Not everyone in Zarun’s clade dresses as gaudily as Zarun, but enough try to emulate him that a gathering of his servants is easy to pick out. My status as pack leader and Deepwalker gets us a place at the inner table, and a few others even push out of the way to make room. Jack seats herself at my left hand, Meroe at my right. One of the Crossroads’ young servers quickly comes over to offer us drinks, and I raise a mug in greeting, receiving nods from around the table.
At Meroe’s prodding, I’ve come to recognize a few of them. Pack Seventeen’s Attoka, an Imperial girl with a shock of bleached-white hair, chats with the somber Marcius, the southerner head of Pack Eleven. Sketor, a tall but skeletally thin iceling boy who trades in weapons, flirts with a trio of young men from one of the hunting packs. There’s a general buzz of conversation, and I’m pleased to see that the others are getting used to me, too. The first few times we joined the group, I spent the whole time fielding questions about the Deeps, none of which I particularly wanted to answer.
The conversation, of course, is about the dredwurm. The hunt for the creature has stretched on longer than I expected, but Jack says this is normal—just finding a dredwurm is hard enough, let alone killing one. Hunting packs are flooding the lower sections of the Stern, looking for the telltale holes torn in the deck plates, and along the way cleaning out the crabs that cross their path. There’s talk of expanding the Middle Deck and the Drips, pushing the barricades outward to incorporate freshly cleared areas into the “civilized” part of the ship.
The gossip is all about who’s found fresh signs, who’s been hurt, who brought home a good kill. I listen with only half an ear as Meroe and I tuck into mushroom-and-crab pies, seasoned with some spice brought back by a scavenger. It’s hot enough to make my eyes water, and tasty enough that I send off for a second helping.
“Aifin,” I ask Meroe, as she guzzles water, “you really think we should bring him out on a hunt with us?”
“He volunteered,” she said. “After he quizzed me about Soliton. I think he’s desperate to fit in.” She shakes her head. “Imagine how lonely he must have been.”
He thought he was in hell. If that’s what hell is like, count me glad we Imperials don’t have such a thing.
“Well,” I say. “We’ll have to see how strong he is. I’ve never worked with someone who used Rhema before.”
Meroe nods. “He and I should both be able to come along soon.”
“You’re sure?” I glance at her cane.
“I think so. It feels much stronger.” She stomps her foot and grins. “Practically good as new.”
Frankly, I’d rather Meroe stay behind. It would be one less thing to worry about, but she’d never permit it. Princess or no princess, she doesn’t want to be coddled.
“And Berun’s been making good progress with Thora,” Meroe says.
“Speaking of progress.” I lower my voice. “Any luck?”
“Not much.” She looks irritated. “People don’t write anything here. All the books are from sacrifices. There’s no records that I’ve been able to find.”
“I don’t think the scavengers have brought back a printing press yet.”
Meroe snorts. “Most of the people I’ve talked to don’t understand why I would care what happened twenty years ago, much less further back than that.”
“But you haven’t found anyone old enough to remember?”
She shakes her head. “No. The Scholar was right—there’s no one who’s been on board longer than Karakoa.”
“There were people here, though. Scavengers find old gear all the time. So what happened to them?”
“Maybe they just died out?” Meroe says. “It takes a lot of effort to keep the crabs out of the Stern. Maybe they broke through, and everyone died.”
“Maybe.” But I find it unlikely. A settlement of ordinary people might be wiped out by crabs, but a town full of mage-bloods?
“Isoka…” Meroe hesitates. “It’s definitely strange, but are you sure this is the right thing to be asking questions about? I thought we were trying to find the Captain.”
“The two fit together,” I say. “If the people on the ship were wiped out somehow, what happened to the Captain? Did he die, too? If he did—”
“Then someone on board eventually became the new Captain.” Meroe nods. “That makes sense.”
“The succession is the important part,” I say. “If we can figure that out…”
I trail off. We’ve always left the most important part of the plan unstated, as though speaking it aloud would make it clear how silly it is. But it’s there: one of us has to become Captain, if such a thing is possible.
I’ve told Meroe that this is my plan for getting us off the ship. If it’s the angels that stop people from leaving and the Captain controls the angels, then the Captain and anyone close to him must be able to leave.
I’d be the first to admit that it’s not a great plan. But it’s what I’ve got, until we get more information. The problem is, the only people who know anything about the Captain aren’t talking.
We get our second helpings, and I happily dig in. Jack is talking to Attoka about how the romantic adventures of a mutual friend are going—not well, apparently—and I find my attention drawn to a conversation at the next table, where some of the less senior pack members have gathered.
“And you believe it?” one boy says, with a thick Jyashtani accent. “Nobody can remember this happening before, but we asked the Captain and ‘everything’s fine; everyone just carry on.’” He snorts.
“You think the Captain doesn’t know what’s happening?” a girl beside him says.
“Don’t be stupid. But if the Captain told the officers, ‘Sorry about this, but I’m dropping you all in deep rot,’ do you think they’d tell us?”
“Don’t know about that,” another young man says. “But I do know that some of the officers are worried. Word is Shiara’s been buying up food and storing it away. She’s got some kind of private fortress in the Drips.”
“She’s always been a paranoid bitch,” the girl says. “Might not mean anything.”
Someone behind me coughs politely for attention. I half-turn and find myself facing a tall, blond iceling girl, a few years younger than me, with a white robe and complicated braid that give her a priestly look.
“Deepwalker?” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. Given the evidence literally written on my face, the whole ship should be able to pick me out by now. “Yes?”
“I serve the Scholar,” she says. “My apologies for the interruption, but he would like to ask if you could attend him this evening.”
I look at Meroe to make sure she’s listening, then ask, “What does he want?”
The girl bows her head. “He’s told me only that he has some information you might find to be of interest.”
“That’s not very specific.” Meroe gives a little nod, though, and I sigh. “All right, why not? Where does he want to meet?”
“He asked me to bring you to his observatory,” the girl says. “If you are not finished with your dinner, I will wait.”
“Oh.” I look down at what’s left of my meal and find my appetite suddenly lacking. “Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose.”
* * *
The girl leads me out of the market, and somewhat to my surprise makes for the long staircase that leads from the Upper Stations to the open deck. We start to ascend, walking in a tight spiral, and it’s not many turns before I’m wishing we’d taken the cage up instead.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Erin,” she says. I wait a moment to see if she’ll offer anything else, but that seems to be all.
“I thought the Scholar didn’t have a clade of his own,” I prompt.
“He does not,” Erin says. “But he helped me and my sister Arin, and in gratitude we tend to his needs. He is a kind master.”
There’s something off here—for one thing, this kind of quiet obedience seems antithetical to the other icelings I’ve met, women like Thora and the Butcher. Maybe there are different nations and cultures among the northerners.
“And he lives up on the deck?”
She nods. “He must be able to view the sky to do his work. You will see.”
After more turns than I’m really prepared for, we reach the top, both of us panting slightly. The staircase rises through a circular hatch, letting out on to the rust-mottled outer skin of the great ship. It’s evening, and the sun is nearly to the horizon, lighting up a band of clouds in pinks and oranges. The eastern sky is already darkening from purple to black, and a few bright stars have appeared.
In the darkness of the Council meeting, I didn’t appreciate how many structures there were on the ship’s deck. The Captain’s tower is the largest, rising like a great black spike at the Stern, but there are dozens of oddly shaped protrusions, cubes, half spheres, and stranger objects. Some have collapsed, undermined by rust, and others spill thick rivers of vegetation and fungus from the holes in their roofs. It reminds me that we’re beyond the defensive perimeter of the Upper Stations, here. This is the domain of the crabs, and I itch to summon my blades.
“You’re perfectly safe,” Erin says. “The master understands the crabs better than anyone else on Soliton, and he keeps careful track of any dangerous ones whose territories might encroach.”