while she puts on shoes and troops down the stairs. Only when she’s out the door does he turn back to me.

  “You don’t trust your … servants?”

  “Erin and Arin are very dear to me, and I would never question their loyalty,” he says. “But I wouldn’t want to upset them unnecessarily.”

  “What exactly are you planning to show me?”

  “Just this.” He walks to one of the tables and raps on the wood. “What do you see, Deepwalker?”

  I look. The thing on the table is like a rope, if a rope could be woven of steel strands. It’s coiled around several times, and roughly severed at both ends. The individual fibers untwist at the cuts, opening out like a flower into smaller and smaller filaments, until they reach the limit of vision and become a vague fuzz.

  “Metal rope?” I ask.

  “Look closer.” He sounds oddly eager. It makes me want to leave this place and not come back, but I bend down instead, squinting.

  Movement, inside the thing. Tiny sparks of gray light, streaming in both directions, a twisting flow that follows the spiral of the fibers. And I realize what the rope reminds me of—Shiara’s necklace, the night of the Council meeting, only much larger.

  My face must have given something away, because the Scholar is smiling in quiet satisfaction. He touches his glasses again, and his hand is shaking very slightly.

  “You can see it, can’t you?”

  “See—” I look from the rope to him and back. “What is this thing?”

  “It’s a piece of the ship, from one of the support pylons.” He takes a step forward, cane tapping. “You can see it. I could tell the night of the Council meeting. I suggested Shiara wear that necklace; it’s another fragment, a weak one, but—” He shakes his head in wonder. “And if you could see that then you’re stronger than I am, much stronger. Finally. Finally.”

  “Slow down.” I take a half step back, and make a conscious effort not to summon my armor. “You can see those lights, then?”

  “You were a gang enforcer, back in Kahnzoka. They’re already telling stories about you. And you’re a Melos adept. You killed people, didn’t you?”

  “I—” My head is spinning, trying to follow him. “So what if I did? Here on Soliton you—”

  “I don’t care about the morality. Leave that to the gods.” The Scholar’s glasses reflect the lanterns burning around the room, tiny bits of light shining in his eyes. “Afterward, you dreamed about them, didn’t you?”

  My throat seizes up for a moment. My mind goes to Hagan, and I swallow hard. “How could you know that?”

  “I dreamed of the first person I killed,” he says. “She was nothing to me, a street rat who tried to knife me in an alley. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but she came at me, and…” He waves his hand, as though to dispel the memory. “I thought she was haunting me.”

  “No such thing as haunting,” I say, automatically. “Dead is dead.”

  “Not entirely.” He takes a deep breath, calms a little. “You—we—can touch a Well no one else can. The Lost Well, the Well of Spirits. Eddica.”

  18

  Eddica. The first Well, the Well of Spirits. Lost, according to some; a myth, according to the Blessed One.

  A month ago I would have said the priests had the right of it. Now …

  “No one can access Eddica,” I say. “There hasn’t been even an Eddica-touched in the history of the Empire.”

  “I suspect your illustrious rulers are lying to you about that, as about so many things.” The Scholar shrugs. “Eddica is real enough. But rare, now, and so subtle that even those who have it usually don’t know it’s there. Only on Soliton does it become obvious.”

  “Why here?”

  “Because that is Eddica energy!” He raps the table again. “The whole ship runs on it. You’ve seen it, in the pylons, the towers.” He lowers his voice. “You’ve felt it from the angels.”

  “I’ve seen something.” I’m sure as rot not going to tell him about Hagan. “This is a strange rotting place, but
that doesn’t make it spirit energy.”

  “Did you dream of Ahdron, after you killed him?”

  I shake my head, frowning.

  “If you die here, you go into the ship. Children can’t be born here, because the spirits can’t reach them. The whole ship is like a giant cage for souls.”

  “That’s…” I take another step away from him. “No wonder the others won’t listen to you. You’re off your head.”

  There’s a pause. He takes a moment and visibly restrains himself, straightening up. His cane taps the deck, twice.

  Because that’s what anyone would say, isn’t it? Anyone who hadn’t been guided out of the Deeps by what looked very much like the ghost of her best friend.

  Could he be right? Rot, rot, rot. I need time to think.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” he says. “I didn’t expect you to, to be honest. It took me years to work it out.” He paces a few steps, tap-tapping, then turns. “But you must admit that you and I share a power that no one else on the ship has. That we can see this … energy. And if we can see it, perhaps we can manipulate it.”

  I remember how Hagan had thrown lines of the strange gray energy at the angel to halt it in its tracks, and used it to show me the way home. Whatever it is, the Scholar is right that it flows throughout Soliton. Is that the Captain’s secret? If this power can control an angel, can it control the ship itself?

  The Scholar misinterprets the look on my face. “You see the possibilities, don’t you?”

  I shrug. “So why aren’t you running the ship?”

  “I’m not strong enough. Only Eddica-touched, not even a talent. I can see the flows, if I concentrate hard, but they remain beyond my reach. But you saw the power in Shiara’s necklace, without even trying. You must be a talent, or even an adept. You might be what I need.”

  “What you need?” I narrow my eyes. “What do you want from me?”

  “Only what’s best for everyone, of course.” He grins. “Come. One more flight of stairs, and I’ll show you the third act.”