Engines and werewolves

Chapter 64

These are well-honed instincts from years on the streets, but they’re almost certainly wrong. Soliton just isn’t big enough for these kinds of tactics to be effective. The ship itself is huge, of course, but the crew here in the Stern can’t be more than a few thousand people. You can’t hide in a place like that, where everyone knows everyone else at least by reputation. It makes me feel horribly exposed, deprived of the anonymizing crowds of the city streets that I could wrap around myself like a comforting blanket.

Besides, I don’t have time to take things cautiously. And when Marvel wakes up—

As though in answer to my thoughts, a few people on the street are staring openly at me. One says something to another in a language I don’t speak, but I catch the word “Deepwalker.”

Spectacular.

I trot down the stairs, two at a time. The Middle Deck is where I was first brought to see the Butcher, I realize, a maze of metal corridors opening on to rooms of various sizes. I turn left, as instructed, and walk quickly down an empty hallway to a curtained doorway. I hesitate at the threshold; am I supposed to knock?

From inside, someone short-cuts my dilemma. “Victoria? Is that you?”

I push the curtain aside. The room is smaller than the cell we were in previously, but in much better shape, with no standing water or rotting carpets. Sleeping mats are set against one wall, a low table with cushions in the center, and a few heavy clay jars stand by the door. Other than that, it’s empty, bare metal floor and walls. I suppose Andre hasn’t had the time to decorate.

In the back, a doorway leads off to a smaller room, blocked by another curtain. The pack leader is nowhere in sight, but Belvia is at the table and the Moron is sitting cross-legged in one corner, in much the same position he used to sit in on the little island.

“Victoria!” Belvia gets up. “I heard they found you, but…”

“Yes,” I confirm wearily. “I’m still alive.”

“They told us Marvel is at Sister Cadua’s,” Belvia says, anxiously. “Do you know—”

“I haven’t seen her, but I heard she’ll be all right.”

“Thank the Blessed.” He swallows. “What … what happened to your face?”

The blue marks. Rot. Time to lie.

“It’s fine,” I tell him. “I hurt myself in the fall. We found a mushroom that helped a bit, but it left these marks behind.” I offer my arm, where another line of curlicues wraps around my biceps.

“It’s … interesting,” he says. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Thanks.” My patience for Belvia isn’t particularly strong at the moment. “Where’s Andre?”

“In the back. He’s taken it for his bedroom.”

I stride past Belvia, and he turns to follow me, almost skipping to keep up.

“Um,” he says. “Do you know what’s going to happen to us?”

“Not yet,” I growl, and push aside the curtain.

Andre’s “bedroom” is just another metal space with a blanket and cushions on the floor. I suppose the sacrifices to Soliton don’t include a lot of furniture. He’s sitting with his back to the wall, a clay jug in one hand, and he grins at me as I come in.

“Victoria,” he says. “Gods be damned. Or should I call you Deepwalker now?”

“‘Victoria’ is fine,” I tell him. He looks much as he did before we left to fight the hammerhead, though his hands are wrapped in bandages. Powerburn, I assume. He really was trying to kill the thing.

“I didn’t think…” He shakes his head. “You can’t blame me for not expecting you to come back from that.”

“I wasn’t so optimistic myself, to be honest.”

I watch his eyes search my face, hesitate for a moment on the new marks, then move on. “You’re all right?”

“More or less.”

“And you want to know where we stand,” Andre says. He takes a pull from the clay jug. “As you can see, Pack Nine’s circumstances have improved.”

“No doubt the Butcher was grateful to you for coming home without me.”

“She would have been happy if we’d all died down there,” he says. “But since we didn’t, and since you killed the hammerhead, she’s happy to take advantage of our success. I’m not sure if she and I are entirely square”—he takes another drink, and I get a whiff of alcohol—“but we’re not on probation anymore.”

“What did you do that made her so angry, anyway?”

He shrugs. “Rutted the wrong girl. How was I supposed to know she had her eye on her?”

I had figured it was something like that. Men like Andre are always letting their pricks get them into trouble.

Quit stalling, Victoria.

The problem is that I can’t hate Andre. He acts like a bully because a bigger bully is sitting on his back, a situation with which I’m intimately familiar. He was probably earnest about helping me, even if it mostly meant helping himself. At the very least, he’s not actively trying to get me killed.

And I’m about to cut his legs out from under him. Or kill him, if it comes to that.

Oh, well.

“—I think we can keep working our way up,” he’s saying. “Now that we’re off probation, we can choose our own targets, and between you and me we should be able to make a lot of scrip quickly. That might let us bring in another—”