Page 49 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

“Good morning,” I tell her. “Or whatever it is.”

“Morning.” Meroe yawns, sits up, winces, and puts her hands on her leg.

“How do you feel?”

“About the same.” She takes a deep breath. “Better, now that you’re back.”

“We’re getting out of here.”

“You found something?” Meroe looks at my project and frowns. “What happened?”

“It’s a long story.” And how in the Rot am I supposed to explain that a boy I murdered turned up to give me a helping hand? “I found a ruined wilder village, and I think I might know how to get out of here. This”—I gesture—“is to help me bring you along.”

Meroe looks at the crude construction, tilts her head, then laughs. “I get it. It’s like a sled.”

“More or less.”

I’ve lashed two long poles to the dish-shaped crab shell, which is large enough for Meroe to sit in. When I take the poles in hand, I can more or less drag the whole contraption across the sand. It’s not elegant, but it’s easier than carrying her.

I hand her a couple of other poles that I’ve cut to roughly the height of her armpits. “You might be able to use these for crutches, too. I don’t know how far we’ll have to go.”

“Very thoughtful,” Meroe says. “You’re practically an expert at this.”

I bark a laugh. “Believe me, I’m making it up as I go along.”

We have only the one canteen between us, and I don’t know when we’ll find more freshwater, so we both drink from the pool until we’re squelching. Meroe puts the rest of the half-cooked crab meat in the shell, then climbs in herself, and I pick up the poles.

“What can I do to help?” Meroe says.

“Just don’t move too much.” I shift my grip until I find something comfortable. “Here goes nothing.”

After a few false starts, my rigged-up travois actually works fairly well. The most difficult part is coming down the shallow slope on the face of each dune, where the thing has a tendency to slide and tug me sideways, but I learn to walk a little faster to get ahead of it. I don’t ignite my blades, the better to see the tiny thread of gray light. For Meroe, it must feel like we’re hiking through the darkness with no guide at all, but she doesn’t question me.

Not on that subject, at least. After a while, she says, “You were telling me about yourself, the other night, before I fell asleep.”

I grunt, hoping responding in monosyllables will keep her from getting too interested. But she persists, and I have to admit that talking is easier than trying not to think at all. So I end up going over my life story, one little piece at a time. I leave out some of the details, and my capture by the Immortals and the aftermath, but that still leaves Meroe with a thousand questions.

What’s hardest for her to understand is how mage-born are treated in the Empire. Things in Nimar are very different, apparently.

“Why would you have to hide being a Melos adept?” she says. “With that kind of power, couldn’t you find a job better than a ward boss?”

I shrug, as best I can while holding the poles. “Mage-born owe their lives to the Emperor’s service. According to the Emperor, anyway, and since he’s got the army his is the vote that counts. Mage-born from the noble families get trained and serve in different ways, according to their talents. For them it’s supposed to be a great honor. If you’re a commoner and they catch you young, then you might get adopted by a noble family or sent to the Legions. But if they think you’re too old to be trained properly, then their only real use for you is as breeding stock.”

“You’re not serious,” Meroe says.

“Of course I’m serious.” I can’t keep a bit of venom out of my voice. “You think the rotting aristos care what happens to a commoner? They stick you in a room, rape you until you get pregnant, and then take the kids away to be raised as their own. It ‘improves the noble bloodlines.’”

“Gods,” Meroe says. “No wonder you hate them.”

I shrug again, uncomfortably. It’s not that I don’t hate the aristos. It’s just that it never occurred to me that there was any other way to feel. How else is an alley rat fighting over scraps of rotten fish supposed to feel toward people who live in manicured gardens and eat hummingbird tongues? A specific reason seemed somehow superfluous.

“In Nimar,” Meroe says, “any position is open to anyone who passes the examinations for it. It doesn’t matter who your parents are.”

I snort. “I’m sure a lot of nobles’ daughters end up as fishwives.”

“It’s not perfect,” Meroe concedes. “But we can’t afford to waste mage-born as ‘breeding stock.’” She shudders. “You’d have taken the examination and been given a high position.”

“What if I didn’t like what I was given?”