I sit against the stacked carpets for a while, eyes closed. Meroe has found Berun, and he’s having trouble keeping up with her rapid-fire questions. Just listening to it is exhausting.
Focus. I think about Tori. About the house in the Second Ward, where she probably doesn’t even know what’s happened to me, has no idea that her beautiful, comfortable life is hanging by a thread. She won’t learn that anything’s wrong until I don’t visit when I said I would. She’ll be heartbroken and worried.
Rotting Naga and his rotting Immortals. He could at least let me send her a letter. I will settle things with him, one way or the other. Zarun and Ahdron were both certain there was no way off the ship—I think of the angels and their horrible voices, and shiver—but they can’t be certain. There has to be something.
I’m coming back, Tori. I swear it.
Pleasant fantasies of what I’m going to do to Kuon Naga occupy me until dinner arrives, which fortunately doesn’t take long. The door opens, and Haia and a couple of crew bring in a large steel bucket and a stack of chipped bowls. Whatever’s in there, it smells wonderful.
Ahdron faces off against Haia, trying to puff himself up and act tough. Haia isn’t buying it, though. She glances around at the rest of us with barely concealed contempt.
“You’re going out in an hour,” she says. “Be ready.”
“I’m ready,” Ahdron says, drawing himself up. “But I can’t speak for these—”
“It’s just the Silvercap Gardens,” Haia interrupts. “Try not to muck it up.”
“Or if you do,” one of the crew behind her says, “don’t bother coming back.”
They set the bucket on the metal deck and leave, barring the door again.
“What’s the Silvercap Gardens?” Meroe says, wandering over.
“I’ll explain,” Ahdron grates, “when it needs explaining.” He goes to the bucket, looks in, and shudders. “Ugh. Crab juice again.”
I can’t resist the smell anymore, and I go to the bucket. It’s full of a murky liquid, hot enough that it steams a little, with some greenish things and unidentifiable white bits floating in it. I’ve eaten crab, pulled from the ocean in wooden traps by fishermen from up the coast. It has to be rushed to the city on ice, so it’s a delicacy, steamed, salted, and buttered. Not worth the coin, in my opinion, but edible enough. The smell of this concoction doesn’t have much in common with what I remember, but I’m hungry enough that I don’t care.
The boy from the island slips in front of me and grabs one of the bowls. He dips it in the bucket, pulls it out full and dripping, and retreats to sit on a folded carpet, drinking the liquid and scooping the soft pieces out with his fingers.
“This is the Moron,” Ahdron says to me and Meroe. “Expect nothing from him and you won’t be surprised. He only turns up for meals.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Meroe says politely.
“And he doesn’t talk,” Ahdron growls. “So don’t bother.”
I take a bowl and fill it, mimicking the boy. Whatever “crab juice” is, it’s good. Shockingly good, even considering that I haven’t eaten in more than a day. Spices I can’t identify give it a tingling bite. The white lumps are meat—crab, I assume—and something spongy that I guess is mushroom. Either way, they’re suffused with the delicious broth, and I gobble them down.
I glance at my empty bowl, then at Ahdron. He gestures wearily for me to go ahead—there’s plenty in the bucket. I have a second helping, which is as good as the first, and a long drink of water.
“Melos, you said,” he says as I’m finishing.
I nod.
“If we’re lucky, we won’t run into anything nasty,” he says. “If we’re unlucky, it’s going to be on you and me to stop it. I’ll stay back, and you get in close and pin it down. Just keep it away from me and I’ll roast it.” He opens his palm, letting Myrkai fire flare briefly. “Think you can manage that?”
As plans go, it’s not much. But I nod again. No sense picking a fight here, not yet. I wish I had Hagan at my side, someone I could count on; then I remember what happened to Hagan, and my stomach knots.
Ahdron turns away, muttering. Meroe sits down next to me, a bowl of crab juice in her hands. She stares at it for a moment, as though unsure how to proceed.
“You use your fingers, apparently,” I tell her. “Once you’re done with the broth.”
She nods and lifts the bowl to her lips with an air of determined curiosity, like a traveler trying the customs of a strange new land.
“You grew up in a palace, I suppose,” I say, as she slurps her soup. “Silver spoons and crystal goblets, that sort of thing.”
“Oh yes.” She finishes the broth and attacks the rest with her fingers, shoveling mushroom and crab into her mouth. In between bites, she adds, “I had a tutor named Rimi just for table etiquette. How to tell a demi-forchette from a shell pick, and why you use one for nuts and the other for fruit, and so on.”
I shake my head. “Important things.”
“When my father dined with us, one of his courtiers would watch me for mistakes,” she goes on, finishing the bowl. “If I made a mistake, I’d be punished.”
“No dessert?”
“He had a black lacquer switch, about as wide as your little finger. There was a special box for it, in my anteroom.”
“Your father beat you for using the wrong fork?”
“Oh no.” She holds out her arms, showing smooth, unblemished skin. “I had to remain pristine against the day I married some prince. He beat Rimi, and made me watch. Every time I looked away, he’d add another stroke.”
Aristos. Whatever country they’re from, they live in a different world.
Meroe scrapes the bottom of her bowl with her fingers and sucks them clean. “That was good. Do you think I could have some more?”
A very, very strange princess. Wordlessly, I wave her on.
* * *
Haia and some other crew return after an hour, just long enough to let the crab juice settle. Ahdron calls us all together by the door, the two silent boys, me, and Meroe. The Moron looks at the two newcomers with interest, idly swiveling one finger back and forth in his ear. Berun is hunched in on himself, looking a little green. Ahdron looks from one of them to the other, sighs, and turns to me and Meroe.
“You. Southerner. Mero, is it?”
“Meroe,” she says. “Meh, roh, ei.”
“Whatever. Isoka explained how things stand?”
“She told me you’re in charge. And we have to go somewhere and do something.” She cocks her head. “I have questions, but—”
“She said you don’t know your Well,” he interrupts. “Are you good for anything?”
“I don’t have a Well,” Meroe says. “But I can dance, sing—maybe not well—speak seven languages, keep an account book up-to-date, follow trade law, and cook puff pastry.”
“In other words,” he growls, “you’re useless.”
“You haven’t tried my puff pastry.” Meroe grins at him fearlessly, and I suppress a laugh. Ahdron snorts. “If there’s a fight, stay out of the way,” he says, looking from her to Berun. To the Moron, he adds, “You can feel free to get yourself killed.”
“The mighty pack leader,” Haia drawls from the doorway. “Come on. You don’t want to keep the crabs waiting.”
We file out, and Haia leads us on another twisting journey through the ship. This time we don’t have far to go, though the direction is even farther down, via a rusting staircase and a long ramp. We finally reach a place where the corridor dead-ends in a large metal door, secured in place with a double bar and guarded by a pair of crew. A stack of lanterns stands against one wall, beside a pile of crude spears.
“Here we are,” Haia says. “Left at the second landing, then keep going until you get to the Silvercap Garden.”
“I’ve done this before,” Ahdron says, taking a lantern and ignoring the spears.
“Just thought you might have forgotten,” Haia says, grinning. “It’s been a while.”
The Coward arms himself with a spear, but none of the rest of us do. We each take a lantern, and Ahdron lights them with a theatrical puff of Myrkai fire. The two guards undo the bars and open the door, which lets a cold wind and a strong smell of salt water into the corridor. The flames dance and flicker.
“Good luck,” Haia says. I get the sense she doesn’t mean it.
Ahdron strides forward, through the door and into the darkness, and the rest of us follow. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. By the sound, I can tell we’re in a much larger space, almost as though I’m back under the open sky. I blink and make out a metal bridge, wide enough for two carts to pass each other, lined by a railing. It stretches on farther than I can see, and to either side is only darkness.
No. Not quite darkness. There are lights there, made tiny by distance, green and blue sparks like colorful stars. They hang in place or move slowly, as though swept by invisible tides.