“I’m fine. I think something got stuck in Berun’s hand, though.”
“That’ll be the needles,” Ahdron says. “The tips are barbed, and they break off. Let me see.”
Berun whimpers and opens his hand. There are three long spines embedded in his palm.
“Those aren’t in that deep,” Ahdron says. “There’s a trick to getting them out. It doesn’t hurt, if you do it right.”
Berun 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.”
Berun grits his teeth, white-faced. Ahdron 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. Berun screams and clutches his hand to his chest, smearing his shirt with crimson. Meroe jolts.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“He’ll be fine,” Ahdron says. “If that’s the worst injury we get today, we’ll count ourselves lucky.”
“That’s still no reason to be—”
“Realistic?” Ahdron smiles. “Come on. If these two can stumble a little further, there’s a pillar up ahead. It’ll be safer to rest there.”
Meroe mutters something in another language. I gather it’s uncomplimentary. I wait, getting my breath back, as she wraps Berun’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 Berun.”
“Don’t you start on him,” Meroe says. “Did you ever think that if Ahdron was encouraging him instead of threatening him he might not be so afraid of everything?”
I doubt that, but Meroe’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 gang in Kahnzoka would have kicked him to the gutter long ago as not even worth killing. Meroe may not have a Well, but she’s got an inner strength that I wouldn’t trade for a hundred craven fools like Berun. Or a dozen insecure bosses like Ahdron, for that matter.
And the way Berun looks at Meroe 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. Ahdron 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 Ahdron 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, Ahdron 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 Ahdron’s offer, and Zarun’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. Meroe 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.
“Isoka.” It’s Ahdron, 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,” Meroe says, eyes wide. She looks from the vessel to the empty holes, then out into the distance. “How many are there?”
“Dozens,” Ahdron says indifferently.
“Do any of them still work?” Meroe 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,” Berun says.
“They’re not cursed,” Ahdron says.
“People who climb out there die,” the boy insists.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ahdron says, “because we’re not going near them. Meroe, time to play hammerhead bait.”
“Right,” she says. “My crucial role in this adventure. You’re ready, Berun?”
“I … think so.” Berun shifts awkwardly. “If it comes, I’ll try to hold it.”
“Here.” Ahdron tosses Meroe 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.”
Meroe 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 Ahdron. “This enough?”
“Should be,” he says. “You and Isoka go out ahead. Berun and I will keep our distance.”
Convenient for him. Meroe 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.