The canteen nearly hits me in the face, and I grab it out of the air. Meroe throws up the rest of the supplies and I set them all aside. She’s sitting just under the step, with one of the poles I used from the travois in her hands.
“Ready?” I ask her.
“Probably not,” she says.
“If you can’t hold it, just fall,” I tell her. “You can try again.”
“And again, and again. Until we starve to death.” Meroe grins and lifts the pole. “Just don’t drop me.”
The pole is long enough that when she raises her arms I can grab the end. I haul it upward, hand over hand, and Meroe uses it to pull herself to a standing position, her good leg underneath her.
Step two: get Meroe up to the bottom stair.
Step two is going to hurt.
Meroe grips the pole, squares her shoulders, and then reaches upward and starts to climb. As soon as she puts her weight on it, I know this was a bad idea. I struggle to maintain my grip, the edge of the stair digging into my arms, and try hard not to scream.
Meroe climbs, hand over hand. One of her legs kicks free, the other secured by the splint. It’s only a couple of feet between us, but it feels like the gulf between worlds. A few seconds stretch into an eternity of pain.
Her fingers brush the back of my hand. I don’t dare let go of the pole, not yet.
“Grab my wrist.” The breath required for speech is almost too much. Meroe nods, pulls herself up one more hand’s width, and her fingers close around my wrist.
I let go of the pole, which falls to the sand below, and grab her hands. Now she’s dangling from my grip, with nothing to brace her legs against, and my arms are already screaming in agony. All I’ve got to do is unwedge my feet, sit up, and lift her up over the edge. No problem.
When I finally pull her up, I collapse backward, and she falls on top of me, dead weight. We lie there for what seems like hours, damp with sweat, gasping for breath. My arms are trembling, with all the strength of wet noodles.
Meroe’s head is on my shoulder. I can feel her body pressed against me, the swell of her breasts, the triple-time slam of her heart. Beads of sweat roll from her hairline down the dark skin of her cheek.
“You’re pretty strong,” I murmur. “For a princess.”
“Told you … I wasn’t … useless.” She rolls off of me, flopping on the step with her arms spread. “I also bake a mean quiche.”
“What in the Rot is a quiche?”
“You Imperials are barbarians.” She sucks in a breath. “Have I said thank you yet? For, you know, not leaving me to die when you probably should have.”
“You haven’t.” I sit up. “And don’t. We’re not finished yet.”
* * *
To climb the stairs, I lift Meroe onto my back, her arms around my neck, splinted leg sticking out awkwardly in front of me. Fortunately, the steps aren’t very steep, winding around and around the pillar in a lazy spiral. The gray thread points straight up, as though it were a fishing line descending to snare me through the sternum.
We climb, and climb, and eventually we reach one of the circular platforms, with bridges extending out into the darkness in several directions. The gray thread points to one, taut and certain, but I set Meroe down and collapse against the pillar.
“Rest,” she says, looking at me worriedly.
I take a long drink from the canteen, then heft it thoughtfully.
“I know,” Meroe says. “We’re going to have to make it last.”
I offer it to her, and she takes a single sparing swallow. I’m too tired to argue. I lean against the pillar, head resting on Meroe’s shoulder. The strange voices are there, almost comfortingly familiar in their unintelligible babble.
When I wake up, I’ve slumped over farther, so my head is in Meroe’s lap. She’s asleep, too, mouth wide open and drooling a little. Not very princess-like at all. I sit up, my abdominal muscles aching, a dull pounding in my skull. The gray thread is still there, still pointing in the same direction. I poke Meroe.
“We need to go.” I still feel exhausted, but I’m not sure I’m going to get any stronger sitting here. Not once we run out of water.
“Mmm.” Meroe blinks and sits up. “You’re sure you’re ready for this?” She yawns. “You don’t want to sleep for another, you know, six days?”
I find myself grinning. “I don’t want to hear any complaining. You can sleep on the way.”
“I offer moral support,” Meroe says. “Moral support can be surprisingly tiring.”
In truth, she doesn’t look great. There are bags under her eyes, and the flesh around her broken bone is distinctly puffy. She wraps her arms around my neck, chin on my shoulder, breathing hard.
In fairly short order my thighs are a mass of pain, my shoulders ache abominably, and each step drives knives into my lower back. We stop when I can’t take it anymore, resting against a railing and chewing the strips of crab. I take another careful swallow from the canteen, and pass it to Meroe.
I can’t see more than the next few steps. The Center is an enormous, three-dimensional maze, hanging in open space, but I can make out none of it. All I have to go on is the gray thread, unreeling steadily in front of me. I can feel Meroe’s curiosity when we come to an intersection, but she never asks how I know which way to go.
She’s gotten very quiet, in fact. When we stop, I deposit her against the rusted railing and kneel in front of her. Sweat beads on her forehead, and her hair is soaked. I press my hand to her skin, and it’s hot to the touch. I ruck up her skirt to get a look at the wound, and the flesh of her thigh is dark and swollen.
“Cheeky,” she says weakly, as I slide my hand up her leg. “Take me dancing first.”
I roll my eyes, and pull out the canteen. It’s heavier than I expected, nearly half-full, and it takes me a second to understand. “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”
“Wasn’t thirsty,” Meroe says. Her lips are cracked, and her tongue rasps over them. Her voice has gone dreamy. “’Sides. Logical. If you collapse, we both die. If I pass out, you’re already carrying me.” She closes her eyes. “Or just leave me. ’S all right. Doesn’t hurt. I’ll just sleep awhile, and come after you when I’m feeling better.”
“Meroe.” When she looks up, I force the canteen into her mouth. She gags for a moment, then swallows. When I take it away, she coughs, and looks up at me resentfully.
“What are you so eager to get back for, anyway?” The water seems to have revived her a little. “You want to get back to working for the Butcher? Fighting crabs?”
“Better than dying here.” I strap the canteen to my belt, significantly lighter now.
“Is it?” She looks at me, and I can see tears in her brown eyes. “Nobody leaves the ship. Is that really a life worth fighting for?”
“You fought for your life, even after you found out … what you are.” I grit my teeth. “Are you giving up now?”
“Maybe my father was right.”
I want to slap her. I want to take her in my arms until she stops crying. For a fleeting, weird moment I want to kiss her. Meroe’s not the only one feeling a little loopy, clearly. But I push all that away and grab her by the shoulders, hoisting her up once again on my back.
“Isoka…,” she says.
“Listen.” I take a deep breath. “I am not going to die on this ship, do you understand? My sister is waiting for me. She needs me. That means I’m getting out of here, no matter what.”
“It must be nice to have someone waiting for you,” Meroe says, talking into my shoulder.
“And I’m not leaving you behind,” I go on. “Not after I’ve hauled you this far. You can come with me to Kahnzoka and do … whatever you want to do. I don’t care. But you’re not going to stay here, and you’re not going to die.”
There’s a long pause.
“Always wanted to see the Empire,” Meroe says in a small voice.
“You will. We’ll…” I pause, at a loss for what Meroe might actually like about my filthy, smoky Kahnzoka. “We’ll climb up the hill and visit the Emperor.” And maybe pay a visit to Kuon Naga while we’re at it.
“Sounds nice.”
“And get the best noodles in the city. I know a place. And plum juice.”
“Mmm.”
I start walking. Meroe is hot against my back, like I’m carrying an oven. She’s fallen asleep again, her wheezing breath whistling in my ear.
My arms have gone past pain and into tingling numbness. I don’t dare stop, not now. I’d never start moving again. I follow the gray thread up stairs and around corners, across bridges and through intersections. If a crab finds us now, we’re finished, because I don’t have the strength left to fight a butterfly. Fortunately, all we see are more strange mushrooms and the tiny gray lights that live inside the pillars.
When change comes, I’m almost too far gone to notice it. There are lights ahead, not the distant, colorful stars but ordinary torchlight, its flickering glow supremely alien here in the darkness. Specks of it swim in front of my vision, like fireflies. I run my sticky, dry tongue over my lips.
I’m supposed to do something. What is it?
Oh yes.
“Here!” The reedy screech is the best shout I can manage. “Over here! We need help.”