Engines and werewolves

Chapter 53

I dream about angels, the twisted, alien shapes that haunt the ship’s rail. In the dream they’re clustered around me, like eager dogs gathering for a treat, except I feel like they’re trying to talk to me. Voices babble at the back of my mind, endlessly, unintelligibly. Someone is shouting in the distance, trying to cut through the chatter, but too far away to hear. The angels bleed gray light, which swirls around me, tiny specks of glowing dust trying to burrow through my skin.

I also dream about Olite, which is more explicable and considerably more pleasant. I kiss the taut muscle of his stomach while his hands run up and down my back. Olite, I suspect, would not mind my scars. Unfortunately, this pleasant scenario means I wake up with an itchy, unfulfilled feeling that leaves me badly wanting to rut, or at least find a comfortable spot with some privacy and take care of things for myself. I don’t seem likely to get either, since Andre is already shouting for everyone to gather.

We do, though in the case of the Moron it’s clearly more because Andre is holding our breakfast bucket than for any respect for the pack leader’s orders. Andre sets the bucket and a couple of loaves of bread in front of us, and starts to talk while we dip our bowls. Marvel sits beside me, and I catch her looking at me uncertainly. She doesn’t say much, for once. Belvia sits as far as possible from Andre, shoveling bits of crab into his mouth between nervous looks up at the pack leader. The Moron eats in beatific silence, apparently ignorant of everything spoken.

“The Butcher wants us to hunt a hammerhead,” Andre says. “Obviously that isn’t easy. She knows where one’s been feeding, which takes care of the first problem, but that leaves the issue of killing the rotting thing.” He shakes his head. “Normally you need a whole set of beaters, a Tartak adept to hold the monster down, and someone to carve a way through its thick skull. We’ve got … us. But we haven’t got a rotting choice if we want to eat, so we’re doing it.”

Belvia has frozen. “We can’t kill a hammerhead. Is she crazy?”

“I think she knows exactly what she’s doing,” I say.

Marvel shoots me a look. Belvia tosses his bowl aside and starts to get up, and Andre’s voice cracks like a whip.

“Coward! Sit down and shut up. You’re part of this, and if you try to run off gods help me I’ll burn you alive. Understand?”

Belvia sits, white-faced. The Moron, having finished his breakfast, sets his bowl down and wanders back to the shore. He plunges easily into the water, swimming out to his island in a few quick strokes.

“Obviously he’s not worth anything,” Andre says. “But Coward, you’re Tartak. So we need you on this one.”

“I’m n … not strong enough,” Belvia says, looking at the floor. “I’m only a talent. I c … can’t hold a hammerhead.”

“You can rotting well try,” Andre says.

“Marvel saved you from the blueshell,” I tell him. “Now’s your chance to return the favor.”

“I didn’t…” Belvia looks at Marvel, then back at the floor. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be … I’m just not strong enough, that’s all.”

“We’re not going to be able to do it the usual way,” Andre says. “We’re going to have to get it to come to us, instead of flushing it out with beaters. Marvel, that’s your job.”

“How?” Marvel says.

“By being bait,” Andre says. “When we start seeing signs the hammerhead is close, you’ll cut yourself and make some noise. That’ll bring it out, sure as winter.”

“I don’t—” I start, but Marvel interrupts.

“All right,” she says. “Then what?”

“Then Coward here holds it. It doesn’t have to be for long; a few seconds will do.” He leans down and sketches an elliptical shape on the deck, then puts a couple of dots in the middle. “The only way to kill a hammerhead is to hit the heart or the brain. But they’re both too far inside to get to easily. So Victoria, I want you to go for the legs instead. Damage enough of them and we’ll slow it right down. Then I can take my time and blast it apart. May not make the best steaks for the officers, but they can go rot.”

“It won’t work,” Belvia moans. “I told you, I can’t hold it.”

“Would you shut it?” Andre closes his fist, which ignites with a whoomph. “I swear, I’m going to—”

“Let me talk to him,” Marvel says. “Please.”

Andre glares at Belvia, but he nods. Marvel takes the boy’s trembling hand and leads him away, speaking to him in a low voice. Andre rolls his eyes and starts on his own breakfast, ripping one of the tough loaves of bread in half.

“So, the hammerhead,” I ask him, “does it have claws like the blueshell, or tentacles, or what?”

Andre shakes his head. “Just a mouth. A big, wide mouth, full of tiny, sharp teeth.” He rips a hunk off the bread and chews with some difficulty. “Rotting gods. Would it kill them to bring it to us fresh?”

“What do they make bread out of, anyway?” I tear a chunk from the loaf. “It can’t be flour.”

“Mushrooms,” he says. “There’s a kind you can grind up like grain.”

Amazing,” I mutter. Crabs and mushrooms seem to be the two things Soliton has in abundance.

Marvel comes back, with Belvia in tow. To my surprise, the boy is looking more determined, his clenched fists still shaking slightly.

“Well?” Andre says.

“I’ll … try,” Belvia says. “I don’t think … I mean…”

Marvel touches his arm, lightly, and he looks up at her. I almost laugh out loud at the puppy-dog devotion in his eyes. He’s fallen for her, hard.

“I’ll do it,” he says. “I don’t know how well it will work, but I’ll do it.”

“That’s the spirit, Coward,” Andre says.

I drift over to Marvel and lower my voice. “What’d you tell him?”

“Just that I needed his help,” she says. “I talked to him instead of threatening him. It wasn’t difficult.”

“And you think he’ll hold up?”

“He gave me his word.”

“Sure, because he wants you to rut him.”

“He doesn’t.…” She hesitates, though if she’s blushing her dark skin makes it invisible. “All right, maybe he does. But still I think he’ll try to help.”

“Boys have done stupider things for a pretty girl.”

Marvel snorts. “You were the one saying you’d be happy to sleep with Olite if it got you what you wanted.”

“If it got me what I wanted. He’s not just a boy with a pretty face.”

“Not just a boy with a pretty face. But he does have a pretty face.”

I glance at her, and there’s a faint, mischievous smile on her lips. I smile a little, too. Trading barbs, in a strange way, makes me feel closer to her than anything else. It reminds me of Grog and Nathan, standing on the street corner and swapping insults and improbable exploits.

“What about the other boy?” she says. “The Moron.”

“Not to my taste.”

She rolls her eyes. “No, I mean, can he help?”

“According to Andre, he never talks and doesn’t seem to understand anything anyone says to him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t speak Imperial or City of bangad.”

“He looks City of bangad.”

“There are a lot of languages in City of bangad,” Marvel says. “Especially in the south.”

“You’d think he’d have said something, then, even if no one could understand him.”

“I wonder if anyone’s tried.”

Her thoughts on the matter are interrupted by the clang of the cell door opening. Helen is waiting for us on the other side with a mocking grin.

“All right, Pack Nine,” she says. “Time to go down into the dark again.”

When Andre warns me about rattlers, I picture some kind of snake. This turns out to be almost completely wrong, and I find myself wishing he’d been a little more descriptive.

These rattlers are spherical creatures a bit larger than my head, looking like nothing so much as a ball of rust-red needles. They move by rolling across the metal deck, their spines making a distinctive rattle-click sound. Two fleshy pink “feet” like stubby tentacles emerge from either end to give them periodic kicks, enabling them to move at high speed.

And, I discover, to jump several feet off the ground with unexpected force. Three of the creatures had careened into the circle of light shed by our torches, then come at us all together. I step toward them, putting myself in front of the others as I ignite my blades. A blast of flame whips past my shoulder, blowing one of the rattlers into a spray of smoking fragments, but the other two keep coming. I get ready to s***h the leading one in half, winding up and ready to swing, when the damn thing springs into the air with a quick thump of its foot against the deck. I try to get my other blade around in time but don’t make it, and it slams into my chest. Melos armor crackles, keeping the needles from my skin, and a wave of brutal heat rolls across me. The impact sends me reeling backward, and the rattler bounces away. It does a quick roll on the deck and starts coming back at us, ready for more.

There’s a scream from behind me. It’s Belvia, who’s down on his knees, clutching at his arm. The rattler that hit him skids to a halt farther on, and another bolt from Andre intercepts it and blows it to bits. I return my attention to the creature that bounced off me, which has gotten back up to speed for another try. Now that I’m expecting the jump, I’m ready for it, and my blade is in just the right place to s***h the thing clean in half. The two pieces thump to the deck, oozing watery fluid and crackling briefly with green lightning.

Marvel is kneeling beside Belvia. The Moron, as usual, is nowhere to be seen now that the action has started.

“Is he okay?” I ask.

Before Marvel can answer, though, Andre points. “The rest of the pack is coming!” he says.

I hear more rattle-clicks. A lot more, like a barrel full of knitting needles rolling down a hill.

* * *

At this point, we’re deep into the Center. Helen gave us a map, a crude, sketchy thing on a bit of torn cloth, and slammed the door behind us.

Wherever they found the hammerhead, it’s much farther away than the Silvercap Garden, and much farther down. We descend several spiral staircases, walking along bridge after bridge until I’m thoroughly lost. The whole Center seems to be a mess of bridges, pillars, and stairs, some sturdy-looking with solid railings, others rickety and rusted, or infested by fungus. Far below us, strange colored lights shift in the dark, moving slowly into new constellations. Now and then, I catch a whiff of something that smells like the sea over the tang of rusty metal.