“Why here?”
“Because that is Eddica energy!” He raps the table again. “The whole ship runs on it. You’ve seen it, in the pylons, the towers.” He lowers his voice. “You’ve felt it from the angels.”
“I’ve seen something.” I’m sure as rot not going to tell him about Hagan. “This is a strange rotting place, but that doesn’t make it spirit energy.”
“Did you dream of Ahdron, after you killed him?”
I shake my head, frowning.
“If you die here, you go into the ship. Children can’t be born here, because the spirits can’t reach them. The whole ship is like a giant cage for souls.”
“That’s…” I take another step away from him. “No wonder the others won’t listen to you. You’re off your head.”
There’s a pause. He takes a moment and visibly restrains himself, straightening up. His cane taps the deck, twice.
Because that’s what anyone would say, isn’t it? Anyone who hadn’t been guided out of the Deeps by what looked very much like the ghost of her best friend.
Could he be right? Rot, rot, rot. I need time to think.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he says. “I didn’t expect you to, to be honest. It took me years to work it out.” He paces a few steps, tap-tapping, then turns. “But you must admit that you and I share a power that no one else on the ship has. That we can see this … energy. And if we can see it, perhaps we can manipulate it.”
I remember how Hagan had thrown lines of the strange gray energy at the angel to halt it in its tracks, and used it to show me the way home. Whatever it is, the Scholar is right that it flows throughout Soliton. Is that the Captain’s secret? If this power can control an angel, can it control the ship itself?
The Scholar misinterprets the look on my face. “You see the possibilities, don’t you?”
I shrug. “So why aren’t you running the ship?”
“I’m not strong enough. Only Eddica-touched, not even a talent. I can see the flows, if I concentrate hard, but they remain beyond my reach. But you saw the power in Shiara’s necklace, without even trying. You must be a talent, or even an adept. You might be what I need.”
“What you need?” I narrow my eyes. “What do you want from me?”
“Only what’s best for everyone, of course.” He grins. “Come. One more flight of stairs, and I’ll show you the third act.”
I’m about ready to walk out the door, or possibly cut this madman in half. But I don’t. Because he may be crazy, but I’m not sure that I’m not crazy, too, and he’s the best lead I have. And crazy or not, he’s on the Council, and he can get to the Captain. If he needs my help so badly, I can get what I need from him.
And if he’s right about this power, then … maybe …
We climb, again. When we reach the top of the spiral stair, he pushes the leather cover aside with his cane. I’m a little surprised to see sky above us, the light now almost totally gone, the river of stars broken by wispy clouds. No lanterns glow up here. We’re still inside the cylindrical structure, but the roof and most of the walls above this floor are gone, leaving a flat expanse of deck bordered by a jagged, rusty edge. The floor is stained by rain and salt spray.
A single table stands in the center, surrounded by three bronze instruments on tall stands. Two look like spyglasses, while the third is a complicated arrangement of interlocking circles whose purpose I can’t divine.
“This is why they let me on the Council, you see,” the Scholar says, having regained his calm. “I figure things out. From here I can see the stars, when it’s clear, and that tells us our position.”
I nod, cautiously, as he walks to the table. I know that sailors at sea use the stars to figure out where they are, though I have no idea how one might actually go about doing it.
The table holds a couple of thick books, with leather covers to keep the rain away from them, holding down the edges of a big leather-backed map. It’s a fine one, painted in a delicate hand, with tiny mountains and decorative sea serpents now cracked with age, and it shows all the lands around the Central Sea, the entire known world. Jyashtan in the west, the Blessed Empire in the east, with the divided bulge of the Southern Kingdoms beneath it. The islands of the icelings in the north, with glaciers carefully picked out in white and blue, and the gray expanse of the Southern Wastes, which the mapmaker has filled with fanciful imaginary beasts. Various islands stand out in the great ocean, including the string that stretch like stepping-stones from east to west, where the war fleets go to fight and die.
The Scholar puts his finger on the map, just below where the island chain comes closest to the Southern Kingdoms. I lean forward and read the label for Cape Wall, painted in tiny, tiny brushstrokes. Automatically, my eyes track north, and find Kahnzoka, tucked into its broad bay.
A thousand miles away. Full of things I never thought about, any more than I thought about the air I breathe. Now I find myself missing … everything. The food at Breda’s, the way people in the Sixteenth Ward nodded to me as I passed, the feeling of walking streets I’d walked so many times the map was ground into my bones. And Tori, beautiful, brilliant, clean Tori, untainted by the blood that stains my hands.
I take a deep breath, feeling it catch in my throat. At that moment, I would give anything to be able to visit her. To sit in her garden and listen to her earnest insistence that everyone could help one another if they would only try.
I would introduce her to Meroe. I think they would get along.
Tears prick the corners of my eyes. I blink them away, furious, and look up at the Scholar. He’s staring at me, his expression unreadable.
“Well?” I ask him. “You’ve already tried to convince me that this ship runs on the spirits of the dead. You’re going to have to work hard to get crazier than that.”
“This, I’m afraid, is a bit more … mundane.” He taps the map. “As you heard at the Council meeting, this is roughly where we are now.” Tracing a line due south, his finger crosses the deep ocean between the Southern Kingdoms and the wastes, then turns west. “For fourteen years, Soliton has followed this path. Never precisely the same, but never varying much. We stop in different cities each year, for example.”
The line continues across the wastes, then north along the coast of Jyashtan, all the way to the ice. Then east again, skirting the icelings’ islands, until it returns to the Empire and turns south once more. A great circle, clockwise around the Central Sea.
“And now it’s going faster than normal,” I say. “You told us already.”
“We passed Cape Wall several days ago,” he says. “And we’re still in sight of land. We’re going the wrong way. East, not south.”
My lips twist. “Maybe the Captain realized he forgot a city, and wanted to make a special trip.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps we’ll turn south, any day. But if we don’t…”
I examine the map under his finger. The Southern Kingdoms and the wastes form a narrow strait, leading right off the eastern end of the map. Just at the edge, an island sits in the strait like a cork in a bottle, painted in blotches of green and red.
The Vile Rot.
“Don’t be stupid.” I straighten up. “No ship goes near the Rot.” I’m from fifteen hundred miles away, and I know that.
“Soliton is hardly an ordinary ship.” The Scholar shrugs. “Suppose that, every twenty years or so, it breaks from its usual pattern and takes this route. Through the Green Strait, to the Rot.”
“That’s…” I shake my head. “That’s impossible. Nothing survives the Rot, not even Soliton. If the Captain took the ship in there, he wouldn’t be around to take it out again.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone aboard died. But the ship?” He taps the deck with his cane. “Steel doesn’t rot.”
“What would be the point?”
“To clean us out, maybe? Like washing out a teapot in hot water. Clean the ship in the Rot and start over.”
“Then why gather us in the first place? That makes no sense.”
“Unless our deaths are the point.” He leans closer. “If our souls power the ship. It picks up fuel, and then it burns it like firewood.” He straightens up. “Or maybe the Captain has his own reasons.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“He’s not inclined to share his thoughts with us,” the Scholar says, with a slight smile.
I look down at the map again, and fight down a chill. “Anomaly … coming…,” Hagan had said. “Find Garden. Or die.”
Is this what he meant?
“I’ve heard enough,” I say out loud. “They warned me you were a little mad, but I have to say this is worse than I expected.”
There’s a long pause.
“I didn’t think you’d believe me,” he says, surprisingly calm.
“I don’t. And I’m leaving.”
“You haven’t heard my offer.”
I snort. “I’m not interested in more crazy theories.”
“Nothing so complicated. I know what you want, and I can get it for you.”
“Oh, really?” I glare at him. “What do I want?”