“What is this place?” Meroe says. “This cannot be a ship.”
“Soliton is the largest ship ever to float,” Berun 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.”
Meroe steps to the railing and looks over the side. “What’s down at the bottom?”
“The Deeps,” Berun says. “No one goes down there and comes back alive.”
“If there’s a Stern, is there a Bow?” Meroe’s face is animated in the lantern’s half-light. “How does the Captain steer?”
“None of that rot makes any difference to you,” Ahdron says. “Keep up.”
“We should try to stay quiet,” Berun says, as we start walking.
“Crabs can hear your footsteps half the ship away,” Ahdron says contemptuously. “If they’re around, whispering isn’t going to hide you.”
“Crabs aren’t the only things out here,” Berun says. But he doesn’t argue further, only winces a little every time Ahdron’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. Ahdron 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 Meroe, 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 Haia 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,” Berun says. We all have canteens, though we didn’t pack any food.
“Here,” Ahdron 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.
“Silvercaps,” Ahdron says. “They’re good to eat. Here.” He digs into a pouch and extracts several wadded bags. “Take the ones that are about as big as your hand. Just grab them right under the cap and snap them off the stalk. Try not to touch anything else. I don’t know if anything really nasty grows here, but I wouldn’t take chances.”
The Coward takes a bag with bad grace, and the Moron accepts one with no sign of understanding. I exchange a glance with Meroe.
“That’s it?” I say. “We’re gathering mushrooms?”
Ahdron’s face is thunderous. “We’re doing the job we’ve been assigned to do, fresh meat. Be glad it’s such an easy one.”
Meroe and I take our bags and follow him inside the moist garden. The fungus is thickest on the edges of the path, so we walk in single file, staying clear of protruding growths. In places they tower overhead, tall spires of pale white flesh and sprays of leafy nodules.
“It’s practically a forest,” Meroe says.
“I’ve never been in a forest, so I wouldn’t know.”
“What?” Meroe turns to me. “You’ve never seen a forest?”
“We don’t have them inside the walls of Kahnzoka. Until they brought me here, I’d never been outside the city.”
“Oh.” Meroe gives me an odd look, and goes quiet.
We stop to pick some of the silvercaps. They’re a little rubbery to the touch, but their flesh parts easily under my fingernail. I drop several into the bag, and stop to look down at one particularly large specimen, nearly a foot across. Its silver coating reflects a distorted image of my face.
“It’s pretty,” I offer, feeling as though I ought to make conversation.
“It reminds me of descriptions of the Vile Rot,” she says. “Mushrooms that grow to the size of houses, and plants that take root in living flesh.”
I pause, halfway to picking another mushroom. “Charming.”
“Sorry.”
We work for another few moments in awkward silence.
“In Nimar,” Meroe says, “there are women who pick mushrooms in the royal forest. They find them using pigs, trained pigs.”
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. “That’s interesting,” I say, non-committally.
“The thing I could never understand,” she goes on, “is how they keep the pigs from eating the mushrooms once they find them.”
My only experience with pigs is when they’re sliced up in bronze sauce, so I shrug. She’s not looking at me, and I wonder if she’s talking to herself.
“I always wanted to try it,” she says. “My father wouldn’t let me, of course. Not a proper activity, a princess grubbing around in the dirt with pigs.” She pops a silvercap free. “I suppose I got the last laugh there.”
“Meroe—”
She turns around, grinning. “Sorry. I’m rambling. I just—”
“Meroe, move!”
Something huge and blue comes up over the edge of the walkway.
* * *
It’s a leg, as long as I am tall, protected by bright blue armor plating. It has four joints, and the end is tipped with a hairy, gooey ball that squishes against the deck. Another identical limb follows, rising over the edge and coming down gently amid the fungi.
“Ahdron!” I shout. I’m already backing away, letting the bag of silvercaps fall, looking around for the others. Berun is just ahead of us, and Ahdron is a little behind. The Moron is nowhere to be seen.
The body of the thing comes up over the rail. It’s enormous, bigger than a horse, discshaped, with four limbs on each side. Six legs serve to stick it to the walkway, as easily as any housefly walking upside down on the ceiling. The two arms are much larger, thick as tree trunks, supporting a pair of grasping claws big enough to fit around my waist. Facing me is what I assume is the thing’s mouth, a nightmare thicket of dozens of blade-tipped tendrils as long as my arm. Every bit of it is blue, the armor a bold sky color, the mouthparts closer to teal. There are no eyes, but the shell is covered in spiny growths.
I have fought men who were bigger and stronger than me, many times. When I was a little girl, I fought men who might as well have been ogres, compared to my slight frame. But at least they were human. I’ve heard stories of the monsters of the world—the tigers of Jyashtan, the great snakes of the Southern Kingdoms, the ancient nightwalkers of the iceling lands, and of course the horrible twisted things that set on anyone who gets close to the Vile Rot. But I’d never thought to see one with my own eyes.
So I freeze, for just a moment. Up ahead, Berun has frozen, too, clutching his sack of mushrooms as though they’re the most precious things in the world. The crab glides toward him. It’s so quiet, armor plates sliding smoothly across one another, and its padded, sticky feet make no sound at all. It steps forward almost daintily, entirely on the walkway now, one claw reaching toward Berun. The movement is oddly tentative, as though it doesn’t quite know what to make of us.
“Hey!” Meroe shouts. A fist-sized bit of fungus flies through the air and shatters on the thing’s carapace in a spray of spores. “Over here! Leave him alone!”
The crab’s whole body shivers at the sound. It spins, and its claw swings toward Meroe, hard and fast. While its slow advance had me almost hypnotized, the quick motion activates instincts hard-won in a hundred street fights. I throw myself flat and pull Meroe down with me, and the claw goes over our heads.