There. The green light gleams off a rippling surface. I shuffle in that direction, sand sliding away from my feet. It turns out to be a fairly large pool, flat and black in the darkness, reflecting my glowing blade and the stars overhead. I kneel at the edge, put my hand in, and take a cautious sip.
It’s freshwater, thank the Blessed, sweet and cold. Ahdron said that drinking the standing water would make me sick, but I’m going to have to risk that, because I don’t see another alternative. I hold the canteen underwater until bubbles stop rising, then gulp greedily, letting more of the water run down my neck into my sweat-and blood-soaked shirt. When the canteen’s empty, I fill it again, and stand up to take it back to Meroe.
And then stop. My reflection stares back at me, dimly, from the surface of the pool, and there’s something … wrong. I bend closer, dropping the canteen, and wait for the water’s surface to settle.
My breath catches in my throat. There’s something wrong with my face. Markings, like graceful, curving strokes of a pen, cross it in a pattern from below my right ear up diagonally to my hairline. They look like a series of curves written in deep indigo, each intersecting the tail of the next, sometimes branching and recombining. It runs down onto my neck, and from there onto my torso. I pull my shirt up, frantically, and spot more of the strange marks, swirling crosshatches running over my breasts and down across my stomach. Now that I’m looking, I can see more on my legs, through the gaps in my trousers left by the hammerhead’s teeth. The marks seem particularly dense where it bit me, the flesh turned almost solid blue.
What in the Rot?
I stand still for a moment, trying to breathe, mind racing. There are gangs in Kahnzoka that tattoo their members, but it doesn’t look anything like this. The only thing I can remember bearing anything similar is a mark like a green and red stain that marred the right shoulder, under the skin, of an old man in the Sixteenth Ward. He was an auxiliary for the Legions, as he tells the story, and took an iceling spear to the shoulder. The wound festered, and he would have died if one of the legionary healers hadn’t tended it. But the healing—Ghul healing—hadn’t been perfect, leaving the strange colors.
And then everything falls into place. The marks, and why I’m alive.
Meroe is a ghulwitch.
* * *
A moment later, I’m standing over her, Melos blade still burning, breathing hard.
She’s a ghulwitch. No wonder she didn’t want to tell the Butcher what her Well was. I put my life on the line to help her, and she was lying the whole time.
No wonder the King of Nimar was so eager to discard his princess. He must have found out that she’s an abomination.
My blade hovers over Meroe’s still face, the point an inch or two from her cheek. She reached into my body with her magic, changed me. Blessed only knows what she did aside from leaving marks on my skin. There could be tumors growing in my brain, or insects nesting in my intestines, ready to chew their way out. She could have turned my fingers to claws, my eyes to fungal growths.
Melos energy spiders out, lightning crackling from the tip of the blade and dancing across her features before earthing itself. Killing her would take less than a heartbeat. Monster. Abomination. Her kind created the Vile Rot, and came close to destroying the entire world.
She must be strong. Certainly no mere touched, to heal me as she did. A well-trained talent might have managed it, but who could possibly have trained Meroe? She must be an adept, a full-fledged Ghul adept, the one thing every nation around the Central Sea agrees must be destroyed at birth. If I put my blade through her skull, I’d be doing the world a service.
I close my eyes for a moment, and see Hagan’s face. I’ve killed better people than this creature, for far worse reasons. For practically no reason at all. The girl in the gambling den begged for her life, my blade at her throat. I stabbed her through the ribs, right to the heart. A quick death.
Shaking, I put my foot on Meroe’s shoulder, roll her onto her back, and put the tip of my blade below her breast. Another fork of green lightning arcs, raising a thin string of smoke where it burns her shirt.
So she saved my life. So what? I didn’t ask her to. She didn’t ask if I’d rather die than have her muck around inside me with her tainted hands.
Rot rot rot.
I see her standing up to the Butcher. Her face, blood running down her cheek, as she continued her calm appeal after the first blow. She must have known it wasn’t going to get her anywhere, but she had to try, and she wasn’t going to beg. When I saw that, I thought …
Rot. I can’t do it, can I?
I let my blade fade away and clench my fists, staring down at this beautiful girl, this abomination who’d kept me alive and done who-knew-what else. I feel a scream bubbling up inside me, rage and fear mixed in an acid brew, and I turn away from her before it can work its way out. I start walking, feet shuffling the sand, no idea where I’m going except away.
The white sand seems to go on forever. After a while, my eyes adapt to the faint light—the “stars,” far above, are the same colored lights I saw from above in the Center. We really are in the Deeps, the part of the ship Ahdron said nobody ever comes back from. Which is just rotting wonderful.
Though I can see a little, I still hear the crab before I catch sight of it. Sand crunches as its feet come down in a complex eight-legged rhythm, moving steadily closer. I turn to face it, and make out a silhouette. It’s smaller than the blueshell, but still taller than I am, an ovoid central body hanging from eight multi-jointed limbs. No claws on this one, and its hide is bright orange, speckled with silver.
I could run, as I could have run before. But I don’t. I turn to it and ignite my blades, green light washing over the sand. The scream I pushed away refuses to be contained any longer. It tears at my throat as I charge.
Long after the creature has collapsed, I continue my work, severing each leg in turn until the body lies on its back, stumps flailing.
“I,” I tell it, “have had. Rotting. Enough.” Power crackles across my armor as I plant my foot on it. “You hear me?”
It answers me with a hiss, not that I was expecting anything else. I let one blade fade away and summon the armor-piercing spike I used against the blueshell. It takes form, slowly, my right hand hot and sparking with green energy. I punch down, driving the spike into the crab’s carapace, and let all the power go. It floods into the creature’s body, sizzling through it with a sound like meat hitting the frying pan. All its stumps twitch at once, strobing with actinic lightning, and then it goes still and dark.
“Enough,” I whisper, breathing hard.
I don’t have time to waste here. I have an appointment with the Captain, and it’s time to get to work.
It’s not hard to follow my tracks back to Meroe. It’s a little harder to make the walk with all eight of the crab’s severed limbs tucked under my arms, but the smell wafting up from where my power cooked it is appetizing, and I have a feeling we’re going to need all the food we can get.
11
By the time Meroe wakes up, I’ve made some progress.
First I splint her leg. It doesn’t seem like a bad break, in the sense that the bone isn’t actually sticking out anywhere. More than that is beyond me, but I know enough to straighten it and strap it to something firm. A length of crab-shell works quite well. For straps, I’ve sacrificed most of my trousers, hacking the tattered cloth off above my knees.
She gasps and shudders as I pull her leg straight, then relaxes when I tie the straps tight. I trickle water into her mouth for a while, then get to work on the crab meat. Cooking with my Melos blades is not an ideal process. I manage to sear the meat by holding it close to the crackling green energy. The middle of each strip still feels raw, but it’s the best I can do, and I devour a few. In spite of the preparation, it’s palatable. As to whether it will make me sick—as with the water, no other options seem to be available, so we’ll find out.
I cut some thinner strips and sear them a little more thoroughly, hoping that will help them keep longer. I’ve got most of one leg carved when Meroe groans, and her eyelids flutter. I let my blades disappear and station myself at her side.
Her eyes open, and find mine immediately. We stare at each other for a long moment.
“I’m not dead?” Meroe says.
“You know, that was my first question as well,” I tell her.
“And?”
“You’re not dead. We’re in the Deeps.”
“My leg hurts.” She shifts, and beads of sweat pop out on her forehead. “Really hurts.”
“It’s broken. I’ve got it set as best I can.”
“Oh.” She swallows. “I thought it might be.”
“Do you think you can drink some water?”
She nods weakly, and I hand over the canteen. She finishes it, then looks up sheepishly.
“Sorry. I probably should have saved that.”