Chapter Sixteen

Ayaan dipped her sponge in the murky tub and then squeezed it between her two hands so it wouldn’t drip. The liches in the officers’ mess were quite particular about their windows. There was little in the way of entertainment available to them onboard—those who could read had already worked their way through the scant magazines and books left behind by the previous crew. Looking out at the waves was hardly the pinnacle of excitement but it had a hypnotic power, especially in the twilight hours. The hairy lich, the one Ayaan had begun to think of as a werewolf, could stand by the window for whole days at a time, moving only to eat. It seemed that being dead changed your brain chemistry, made you less anxious at the passing away of time, of the waste of your life. Of course maybe it was just the fact that the liches were functionally immortal. If she knew she had centuries, millennia to pass, Ayaan thought, she would feel a lot less urgency to carpe every diem.

“Look, Amanita’s come out for some sun,” the werewolf said. His voice was muffled and distorted—the weird growth of hair lined all of his orifices, his tongue covered in what looked like sodden felt—but Ayaan could understand his simple English. Along with the other liches in the room she stepped over to where he pointed, his furry finger smearing grease on the window pane. Ayaan silently grumbled: she would have to clean that mark.

Amanita, the creature the werewolf had seen, was often spoken of by the cultists but Ayaan had never seen her before. She had, she remembered, seen mushrooms and puffballs growing in profusion at the refinery on Cyprus, so she must have been very close to the Tsarevich’s most accomplished lieutenant. Still she wasn’t prepared for what she saw through the window. Atop the tower where the liches kept their quarters Amanita stood naked in the sun, perhaps two and a half meters tall. She made no attempt to cover her genitalia but then she hardly needed to. A thick layer of fungal growth covered every square centimeter of her skin. Long, filamentous mycellia made her hair while her shoulders and back were studded with yellow chytrids. Dark fuzzy mildew draped from her breasts while rows of bright orange Judas’ ear mushrooms ringed her distended belly and mold dripped from her fingers.

She had the power, they said, that made grain sprout from the earth, that made creeping olive vines twist across Siberian tundra. She had the ultimate green thumb, she could make anything vegetative flourish wherever a dried-up seed or a crystallized spore or a half-gnawed rhizome still lingered in the ground. They said she had saved entire villages from starvation after the unceasingly hungry ghouls had devoured all their crops. Her true love, though, was not in green things but in blights and rots and molds and especially mushrooms. The name she’d chosen sounded pretty enough. It was also the Latin name for the mushroom commonly called the Destroying Angel.

What she might be doing atop the tower was anyone’s guess. “I wonder if this has anything to do with your friend,” the green phantom said, turning to look directly at Ayaan.

Ayaan held the sponge carefully with both hands so it wouldn’t drip on the floor. She tried to look like she had no idea what he meant. It wasn’t that hard, since she didn’t.

“You know, the girl. The girl on the flying bridge. I think she’s one of the navigators. Isn’t she one of your co-conspirators?” The green phantom smiled, his desiccated skin stretching whitely across his sharp jaws.

Ayaan dropped the sponge and ran. She expected to feel his power wrapping icy chains around her heart at any moment as she stumbled down the stairs, down toward the foredeck. She was just trying to get away from him. Strangely enough, he let her go.

She rushed out onto the deck, dodging between cook fires and capstans. She saw the Least ahead and knew she would have to avoid him. Beyond that she had no plan. What was he doing? He kept jumping up and down. The whole deck vibrated as he collided with it again and again. Hiding behind an enormous bollard she peered out to see what he was up to. He was trying to touch the end of the ship’s main crane, an enormous long boom made of girders that loomed out over half the deck. Something dangled at the end of the crane, a piece of bloody meat or... or...

It was the Turkish girl, of course. Ayaan swallowed in horror. They had cut her wrists and her ankles, punched holes in her until her blood ran in sheets down her body but they hadn’t killed her. She was still moving, a spasm here, a twitch there in between long pauses to rest and regain what little strength remained to her. She was still alive.

Just the way the Least would want her.

Ayaan slapped her cheeks to try to get her blood moving again and hurried aft. There was still a chance, a chance to do some good. Without the girl on the flying bridge they couldn’t release the underside compartment hatches, they couldn’t flush the Tsarevich’s army of undead. They could still... the fire...

Ayaan had never known the girl’s name. That had been intentional—in case any of them were caught they couldn’t give each other away. It just seemed horrible now. She had gotten the girl tortured to death, might as well have fed her to that brute herself and for what? For... Ayaan stopped herself. The liches were still all up in the superstructure, in the mess she had just left but the Tsarevich and Amanita were in the tower. If the liches knew about the girl they certainly knew about the Siberian and the plan to torch the tower. They could catch her at any moment, they could kill her from a distance. If she acted quickly enough, however, if she didn’t stop to think, maybe she could still sell her life dearly. It was all she wanted. At least it would be enough.

He was there—the Siberian—standing outside the tower as she drew near. Just standing there, waiting for her to come and tell him what to do. She rushed up waving her hands and yelling at him, not caring who might hear, screaming at him to start the fire but he just stood there, looking at her, his face strangely empty of emotion.

She got close enough to touch him but she didn’t. She knew something was wrong. He opened his mouth to speak and then he started coughing, spasmodically, horribly, gagging and choking and spitting. Dark clouds of spores erupted from his mouth, stained Ayaan’s clothing where they flecked across her. The sea breeze tore the rest of them out and away to float over the ocean. The Siberian’s skin darkened, started to turn blue. Not from anoxia, though he was clearly suffocating. It was a creeping kind of mold, like Penicillin growing on bread, that changed his color. It swarmed up and over him, dry smut dripping from his tear glands, furry mold sprouting from his ears, from his nose. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Cicatrix walked out of the deck-level entrance to the tower. She had the doctor, the hand surgeon from the stern, on an actual leash, a dog collar around his neck.

“Tell her what you do to her,” Cicatrix demanded, and forced the man to his knees.

He stammered and sobbed and tried to look up at Ayaan but he couldn’t, he didn’t have the strength.

“Tell her!” Cicatrix screamed, and kicked the man in his ribs.

“Stop. I know what he did,” Ayaan told her. Clearly he had divulged her secrets. Given away her grand plot. She couldn’t blame him, either. He had a badly-sutured wound on the end of his right arm where one of his hands used to be. He probably begged them to leave the left one intact, would have done anything for that. Ayaan wondered if he had told them how many bones were in his hand, how many muscles.

A wave of revulsion for the broken man swam up her innards, blossomed in her throat. He should have died, he should have thrown himself over the side of the boat before confessing. It was what she would have demanded of herself. She tried to tell herself that the threat of death would make this man do anything—anything to survive. It was hardly a unique perspective. It wasn’t hers, though. Ayaan had grown up listening to stories of glorious martyrs, of those who traded their lives on Earth for the greater good amd the Paradise that awaited. She had seen so many things, learned so much, but she didn’t suppose she would ever have real sympathy for such a coward.

Her mouth filled. She spat on him.

“You’ve caught me,” she told Cicatrix. “I won’t apologize. As one living woman to another all I ask for is a clean death.”

Cicatrix smiled at her. “It was clever plan,” she said, ignoring Ayaan’s request. “We talk about it, all this day, Tsarevich and myself. We were being quite impressed and entertained.”

Clearly Ayaan wasn’t going to get the swift resolution she wanted. She glanced sideways at the rail. She could be over it in a second. It would take only a heartbeat before she hit the water. Ayaan couldn’t swim—it would be over quickly. She’d heard unpleasant things about death by drowning, and it wouldn’t keep her from coming back as a ghoul but still. It would be a better exit. A cleaner way to go.

Then she felt the energy draining out of her limbs, her muscles, her bones. She could barely keep her eyelids open. Any moment she would... she would collapse... she knew the... green phantom... had her...

“We like you,” Cicatrix said, bending over her, smiling down at her. Ayaan had fallen to the deck without realizing it. “We think you’re fun.”

Ayaan’s vision closed down like a black shutter falling across Cicatrix’s face.