“I’m not what they think, either,” Meroe says, pressed against my chest. “I’m a ghulwitch. If they knew that, they’d have torn me apart by now. But I’m going to keep faking it because I haven’t got any choice, and I need your help.” She looks up, her face close to mine, and my breath catches in my throat. “Please?”
“Of course.” I put on a shaky smile. “We’ll fool them all together; don’t worry.”
* * *
Crossroads had also been cleared, its tables and chairs pushed to the edges to leave a broad space. Sleeping pallets and blankets occupy about half of it, covered with exhausted-looking pack members, still in their armor with weapons nearby. The other half is a hospital, with the casualties laid out in neat rows, while Sister Cadua and her people move from one to the next and kneel beside them. Most of the injuries are relatively minor. A few who are worse off groan in pain, or lie ominously still.
Meroe takes my hand again as we approach, squeezing painfully tight.
“Some of them are going to have to be left behind,” she whispers. “We’ll carry a few, but the ones Sister Cadua thinks are dying…”
“Blessed’s balls.”
“It’s not that many,” Meroe says, desperately. “And some of them may recover before we’re ready to leave.”
I lower my voice even further. “You could help them.”
“I tried,” Meroe says, miserably. “Of course I tried. But the power just … wouldn’t come. I’d try to focus, and all I could see was Berun’s face, hear him screaming. I…”
She trails off, and all I can do is keep squeezing her hand.
We’re recognized before long, and crew start flocking around. None of them want to get too close, so we end up in a sort of bubble of clear deck, surrounded by a dense, quiet crowd. Looking around at the faces, I feel close to panic. It’s like—
Every so often, back in Kahnzoka, someone would come to me as ward boss and just … beg. I’m used to people asking for favors, for business arrangements, or peddling a sob story. But every so often, a petitioner looks at me and I can feel the raw desperation coming off them. No attempt at bargaining or plea for sympathy, just need. The feeling that this is the end of the line, the last chance.
I grant those petitions, as often as I can. Most of the time, they don’t ask for very much. It’s good for my reputation, and honestly I just get uncomfortable with the way they look at me. Now, as I stand in what used to be Crossroads, every face has that look. Men and women, Imperials and Jyashtani and icelings and Akemi and southerners. Kids—so many kids, boys and girls of twelve or thirteen, more than I imagined. Most of the people I’ve dealt with were part of the hunting packs, who tended to be at least my age, but the officers’ clades and scavengers are full of soft young faces, working behind the scenes. Now they’re here, the children who mop the floors, cook the food, clean the clothes, stained with sweat and blood, staring at me like I’m the Blessed One come again.
“Isoka,” Meroe whispers. “Say something.”
“What?” I try a smile, and it ends up as a corpse’s demented rictus. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Something hopeful.”
Hopeful. Right. I swallow.
“Um. Hi.”
Not a great start. Did my voice always sound like that?
“I know things aren’t … great. But we’re working on it. Meroe is helping; the officers are helping—”
I’m babbling. I’m almost glad when a voice from the crowd cuts me off, a young man.
“Where are we supposed to go?” he says.
“The Garden,” I say. “We’ll be safe there.”
“How do you know?” says a stick-thin girl, her arm in a bloody sling.
“It’s hard to explain,” I say. A ghost told me lacks a certain something as an explanation, I have to admit. “But trust me, we can get there.”
“Why is the Captain doing this?” a younger girl says. “Why would he steer us into the Rot?”
I meet her eyes, and immediately regret it. She’s Tori’s age, and she has the same intensity as my sister, the same wholehearted belief.
What am I supposed to say? That the leaders they’ve all put their faith in have been lying to them for years? That there’s nothing in the Captain’s tower but the skeleton of some mad nobleman? That none of us have any clue what controls the ship, and for all we know it could be taking us to the ends of the world?
“I don’t know.” The lie burns my throat. If you’d asked me, a month ago, what I would do in a situation like this, I would have told you I’d give them the hard truth. Now, staring at those faces, I can’t do it. It’s one thing to kill someone. It’s another to destroy them. “But the Garden is the only chance we have.”
“The Garden’s a rotting myth!” someone at the back shouts.
Mutters rise, on both sides. I hold up my hands and get quiet, for a moment.
“Look,” I say. “You don’t have to believe me. But at least you should know that I believe it. What would be the point of a lie? It’s not like Meroe and I, or the other officers, are going to send everyone off while we stay behind. Right or wrong, we’re all going to the same place. Either everyone will be safe”—I risk a sideways glance at Meroe—“or we’re all going to die, together. That much I can promise.”
* * *
We take things slower on the way back. My wounds are hurting badly from even this modest exertion, burning pain stabbing with every breath and every step. Meroe stays by my side, keeping to my pathetic pace. I grit my teeth to keep from screaming.
“Some good I did as inspiration,” I say, after a while. “I basically told them we were all probably going to die.”
“I don’t think you said ‘probably,’” Meroe says, with a slight smile. “And you were honest with them. I think it’s what they needed.”
“I wasn’t, though.”
“About the Captain?” She gives a shrug, though I can see it troubles her, too. “Sometimes there’s value in a myth.”
“A lie, you mean.”
“It’s not the same thing, exactly.”
I don’t quite get it, but I don’t want to argue. The streets are empty of vendors and hawkers, the stalls crushed or ransacked in the aftermath. Dead crabs lie here and there, scorched by Myrkai fire or cut to pieces.
“What happened to Aifin and the others?” I ask, ashamed I hadn’t thought of it before now. Some pack leader I am.
“They’re all right,” Meroe says. “Aifin has been helping with my scavenging work. Thora and Jack are with Zarun at the walls.”
“Oh. That’s … good.” In truth, I feel numb, distant. “When are we leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Meroe says. There’s a slight tremble in her voice. “I wish we could do more to prepare, but if the crabs keeping coming…” She trails off.
“You’ve done everything you can,” I say, quietly. “I don’t think anyone could have done better.”
“It’s not enough,” she says.
It will never be enough. Not for her. That’s what makes me want to wrap myself around her and keep her safe from the world. But Meroe is not like Tori, to be kept in blissful ignorance of the blood at the foundation of her fake, beautiful life. She understands.
She doesn’t want me to keep her safe. She just wants me to help, to try to be as good as she is.
Rotting Blessed, I want to kiss her.
25
By morning, there’s still not enough water, not enough food, not enough medicines or boots. But we’re leaving anyway, because there’s no time left.
The beginning is the trickiest part, a classic disengagement in the face of the enemy in a manner (Meroe tells me) straight out of Gero’s Campaigns. Everyone gathers together in the shadow of the First Tower, except for the bare minimum of fighting crew needed to hold the walls. Seven or eight hundred people, battered and dirty already, some of them injured. They pick up improvised packs, filled with a little bit of food, a little spare clothing, and as much water as they can carry and still stagger.
Zarun and Karakoa are still leading the defense, so Shiara and the Scholar assist Meroe in getting the column moving. Pack leaders fan out, taking to the edges of the crowd, making sure no one shirks their burden or gets left behind. Carts would make this easier, even without horses to pull them, but carts would never manage the spiral steps. So everything has to go on someone’s back, or not at all.
The youngest scavengers act as runners, darting off into the abandoned city to get messages to the walls. As the column moves off, heading away from the First Tower toward the Center, the fighting packs have to fall back to join it, but not so quickly that we all drown in a horde of crabs. It’s a delicate piece of timing, and I feel completely useless, walking next to Meroe and trying to ignore the pain of my wounds. She listens to returning messengers and gives them answers, telling pack leaders to move in ten minutes, or twenty, or to hold out for more instructions.