Page 57 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

“You’re not serious,” Ahdron says, lifting the bottle to his lips.

“Of course I’m rotting serious.”

“Do you have any idea what the Butcher will do to you?”

“Let me worry about the Butcher,” I tell him.

“You are serious.” He sets the bottle aside and clambers to his feet. “You haven’t been here a rotting week, Deepwalker. You think you know how things work on Soliton?”

He steps closer, squeezing my space, and I don’t give ground. “It’s not a matter of what I know,” I say. “It’s a matter of whether you think you can take me on.”

“You rotting Melos types are always so rotting confident,” he sneers. “You think I’ve never killed one of you before?”

“You’ve never fought me.” I force a smile. “Concede the point and you can stay in the pack. You’d make a good subordinate.”

“Freeze and rot,” he says. “We had a deal.”

“Circumstances have changed.”

“Get out.”

“I want an answer.”

“As the challenged party, I have a day and a night to respond.” His lip curls. “Not that you would know the first rotting thing about it.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“I was wrong about you,” he says. “I thought you were smart, Isoka.”

“If it’s any consolation,” I tell him from the doorway, “I was right about you.”

Ahdron is correct on one point—I don’t really know what I’m doing. I don’t know my way around Soliton yet, much less the rules of power struggles. I don’t even know how to buy food, or a place to sleep.

But all that can wait. If this works, I’ll have time to get my legs under me. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll be dead, which means Tori goes to the whorehouse and Blessed knows what happens to Meroe. So it has to work.

When you’re on the bottom, you have to take risks. It’s the only way up.

I find my way to Sister Cadua’s in a series of false starts and bad directions. A tall Imperial woman meets me at the familiar curtained doorway, and now that I’m looking for it I can see her eyes flick to the marks on my face before she looks away.

“Yes,” I say, before she can speak. “It’s me. From all the rumors.”

“You want to see your friend?” she says.

“Please.”

She nods and leads me inside. We pass a number of doorways before she gestures me into a small room, where Meroe is laid out. I’m relieved to see that she already looks better than I remember, scrapes and bruises fading, breathing easily. My makeshift splint is gone, replaced with a sturdier version.

There’s a chair beside the bed, and I sit down, suddenly feeling a weight of exhaustion. For a while I just watch Meroe breath, staring at the rich brown of her skin, the delicate little upturn of her nose.

I remember the first night in the Deeps, pressed together for warmth. It’s warm enough, here, but I imagine climbing into bed beside her, huddling close. Just to be there when she wakes up. Just to feel …

Blessed’s rotting balls. I don’t understand myself anymore.

“Miss Isoka?”

I startle. I must have fallen into a doze without realizing it. Now another woman is in the room with me. She looks Jyashtani, though her skin is almost as dark as Meroe’s. Shorter than me, broad and heavyset, she has an air of unmistakable authority.

“Sister Cadua?” I guess.