As it turns out, I don’t get my chance to interrogate Veldi, our mysterious stranger, until the following morning.
There’s too much that needs doing in the meantime. At Meroe’s direction, teams fan out through the stone corridors of the ancient building. They find other entrances, one on each of the four sides, and we set guards on them. There are large central chambers on several levels, big enough to accommodate the crew several times over. We search one thoroughly and herd everyone inside. Another team finds a spring trickling into a rocky pool on the bottom level, and Meroe hurriedly orders every available skin and bottle filled.
The crew is a mass of confusion, friends and families separated in the chase, the crowd milling desperately as they seek familiar faces. Shiara takes charge there, sorting people out and restoring order. Most of those who were separated get reunited, but not all. We lost people in the mad dash, overrun and torn to pieces by the walking corpses.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have cared. Even a month ago, I was ready to leave the crew behind, take Meroe and flee to the Garden on my own. She’d convinced me to try to help, instead. And now, somehow, they expected it from me, relied on me to keep them safe. And I hadn’t done it.
It hurts. Why does it hurt?
I pause for a rest at some point. Just briefly, sitting down on a blanket some kind soul has spread across the stones, closing my eyes. When I open them, sunlight is slanting down into the chamber through high slit windows, and Meroe is sitting beside me, her head leaning on my shoulder. As I move, she yawns and stirs.
“Hey,” I manage.
“Hey.” She sits up and wipes gunk from her eyes. “I guess we’re still alive.”
“I guess so.”
I kiss her, with only a brief hesitation due to the eyes all around us. It’s not like we’re keeping our relationship secret, but some habits die hard.
“If the sun’s up,” she says, “I want to go up to the roof. Maybe we can finally get a decent look at this place.”
After confirming with the teams watching the doors that there had been no further attacks overnight, I follow Meroe up a four-sided spiral stair that runs around a shaft at the center of the building. With the fading of adrenaline, the pains of the night before are making themselves felt, and my legs are twinging by the time we get to the top. My arms have the bone-deep ache of powerburn, something I’m intimately familiar with. The crew’s healer, Sister Cadua, is still caring for the injured, but I’ll have to see if she salvaged any of her ointments.
The stairs end in a flat platform with a ladderlike arrangement of stones leading up through a square hole in the roof. I groan at the sight, and Meroe gives me a sympathetic look. She goes up first, and I follow, gritting my teeth. I’m breathing hard when we emerge into the glare of the sun, and I shade my eyes and look around.
At least all that climbing brought us a good view, far above the tops of the jungle trees. The building we’ve occupied stretches out below us, an immense stone ziggurat, pyramid-shaped but stair-stepped, built of huge stone blocks. Ramps run up the center of each side, leading to the four main entrances we’d discovered the night before, and bands of narrow slit windows ring the structure. Everything is carved from stone.
Ours isn’t the only such building. Looking out over the jungle, I can see more step-pyramids rising through the trees. Some are smaller than ours, others roughly on the same scale, while three in particular are truly enormous, towering half again the height of our viewing platform. In between, tall obelisks jut upward, tapered pillars of cut stone like enormous swords thrusting toward the sky. A few are intact, but most have lost at least part of their upper reaches, and some have toppled over entirely, barely visible through the jungle.
Turning, I look toward the sea. Soliton is still berthed in the gargantuan dock, along with the decaying hulks of the other ships. I can’t see any activity among the angels on her deck, but there’s a steady flow of Eddica energy still pouring out of the ship, invisible but strong enough that I can sense it easily from here.
“Look,” Meroe says, tugging at my sleeve. “Over there. That looks like fields.”
I follow her pointing finger. A large strip of land does seem to have been cleared of jungle, covered with a checkerboard of different colors. It’s hard to tell from here, but I think I can see something moving, dark figures reduced to ants by the distance.
“Are those people?” I ask.
“I don’t … think so.” Meroe squints. “Should have brought my glass. But they’re too big. Look, beside the trees. That thing must be the size of an ox.”
She’s right. Whatever the distant creatures are, they’re not human. I’m not sure if that makes me more or less worried.
Toward the horizon, the sun gleams off a solid white mass. It takes me a moment to realize that I’m looking at snow. The misty dome we’d seen from Soliton’s deck is invisible from the inside, but the boundary line is still obvious. It’s warm enough here that I’m considering shedding some of my leather armor, but somehow this whole jungle has been grafted into the middle of an icy wasteland.
“It has to be the same people,” Meroe mutters.
“What people?”
“The people who built Soliton.” She waves a hand excitedly. “Look at this place. A tropical forest, here in the far south. And those docks! Someone made all of this.”
I nod slowly. It seems logical—well, not logical, but plausible—that people who could make a steel monstrosity the size of Soliton might be able to use magical power on a scale big enough to create a place like this. I’ve never heard of anything like it, but that doesn’t mean much; I would have said Soliton itself was impossible before I’d seen it with my own eyes.
“It’s all powered by Eddica,” I tell her. “I can feel it. Power is running out from Soliton and into … something else, but there’s smaller flows all through the place.”
“That makes sense.” She sighs. “As much sense as anything makes, anyway.”
I pause. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She leans against me. “Just don’t … scare me like that. Last night, I thought…” She swallows. “Be careful.”
“I’ll do my best.” We kiss again, more leisurely this time, although it reminds me how long it’s been since I cleaned myself up. But there are more important things to worry about, for the moment. “Shall we see what our guest has to tell us?”
“I think so,” Meroe says. “Though to be fair, we’re the guests, aren’t we?”
Back down in the belly of the ziggurat, the crew has started to explore. It looks like there’s not much to find—just more big, empty rooms, striped with light from the narrow windows, any furnishings long since decayed. People spread out what blankets and cloth they have, though few had salvaged much in the rush to get off the ship. We have water, but food is going to be a problem pretty quickly. If those are fields out there, it might be worth an expedition to see what’s growing in them.
First things first, though. Veldi, looking somewhat the worse for wear, sits on a blanket with Zarun standing behind him, backed up by a couple of armed crew. He looks up at me imploringly, tugging nervously at his braid-knot.
“I warned you that you were in danger!” he says. “I don’t understand this suspicion. I’m only trying to help.”
“Since I have no idea what in the Rot is going on here,” I tell him, “you’ll forgive me for being a little paranoid. I take it those monsters last night weren’t friends of yours?”
He shudders. “Of course not. Those are Prime’s creatures.”
“Who is Prime?” I remember a withered face and dark eye sockets. “For that matter, who in the Rot are you?”
“Perhaps it would be better,” Meroe says gently, “if you began at the beginning.”
“Right. Yes.” He straightens up a little and risks a smile in her direction. “We call this place the Harbor. Because the ship docks here, you see? It’s … a city, I suppose, though somewhat overgrown now.”
“Who’s we?” I say.
“The Cresos clan.” He gives a slight bow. “Servants to my lady Catoria.”
“You arrived on Soliton?” Meroe says eagerly.
He nods. “Perhaps five years previously. At least, this is the fifth time the ship has returned. There are no seasons here, so time can be hard to judge.”
Meroe frowns. “And the ship brings more people every time it comes back?”
“Not every time. Twice it has brought no one, and twice only a handful of souls. Yours is the first large group we’ve seen.”
“The Rot,” I mutter. “When the ship sails past the Vile Rot, the crabs and diseases kill everyone, unless they hide in the Garden.”
“My lady believes that to be the case, yes,” Veldi says. He seems to have relaxed a little, or at least forgotten Zarun looming ominously behind him. “I only followed her directions, so I know little of such matters.”
“So—” I want to ask him if someone in his clan has an Eddica talent, but I think better of it. I don’t want to tip our hand. Fortunately, Meroe fills the gap.
“Are you the only people here?”
“Unfortunately not,” Veldi says. “We occupy one of the great ziggurats. Another is held by the Minder fanatics”—and here he does look at Zarun, with a disapproving twist to his lip—“and the third is Prime’s territory.”
“They were here when you arrived?” Meroe says.
“Prime has always been here, I think,” Veldi says. “The Minders came with us on Soliton. They were our allies, until they betrayed us.”
“So—”
Meroe’s eyes are bright, eager to explore the mystery, but I hold up a hand to cut her off. “Where do you get food?”
“The angels bring us what we need,” Veldi says. “They work the land, maintain this place.”
“Can you get them to bring us something?”
“We cannot make them do anything,” he says. “But we have more than enough in our stores.” He bows again. “Please, let me return to my clan. I swear I will bring you a proper delegation and what food and supplies we can spare.”
“Can you make it back there?” I ask him. “What about the corpses?”
“For the most part, they are only active at night,” he says. “By day, the angels are about, and they destroy Prime’s servants if they encounter them. But I thank you for your concern.”
I purse my lips, and gesture to Meroe and Zarun. We step back a few paces.
“He’s an odd one,” I tell them. “The way he talks is … old-fashioned. But I don’t get the sense he’s lying.”
“I don’t see the harm in letting him go,” Meroe says. “We are going to need food, and more besides. Bedding, clothes, medicine.”
“He doesn’t seem to care for Jyashtani,” I say, looking at Zarun.
He shrugs. “He wouldn’t be the first Imperial I’ve met to feel that way. As long as he doesn’t try anything, we’ll manage.”
“All right. Tell him he can go, and we’ll gladly accept his offer. Even if he just runs off, I suppose it can’t hurt.”
Meroe nods agreement. Zarun turns away to tell the prisoner the good news, leaving me and Meroe alone.
“Have you ever heard of a Cresos clan in the Empire?” she says.
“No, but I wouldn’t have. Shiara knows more about court history, she might remember something.” I glare at Veldi as Zarun helps him to his feet.
“You don’t trust him?” Meroe says.
“That’s not it. If Soliton comes back here every year, then…” I shake my head. “It has to leave soon. And I rotting have to be on it when it does, or else.…”
“I get it,” Meroe says. “We’ll find a way.” Then her forehead creases, deep in thought.
Veldi departs on his own, jogging without fear into the jungle. He was serious about the monsters not being a problem during the day, apparently.
He claims he’ll be back by evening. In the meantime, we keep everyone inside the ziggurat and guards on the doorways. Meroe and Shiara gather what food there is—scraps that happened to be in people’s packs, or that they grabbed in haste when the angels came—and share it out as equitably as they can. It’s a tribute to how much trust the crew has in Meroe after the Garden that those who have food give it up without a murmur.
Some of the fighters press me to let them go into the woods to hunt. If Veldi doesn’t come through, tomorrow we’ll have to risk it, but right now I don’t want to split our strength when we have only his word for what’s out there. One hungry day isn’t going to kill anyone, I hope. I walk restlessly to the guard posts, checking up on things. It’s something you learn as a ward boss—the value of being seen, even if you aren’t really doing anything. Sometimes people treat leaders like fairy stories: if they can’t see you with their own eyes, they don’t believe you’re real.
I wonder what’s happened to the Sixteenth Ward. I’ve been gone long enough that they’ve probably appointed someone to fill my place. No one will question my disappearance much, I’m sure.
Except Tori. That thought gnaws at the back of my mind, and I pause by the northern entrance, which looks out to sea. Soliton is still there, docked beside her decayed sisters, looking for all the world like she’s never going anywhere. But she is, and soon. I have to get back aboard.
“Deepwalker!” A trim young Jyashtani woman hurries up to me, offering a crisp salute. I recognize her, vaguely, as a fighter from one of Zarun’s packs. “Someone’s arrived.”
“Veldi?” I ask her, turning away from the looming, silent ship.
“No, sir,” she says. Her manner makes me wonder if she was a soldier before getting tossed onto Soliton. “It’s a Jyashtani. Says his name is Harak. He’s waiting just inside the south entrance.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I say. “Find Zarun and tell him to meet me there. Meroe, too, if she’s not busy.”
“Yes, sir!” She salutes again, and takes off at a jog.
I thread my way through the ziggurat, passing through the big chamber most of the crew occupy. Now that it’s clear the building is empty, a few have pitched their meager blankets in some of the other rooms in search of a little privacy. Back on Soliton, practically everything that hadn’t been scavenged from tribute had come from the bodies of dead crabs—meat for food, shells for armor and construction, sinew for fiber. What hadn’t come from crabs had been made from mushrooms. Learning to survive here in the jungle would be starting from scratch for the crew, unless the trees happened to hide enormous shelled monsters.
The ziggurat helped, sturdy and defensible in spite of its enormous age. And Veldi’s people clearly manage, so if we have to stay here—
But I can’t stay here. My hands tighten into fists. It’s easy for the immediate problems to get in the way—back on Soliton, I’d let that happen, and my only excuse was that I’d had the better part of a year still to go. Now I have less time, probably much less, and I can’t let myself get distracted again.
On the heels of these thoughts, I stride into the chamber just inside the southern doorway, where five crew with spears are waiting. “Well?” I bark, probably too loud, as they snap to attention. “Where is he?”
“Here I am,” a deep voice says, and I turn.
The man—and it is emphatically a man—is a tall one, topping me by a head and a half, and broad to match. He wears the full, flowing trousers I associate with Jyashtani, gathered at the ankles with dark ribbons, plus leather sandals and little else. His torso looks like a doctor’s anatomical diagram, with each muscle painstakingly picked out under dark, coppery skin. His hands are long-fingered and surprisingly delicate, but his arms are thick and fringed with short black hair. His head is shaved bald, gleaming like it’s been oiled, but he’s kept a thick black mustache, which droops down past the corners of his mouth.
I stop short, looking him over, and he clasps his hands Jyashtani-style and gives me a bow. It makes the muscles in his core shift in interesting ways, and I have an urge to feel them tighten under my fingers. Historically my preference in men has been lithe instead of bulky—like Zarun, for example—but I can’t deny my eyes linger. The scale of him—
Focus, Isoka.
“Deepwalker,” one of the guards says, sounding relieved.
“You said your name is Harak?” I ask the stranger, and he nods.
“I am. And you are Isoka Deepwalker.” I’m able to follow his speech only with difficulty. In addition to a thick accent, he’s speaking pure Jyashtani, and my knowledge of that language is limited. “I am here to welcome you to the place of the Divine Being.”
“Okay,” I tell him, mustering all the Jyashtani I can manage. “So who are you?”
“I am Harak,” he repeats patiently. “Of the gara-tseni.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“My order,” he says. “Your people call us ‘Minders.’” He mangles the Imperial word, but I recall Veldi saying something about “Minder fanatics.” “Our garash, my vettatol, has sent me to bid you welcome, and to offer friendship to all those who would gara tsen volta—”
At that point I lose the thread entirely. Fortunately, there’s a clatter of footsteps, and I look over my shoulder with a sigh of relief as Zarun arrives. Harak perks up as well, bowing deeper, and Zarun, looking surprised, matches his formal style. Harak rattles off a string of Jyashtani too fast for me to understand, and Zarun blinks.
“Can you understand him?” I ask.
“I think so. He sounds a little…” He cocks his head. “Pretentious?”
“Ask him what he wants.”
Zarun nods and answers. After a short dialogue, he turns to me again.
“He says he’s here to welcome us to the Harbor, the holy place of the Divine Being.”
“I got that much. Something about ‘garash’ and an order?”
Zarun frowns. “You have monks in the Empire, yes? People who retreat from the world and devote themselves to religion?”
“We do. Less than we used to, I think.” I remember something about a war between the monks and the Emperor, but I’m not sure if that’s history or just a story. “Is that what he is?”
“More or less.”
“My image of a monk is an old man with limbs like sticks and a long white beard.” I nod at the avatar of masculine perfection in front of us. “Not that.”
“There are many monastic orders in Jyashtan, and their traditions vary widely. His is called the gara-tseni, which is something like ‘those who carefully watch,’ or—”
“The Minders.”
“Right,” Zarun says. “Garash is the head of the order. He says anyone who wants to join them is welcome.” He scratches the side of his head. “I think. He gets a little flowery there.”
“Well.” I pause for a moment, considering. “Tell him…”
I’m saved from having to continue that statement—since I have no rotting idea what to tell him—by the arrival of yet another out-of-breath messenger, this one a boy with a peach-fuzz beard.
“Deepwalker!” he says. “There’s—”
“Let me guess,” I say. “More visitors.”
He gulps and nods. “Veldi’s here, but there’s a whole group with him. And they brought a bunch of stuff. They say there’s food!”
That would at least be something to get excited about. I’ve been steadfastly ignoring the rumbles from my stomach since morning.
“Okay.” I beckon to the leader of the door guards and nod at Harak. “Take him somewhere out of the way, politely, and tell him I’ll be back as soon as I can. Zarun, stick with me, let’s see what Veldi’s friends have to say.”
We follow the boy back through the central chambers. People are talking in small, excited groups, and I can almost see rumors winging their way through the air. If Veldi hasn’t brought food after all, there’s going to be a rotting riot.
“It looks good on you,” Zarun says in my ear.
I frown at him. “What does?”
“Command.”
“Please. You know I’m making this rot up as I go along.”
“Of course. But you don’t let it show.” He gives me that brilliant smile, and I shake my head.
This time, our guards have already escorted the visitors to a small chamber inside the ziggurat. There are, as the messenger warned, quite a few of them. I count a dozen armed Imperials, including Veldi, all young men wearing old-fashioned swords, dark robes, and with their hair done up in the same strange, elaborate style. Four of them stand in a square around a young woman in a long, voluminous kizen, with a silk veil drawn in front of her face.
To one side of these dignitaries, there are another dozen people in less elaborate costumes. They’re evenly split between dark-skinned southerners and pale, blond icelings dressed for labor in rough vests and trousers. Beside them is a pile of heavy canvas sacks, and barrels that seem to be mostly full of silver-skinned fish. Just the sight of it makes my mouth water.
Meroe and Shiara arrive only moments after we do. I’d badly like some time to consult with Meroe, actually, but that doesn’t seem to be an option. As soon as they notice us, the Imperials stand and bow, and I respond automatically. The young woman steps forward, her four retainers following. Her bow is shallower, carefully precise.
“Isoka Deepwalker,” one of the men says. “You represent the new arrivals?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I say.
“My lady of Cresos, ruler of the Harbor, bids you welcome,” he says. “She brings you these gifts as a token of her generosity.”
“She has our thanks,” I say.
The veiled figure beckons, and the man speaking leans closer so she can whisper. He straightens again and says, “My lady wishes to meet with you in private, if that is acceptable.”
I glance at the others. “If what she has to say concerns our crew, then the whole Council should be there.”
Another whisper.
“The southerner may attend,” the man says. “But not the Jyashtani. My lady has suffered enough at the hands of his kind.”
I go tense. Zarun’s face is smooth, unreadable. I glare at the veiled woman.
“Give us a moment?” I ask, and step back with the others. “Any idea what’s going on?”
“Imperials hate Jyashtani,” Zarun says, with a shrug. “It’s not exactly news.”
“It was never a problem on Soliton,” I say.
“Soliton is a ship full of dregs and outlaws,” he says.
“They were on Soliton, too,” Meroe says. “Something else is going on here.”
“Their language is … odd,” Shiara says. “But I’d guess they’re noble-born.”
“Why would Kuon Naga feed nobles to a rotting ghost ship?” I say.
“Because he had some he wanted to be quietly rid of?” Meroe says. “That’s what my father did to me.”
Rot. I hadn’t thought of that. She doesn’t seem upset, but I make a note to apologize later.
“I’m missing something,” Shiara says quietly. “Cresos. It sounds familiar.”
“I could tell them to go to the Rot,” I say to Zarun. “I don’t want to start off with them thinking they get to push us around.”
“We need the food,” he says. “Besides, I can hardly follow this formal talk anyway. I’ll go see if I can get anything more out of Harak, and you find out what you can from Lady Cresos. Maybe if we compare notes we’ll get somewhere.”
I nod, feeling sour. Shiara, Meroe, and I return to the visitors, while Zarun heads back the way we came.
“Lady Cresos is more than welcome to meet with us,” I say, “though we can’t offer much in the way of hospitality. In the meantime, we would like to distribute your gifts among our crew as soon as possible.”
“Of course,” the man says. “Our servants will assist. Some of the Harbor’s fruits will be unfamiliar.”
The servants—all the non-Imperials—start picking up the sacks and barrels. I let them pass, then extend a hand, and the veiled woman follows us out. I note some sour looks among her attendants, but none of them speaks up.
We settle in another empty stone chamber—the ziggurat certainly doesn’t lack for those—with a blanket spread on the floor. Lady Cresos sits, folding her legs beneath her in the nerve-deadening formal style. Shiara matches her neatly, and to my surprise, so does Meroe, with grace enough that you might have thought she was raised in the royal court. I suppose she was raised in a formal court, and probably had special training on dealing with Imperials.
I sit beside her, legs defiantly crossed, and wonder if I should fart and pick my nose to make the point. Lady Cresos inclines her head and reaches up to fold back her veil. When she straightens—
There’s a blurred moment of confusion, and my heart skips a beat.
She doesn’t look that much like Tori, really. She might be about the same age, thirteen or fourteen—has Tori’s birthday passed? I’ve lost track of the date—with the same long, smooth black hair, curling down past her waist. She holds herself in much the same way, the careful manners inculcated by etiquette tutors, and a touch of powder enhances the pallor of her cheeks. Her eyes are different, wider and light brown.
Meroe is looking at me, concerned, and I grit my teeth. Focus, Isoka. Tori is in Kahnzoka, Blessed knows how many miles away, and if I don’t get out of here …
“Thank you,” Meroe says. “For the gifts. The angels didn’t give us much time to gather supplies.”
“They can be rude things, can’t they?” the girl says, with the ghost of a smile. “It is nothing. They bring us more than we need, and I am pleased to share. You are the first newcomers in a long time.”
“Lady Cresos—” I begin.
“You may call me Catoria, if you wish.”
I pause, not sure of the etiquette, but eventually decide to take her at her word. “Catoria, then. My name is Isoka, and these are my fellow Council members Meroe and Shiara.”
“An honor,” Catoria says, with another slight bow.
“You said it’s been a long time,” Meroe says eagerly. “How long? And what happens when no one arrives?”
“Veldi said five years,” I cut in. “What about Soliton? How long does it stay in the dock?”
Catoria holds up her hands, long sleeves brushing on the blanket. “I had a feeling you would be confused. Perhaps I should begin at the beginning?”
Meroe and I look at each other. I glance at Shiara, who has raised one painted eyebrow, as though to ask why I insist on making a fool of myself.
“Perhaps,” I say, “that would be best.”