Engines and werewolves

Chapter 47

“I’ll explain,” Andre grates, “when it needs explaining.” He goes to the bucket, looks in, and shudders. “Ugh. Crab juice again.”

I can’t resist the smell anymore, and I go to the bucket. It’s full of a murky liquid, hot enough that it steams a little, with some greenish things and unidentifiable white bits floating in it. I’ve eaten crab, pulled from the ocean in wooden traps by fishermen from up the coast. It has to be rushed to the city on ice, so it’s a delicacy, steamed, salted, and buttered. Not worth the coin, in my opinion, but edible enough. The smell of this concoction doesn’t have much in common with what I remember, but I’m hungry enough that I don’t care.

The boy from the island slips in front of me and grabs one of the bowls. He dips it in the bucket, pulls it out full and dripping, and retreats to sit on a folded carpet, drinking the liquid and scooping the soft pieces out with his fingers.

“This is the Moron,” Andre says to me and Marvel. “Expect nothing from him and you won’t be surprised. He only turns up for meals.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Marvel says politely.

“And he doesn’t talk,” Andre growls. “So don’t bother.”

I take a bowl and fill it, mimicking the boy. Whatever “crab juice” is, it’s good. Shockingly good, even considering that I haven’t eaten in more than a day. Spices I can’t identify give it a tingling bite. The white lumps are meat—crab, I assume—and something spongy that I guess is mushroom. Either way, they’re suffused with the delicious broth, and I gobble them down.

I glance at my empty bowl, then at Andre. He gestures wearily for me to go ahead—there’s plenty in the bucket. I have a second helping, which is as good as the first, and a long drink of water.

“Melos, you said,” he says as I’m finishing.

I nod.

“If we’re lucky, we won’t run into anything nasty,” he says. “If we’re unlucky, it’s going to be on you and me to stop it. I’ll stay back, and you get in close and pin it down. Just keep it away from me and I’ll roast it.” He opens his palm, letting Myrkai fire flare briefly. “Think you can manage that?”

As plans go, it’s not much. But I nod again. No sense picking a fight here, not yet. I wish I had Grog at my side, someone I could count on; then I remember what happened to Grog, and my stomach knots.

Andre turns away, muttering. Marvel sits down next to me, a bowl of crab juice in her hands. She stares at it for a moment, as though unsure how to proceed.

“You use your fingers, apparently,” I tell her. “Once you’re done with the broth.”

She nods and lifts the bowl to her lips with an air of determined curiosity, like a traveler trying the customs of a strange new land.

“You grew up in a palace, I suppose,” I say, as she slurps her soup. “Silver spoons and crystal goblets, that sort of thing.”

“Oh yes.” She finishes the broth and attacks the rest with her fingers, shoveling mushroom and crab into her mouth. In between bites, she adds, “I had a tutor named Rimi just for table etiquette. How to tell a demi-forchette from a shell pick, and why you use one for nuts and the other for fruit, and so on.”

I shake my head. “Important things.”

“When my father dined with us, one of his courtiers would watch me for mistakes,” she goes on, finishing the bowl. “If I made a mistake, I’d be punished.”

“No dessert?”

“He had a black lacquer switch, about as wide as your little finger. There was a special box for it, in my anteroom.”

“Your father beat you for using the wrong fork?”

“Oh no.” She holds out her arms, showing smooth, unblemished skin. “I had to remain pristine against the day I married some prince. He beat Rimi, and made me watch. Every time I looked away, he’d add another stroke.”

Aristos. Whatever country they’re from, they live in a different world.

Marvel scrapes the bottom of her bowl with her fingers and sucks them clean. “That was good. Do you think I could have some more?”

A very, very strange princess. Wordlessly, I wave her on.

Helen and some other crew return after an hour, just long enough to let the crab juice settle. Andre calls us all together by the door, the two silent boys, me, and Marvel. The Moron looks at the two newcomers with interest, idly swiveling one finger back and forth in his ear. Belvia is hunched in on himself, looking a little green. Andre looks from one of them to the other, sighs, and turns to me and Marvel.

“You. Southerner. Mero, is it?”

“Marvel,” she says. “Meh, roh, ei.”

“Whatever. Victoria explained how things stand?”

“She told me you’re in charge. And we have to go somewhere and do something.” She c***s her head. “I have questions, but—”

“She said you don’t know your Well,” he interrupts. “Are you good for anything?”

“I don’t have a Well,” Marvel says. “But I can dance, sing—maybe not well—speak seven languages, keep an account book up-to-date, follow trade law, and cook puff pastry.”

“In other words,” he growls, “you’re useless.”

“You haven’t tried my puff pastry.” Marvel grins at him fearlessly, and I suppress a laugh. Andre snorts. “If there’s a fight, stay out of the way,” he says, looking from her to Belvia. To the Moron, he adds, “You can feel free to get yourself killed.”

“The mighty pack leader,” Helen drawls from the doorway. “Come on. You don’t want to keep the crabs waiting.”

We file out, and Helen leads us on another twisting journey through the ship. This time we don’t have far to go, though the direction is even farther down, via a rusting staircase and a long ramp. We finally reach a place where the corridor dead-ends in a large metal door, secured in place with a double bar and guarded by a pair of crew. A stack of lanterns stands against one wall, beside a pile of crudespears.

“Here we are,” Helen says. “Left at the second landing, then keep going until you get to the Silvercap Garden.”

“I’ve done this before,” Andre says, taking a lantern and ignoring the spears.

“Just thought you might have forgotten,” Helen says, grinning. “It’s been a while.”

The Coward arms himself with a spear, but none of the rest of us do. We each take a lantern, and Andre lights them with a theatrical puff of Myrkai fire. The two guards undo the bars and open the door, which lets a cold wind and a strong smell of salt water into the corridor. The flames dance and flicker.

“Good luck,” Helen says. I get the sense she doesn’t mean it.

Andre strides forward, through the door and into the darkness, and the rest of us follow. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. By the sound, I can tell we’re in a much larger space, almost as though I’m back under the open sky. I blink and make out a metal bridge, wide enough for two carts to pass each other, lined by a railing. It stretches on farther than I can see, and to either side is only darkness.

No. Not quite darkness. There are lights there, made tiny by distance, green and blue sparks like colorful stars. They hang in place or move slowly, as though swept by invisible tides.

“What is this place?” Marvel says. “This cannot be a ship.”

“Soliton is the largest ship ever to float,” Belvia says, looking miserable. “It’s bigger than some cities. That way”—he points to the door behind us—“is the Stern, where the crew lives. This”—he waves at the darkness—“is the Center. There are other bridges, ladders, stairways, hundreds of them. This is where we come to hunt.” He huddles in on himself. “Where the crabs are.”

Marvel steps to the railing and looks over the side. “What’s down at the bottom?”

“The Deeps,” Belvia says. “No one goes down there and comes back alive.”

“If there’s a Stern, is there a Bow?” Marvel’s face is animated in the lantern’s half-light. “How does the Captain steer?”

“None of that rot makes any difference to you,” Andre says. “Keep up.”

“We should try to stay quiet,” Belvia says, as we start walking.

“Crabs can hear your footsteps half the ship away,” Andre says contemptuously. “If they’re around, whispering isn’t going to hide you.”

“Crabs aren’t the only things out here,” Belvia says. But he doesn’t argue further, only winces a little every time Andre’s boots ring too loudly off the metal deck.

The bridge slopes down a little, and the surface is uneven, parts of it sagging or twisted. The railings are intermittent. In the darkness below us, colored lights move, fade out, and bloom again. We cross a circular landing, where several bridges meet and a spiral stairway descends dizzyingly out of sight. Most of the steps are broken in the middle, the rust-edged remnants clinging to the frame like a mouthful of shattered teeth. I think I can hear water rushing, far below us. Andre leads us across the landing and onto another bridge, where a crude arrow has been scraped into the rust.

I pause by a support pillar. There’s a noise, down at the very edge of hearing, like someone talking in another room. And I swear I can see something moving, running along the metal surface in intricate, shifting patterns. Gray light. I blink, and look at Marvel, but she doesn’t seem to notice. The others are already past, and I hurry to catch up, fighting a chill.

At the second landing, we turn left, as Helen instructed. Soon I can hear the patter of falling water, and we reach a spot where the bridge changes shape, splitting into four curving sections connected by long, arched buttresses. A little ways on, part of one section has broken free, leaning drunkenly against its neighbor. The paths divide and divide again, creating a labyrinth of interconnected bridges, like a hedge maze with bottomless pits instead of hedges.

Water falls from above us, not a steady rain but a constant spatter, drops splashing off the walkways or missing them and falling into oblivion. I hold out my hand for a few moments, and a heavy drop splashes into it, while another lands in my hair. I sniff my hand—freshwater.

“Don’t try to drink it,” Belvia says. We all have canteens, though we didn’t pack any food.

“Here,” Andre says from up ahead. “This is what we came for.”

He raises his lantern, and a hundred tiny gleams of light move with it. The curving paths are covered in weird fungal growths, huge shelf-like things veined with purple, sprigs of what looks like bright red grass, dangling tendrils that remind me of jellyfish tipped with electric blue. The dominant type seems to be a mushroom of a more normal toadstool shape, whose caps are plated unevenly with what looks like polished silver. They reflect the glow of the lanterns like stars.