Ayaan dipped her sponge in the murky tub and then squeezed it between her two hands so it wouldn't drip. The liches in the officers' mess were quite particular about their windows. There was little in the way of entertainment available to them onboard'those who could read had already worked their way through the scant magazines and books left behind by the previous crew. Looking out at the waves was hardly the pinnacle of excitement but it had a hypnotic power, especially in the twilight hours. The hairy lich, the one Ayaan had begun to think of as a werewolf, could stand by the window for whole days at a time, moving only to eat. It seemed that being dead changed your brain chemistry, made you less anxious at the passing away of time, of the waste of your life. Of course maybe it was just the fact that the liches were functionally immortal. If she knew she had centuries, millennia to pass, Ayaan thought, she would feel a lot less urgency to carpe every diem.
'Look, Amanita's come out for some sun,' the werewolf said. His voice was muffled and distorted'the weird growth of hair lined all of his orifices, his tongue covered in what looked like sodden felt'but Ayaan could understand his simple English. Along with the other liches in the room she stepped over to where he pointed, his furry finger smearing grease on the window pane. Ayaan silently grumbled: she would have to clean that mark.
Amanita, the creature the werewolf had seen, was often spoken of by the cultists but Ayaan had never seen her before. She had, she remembered, seen mushrooms and puffballs growing in profusion at the refinery on Cyprus, so she must have been very close to the Tsarevich's most accomplished lieutenant. Still she wasn't prepared for what she saw through the window. Atop the tower where the liches kept their quarters Amanita stood naked in the sun, perhaps two and a half meters tall. She made no attempt to cover her genitalia but then she hardly needed to. A thick layer of fungal growth covered every square centimeter of her skin. Long, filamentous mycellia made her hair while her shoulders and back were studded with yellow chytrids. Dark fuzzy mildew draped from her breasts while rows of bright orange Judas' ear mushrooms ringed her distended belly and mold dripped from her fingers.
She had the power, they said, that made grain sprout from the earth, that made creeping olive vines twist across Siberian tundra. She had the ultimate green thumb, she could make anything vegetative flourish wherever a dried-up seed or a crystallized spore or a half-gnawed rhizome still lingered in the ground. They said she had saved entire villages from starvation after the unceasingly hungry ghouls had devoured all their crops. Her true love, though, was not in green things but in blights and rots and molds and especially mushrooms. The name she'd chosen sounded pretty enough. It was also the Latin name for the mushroom commonly called the Destroying Angel.
What she might be doing atop the tower was anyone's guess. 'I wonder if this has anything to do with your friend,' the green phantom said, turning to look directly at Ayaan.
Ayaan held the sponge carefully with both hands so it wouldn't drip on the floor. She tried to look like she had no idea what he meant. It wasn't that hard, since she didn't.
'You know, the girl. The girl on the flying bridge. I think she's one of the navigators. Isn't she one of your co-conspirators?' The green phantom smiled, his desiccated skin stretching whitely across his sharp jaws.
Ayaan dropped the sponge and ran. She expected to feel his power wrapping icy chains around her heart at any moment as she stumbled down the stairs, down toward the foredeck. She was just trying to get away from him. Strangely enough, he let her go.
She rushed out onto the deck, dodging between cook fires and capstans. She saw the Least ahead and knew she would have to avoid him. Beyond that she had no plan. What was he doing? He kept jumping up and down. The whole deck vibrated as he collided with it again and again. Hiding behind an enormous bollard she peered out to see what he was up to. He was trying to touch the end of the ship's main crane, an enormous long boom made of girders that loomed out over half the deck. Something dangled at the end of the crane, a piece of bloody meat or... or...
It was the Turkish girl, of course. Ayaan swallowed in horror. They had cut her wrists and her ankles, punched holes in her until her blood ran in sheets down her body but they hadn't killed her. She was still moving, a spasm here, a twitch there in between long pauses to rest and regain what little strength remained to her. She was still alive.