Page 62 of City of Stone and Silence

“The problem,” Meroe says, “is that I fell in love with a self-centered, self-pitying piece of rotscum.”

“I—” Anger drains away, all at once, and a terrible guilt surges to take its place. “Meroe. I don’t—”

But she’s already leaving, dress whipping around her as she stalks away. I can’t bring myself to call out as she clomps heavily down the stairs.

I sit back down, legs wobbling underneath me. Then, eyes still full of tears, I start to laugh.

The sun is long gone, and the sky is full of stars.

Go downstairs, something at the back of my mind tells me. It’s the fever, the guilt. Tell her that, tell her you’re sorry. She’ll put her arms around me, and tell me she’s sorry, too, and kiss me, because Meroe is a better person than I have any right to have near me.

But if I do that, then I’ll have to figure out what comes next. Face the prospect that Soliton is going to leave, stranding me here, maybe for the rest of my life, while back in Kahnzoka, Tori will be at Kuon Naga’s nonexistent mercy.

What rotting kind of life could I live, knowing that? Staying here with the crew, with Meroe, knowing that my failure had delivered my sister into the hands of a monster?

Fog has rolled in off the sea, swathing the forest in wisps of cloud. The moon, rising, glints across the top of the mist, like a cold ocean rising up over the treetops. It swirls unsettlingly, and as I watch, it parts to reveal a large, four-legged figure at the base of the ziggurat. It’s an angel with a dog’s head, the one I’ve glimpsed several times now, which followed us from Soliton. It stands on the steps at the bottom of the building, looking upward, and I swear it sees me. It makes a jerking motion with its head, over one shoulder. Then again, as though it wants me to follow.

Following it would be madness, of course. Prime’s monsters could be out there, along with Blessed knows what else.

But it’s better than going back inside and confronting the truth.

I stand up, leaving the blanket behind. I’ve got only a light tunic on, feet bare, but it’s a warm night. The ramp on the side of the ziggurat doesn’t come all the way up, so I step off the edge of the first tier, absorbing the ten-foot drop with a crouch and a flare of Melos armor. Then the next, and the next, heat rising along my bare legs, descending in an arc of spitting green sparks. When I reach the ramp, I start to jog, bare feet slapping against the stone. The angel keeps staring at me, unmoving, until I’m nearly to the bottom. Then it turns, and with a last look over its shoulder lopes into the misty darkness.

I go after it. It moves slowly enough that I can keep pace, far enough behind that I can barely make out its bulk through the fog. Swirls of mist open around me, and in every faint, moonlit shadow I expect to see a walking corpse or a lizard-bird waiting to claw my guts out. But nothing attacks me. Overhead, I hear the squeak and flap of bats on the hunt, and once the abrupt screech of something small dying suddenly amid the undergrowth.

I don’t know which direction we’re going, but we travel for some time. Eventually the forest stops at a neat line of trees, and the angel walks out into a plowed field. There are other angels here, inert and still, waiting for daylight to begin their appointed tasks again. Compared to Soliton’s guardians, who are all disturbing, fantastical shapes, the angels of the Harbor are utilitarian—great featureless bodies with four legs and two arms, looking like stone statues no one has carved in detail. They take no notice of us.

The dog-angel stops in the middle of the field, the blue glow from its crystal eye lighting up the ground. In the middle of the neatly plowed rows of earth, there’s a pit, the sort of thing a real dog might dig to bury a bone. It’s about as deep as I am tall, like a grave. I pause in front of it, skin sheathed in sweat after the long run, breathing hard and fighting a stitch in my side. The angel points its nose down into the pit, and waits.

“You want me to go down there?” I ask it. I’m not expecting a response, and I don’t get one. Approaching the edge of the pit, I look down, and see something gleaming dully at the bottom. “Are you going to bury me alive?” I pause. “That’s a joke, I think.”

I climb down. What else am I supposed to do, at that point? Go home?

As I descend, the dog-angel lies on its belly and lets one foreleg hang into the pit beside me. It’s just about long enough to reach the bottom, and it puts its heavy stonelike paw on a gleaming bit of metal. I kick away a few clods of dirt to reveal a long metallic tube buried in the soil, stretching into the walls of the pit as though this angel had excavated a hole around some kind of sewer pipe.

Maybe it is a sewer pipe. Or irrigation for the fields? My grasp of the principles of agriculture is pretty hazy. Or else—

Then I get it, and my skin pebbles into goose bumps. It’s not a pipe for water, or for sewage. It’s a conduit, carrying Eddica energy, like the ones I found in the control room on Soliton. I’d known there must be something like that here, judging by the flows of power I could feel, but not where. Bending over, I can see the rush of energy inside it, tiny motes of gray light tumbling through the metal in a current. They wash up and around the paw of the dog-angel, shimmering in the blue glow of its eye.

It lifts its paw, then touches the conduit again.

“Yeah,” I say. “I get it.”

I don’t understand. But what else is new?

I put my hand on the conduit, and try to feel the Eddica flow through me. Then, all at once, there’s another presence, and a voice in my head.

“It took you long enough.”

“Hagan?” It comes out as a whisper.

His shape appears before my closed eyelids, outlined in gray Eddica-light. I fight the urge to sob at the sight of him. Not that I make a habit of that, but …

“Where have you been?” I say. “I haven’t seen you since my fight with the Scholar. I thought—” I swallow and clear my throat. “I thought you were dead. Deader. Dead again. Whatever.”

“I think—I think I nearly was.” His shape wavers, as though it’s made of fog and the wind has picked up. “I don’t think I’m quite … whole, anymore. I don’t remember everything. What the Scholar did … damaged me. It took a while for me to pull myself together, so to speak.”

“I tried to help you,” I tell him.