“There’s more,” I tell her. I set the canteen aside and pick up a strip of meat. “Food?”
Another nod. She pops the crab meat into her mouth and chews thoughtfully, watching me out of the corner of her eye. Tension is thick in the air, and for a moment I feel sorry for her. After all, how do you ask someone if they’ve figured out you’re a ghulwitch?
“Isoka—” she starts, after the second strip of meat.
“I know,” I tell her, tapping the line of blue marks across my face.
“Oh.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I could feel you dying and I’d never done anything like it before, but I wanted to save you, and I just…” She shakes her head, not looking at me. “I didn’t know it would leave marks. I don’t really understand anything.”
“I was dying?”
She nods. “We hit hard. Your armor protected us some, but not enough. And the powerburn was … bad. You’d lost so much blood already.…” She swallows again. “I was just lying there and I could feel you slipping away. And I didn’t…” Meroe looks up at me, brown eyes shining. “I didn’t want to be alone. That’s what I was thinking. I’m an awful person, Isoka. You were dying and all I could think was, oh, gods, I don’t want to be alone down here.”
There’s a long pause. Meroe presses the heels of her bandaged palms into her eyes, scrubbing away the tears.
“So you’re a ghulwitch.” I hesitate. “A Ghul … adept.”
“I … think so,” she says. “I’ve never tested my power.”
“Why not heal yourself?”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t work. Believe me, I’ve tried. I can’t affect my own body.”
I’d heard that was true for ghulwitches, but I’d never met one to ask before. Looking down at Meroe, battered and crying, I found it hard to square her with the monstrous stories everyone tells.
“Does anyone else know?” I ask her.
“Not anymore.” She takes a deep breath. “When I was little my keeper was a servant named Gigi. She was the one who noticed my power. I had been playing in the garden, and the plants were … strange.”
I nod silently. Most mage-born, especially adepts, are noticed at a young age, when they do something clearly unnatural. The power comes to us when we’re too young to know any better, or to control what feels like a perfectly normal part of ourselves. I’d been lucky enough that I could lose myself in the slum, staying away from anyone who’d seen my occasional outbursts until I eventually learned enough control to keep myself hidden.
“She saved my life,” Meroe went on. “Gigi told everyone I was ill. Do you have the crowfoot pox in the Empire?” When I shrug, she says, “It’s an uncommon disease in Nimar, but not unknown. It’s dangerous for children, but almost always deadly for adults who catch it. Gigi told everyone I had the pox, and isolated herself with me in one of the monastery towers. We lived there for nearly a year, servants leaving our food outside the door. All that time, Gigi tried to make me understand what my power was, and what it would mean if anyone found out.”
“They would have killed you, I assume.”
Meroe nods. “Mage-bloods are venerated in Nimar, and given honorable placements. Every Well except Ghul. A few weak touched and talents are apprenticed into a monastic order, but adepts…”
“It’s the same in the Empire,” I say. “Ghul adepts are too dangerous to let live.”
“I know.” Meroe shakes her head. “Believe me, I know. Do you have any idea how often I’ve thought of just … doing what Gigi should have done? I had a spot picked out, a tower in the palace with a hundred-foot drop onto hard flagstones. I even went up there a few times, but I never … I was never strong enough.”
“It’s no shame to want to live.”
She laughs bitterly. “Tell that to my father.”
“He found out?”
“I don’t know for certain. But”—she waves a hand—“it would explain how I ended up here, wouldn’t it?”
I nod, and we lapse into silence again. Meroe stares at me, studying my face, and ventures a weak smile.
“It doesn’t look … bad,” she says. “Almost pretty. South of Nimar, there’s a tribe who practice ritual scarification, and I always thought—”
“I don’t care how it looks.”
She cuts off, swallowing. After another moment, she says in a small voice, “What are you going to do now?”
The meaning is obvious enough. Meroe can’t walk, nor can she defend herself against the crabs. If I abandon her, it’s the same as if I slit her throat, and we both know it.
I’m not prepared to do that. I may still not fully understand why, but it’s time I accepted it. “We are getting out of here. Ahdron said nobody comes back from the Deeps, but there’s got to be a way back up. We’ll stay away from the crabs as much as we can, and I’ll kill them if I have to.”
“What about the wilders?” she says. I frown. I recall Berun mentioning the term, but not the details. Meroe goes on, “People who ran away from Soliton’s ‘civilization.’ They’re supposed to live out here. Maybe they can help us.”
“Didn’t Berun say they hate the people from the Stern?”
Meroe shrugs. “I doubt Berun ever met one himself.”
“If we meet any wilders, we’ll ask for help,” I say. “And if they get in our way, I’ll kill them, too.”
She gives me an odd look. “You’ve done that before, haven’t you?”
“What?”
“Killed people.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me that this might be new ground for her. I nod, a little uncomfortable. Rotting aristos.
“Okay,” Meroe says, after a moment’s pause. “Can I make the obvious point that I can’t walk?”
“I’ll make you a sledge, at least until we have to start climbing.” I glance around at the rolling, empty sand. “That’s the hard part. I’m going to have to go and find some supplies, and you’ll need to wait here for me.”
Meroe blinks. I can see the fear in her eyes, just for a moment—fear of being alone here, hurt and helpless, easy prey for anything that happens along. Then, as always, she steadies, and gives a decisive nod.
“All right,” she says, no hint of worry in her voice. “Can you help me to the water before you leave?”
Blessed above. Sometimes I think this princess is twice as tough as I am.
* * *
I walk. And walk. And walk.
Soliton is a ship. A big ship, but still. There has to be an end to it, doesn’t there? An outer hull. But if there is, it’s invisible to me, far beyond the tiny circle of light thrown by my Melos blade. After a while I dismiss the magic and let my eyes adapt, walking by the light of the moving stars.
I keep my course as straight as I can. I should be able to follow my footprints in the sand to return to Meroe, but I’m still wary. There are two red stars, neither moving much, that hang directly behind me. Hopefully, when I turn around, I can just walk toward them.
Eventually, something huge looms out of the shadow, blotting out the stars as I come near. I approach slowly, wary for crabs, but nothing moves. It’s a metal tower, a dozen yards across at the base. I imagine it stretching upward to the Center, narrowing as it rises, supporting decks and platforms and bridges. A few shelf mushrooms grow around it, but there’s no sign of a ladder or stairs. It’s just possible I could climb it, but not for long enough to make a difference, and I’d never get Meroe up.
At the base, there are large chunks of fallen mushroom lying on the sand, dried and desiccated. I pick one up, curiously. It weighs almost nothing, but it’s far too crumbly and brittle to be of use building a sledge. The tower itself looks too solid to carve a piece off of.
Something moves, inside the pillar. The specks of gray light flow steadily upward, denser here. They seem to well up from under the sand, as though the pillar were a giant siphon drawing them skyward. When I touch it, I feel … something, a faint tug and a whisper that quickly fades away.
Looking over my shoulder, I see one of my two guide stars has started to move sideways, crawling slowly across the darkness. I pick up a couple of the larger chunks of shelf mushroom and head back along my footprints.
I relax a little when my pool comes into view, with Meroe a darker lump beside it. She sits up as I return, and I drop the bits of mushroom on the sand.
“Welcome back.” She’s huddled tightly in on herself. “Did you find anything?”
“Not much.” I indicate the mushroom. “I’ll try a different direction tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Meroe says, with a slight smile. “How will we know when that is?”
“After I get some sleep, then,” I tell her. “How are you feeling?”
“My leg hurts,” she says. “No worse than it did, though.” She hugs herself a little tighter. “I’m cold.”