“Why not now?”
“Mundane reasons,” he says. “I will have to adjust the rotation of the guards, to ensure you will not be found.”
“Fine.” I stuff the eye back into my pocket. “I hope the Captain stays up late.”
* * *
The Upper Stations are still buzzing with packs trading information about the dredwurm. I wonder if Zarun has woken up yet, and if he’s realized what happened. The mushroom I dosed him with should only have left him groggy, which would be easy enough to write off to wine and a busy night.
When I arrive, Jack and Thora are sitting in the common room of our quarters, roasting something in a pan. Thora is staring intently at the fire, but Jack bounces up, indecently cheerful.
“Fearless leader,” she says. “I perceive that you have gotten an early start on the day!”
“More like she didn’t actually finish the night,” Thora said. “I hope you ended up somewhere good.”
“I was with Zarun,” I say.
Thora looks up at Jack with a grin. “Told you. That’s two bottles you owe me.”
Jack heaves an exaggerated sigh and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I believed in you, Deepwalker.”
“Were you betting on who I would rut?”
Jack blinks, as though the thought that I might object had never occurred to her, then puts on a shifty look. “Possibly.”
“And what did you put your bottle on?”
“That Princess Meroe would get her dainty fingers into your underthings before our illustrious clade master. I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
I suppress a powerful urge to punch her in the face. Instead, I turn away and head for my bedroom.
“Do you know what’s going on with the others?” Thora says, her attention back to her cooking. “I haven’t seen anyone else today.”
“No idea.” The words are a growl as I push through the curtained doorway.
Thora’s not stupid. We won’t be able to keep what happened from her for long. Berun is dead—my mind helpfully supplies an image of his screaming face, disappearing inside a mass of bulging, tumorous flesh—Aifin is hurt, and Meroe …
Meroe is curled up on her sleeping mat, facing the wall. I sit beside her.
“I talked to the Scholar,” I say. “He’s taking me to the Captain tonight.”
She doesn’t respond. Her breathing is quiet and snuffly.
“This is going to work. I will make it work. We will get off this rotting ship, and find Tori, and … and I don’t know where we’ll go after that, but you will come with us.”
Meroe shifts slightly, pulling in her knees a little tighter.
“It wasn’t your fault, Meroe.”
When her voice finally emerges, it’s a whisper. “Of course it’s my fault.”
“None of us would have been there if not for me,” I say. “I thought … I thought I was strong enough that we’d be all right.”
“Berun only came because I told him to,” Meroe says. “He has—had—a crush on me.”
I hadn’t known she knew about that. She does a good job of seeming oblivious.
“And then,” Meroe goes on, “I tried to help him, and he turned into that thing. And then he rotting exploded. So don’t try to tell me it’s not my fault.”
“He was dying,” I say. “I told you to help him, even though you didn’t think you could. There was nothing—”
“Rotting gods, Isoka, will you shut up?!” Her voice is a croak. “I’m not your rotting puppet. I decided to help you, to try to save Berun, everything. I decided. And that means…”
She trails off, and there’s a long silence. After a moment, I tentatively put a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t rotting touch me!”
I snatch the hand back, as though I’d touched a hot stove. Meroe curls herself tighter, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
“My father,” she says after a while, “made the wrong choice, sending me to Soliton. He should have slit my throat when he had the chance.”
“Meroe, please.” There are tears in my eyes.
“Don’t pretend you aren’t thinking it,” she says. “I know what I am. A rotting ghulwitch. Anyone who can do something like that can’t be allowed to live.”
I sit beside her, head bowed, and I can’t find anything to say.
“Would you kill me? If I asked you to?” Meroe says.
I swallow. “No.”
“It could have been you, you know. It’s only dumb luck that I saved you, and it didn’t end up like that.”
“You knew you couldn’t help Berun,” I say quietly. “You told me.”
“I’d do it myself, but I know I’m too much of a coward.” She takes a deep breath. “Don’t worry. I’m sure somebody on Soliton will be willing to kill me, if I tell them what I am.” She snorts a laugh. “Maybe I’ll ask the Butcher.”
Another silence. I take a long breath.
“When I was eleven years old,” I tell her, very quietly, “I decided I wanted to die. It had been … a bad year. My friends, the boys and girls I’d spent my childhood with on the streets, were dying. Two boys got the red fever and puked up their guts. The rest of us left them to rot under a bridge. My best friend, Seria, got taken by the kidcatchers.” I close my eyes. “She must have put up too much of a fight. We found her naked in an alley with her throat slit. It seemed like Kahnzoka wanted us to die. That was just what was supposed to happen to street children. And I was cold and so hungry and tired of fighting it.”
I knot my fingers together in my lap. Meroe says nothing.
“One night I was sitting there, with Tori leaning against me, half a blanket wrapped around both of us and still shivering. And I thought, Why not? I had a knife, a little thing barely more than a potato peeler, but I knew how to reach the heart.” One of my hands goes to my own chest, the spot on the left side behind my breast, the gap in the ribs. Where I’d put my blade into Shiro. “It would hurt for a moment, and then it would be over.
“But there was Tori. She was seven years old. If I died, she wouldn’t survive long, between the kidcatchers and the cold. So I put her in my lap, and I took out my knife. And I tried to work up my nerve.
“I thought she was asleep. But when she felt the knife against her skin, she opened her eyes. She didn’t scream or cry. She just looked up at me, only half-awake, and she smiled and said, ‘You’ll come, too, right?’”
I had never told anyone about that night. Not Hagan, not any one of the boys who’d shared my bed. I don’t even know if Tori remembers. Maybe she thinks it was a dream.
“I couldn’t do it. Obviously. I couldn’t hurt Tori, and I couldn’t leave her behind. That meant the only thing to do was protect her.” I let out a breath. “It wasn’t long after that that my Melos powers came, and I found out that hurting people was something I was very good at. But it was all right, because it was for her.”
I open my eyes. Meroe has rolled over, watching me from behind a fringe of disheveled hair.
“Why are you telling me this?” she says. “Is it supposed to make me feel better? My sisters wouldn’t stop to piss on my grave if I died. One less obstacle between them and the throne.”
“They can go rot. I’m not going to kill you, Meroe, and I’m not going to leave you behind.”
“You just get to decide that, without consulting me?”
“It’s my choice to make.”
She sits up. Her face is streaked with tears, and her hair has escaped from its knot to hang curly and loose across her face.
“I should never have let you help me,” she says. “I should have left you to die in the Deeps. You stupid, arrogant—”
I kiss her.
It’s a tentative kiss, a brush of my lips against hers. For a moment she sits frozen. Then she leans into me, her mouth opening under mine, desperate and hungry.
I close my eyes, and so her foot slamming into my gut catches me completely unaware. I double over, gasping, as she scrambles away, her back to the wall. Her eyes are very wide.
“Get out,” she says.
“I’m sorry.” My voice is a wheeze. “Meroe, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“Get. Out.”
I get to my feet, clutching my stomach, and stagger to the door. Meroe stares after me, her face a mask.
* * *
That night, I climb the long stairs up to the deck, trudging around the spiral until my legs burn. The dredwurm’s eye is a weight in my pocket.
Why did I do that? For a moment I’d been so certain. I’d thought—
What? That Meroe would appreciate being suddenly slobbered on? Blessed’s balls, Isoka, how would you feel if some strange woman started kissing you without so much as asking?
And now I’d knocked the whole thing into the Rot.
I just hope—oh, Blessed, I hope so hard it makes my chest hurt—that she doesn’t do anything stupid before I get back.
And the Captain had better hope, for his own sake, that he has some good answers.
Another three turns to the top.
I could have hinted: So, Meroe, did you have crushes on any stableboys back at the palace? Or … Something like that, but not stupid.
Jack had said … but Jack is a little bit crazy.