Page 24 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

“Oh.” Meroe gives me an odd look, and goes quiet.

We stop to pick some of the silvercaps. They’re a little rubbery to the touch, but their flesh parts easily under my fingernail. I drop several into the bag, and stop to look down at one particularly large specimen, nearly a foot across. Its silver coating reflects a distorted image of my face.

“It’s pretty,” I offer, feeling as though I ought to make conversation.

“It reminds me of descriptions of the Vile Rot,” she says. “Mushrooms that grow to the size of houses, and plants that take root in living flesh.”

I pause, halfway to picking another mushroom. “Charming.”

“Sorry.”

We work for another few moments in awkward silence.

“In Nimar,” Meroe says, “there are women who pick mushrooms in the royal forest. They find them using pigs, trained pigs.”

I’m not quite sure what to make of this. “That’s interesting,” I say, non-committally.

“The thing I could never understand,” she goes on, “is how they keep the pigs from eating the mushrooms once they find them.”

My only experience with pigs is when they’re sliced up in bronze sauce, so I shrug. She’s not looking at me, and I wonder if she’s talking to herself.

“I always wanted to try it,” she says. “My father wouldn’t let me, of course. Not a proper activity, a princess grubbing around in the dirt with pigs.” She pops a silvercap free. “I suppose I got the last laugh there.”

“Meroe—”

She turns around, grinning. “Sorry. I’m rambling. I just—”

“Meroe, move!”

Something huge and blue comes up over the edge of the walkway.

It’s a leg, as long as I am tall, protected by bright blue armor plating. It has four joints, and the end is tipped with a hairy, gooey ball that squishes against the deck. Another identical limb follows, rising over the edge and coming down gently amid the fungi.

“Ahdron!” I shout. I’m already backing away, letting the bag of silvercaps fall, looking around for the others. Berun is just ahead of us, and Ahdron is a little behind. The Moron is nowhere to be seen.

The body of the thing comes up over the rail. It’s enormous, bigger than a horse, discshaped, with four limbs on each side. Six legs serve to stick it to the walkway, as easily as any housefly walking upside down on the ceiling. The two arms are much larger, thick as tree trunks, supporting a pair of grasping claws big enough to fit around my waist. Facing me is what I assume is the thing’s mouth, a nightmare thicket of dozens of blade-tipped tendrils as long as my arm. Every bit of it is blue, the armor a bold sky color, the mouthparts closer to teal. There are no eyes, but the shell is covered in spiny growths.

I have fought men who were bigger and stronger than me, many times. When I was a little girl, I fought men who might as well have been ogres, compared to my slight frame. But at least they were human. I’ve heard stories of the monsters of the world—the tigers of Jyashtan, the great snakes of the Southern Kingdoms, the ancient nightwalkers of the iceling lands, and of course the horrible twisted things that set on anyone who gets close to the Vile Rot. But I’d never thought to see one with my own eyes.

So I freeze, for just a moment. Up ahead, Berun has frozen, too, clutching his sack of mushrooms as though they’re the most precious things in the world. The crab glides toward him. It’s so quiet, armor plates sliding smoothly across one another, and its padded, sticky feet make no sound at all. It steps forward almost daintily, entirely on the walkway now, one claw reaching toward Berun. The movement is oddly tentative, as though it doesn’t quite know what to make of us.

“Hey!” Meroe shouts. A fist-sized bit of fungus flies through the air and shatters on the thing’s carapace in a spray of spores. “Over here! Leave him alone!”

The crab’s whole body shivers at the sound. It spins, and its claw swings toward Meroe, hard and fast. While its slow advance had me almost hypnotized, the quick motion activates instincts hard-won in a hundred street fights. I throw myself flat and pull Meroe down with me, and the claw goes over our heads.

“Run,” I hiss at her.

I leave Meroe facedown in the padded fungus and spring up, igniting my blades. Melos power crackles from my wrists and runs over my body as the armor field stabilizes. As the crab brings its second claw down, I throw up an arm to push the strike aside, ready to move closer and jam an energy blade into its maw.

This turns out to be a very bad idea. I do it automatically—against a smaller, weaker opponent, many large men will go for a sweeping downward blow, even if they should know better. It’s a great opportunity to end a fight before it really gets started. But I’m used to fighting humans, not crabs the size of carts. The claw meets my Melos blade and keeps coming, pushing my arm aside with no effort at all. It’s like trying to deflect a lead weight dropped from the top of a building. I have to throw myself out of the way, wrenching the muscles in my side, to avoid getting crushed.

Even as I do, my second blade sweeps out, intercepting the crab’s arm just behind the claw. Against a human, a Melos blade will take a hand clean off with a good hit. Now my blade scrapes over the crab’s armor with a sound like a needle dragged over glass, leaving a dark, smoking scorch mark but no other damage. I feel heat wash across my arm as my power flares.

The claw hits the ground with a crunch. Fortunately, by luck or good reflexes of her own, Meroe rolled sideways out of the way. Unfortunately, that took her closer to the crab, just underneath the writhing, bladed tendrils around its mouth. Meroe sits up in time to see a half-dozen tentacles tipped with long, sword-like points reaching toward her, and starts scrambling backward.

Time to assess, now that I have a moment. The best option at this point would be to run away. Let the crab eat Meroe and probably Berun, too. Neither of them seems like they’re going to be much help, and I think I can find my way back the way we came. Ahdron probably already took off. If Haia objects to my coming back alone, I can always kill her.

But I don’t run. Meroe’s not moving anymore—she grabbed the first two tentacles to reach her, and I can see her arms straining to keep them away. Blood leaks from her hands where they cut her, but she’s not giving up, even as more tentacles stretch forward.