Rot, rot, rot. Focus, Isoka.
I reach the top, and get my bearings. There’s no one waiting to guide me, but the Captain’s tower looms overhead, a black slice cut out of the starscape. The breeze of Soliton’s passage ruffles my hair—longer, now, than I usually let it get—and flaps my shirt against the still-tender skin of my back.
A single light is burning in the empty space where the Council held its audience. The Scholar waits between the two silent angels, cane in one hand and lantern in the other. His spectacles are circles of darkness obscuring his face.
“You’re late,” he says.
“It’s been a long day,” I say. “If someone else is offering you a dredwurm’s eye, you’re welcome to deal with them instead.”
He grins. “Zarun and the others have found no sign of the dredwurm’s passage today. They are … unhappy.”
“Then let’s get this over with.”
He nods. I glance up at the angels, but they’re dark, with no sign of a faceted gem, blue or red. For a moment I try to twist into the strange state of mind that let me pull at the gray energy, but I don’t have the concentration for it, and it only makes my head hurt. I scowl, and hurry after the Scholar.
We take a roundabout approach to the tower, walking a circuitous path across the deck of the ship and cutting through the shadows of several rusted-out structures. The Scholar’s cane taps out a steady rhythm, so I don’t bother trying to move quietly.
“Your … energy. What you call the Eddica Well.”
He looks over his shoulder. “You still don’t believe me, I take it?”
“I believe that it exists. I just don’t think you’ve got the whole story.” I hesitate. “If the spirits of the dead are powering the ship, can we speak to them?”
“No,” he says. “Eddica taps the energy of the dead. Not their minds, not their essence. Those are gone.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong, just to wipe the smug look off his face. But something tells me I’m better off keeping a few cards to myself.
We’ll see what the Captain has to say first.
Finally, we make our approach to the Captain’s tower, from the side instead of straight on. It’s longer than it is wide, and canted slightly backward, like an oval pipe plunged at an angle into Soliton’s stern. There’s a small doorway here, covered by a scrap-metal door. A canvas shelter stands beside it.
“This is normally the guardpost,” the Scholar says. “Fortunately, arranging the rotations is among my duties. I doubt anyone will notice the lapse.”
“What about the angel?”
He nods, fishes in his pocket, and presents me with a small silver necklace, the kind of thing that you might buy for a sweetheart if you were moderately well-off and cloyingly sentimental. I frown at it.
“That is the key to the tower?”
He shrugs. “It’s just a token of the Captain’s permission. There’s no magic to it.” He holds it up by the chain, puts his cane under his arm, and extends his other hand.
I pull the eye out of my pocket and hand it over, taking the necklace in return. The chain slithers into a heap, cool against my skin.
“If you’re lying…,” I begin.
“Then the angel will tear you to shreds?” He grins.
“Then you’d better hope you’re right about the spirits of the dead,” I say. “Because I’ll come for you.”
“Fair enough.” He inclines his head, then offers me the lantern. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
* * *
The bottom floor of the Captain’s tower is completely dark and very, very still.
I hold the lantern high, but it’s a tiny light in a vast space. The ceiling is at least thirty feet overhead, meaning this chamber takes up a substantial portion of the tower. There are no other doors that I can see, just the blank metal deck, with rusted patches like anywhere else on the ship.
At the rear of the chamber, a set of steep stairs, nearly a ladder, goes straight up the slightly canted wall of the tower. In front of those stairs, its head nearly brushing the ceiling, stands the angel.
This one is more humanoid than most. It looks a bit like two men standing side by side, but merged at the shoulder, down one side of the torso, and along their central leg, giving it a grand total of three. The body is mannequin smooth, without definition, hands and feet just shapeless lumps, its two heads blank. But three human faces, rendered in great detail, stare out from its massive, merged chest. One laughs, one screams, and one weeps.
I don’t know who designed these things, but they belong in a madhouse.
I take out the silver necklace and hold it by the chain as I approach. The angel doesn’t stir, for all the world as though it were simply a statue. But it isn’t. As I get closer, I can see motes of gray light running through it, just below its surface, and hear voices babbling at the edge of hearing.
Spirits, the Scholar said.
Rot. Dead is dead.
Either way, I give the thing a wide berth, edging around it to reach the stairs. Whatever the necklace is, it works, because the angel doesn’t so much as twitch. I shove the charm back into my pocket and start to climb, awkwardly holding the lantern in one hand.
When I get to the second floor, it’s disappointingly ordinary. Some kind of storeroom, half-full of crates and barrels, all of which are old enough that they’re crumbling with rot. The lantern light illuminates patches of colorful mushrooms, but not much more. I continue onward.
The next level looks more like a barracks. A half-dozen Jyashtani-style beds line one wall, plain and utilitarian, while heavy trunks are pushed against the other. There’s no sign of the occupants, though, and once again everything looks old. The sheets are frayed to translucence, with patches of mold growing across them. Bits of floating fungus and dust shimmer in the air when they catch the light, like drifting snow.
The ceilings in here are high. From the height of the tower, the next level must be the last. I grit my teeth, and keep climbing.
Unlike the rest of the tower, this level is divided in half by a wooden partition. The stairway ends in what looks like a nobleman’s dining room, wedged awkwardly into the metallic semi-circle. There’s a huge hardwood table, surrounded by chairs trimmed in crumbling velvet. A silver candelabra is nearly black with tarnish. More heavy wooden furniture sits against the walls, a sideboard and a chest of drawers, bronze fittings turned green and the wood itself starting to flake away. Fungus and mold are everywhere, waterfalls of the stuff dripping from the table and hanging in curtains on the walls. The floor, once covered with thick carpets, sends up bursts of swirling dust whenever I take a step, which hangs in the air as though trapped in liquid.
The wooden wall is falling apart, too, one section dangerously bowed. There’s a door in the middle, which hangs open a few inches. I pause for a moment, listening, but there’s no sound at all.
What in the Rot is going on here?
There’s no point in trying to hide my presence, since my boots made enough racket climbing the stairs to wake the dead. But I find myself reluctant to shout, anyway. The silence has the same oppressive quality as a library, or a tomb. I manage to clear my throat and say, “Hello? Is anyone here?”
There’s no answer. I step forward, raising a cloud of disintegrating carpet, and head for the door.
It swings open a few more inches at my touch, hinges groaning. I slide through, and find myself in a bedroom, as opulently furnished as the antechamber. There’s a huge four-posted bed, with moldy sheets and ragged lace fringes. A wardrobe, its doors hanging open, revealing the tattered remnants of someone’s finery. And another table, with a single wing-backed chair pulled up to it. There’s a set of pens and a desiccated inkwell, along with some scraps that might once have been paper.
In the chair, reclining as though at ease, is a corpse.
It’s still mostly intact. One arm has fallen away at the elbow, but the other rests in its lap, bones covered with withered scraps of skin. It wears a fine silk dressing gown, with a layer of hanging mold and dust. The skull stares at me, eye sockets gaping wide, tiny red-capped mushrooms pushing up from within. Here and there, gold gleams in the lantern light. A necklace, rings, a bracelet. The trappings of power and wealth.
Of a captain?
“Hello?” It’s a stupid, stupid thing to do, but I can’t not speak. Dead is dead, except that maybe it isn’t. I don’t really expect the skeleton to move, to stand up and speak, to lurch forward, grasping fingers extended—
—but I have my blades ready, just in case—
Nothing happens, of course. Dead is dead. And the corpse is just a corpse, left here for long, long years, undisturbed.