Page 83 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

“Don’t be stupid. But if the Captain told the officers, ‘Sorry about this, but I’m dropping you all in deep rot,’ do you think they’d tell us?”

“Don’t know about that,” another young man says. “But I do know that some of the officers are worried. Word is Shiara’s been buying up food and storing it away. She’s got some kind of private fortress in the Drips.”

“She’s always been a paranoid bitch,” the girl says. “Might not mean anything.”

Someone behind me coughs politely for attention. I half-turn and find myself facing a tall, blond iceling girl, a few years younger than me, with a white robe and complicated braid that give her a priestly look.

“Deepwalker?” she says.

I raise an eyebrow. Given the evidence literally written on my face, the whole ship should be able to pick me out by now. “Yes?”

“I serve the Scholar,” she says. “My apologies for the interruption, but he would like to ask if you could attend him this evening.”

I look at Meroe to make sure she’s listening, then ask, “What does he want?”

The girl bows her head. “He’s told me only that he has some information you might find to be of interest.”

“That’s not very specific.” Meroe gives a little nod, though, and I sigh. “All right, why not? Where does he want to meet?”

“He asked me to bring you to his observatory,” the girl says. “If you are not finished with your dinner, I will wait.”

“Oh.” I look down at what’s left of my meal and find my appetite suddenly lacking. “Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose.”

The girl leads me out of the market, and somewhat to my surprise makes for the long staircase that leads from the Upper Stations to the open deck. We start to ascend, walking in a tight spiral, and it’s not many turns before I’m wishing we’d taken the cage up instead.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Erin,” she says. I wait a moment to see if she’ll offer anything else, but that seems to be all.

“I thought the Scholar didn’t have a clade of his own,” I prompt.

“He does not,” Erin says. “But he helped me and my sister Arin, and in gratitude we tend to his needs. He is a kind master.”

There’s something off here—for one thing, this kind of quiet obedience seems antithetical to the other icelings I’ve met, women like Thora and the Butcher. Maybe there are different nations and cultures among the northerners.

“And he lives up on the deck?”

She nods. “He must be able to view the sky to do his work. You will see.”

After more turns than I’m really prepared for, we reach the top, both of us panting slightly. The staircase rises through a circular hatch, letting out on to the rust-mottled outer skin of the great ship. It’s evening, and the sun is nearly to the horizon, lighting up a band of clouds in pinks and oranges. The eastern sky is already darkening from purple to black, and a few bright stars have appeared.

In the darkness of the Council meeting, I didn’t appreciate how many structures there were on the ship’s deck. The Captain’s tower is the largest, rising like a great black spike at the Stern, but there are dozens of oddly shaped protrusions, cubes, half spheres, and stranger objects. Some have collapsed, undermined by rust, and others spill thick rivers of vegetation and fungus from the holes in their roofs. It reminds me that we’re beyond the defensive perimeter of the Upper Stations, here. This is the domain of the crabs, and I itch to summon my blades.

“You’re perfectly safe,” Erin says. “The master understands the crabs better than anyone else on Soliton, and he keeps careful track of any dangerous ones whose territories might encroach.”

“Good to know.” I keep looking around, just in case.

She leads me to a large cylindrical structure, like half a barrel embedded into the deck. It’s several stories high, and the rusted holes in the sides have been patched with scrap metal and fabric. A small door at the bottom stands open, and Erin reaches it, then steps aside, gesturing for me to enter first. Beyond is warm, musty darkness, and I blink as my eyes adjust.

The interior of the cylinder is a single large space, full of a bewildering array of chests, cabinets, desks, and dressers. It looks as though the Scholar has grabbed any furniture that might be useful to keep things in, in some cases stacking them on top of one another in unwieldy arrangements. The desks are covered in … junk, pieces of broken tools, metal fragments, sections of mushroom, and organic debris that must have come from dead crabs. There are bones, as well, human skeletons both fresh and yellowed with age.

One set makes me pause for a moment. They’re dry and brittle looking, but still recognizably wrong, twisted and deformed. Limbs bifurcate where they should run straight, or twist into spirals. A skull bulges like it struggled to contain something growing within. Another, so small it might have belonged to an infant, has two extra eye sockets. These bones look older, but …

“You’ve seen something like this before, haven’t you?”

The Scholar is coming down another spiral staircase, this one wrapped along the outside wall of the building, leading up to a second level that’s half rusted away. His cane raps on each step as he descends.

“In the Deeps,” I say, cautiously. “There was a village, all ruined. The bodies there looked like this.”