Engines and werewolves

Chapter 54

A few small crabs, about the size of dogs, scurry away from our approach. The people of Soliton use “crab” to mean any of the monsters of the Center, but these look like the crabs I’m familiar with. Belvia says they’re called scuttlers and they don’t attack humans unless they seem weak. I guess we look strong enough, because the scuttlers leave us alone, and we don’t run into any serious problems until we reach a wide bridge four levels down and the rattle-clicking begins.

Rattlers, apparently, hunt in packs. I rotting well wish people would take the time to explain things.

Apparently they hunt in big packs, too. At least two dozen of the red creatures roll out of the darkness, already moving fast, feet kicking out every few yards to push them ever faster. If I wait for them to come to us, they’ll knock me down and Marvel and the others will be easy prey. So I run toward them, angling diagonally across the bridge, slamming my boots hard against the metal deck to make it ring like a gong. Crabs are supposed to be attracted to sound, and the rattlers are no exception. They start to turn in my direction, the whole pack slewing around to come after me. The closest one jumps, and I s***h it in two. Another Myrkai bolt sends a rattler careening off the bridge wreathed in flame.

Then the rest of them have made the turn, and they’re jumping at me, too. I duck and roll out of the way as a half dozen fly through the space where I was standing, bouncing off the deck and spinning to come back at me. I cut another down as it gets too close, and feel a pulse of heat as one of them caroms off the backs of my legs. Three more jump, and I intercept one and duck another. The third catches me on the shoulder, hard enough that I stumble backward and land on my a*s.

“Andre!” I shout. “Now!”

He says something in response, but I’m not listening. I curl up, putting my head down, and let my blades fade away as I put all the energy I can muster into my armor. It thickens, power crackling over me as the rattlers slam against me again and again. Their spines scrape against the solidified magic with a sound like blades on glass, green lightning arcing all around me.

All at once, everything goes white, and my armor flares hot enough that I want to scream. There’s a rush of sound, like the whoomph of igniting oil, and then sudden quiet. A single rattle-click rapidly fades into the distance.

I open my eyes and push myself to my feet.

I’m standing in the middle of a huge patch of blackened deck. All around me are the rattlers, cooked to a crisp by the enormous fireball I was just at the center of. Andre is standing some distance off, arms folded, looking smug.

I take a step toward him, stumble a little, and concentrate on breathing for a moment. Stray sparks of green light still shimmer over my clothes, earthing themselves on the deck and the dead rattlers.

I don’t know if the things are good to eat, but they smell delicious.

“If you could do that,” Marvel says, “why didn’t you just do it in the first place?”

“For starters, it wears me out,” Andre says, grinning. “And it’s not very accurate. I needed them all together and well away from us, unless you fancy getting cooked, too.”

Marvel takes my arm, carefully, and puts it across her shoulders.

“Here, lean on me,” she says. We start walking back toward the others. “Are you all right?”

“Medium-rare, at worst,” I tell her, sucking in a breath. In truth, my limbs feel a little wobbly from the rush of power, but it’s passing. Momentary impacts and flames are easier on my armor than the sustained pressure the blueshell put me through. “What about you?”

“I’m fine. I think something got stuck in Belvia’s hand, though.”

“That’ll be the needles,” Andre says. “The tips are barbed, and they break off. Let me see.”

Belvia whimpers and opens his hand. There are three long spines embedded in his palm.

“Those aren’t in that deep,” Andre says. “There’s a trick to getting them out. It doesn’t hurt, if you do it right.”

Belvia stares up at him. “Do you know how?”

He nods. “You have to hold very still, though. Take a deep breath. I’ll unhook them on three.”

Belvia grits his teeth, white-faced. Andre crouches and grabs the spines.

“One,” he says, and then immediately yanks hard. The spikes come out, blood running freely from the cuts they leave behind. Belvia screams and clutches his hand to his chest, smearing his shirt with crimson. Marvel jolts.

“What are you doing?” she says.

“He’ll be fine,” Andre says. “If that’s the worst injury we get today, we’ll count ourselves lucky.”

“That’s still no reason to be—”

“Realistic?” Andre smiles. “Come on. If these two can stumble a little further, there’s a pillar up ahead. It’ll be safer to rest there.”

Marvel mutters something in another language. I gather it’s uncomplimentary. I wait, getting my breath back, as she wraps Belvia’s hand in a bandage. She’s brought the sack of linen with her, along with a makeshift knapsack full of extra canteens and leftover mushroom bread from breakfast.

“Are you planning on staying down here longer than the rest of us?” I ask, as she knots the bundle back up.

“You never know,” she says. “It might help, and at least I can carry some extra weight.” She catches my eye and adds in a quiet voice, “I don’t like being useless.”

You’re doing better than Belvia.”

“Don’t you start on him,” Marvel says. “Did you ever think that if Andre was encouraging him instead of threatening him he might not be so afraid of everything?”

I doubt that, but Marvel’s expression tells me it wouldn’t be productive to say so, so I only shrug. I have a hard time understanding why she’s coddling this boy, who seems to deserve his nickname. Any g**g in Rachtown would have kicked him to the gutter long ago as not even worth killing. Marvel may not have a Well, but she’s got an inner strength that I wouldn’t trade for a hundred craven fools like Belvia. Or a dozen insecure bosses like Andre, for that matter.

And the way Belvia looks at Marvel makes me want to slap him, halfway between a boy at his first peep show and a supplicant looking on the image of his goddess. She doesn’t seem to notice, or pretends not to. The Moron has reappeared, standing at the pack leader’s side as calmly as if nothing had happened. Andre regards him sourly for a moment, then turns and leads us onward.

We reach the pillar, a massive metal spire at the intersection of four bridges, with a circular platform ringed by a rusted-out railing. Shelf mushrooms grow on its side, and tiny beetles with iridescent red carapaces scuttle among them. I hold back for a moment, waiting for Andre to tell us they’re flesh-eating monsters, but he doesn’t give them a second glance, so I relax. The pack leader sits in a soft pile of fungus with his back to the pillar, taking a long swig from his canteen.

“Take a break,” he says. “It’s another hour’s walk to the edge of the Wrecks, and I don’t want us exhausted when we get there.”

I sit down against the pillar a little ways away from them and take a long drink. Another hour, Andre says, and we’ll reach the hammerhead’s hunting ground. If we find it, and if this rotting plan to kill it actually works, then I’ll need to figure out what to do about Andre’s offer, and Olite’s. And—

There’s something moving, under the surface of the pillar. It’s hard for my eyes to focus on. At first I think it’s a horde of ants, but the moving specks are smaller, and glow with a faint gray light that feels unpleasantly familiar. They’re all flowing in the same direction, up from the deck toward the ceiling lost in darkness above us. As they move, they weave around one another, a delicate dance of near collisions like they really were ants. I put my hand against the pillar, tentatively, and watch the flows shift around it, like a stream twisting around a rock.

And there are voices, down at the edge of hearing. Most of the words are unintelligible, but a few break through the babble. “Hurts. Please.” Someone—something—is begging. And then another, “Kill, kill, killkillkill—”

I snatch my hand away and scramble back a pace, heart pounding. Marvel looks up at me, questioningly. I blink, and wave her away. She’s touching the pillar. So whatever it is, she can’t see it, or hear the voices.

“Victoria.” It’s Andre, climbing to his feet. “You ready?”

I nod, my throat suddenly dry. “I’m ready.”

* * *

It’s not hard to guess why they called this place the Wrecks.

We reach it after descending another staircase. In the midst of the labyrinth of bridges, a wide, flat expanse of decking stretches out ahead of us, beyond the range of our lanterns. It’s supported at regular intervals by more pillars, and I give these a wide berth. In between the pillars there are holes in the deck, too clean and rectangular to be rusted-out patches, each the size of a building. On the sides of the holes are huge stanchions, as tall as I am, from which dangle lengths of arm-thick chain.

The first few holes we find are empty, just drops into the unknowable depths of Soliton. Eventually, though, we come across one that’s still occupied. It takes me a moment to understand that the ugly, rusted thing hanging in the gap is a ship, albeit one of a design I’ve never seen before. It has two parallel hulls, long and narrow, with a gracefully curved deck bridging the gap between them. The chains are attached to it, suspending the small vessel in midair at roughly the level of the deck.

So this is a dock, of a sort. I wonder if the small vessel was some kind of ship’s boat—it’s the size of a war galley, but given the enormity of Soliton it doesn’t seem unreasonable. Why a dock would be hanging in midair with no water in sight is beyond me, but once again, it’s a weird ship.

It isn’t just rust that has damaged the small vessel. Parts of its hull are shattered into jagged, twisted shards, or torn open by parallel rents I can’t help but interpret as the marks of enormous claws.

“Wow,” Marvel says, eyes wide. She looks from the vessel to the empty holes, then out into the distance. “How many are there?”

“Dozens,” Andre says indifferently.

“Do any of them still work?” Marvel says, taking a step forward. “Is there a way to get them into the water? You could—”

“Don’t,” he says. “People have tried going out to them. Even if you don’t slip and fall all the way to the Deeps, there’s nothing to find.”

“And they’re cursed,” Belvia says.

“They’re not cursed,” Andre says.

“People who climb out there die,” the boy insists.

“It doesn’t matter,” Andre says, “because we’re not going near them. Marvel, time to play hammerhead bait.”

Right,” she says. “My crucial role in this adventure. You’re ready, Belvia?”

“I … think so.” Belvia shifts awkwardly. “If it comes, I’ll try to hold it.”

“Here.” Andre tosses Marvel a small object, which makes a clonk-clonk noise. It turns out to be a bell, bent out of shape. “Just cut yourself a little, and make a racket.”

Marvel nods, and takes a deep breath. She pulls a knife out of her pocket and offers it to me, hilt first.

“Would you mind?” she says.

I take her hand, palm up. It’s shaking a little. “Close your eyes,” I tell her.

She does. I make a quick gash across the meat at the bottom of her thumb, just below the bandage. Blood wells quickly, drops running down her arm.

She holds her hand out to Andre. “This enough?”

“Should be,” he says. “You and Victoria go out ahead. Belvia and I will keep our distance.”

Convenient for him. Marvel waves her hand around, letting blood drip on the deck, and rings the bell with a clack-clonk. It echoes weirdly off the metal.

“I guess we just … walk,” she says. “Come on. I want to see if there are more of the little ships.”

“Does it matter?” I say, falling into step beside her.

“You’re not curious?” she says.

“About what?”

“About this!” She waves a hand. “Who built this thing? How? What was it for?”

I think of the voices in the pillar, and the angels. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Really? I certainly do.” She rings the bell again. “I mean, have you even heard of anything like it?”

I shake my head. “Whoever built it, though, I think they’re long gone.” I gesture at the small ship as we walk past it. “Otherwise they’d have kept things in better shape.”

“Does the Captain know, do you think?”

There’s a thought I hadn’t considered. I’ve been assuming the Captain can steer Soliton—that’s what it means to be a Captain, isn’t it? But I wonder if he understands any more about how the ship works than the rest of us.

“I’d love to talk to him,” Marvel says.

“You like figuring things out, don’t you.”

She nods. “My father always told me I shouldn’t be so interested in everything. It wasn’t … seemly, for a princess. But I suppose I can’t help it.” She rings the bell, and waves her wounded hand back and forth. “There was a eunuch at our court who studied the stars. I used to sneak in and play with his telescope.”

“What’s a telescope?” The word is Imperial, but I’ve never heard it before.

“It’s … you know what a spyglass is? For looking at ships?”

I nod cautiously. I’ve seen those on the docks.

“A telescope is like that, but stronger. You use it to look at the stars, or the moon.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Curiosity?”

Which is, of course, a very aristo way of looking at things. Why not stare at the sky when you don’t have to work for your dinner?

The next bay over is empty, so we change directions, and come alongside another wrecked vessel. This one is dangling nose down, with only the chains at its aft end still holding it in place. It shifts back and forth, very gently, producing faint metal-on-metal creaks.

Marvel rings her bell. “I feel like I’m calling the castle to dinner,” she says.

“You’re calling someone to dinner.” I look over my shoulder and make sure Andre and Belvia are not too far behind us. They’re hanging back, but still in sight. “Hopefully it’ll hear us soon.”

The hanging ship creaks again. Then I become aware of another sound, a rapid drumming. It comes up through my feet as a vibration in the deck, making my teeth buzz. Marvel tenses.

“I think you can get rid of the bell.” I look around again, but I can’t see any sort of monster. The sound comes from every direction at once. “Where in the Rot is it?”

“I think…” Marvel hesitates, closing her eyes, then takes a step away from the closest gap. “Underneath!”

The hammerhead crawls up over the side of the gap. Chunks of rusty decking break and fall away under its weight, but it keeps coming. It’s big, as tall as the blueshell but considerably more compact, with a long, oval body split into many narrow segments of gray chitin. Each side of it is lined with legs, hundreds of stubby little things that keep it only a few inches off the ground. They move with eerie, mechanical coordination, ripples of motion running down each flank. At the front of the creature, its body flattens out into a broad head, protruding out to either side and shaped vaguely like a hammer. A huge mouth splits the head almost in two, and as it yawns wide I can see row after row of needle-like teeth, short but viciously sharp.

The legs, Andre had said. Marvel is already backing away from it, and I fade to one side, ready to attack its flank if it stays focused on her. All of a sudden, though, I don’t like this plan. Marvel is all alone, and if something goes wrong—

“Belvia!” Marvel shouts. “Now!”

Belvia, at Andre’s side, swallows hard and concentrates. For a moment, pale blue light flickers around the hammerhead, which is still moving toward Marvel at a leisurely pace. The Tartak force makes it pause for a moment, but no more than that.