“I don’t know what that is.”
“I think it’s a kind of mushroom,” said Lazlo, who knew very well what poltroon meant. Really, he was surprised that Drave did.
“You are absolutely a mushroom,” said Ruza.
“It means ‘coward,’ ” said Drave.
“Oh.” Lazlo turned to Ruza. “Do you think I’m a coward?”
Ruza considered the matter. “More of a mushroom,” he decided. To Drave: “I think you were closer the first time.”
“I never said he was a mushroom.”
“Then I’m confused.”
“I take it as a compliment,” Lazlo went on, purely for the infuriation of Drave. It was petty, but fun. “Mushrooms are fascinating. Did you know they aren’t even plants?”
Ruza played along, all fascinated disbelief. “I did not know that. Please tell me more.”
“It’s true. Fungi are as distinct from plants as animals are.”
“I never said anything about mushrooms,” Drave said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Drave, you wanted something.”
But the explosionist had had enough of them. He flung out a hand in disgust and stalked off.
“He’s bored, poor man,” said Tzara, with a flat lack of pity. “Nothing to destroy.”
“We could at least give him a small neighborhood to demolish,” suggested Ruza. “What kind of hosts are we?”
And Lazlo felt a . . . fizz of uneasiness. A bored explosionist was one thing. A bored, disgruntled explosionist was another. But then the conversation took a turn that drove all thoughts of Drave from his head.
“I can think of a way to keep him busy,” said Shimzen, one of the other warriors. “Send him up in a silk sleigh to blow the godspawn into blue stew.”
Lazlo heard the words, but they were spoken so evenly, so casually, that it took him a moment to process them, and then he could only blink.
Blue stew.
“As long as I don’t have to clean it up,” said Ruza, just as casually.
They had been briefed, earlier, on the . . . situation . . . in the citadel. Their blasé demeanor was certainly a cover for their deep disquiet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t absolutely in earnest. Tzara shook her head, and Lazlo thought she was going to chide the men for their callousness, but she said, “Where’s the fun in that? You wouldn’t even get to watch them die.”
His breath erupted from him in a gust, as though he’d been punched in the gut. They all turned to him, quizzical. “What’s the matter with you?” asked Ruza, seeing his expression. “You look like someone served you blue stew for dinner.” He laughed, pleased with his joke, while Shimzen slapped him on the shoulder.
Lazlo’s face went tight and hot. All he could see was Sarai, trapped and afraid. “How can you speak like that,” he asked, “when you’ve never even met them?”
“Met them?” Ruza’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t meet monsters. You slay them.”
Tzara must have seen Lazlo’s anger, his . . . stupefaction. “Trust me, Strange,” she told him. “If you knew anything about them, you’d be happy to drop the explosives yourself.”
“If you knew anything about me,” he replied, “you wouldn’t think I’d be happy to kill anyone.”
They all squinted at him, puzzled—and annoyed, too, that he was spoiling their amusement. Ruza said, “You’re thinking of them as people. That’s your problem. Imagine they’re threaves—”
“We didn’t kill the threave.”
“Well, that’s true.” Ruza screwed up his face. “Bad example. But would you have looked at me like that if I had?”
“I don’t know. But they’re not threaves.”
“No,” Ruza agreed. “They’re much more dangerous.”
And that was true, but it missed the point. They were people, and you didn’t laugh about turning people into stew.
Especially not Sarai.
“You think good people can’t hate?” she’d asked Lazlo last night. “You think good people don’t kill?” How na?ve he’d been, to imagine it was all a matter of understanding. If only they knew her, he’d told himself, they couldn’t want to hurt her. But it was so clear to him now: They could never know her. They’d never let themselves. Suheyla had tried to tell him: The hate was like a disease. He saw what she meant. But could there ever be a cure?
Could the people of Weep ever accept the survivors in the citadel—or, like the threave in the desert, at least suffer them to live?
51
Poltroons
“There is a magnetic field between the anchors and the citadel,” Mouzaive, the natural philosopher, was telling Kether, artist of siege engines, in the guildhall dining room. “But it’s like nothing I’ve seen before.”
Drave, who was irrationally furious to find mushrooms on his plate, sat at the next table. The sullen look on his face gave no hint that he was listening.
Mouzaive had invented an instrument he called a cryptochromometer that used a protein extracted from birds’ eyes to detect the presence of magnetic fields. It sounded like a lot of flummery to Drave, but what did he know?
“Magnetic anchors,” mused Kether, wondering how he might appropriate the technology for his own engine designs. “So if you could shut them off, the citadel would just . . . float away?”
“That’s my best guess.”
“How’s it floating, anyway, something that big?”
“A technology we can’t begin to fathom,” said Mouzaive. “Not ulola gas, that’s for certain.”
Kether, who was keen on appropriating that technology, too, said sagely, “If anything’s certain, it’s that nothing’s certain.”
Drave rolled his eyes. “What’s making it?” he asked, gruff. “The magnetic field. Is there machinery inside the anchors or something?”
Mouzaive shrugged. “Who knows. It could be a magical moon pearl for all I can tell. If we could get inside the damned things, we might find out.”
They discussed the metallurgists’ progress, and Thyon Nero’s, speculating who would breach the metal hulls first. Drave didn’t say another word. He chewed. He even ate the mushrooms while phrases like “breach the hulls” rang in his mind like bells. He was supposed to sit back while the Fellerings and Nero vied for the reward? As though Nero even needed it, when he could just make gold any day of the week.
He’d be damned if this bunch of poltroons were going to keep him from throwing his hat in the ring.
Or more like blowing the damned ring up.
52
Amazing, but Scorched Sparrow had, in fact, tried to visit Sarai, but ghosts blocked the corridor and wouldn’t let her through. The little girl ghost, Bahar, dripping with river water and dolor, told her solemnly, “Sarai can’t play right now,” which sent a chill up her spine. She went to the Ellens in the kitchen to see if they knew how she was, but she found them grim and silent, which sent another chill. They were never like this. It had to be Minya’s doing, but Minya had never oppressed the nurses as she did the other ghosts. Why now?
Minya was nowhere to be found, and neither were Ruby or Feral.
Sometimes they all just needed a little time to themselves. That was what Sparrow told herself that afternoon in the citadel. But she needed the opposite. She needed her family. She hated not being able to go to Sarai, and she was furious that she couldn’t even find Minya to appeal to her. She went to the heart of the citadel and called out through the narrow opening that had once been a door. She was sure Minya must be inside, but she never answered.
Even the garden couldn’t soothe her today. Her magic felt feeble, as though some river within herself were dry. She imagined herself weeping, and Feral holding her to comfort her. He would smooth her hair with his hands and murmur soothing things, and she would look up, and he would look down, and . . . and it wouldn’t be anything like when Ruby had kissed him, all sucking noise and storm clouds. It would be sweet, so sweet.