Page 34 of City of Stone and Silence

“Some of us thought we were going to be exiled, as an act of Imperial mercy. Others guessed the Emperor had devised an even more gruesome fate for us. I suppose both were correct, in a way. One foggy summer night, the Guard drove us in a sealed wagon down to the docks.”

“And rowed you out to Soliton,” I guess.

She inclines her head. “Indeed. You all shared that experience, so I don’t need to explain the conditions aboard the ship. When we arrived, Soliton was empty of human life, though we found plenty of scraps and ruins. We huddled together in the lower decks, hiding from the crabs, only slowly learning to hunt. Few of us had any experience using our Wells in combat.”

Aristos. I manage to keep the thought to myself. They work so hard to keep mage-blood in their family lines, and then do rot-all with it. It’s hard to hold on to my scorn, though, seeing the sorrow on Catoria’s face.

“I was the heir to the Cresos clan,” she went on. “My uncle’s families had been exterminated, and so I was the last survivor of the main line. My cousins defended me as best they could, and though some of them gave their lives, little by little we established ourselves. As Soliton passed through the Southern Kingdoms and the Waste, more sacrifices came aboard, and they agreed to serve the clan in exchange for our protection.

“Later that year, however, another large group came aboard somewhere in Jyashtan.” Her voice went hard. “They called themselves the Minders, and at first they refused any offer of cooperation. There were even fights between us, though we kept apart. Other Jyashtani sacrifices joined them, and soon there were two growing communities.

“From Jyashtan, Soliton’s path took it north and east, into the lands of the icelings. More sacrifices came and they split between the two groups. But there was one among them, a girl named Silvoa. She…”

Catoria pauses, swallows. I can feel Meroe nearly bursting with unasked questions, but she manages to restrain herself.

“Silvoa brought us together. She came to me and to Gragant, the Minders’ leader, and showed us the folly of our feud. She was … persuasive.” Again, that very slight smile. “We agreed to work together, under her leadership, and we gained the upper hand over the crabs. Some of my family even started to talk about finding a way off Soliton, back to Kahnzoka, to revive the clan.”

“Did you find a way past the angels?” I say, trying not to sound too interested.

Catoria shakes her head. “Silvoa had some ideas. But things changed before we could try any of them.”

“Changed how?” Meroe says.

“Silvoa started hearing … voices.” Catoria pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath. “I didn’t believe her at first. We fought. It wasn’t until later that she … convinced me. She said that Soliton itself was talking to her, and it wanted us—”

“To find the Garden,” I say, grimly.

“Yes.” Catoria gives a satisfied nod. “I suspected as much when Veldi told me so many of you came ashore. You have someone who can hear the voice of the ship, too.”

“We do,” I say. Shiara catches my eye, silently urging caution, and I stop there.

“Then I imagine you know what happened. We and the Jyashtani fought our way forward to the Bow, and Silvoa led us into the Garden and closed the doors behind us. Sometime later the ship passed the Vile Rot, and we heard the crabs going mad outside.”

It sounds like they’d had a considerably easier time of it than we did. Part of that was down to the Scholar trying to kill everyone in his mad bid to seize control, of course, but if we’d set out earlier, I wonder how many more might have been saved. Another thing I wouldn’t have cared about, before.

“We arrived here, at the Harbor,” Catoria says, “and the angels forced us off the ship. When we reconnoitered inland, we encountered Prime’s monsters, and they began to harry us by night. Silvoa led us to shelter in one of the great ziggurats, and the angels began to deliver food from the fields. Eventually we explored the rest of the city and found the second empty ziggurat, along with the one inhabited by Prime. We pushed his creatures back, and for a while it seemed…”

She trails off, her face pinched. I notice one sleeve of her kizen is wrapped in her fist, fingers squeezed tight.

“Silvoa had a theory,” she goes on eventually, when none of us break the silence. “In each of the great ziggurats there’s a … she called it an access point. A room studded with metal bars and pipes. Silvoa said she could talk to the city there, the same as she could talk to Soliton.”

I thought of the chamber where I’d fought the Scholar, deep within the Garden, full of the metal conduits that conducted Eddica power through the ship like blood through a body. There were other places I’d been able to feel the flow, but never so strongly as in that room.

Here, in the Harbor, I’d felt nothing of the kind. Only the vast current of energy from Soliton into the city was visible at all, and even that felt distant, obscured. Certainly my attempts to touch it with my own power had been fruitless. I’d wondered if the city functioned in the same way as the ship—it apparently had angels of its own—but …

“After visiting the two ziggurats we could access,” Catoria says, “Silvoa thought that if she could only reach the third, the city would … recognize her. Accept her as its master. I don’t fully understand what she wanted, but she insisted she had to go to Prime’s fortress. I tried to convince her it was too dangerous.” Catoria lets go of the twisted loop of silk and looks down at her hands.

“I begged her not to go, and in the end she agreed. She agreed.” The girl pauses again. “But Gragant talked to her while I was asleep, and convinced her to try. He and some of his Minders went with her, and some of my men as well. Silvoa was certain that she could speak to Prime, negotiate with him.” Catoria shakes her head. “Only Gragant returned. Silvoa and the rest died there, at the hands of Prime’s creatures. Just as I’d said they would.”

“Did he tell you what happened to them?” Meroe says. “Or who ‘Prime’ actually—”

“He claims he saw little,” Catoria spits. “The guilt, I imagine, was too much for him. He betrayed me, and he betrayed Silvoa, whom he’d sworn to serve. I do not … wish to speak of him.” She clears her throat. “The Minders left us soon afterward, taking up residence in the other great ziggurat. Since then, we’ve waited for Soliton to return. It’s been five years. The first four times, no one disembarked. I suppose no one survived the passage of the Rot. But now you’ve come.” Her smile widens, becoming a little more genuine. “Swear loyalty to the Cresos clan—to me—and you can join us.”

“Well?” I ask Meroe. “How much of that do you believe?”

“That is … a good question,” Meroe says.

We’re standing against the wall of one of the large chambers, where most of the crew has settled. Shiara is helping supervise the distribution of the Cresos clan’s gifts to the crew. In addition to the food, there are blankets and rolls of mottled, tightly woven cloth. I wonder if that comes from the angels, too.