Page 48 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

No. Not possible. Hagan is dead, dead, dead; I rotting killed him myself.

I’m going mad.

“Way.” He grimaces, as though each word costs him an enormous effort. “Way. Out.”

Blessed’s balls.

“The way out?” I shake my head. I can’t believe I’m doing this. “You know the way out?”

He nods, with difficulty, and raises one hand. Gray light floods my senses again. For a moment there’s something at the back of my mind, a vast, complicated web of tunnels and decks, a map that’s far, far more intricate than I can comprehend. Then it’s gone, draining away. Hagan looks frustrated. He grits his teeth, and light shifts in front of him, forming a ball of gray. With a gesture, he sends it floating toward me.

My hand comes up to catch it, automatically, but it passes through my fingers like they’re not even there. It hits me in the chest and sinks into my skin, without even a flicker from my Melos armor. It feels strange, as though someone had latched a thread around my breastbone and given it a gentle tug. When I look down, a gray thread emerges from my chest, leading off into the darkness.

“Follow,” Hagan says.

“I…” I shake my head. “This is impossible. Hagan—”

The angel shifts, its twisted limbs grinding toward me. Hagan turns to it, and it freezes again, but the strain on his face is obvious.

“Go,” he says.

I don’t need to be told twice. I edge around the angel, which remains motionless as a statue. When I reach the door, I pause and look back. Hagan is still there, outlined in glowing gray, watching me.

I have to say something. I can’t just …

“Hagan. Are you—”

“Isoka.” His voice is harder to make out, the distortion louder. “Listen. Anomaly … coming. Danger. Garden.” He grows louder for just a moment. “Find Garden. Or die.”

The angel shifts again, trying to turn around.

“Go!”

I back through the doorway. An instant later, the metal slides shut in front of my nose, leaving an unbroken expanse of wall. It’s just me and the dead village, alone in the dark.

For a while I just sit, among the ancient corpses, and stare at the wall.

What in the Rot was that?

Hagan—except it’s not Hagan, because Hagan is dead—stopped an angel from tearing me apart.

But the last time we met—I can’t believe I’m even thinking this—I put my blade through his skull. So I can’t imagine he’d be well-disposed to me, if he were still hanging around. Which he’s not.

And then there’s this … thing in my chest. The gray thread stretches out of me and curves off into the dark, shifting slightly as though with an intangible breeze but always pointing in the same direction. I’m supposed to follow it, which makes even less sense than anything else. If Hagan is here, how in the Rot does he know the way back to the Stern?

I never even asked. That thing, that presence, rooted around in my mind, and apparently didn’t like what it found.

But—

I put my head between my hands and groan, fingers digging into my hair. No matter how many times I go over it, it doesn’t make any rotting sense.

Maybe I am going mad.

Eventually, I have to get up. Meroe is waiting, unprotected. That thought gets me worried enough that I hurry through my preparations, grabbing what I need from the wreckage of the village before heading back the way I came.

When I finally get there, Meroe is asleep beside the pool. I kneel to check on her, worried, but she just seems cold and exhausted. I’m tired, too, but after what happened inside the wall I don’t even think of sleep. I’m not sure I could pass another quiet night in this place.

Instead, I get to work on my supplies. I brought one of the larger crab shells from the ruined village, a few of the long, flexible dried mushroom poles from the buildings, and as many intact scraps of fabric as I could manage. Being a Melos adept, fortunately, means never being without a handy cutting tool. I start slashing and tying, and by the time Meroe wakes up I’m nearly finished.