Page 66 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

Bands of blue light have materialized around the creature, spreading across its legs and along the curve of its neck. Thora and Berun, on the other side of the chamber, are both concentrating hard, wrapping the shaggy in bonds of Tartak force. Intent on Jack, it doesn’t notice until it’s too late. The thing tugs against the binding, and I see Berun flinch, but it’s stuck fast.

Which is my cue. I come out from the doorway, running alongside the beast until I can get at the base of its long, curving neck. I duck forward, blades slashing, sending strands of thick green flying. Liquid spatters across me, beading on my armor, and starts to sizzle. I feel pinpricks of heat as the stuff tries to eat its way to my flesh. Charming. I grit my teeth and push forward, surrounded by crackling green lightning and acrid smoke. One of my blades makes contact with something solid, and I swing in that direction, barely able to see. I can feel the cut, though, and the gush of fluid. I hack at the long neck again, like a lumberjack trying to fell a tree.

There’s another bellow from the shaggy, and I turn to get a glimpse of its mouth coming at me, the neck doubling back on itself. I duck, reflexively, but before it reaches me Jack is there, her shadow rising from the deck in front of her like a paper cutout. The shaggy’s head collides with the flat black shape and recoils as if it had struck a wall.

“Finish it!” Jack says. She’s grinning, as always, in spite of the fact that threads of smoke are rising from her clothes where flecks of acid have landed.

I leave her to watch my back, and turn to my task. It doesn’t feel like a fight. More like a chore, a butcher hacking apart a carcass with measured strokes, only with a lot more blood. Eventually, I hit something vital, and black blood spews forth in a torrent. The shaggy gives a despairing gurgling bellow. I skip sideways and it staggers forward and collapses to the floor.

It’s getting hot inside my armor, coated as I am in acid, but I don’t dare drop it for fear of letting that stuff onto my skin. I glance at Jack, who is still smoking slightly. Berun is on his knees, gasping for breath. Thora kneels beside him, patting his shoulder.

“There,” she says. “You did well, lad. Better than I would have given you credit for.”

“What about me?” Jack pops up beside Thora, emerging from a shadow like a fish jumping from a lake. “Any praise for Clever Jack?”

“You were brilliant,” Thora says, patting Berun’s shoulder again and getting to her feet. “As always.”

“And my reward?”

Thora gathers the slender girl close with a hand at the small of her back and kisses her thoroughly. My ground-in instinct to look away from such a display wars with an undeniable interest, and under other circumstances I might have left them to it. As it is, though, I give a loud cough.

“A little help?” I spread my arms, which are still steaming with acid. The heat inside my armor is getting seriously uncomfortable.

Thora pushes Jack away, ignoring the disappointed noise she makes. “Sorry, pack leader,” she says. She uncorks a waterskin and lets the stream play over my armor, the water making strange patterns as it runs along the flickering surface of the energy field. It takes two skins before I feel like I can risk letting my power drop, sucking with relief at the cool air.

“Did you know that stuff burns?” I ask Thora.

She shakes her head. “I hadn’t heard of anything like that. Maybe this one has something different growing on it than most shaggies.”

“Maybe it’ll flavor the meat,” Jack says, looking the dead beast over. “Good eating on these.”

I nod, then glance back at the doorway I’d come from. “Good work, all of you. Just … give me a minute, would you?”

“I sometimes get like that after a fight,” Thora says to Jack behind me. “You get carried away and don’t realize how much you’ve been holding it in.”

“The general Hespodar’s two greatest military maxims,” Jack says, in all seriousness, “were ‘never let the phalanx press into broken ground’ and ‘always piss before the battle.’”

“You made that up,” Thora says.

“Possibly.”

Around the corner, I press my hand back against the edge of the torn metal. But the flow of gray light has faded, and Hagan’s voice is gone.

Rot. Because what I need is more mysteries.

The aftermath of a hunt, I’ve learned, is as well planned as the system of tithes and protection payments that keeps the Sixteenth Ward running.

When a hunting pack brings down large prey, we report where we left the bodies to one of the clades, who send out a scavenger pack to drag them back to safety. In return, the clade leader gives the pack etched bits of crab shell called scrip, which work more or less like ordinary money. Money without gold or silver in it still seems strange to me, but no stranger than everything else on Soliton.

Pack leaders are free to choose their own targets, based on reports from scavengers and other hunting packs. When two groups want to hunt the same prey, the Council decides, either awarding it to one or ordering them to work together. The Council seems to decide everything, in fact. Berun told me the Captain doesn’t stick his nose in everyday life much, but as far as I can tell he doesn’t intervene at all, except for occasionally sending the angels on mysterious tasks of his own.

There’s not much everyone agrees on about the Captain—that he’s a man, that he lives in a tower that sticks up from the deck near the stern of the ship, and that he controls the angels through some means no one understands. He seems to have been here longer than anyone else; at least, no one I’ve talked to came aboard before him. Other than that, though, there’s almost nothing.

It’s frustrating, because aside from my investigation of the Captain and how he controls the ship, things have been going well for a change. For all that Zarun sent them to spy on me, Thora and Jack can handle themselves, and between us we’ve been able to bring down enough prey that we have plenty of scrip for food and enough left over for furnishings. Our rooms, which I’ve learned are in a place called Tower Five, have grown steadily more comfortable. Mostly this is Meroe’s doing, since her leg keeps her out of the daily hunts.

When we return home, she’s sitting on the floor in the common room, which is now equipped with several more chairs and a thick carpet. The Moron is sitting opposite her, cross-legged, and there’s a book open on the floor between them. I blink at the sight of the Moron—who, as far as I know, has never responded to any attempt at communication—pointing eagerly at the book, while Meroe stares intently.

“What’s this?” Jack says. “Has the Princess managed to tame the savage beast?”