“You’re right,” I say. “What does the Admiral think he’s playing at?”
“I don’t think he’s playing.” Naomi’s voice sounds rough like everyone’s does when they get to her age. Like mine will sound eventually. “I think he has exactly who he wants on this voyage. I just don’t know why.”
CHAPTER 4
THIS IS THE MOMENT the voyage starts. Not when the Admiral gave a speech and people cheered. This. When the motor first turns, the ship moves, the armor whirs into gear.
I have a wave of memory—Call and I standing together on the deck of the other dredge, watching the trees and rivers pass by. It takes time and work to tear up a river the way the dredge does, so you can see almost everything. The ship is not fast.
Naomi and I are on the bridge, the small room at the front of the dredge. Here, we can steer the ship and watch the mining buckets coming up outside, a long loop of them rotating through on a bucket elevator. They’re huge, weighing over a thousand pounds each, made of metal strong and durable enough to withstand scraping along the bottom of the river floor and hauling up rocks.
The windows of the bridge gave me trouble when I was designing the armor because they’re a spot for a potential breach. One morning I woke up and the world went from dark to light with the opening of my eyes and I knew: The ship needs eyelids. The window armor can be retracted for viewing or extended over the windows for security.
Right now, they’re open, and Naomi and I watch the river sliding slowly past beneath us. She gives me a thumbs-up. Everything sounds as it should, loud and sweet and terrible. I smile back. I think about what the Admiral said to me before we left. Don’t underestimate how much the raiders hate your ship. But what I think is that the raiders shouldn’t underestimate how much I love my ship. Or, to be precise, how much I love what it does.
It’s a pale, twisted little thing compared to what I felt for Call. Maybe it’s not even love, what I feel. I don’t know.
But it’s better than nothing.
* * *
• • •
I breathe a sigh of relief as I open the door to the captain’s quarters. Alone. At last.
I can work with others when I have to, when I’m designing or refining the ship. I’ve been doing that for the past two years.
But this is different. I’m living with other people again. We’re all stuck on board the dredge until the end of the voyage. Back when there were ocean journeys, they couldn’t leave their ships because they were surrounded by water. Here, we’re feet away from a shore, from land. It’s enough to make you crazy, thinking about escape or climbing off and walking away. That’s the strange thing about the dredge. In theory, you could leave. But in practice, it’s not allowed.
None of us can leave. Not even the captain.
My quarters aren’t much nicer than the rest of the crew’s accommodations, except in one critical way—they’re private. My space has a bunk, a desk and chair next to it, a tiny dresser. Everything is made of metal and bolted to the wall and floor.
There is a map of the Serpentine River Valley tacked to the wall. After I heave my bag onto my bed, I walk over to examine the map—the greens and blues and browns, the names of the tributaries and their valleys.
A knock at the door. I open it to find my first mate.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Brig says. “But is there anything you’d like me to do? Naomi’s at the helm and she says she doesn’t need me to relieve her yet. I’ve been down to the mining deck and everything seems to be going smoothly.”
Right. Orders. I need to remember to give them.
“Call a meeting for me,” I tell Brig. “During both meal times.” We eat in two shifts so that there are always personnel to keep the ship going, and the cafeteria is the only area large enough to hold everyone. Except for the mining deck, I suppose, but it’s hard to hear down there.
“Will do, Captain Blythe.”
Brig salutes without irony. He’s had militia training, I’m sure of it, though he’s wearing the same uniform as everyone else. There’s something sad and set about his eyes, an almost-gentle, resigned quality, though everything else is sharply defined—his hair combed with military precision, his broad shoulders straight and his posture upright.
He’d also make an excellent informant for the Admiral.
I close the door.
I go back to my bag and pull out my comb, set it on the desk. I take out some shirts. When I reach back inside the bag, my body goes still as my fingers brush against something unfamiliar. I know the feel of everything I packed and this isn’t mine. Paper, soft and worn, folded into a large square.
I pull it out and open it up.
It’s a map, a little like the one on my wall. Except this isn’t a full map, just a piece of one. At the corners where it’s folded, there are small holes. It’s old.
But the message written on it is new. Scrawled in dark black ink that has bled into the fog-soft paper.
This is not your river.
Is it a threat? I run my thumb across the words.
Of course it is.
So. There may be someone on board who sympathizes with the raiders.
I fold the map back up and zip it into my bag.
You want to play cat and mouse with me? I think. Good. Let’s play.
CHAPTER 5
“SO HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE to get used to the sound?” Tam asks me as I come through the dinner line in the cafeteria. The noise from the mining below is enough to rattle your teeth and shake your brain against your skull.
But Tam seems to be handling it well. He looks cheerful and calm, and he’s not sweating, though the kitchen must be hellish hot.
“Soon,” I say. “Never.”
“Be careful.” Tam puts a dish with a metal cover on my tray. “Don’t burn yourself.”
I take my meal to the table at the front of the room because that’s where the captain on my other voyage always sat. He was an older man with a weary manner, but he was efficient and fair. I’ve never blamed him for what happened. He didn’t kill Call.
That ship was the twin of this one, the layout is the same, but Call was never here. I make sure to remind myself of this every time I catch myself thinking of him, hoping against hope to see him come around a corner, through a door.
Someone—Tam? his kitchen assistant?—has set the tables with real napkins and flowers in heavy metal cups. The delicate blossoms shake with the constant vibration of the dredge. A petal falls as I set down my tray. I don’t sit.