* * *
They’re waiting for me. The ones who are left.
Meroe meets me at the bottom of the stairs, wrapping me in a hug tight enough to send spikes of pain through the burnt skin of my back. I ignore it and hug her back, just as tightly. Her braids are crusty with blood.
“You did it,” she says. “Gods, Isoka. You did it.”
I blink tears out of my eyes, and look past her.
The long curve of the door is closed, the unfolded steel sheets sealing off the entryway. I can hear crabs banging on it, distantly, but the metal doesn’t even shiver. They’re locked out. And we’re locked in.
Inside the door, bodies are piled in heaps. Crab bodies, blown apart or fried or cut to pieces, and human bodies, torn or slashed or mangled. Blood in every color imaginable has soaked into the soil, churned now into thick mud. There are dead hunters, the men and women I fought alongside on the way here, but so many others, too. Scavengers and servants, porters and children, lying in drifts like windblown sand.
“They came back to help,” Meroe says in my ear, as I walk forward. “Not just the fighters. Everyone who could hold a blade or a spear.”
“You wanted to save everyone,” I say, my eyes locked on the corpses.
Meroe squeezes my hand. “We saved everyone we could.”
The living are gathered just upslope of the carnage, sitting in stunned knots on the grass. A few are at work on bandages, helping the injured, but most just sit and stare at the closed doors, unable to believe that the nightmare is finally over. I see a few of the hunters, pitifully few. Aifin, Thora, and Jack are sitting together. Thora’s asleep, head resting on her lover’s shoulder, but Jack is awake enough to give me a little wave. I see Zarun, protesting feebly as Sister Cadua goes at him with her needle and thread.
Karakoa lies on the hillside, on his back, eyes closed. At first I think he’s asleep, too, but then I see the deep cuts in his coat, the crimson stains that surround them. The cuffs of his sleeves are scorched from powerburn, and I shudder to think what the flesh underneath must look like. His lover, the young man I’d seen at the officers’ council, kneels beside him, prostrated in an attitude like prayer.
“He fought to the last,” Meroe says quietly. “Sister Cadua told him to fall back, to get help, and he refused. You could smell his skin burning. When the doors finally closed, he walked back here and just … lay down.”
“Oh.” I put my arm around her shoulders, pulling her tight against me.
“Deepwalker.”
I turn, reluctantly. Shiara is standing between two tired-looking hunters, her kizen frayed at the edges, her makeup slightly smudged. By her standards, she might as well be naked.
“What?” I ask her.
“Where is the Scholar?” she demands. “He was seen going up the stairs.”
“Dead.” No need to elaborate on how.
“Oh.” She seems to deflate a little, then squares her shoulders. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean? We’re safe.”
“For the moment.” She waves a hand. “Will the ship keep going, past the Rot? Where does it stop? Will the doors open again, or are we trapped in here?”
I feel eyes on me, from all directions. Stares. Even Meroe is watching me.
What makes them think I have the answers?
“Deepwalker?” Shiara says.
Epilogue
Soliton continues on.
There’s food in the Garden, and freshwater. We’re short of clothes, furniture, the sort of thing the scavengers used to retrieve, but we survive. The old clades are dissolved, and even the Butcher’s crew is joined into our single community, united by the trauma of our flight and final, desperate battle.
The crew looks to Shiara and Zarun for leadership. They look to Meroe, who organized the march and saved them. And, for reasons I don’t understand, they look to me. They call me Deepwalker, like it means something, and nod quietly when I pass by.
Rot. I will never understand people.
We bury the dead, a novelty on Soliton. When we recover our strength, we explore the rest of the Garden. There are several more levels, different environments, different plants and animals. Meroe and I agree that we need to be careful with it. We take fruit from the trees; a few unfamiliar animals for meat; berries and vegetables. But not too much. This place is a refuge, and we don’t know how long we’ll need it. Or when we’ll need it again.
Eventually—there’s no way to judge the passage of time in the Garden, where the fake sun always shines—the door opens. We venture out, cautiously, but the killing frenzy that drove the crabs has passed. They are back to their old selves, wandering and only occasionally dangerous, and the hunters quickly go back to hunting. Scavengers venture forth, into fresh, rich territory near the bow of the ship where no one has gone before, and return with rich booty. A new town starts to take shape, around the base of the Garden, with barricades and crude shacks that grow by the day.
Meroe, Jack, Thora, and I go on an expedition, climbing the staircases from platform to platform until we make our way, exhausted, onto the deck. It’s night, and a blaze of glorious stars stretches from horizon to horizon. There’s no sign of land, no city lights, just the endless stretch of dark ocean.
Meroe says that she can get a rough idea of where we are from the stars, which surprises none of us. We wait, staring upward, while she sketches and calculates, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. Finally, she announces that we have left the Vile Rot far behind. We have passed beyond it, beyond the Central Ocean, where no ship has ventured for a thousand years. And Soliton is still heading east, cutting smoothly through the water, taking us farther and farther from everything we’ve ever known.
There will be questions, when we get back. People will ask me when we’ll reach land, whether there’ll be more sacrifices, what happens next.
Hagan hasn’t appeared to me since the Scholar died. I’ve pressed my hand to the Eddica streams that still flow through the ship and called his name, but he never responds. It’s possible what the Scholar did destroyed him. Sometimes, though, when I let my thoughts run along with the strange gray energy, I can feel … something. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
I hope wherever Hagan is, it’s somewhere he wants to be.
Thora and Jack wander off, to find a private corner. Meroe and I lie on the deck, side by side.
“I have to get back to Kahnzoka,” I say. “Tori is waiting for me.”
“I know,” Meroe says. She levers herself up on one elbow, then leans over and kisses me. “We’ll get there.”
In that moment, in spite of the fact that we’re going in the wrong direction, in spite of the fact that there are crabs and the Vile Rot and Blessed knows what else in the way, in spite of everything, I believe her.
Hold on, Tori. I’m coming.
We are coming.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book represents my first venture into the world of YA. Doing something new always carries with it the fear of screwing it up royally, and so I’ve been enormously grateful to have a great crew of people much more knowledgeable than me helping me along the way. (Any royal screwups that do result are, of course, my own responsibility!)
When I first started thinking about this project, I consulted my resident YA expert, Casey Blair, who provided me with an extensive, annotated reading list and endless input along the way. Liz Bourke provided another great swathe of recommended reading. Later, she and Iori Kusano were generous enough to look over a draft as sensitivity readers, in which capacity they were enormously helpful.
My agent, Seth Fishman, performed wonders as usual, finding the perfect home for my odd little project. I’d also like to thank the rest of the team at the Gernert Company: Jack Gernert, Will Roberts, Rebecca Gardner, and Ellen Goodson.
Special thanks to my amazing editor, Ali Fisher, who was perfectly in sync with me from day one. It’s always wonderful working with someone great! I’ve loved Richard Anderson’
s art for a while now, and having him do a cover for me was amazing; thanks to him for his wonderful work. At Tor Teen, I’m grateful to everyone from the legendary Tom Doherty on down: Kathleen Doherty, Seth Lerner, Elizabeth Curione, and Karl Gold. And my thanks to everyone on the Macmillan and Tor/Forge marketing and sales teams who work hard to make this book a success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DJANGO WEXLER graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in creative writing and computer science, worked in artificial intelligence research and as a programmer/writer for Microsoft, and is now a full-time fantasy writer. Django is the author of The Shadow Campaigns, an epic fantasy series for adults, and The Forbidden Library, a classic fantasy series for middle-grade readers. You can sign up for email updates here.
Visit Django Wexler online:
Website: DjangoWexler.com
Twitter: @DjangoWexler
Goodreads: Django Wexler.
Facebook: Facebook.com/AuthorDjangoWexler
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Map
The Nine Wells of Sorcery
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SHIP OF SMOKE AND STEEL
Copyright © 2019 by Django Wexler
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Richard Anderson
A Tor Teen Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Wexler, Django, author.
Title: Ship of smoke and steel / Django Wexler.
Description: First edition.|New York: Tor Teen, 2019. | “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.” | Summary: Isoka, an eighteen-year-old ward boss in the great port city, Kahnzoka, is sent on an impossible mission to steal Soliton, a legendary ghost ship, or her sister will be killed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018044553 | ISBN 9780765397249 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780765397263 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Fantasy. | Magic—Fiction. | Ships—Fiction. | Dead—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.W5358 Shi 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044553
eISBN 9780765397263
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: January 2019
Ship of Smoke and Steel Page 38