Once I’m away from the house, I let down my guard a little. It doesn’t matter if someone sees me now, as long as they’re not looking close. I live in the Second Ward, high on Kahnzoka’s hill, with only the august heights of the First Ward separating us from the Imperial presence himself. The streets are curved and tree lined, with large circular stones engraved with family crests marking the entrances to the walled estates. Rich families mean servants, and while most of those servants live in the households of their masters, there are always day laborers and temporary replacements coming and going. Nothing unusual about a young woman in shabby clothes trudging home to the lower wards at the end of a long day.
Our street joins another, which leads, after several turns, to a gate. The ward walls, formidably high and broad enough for two men to walk abreast, are manned by the Ward Guard. I remember the Ward Guard with a hint of terror, from our days in the lower wards—brutal enforcers of order, who cared little about the people under their protection, always on the lookout for a chance to extort a few coins. Here in the Second Ward, things are different. If I were dressed as Lady Tori of the Gelmei estate, they would bow and scrape, but even as a poor laborer they’re more polite. You never knew which maid might have the ear of her mistress, and plenty of families in the Second have enough pull to get a poor guard arrested.
Cabs gather at the gate. I find a two-seater heading for the Eleventh Ward, already occupied by an older woman with a long woolen shawl and a cheerful expression. She shoves over and I climb up beside her, passing a couple of copper bits to the cabbie with a nod of thanks. The horse snorts and starts moving, and we pass through the gate, gleaming spikes of the portcullis hanging threateningly overhead.
Then we’re out, onto the broad thoroughfare of the military highway, joining a stream of carriages and pedestrians. I take a deep breath. My gardens smell of willow and fresh-cut grass, sharp and clean, but this is the real scent of Kahnzoka—dung, smoke, and the press of humanity. I give the old woman a grin, and she grins back.
2
ISOKA
Meroe rolls over, sending the sheet slithering to the floor, and mutters something unintelligible in her sleep.
I sit and watch her for a moment, her brow creased as though in deep thought, eyes shifting under closed lids. She’s naked without the sheet, and I have to fight the urge to run my hands along her beautiful brown skin. I never get tired of looking at her body, so different from mine; soft and curved where I’m lean and hard, smooth and unblemished where I’m scarred and marked. Her face relaxes, brow uncreasing, and her breathing grows smooth and deep.
I wish I could rotting sleep.
Meroe spends her days doing useful things—managing our food supply, organizing guard shifts, going up to the deck to plot our course with her navigator’s instruments. In the meantime, everyone calls me leader, even though all I do is nod and smile and drink. And fail to sleep.
My restlessness must be getting to Meroe, because she mumbles again and puts a hand over her eyes. I roll out of bed—an old mattress tossed on the floor of this chamber, high above the Garden—and pad around to her side. When I pull the sheet back over her, she relaxes again, and I slip out into the corridor.
The Garden complex is in better shape than the rest of Soliton, fewer rusted-out patches or mushrooms growing on the walls. It’s like a ship-within-a-ship, a cylindrical section walled off from the rest of the vessel. A pair of big doors open onto the first level, the grassy plain where so many died to keep the rest of us safe from maddened crabs. Above that, a few more levels produce various kinds of food. Then there’s the control room, where I killed the Scholar, where I’ve spent many frustrating hours since.
Higher up are more levels divided into smaller chambers, which is where we’re living. I don’t know exactly how many people survived the trek through the ship and the battle that followed—counting things had been the Scholar’s job—but it’s a lot fewer than were living at the Stern. A few hundred, none much older than I am, many as young as twelve or thirteen. What’s left of Soliton’s crew.
I stop for a long piss, then make my way to the stairwell, winding up through switchback after switchback. Soliton is huge, bigger than a ship has any right to be, and it seems like it takes hours to reach the deck. Eventually, though, I find myself facing a door, improvised from rope and broken metal plate. At the moment it stands open, though a guard waits just inside, ready to slam it shut if the crabs return. I give her a nod, and she bows.
“Deepwalker,” she murmurs, and it sounds like a prayer. I can feel my teeth grinding.
“Is anyone on the tower?” I ask her.
“Zarun,” the guard says. “For about an hour now.”
Too much to hope that I could be alone in the middle of the night. I suppose I’ve had worse company. I pause in the doorway for a moment, my breath steaming in the air. The Garden keeps itself heated, but out here it’s getting cold.
Soliton’s deck is cluttered with protrusions—small rectangular humps, mysterious snaking metal conduits, spires like tree trunks trailing cables. In a few places, such as the Captain’s Tower near the Stern, these are the size of buildings. The tower rising above the Garden isn’t nearly that big, just a couple of stories high, but it provides a good vantage point. There’s a ladder set into the outside, and I make plenty of noise as I work my way up. Zarun isn’t someone you want to catch by surprise. At least not accidentally.
Meroe keeps her equipment up here, a telescope and a few other mechanisms whose use I don’t even faintly understand. To my surprise, Zarun has his eye to the telescope’s lens when I reach the top.
“Anything worth looking at?” He’s got it pointed almost straight up.
“The moon,” he says, raising his head. His dark hair is cut short, framing a handsome face with the copper skin of a Jyashtani and startling blue eyes. “Want a turn?”
I glance up. The moon is near full, a slightly imperfect circle glowing in a diamond carpet of stars that is nothing like the smoky, sepia-toned city skies I’d grown up with. Staring gives me a faint sense of vertigo, as though I were going to fall up into that darkness and never stop.
“What’s the use of looking at the moon?” I ask him.
Zarun shrugs. “No use. It satisfies my curiosity.” He steps away from the telescope and leans against the waist-high railing that surrounds the top of the tower. “There’s little enough else to do lately.”
“Not enough scavenging expeditions to keep you busy?”
The crew had left almost everything behind at the Stern. Soliton was littered with goods, sacrifices loaded on board for generations, the greatest treasure hoard in the world. Our scavengers combed through it, ignoring the gold and jewels, bringing back cloth, wood, leather, books, anything useful.
“I’ve gone out plenty,” he says. “But they don’t need me. The last dozen teams haven’t seen so much as a bent crawler.”
“That doesn’t mean the next one won’t find a hammerhead.”
“Let’s hope.” He grins.
“You’re that bored?” My own battle with a hammerhead had left my leg nearly torn off, and that was before Meroe and I fell into the Deeps. It isn’t an experience I look forward to repeating.