“Pezarrat should send you a warm body.”

“No.” Djola held up the metal-mesh bag of poison sand. “I’m too busy.”

“Studying void-storms?” She pushed him back toward sick bay. “Be careful there.”

The next morning, Djola gave Pezarrat acid-conjure, and the captain raided a fleet of merchant ships. Djola refused to watch. He hid in his bunk and drank seed and silk potion. Victory was swift. Hulls turned to sludge and merchants surrendered. No casualties. “A man of your word.” Pezarrat mocked him, but left him alone to work.

Djola spent the next days trying to neutralize poison sand. He lined a wooden bucket with Lahesh metal-mesh and wore a mesh veil to protect his face. He doused lethal grains with fire or water, then added concoctions of crystals, potash, bat dung, and lava stone.

The results were always the same: a spoonful of poison sand turned into a bucketful, which he tossed out a porthole. He should have worried about watery forests and behemoths, but despair and seed and silk blunted his concern. He needed to talk to wise men in the floating cities.

20

Orca

After a fifth acid-conjure raid, celebrations raged up on deck. Djola lay on his bunk in a silk-and-seed stupor, watching a spider weave a web—a crossroads-moon Vévé—in the open sick bay door. Pezarrat charged through the sticky strands. He clawed his face and spit spider-silk. “Vandana says you need a warm body.”

Pirates dragged in Orca, a hefty boy with dimpled cheeks and a long, silky braid. Orca had been used so badly during the celebration, he could barely walk.

“No.” Djola refused to invite a spy between his thighs. “No.”

Pezarrat chortled. “Vandana fought off a gang of horny men. She insisted the fat one was perfect for you.”

“If I don’t want him, will you dump him in the sea?”

“Why keep spoiled meat?” Pezarrat and his men barged past Vandana.

Djola groaned at the blood on Orca’s clothes and the suffering in his face.

“Give me a hand!” Vandana helped Orca to Djola’s bunk.

Djola and Vandana tended Orca’s wounds, gave him food Vandana stole from Pezarrat’s table and boiled wine made from Smokeland fruit. Djola held Orca’s hand through the night while Vandana told tales of wild women from beyond the maps. Instead of dying out after plague and war decimated their people, the women crossed Mama Zamba and seduced thief-lords, good citizens, pirates, and slaves. Dazzled by free, wild-women ways and anxious for another life, a better story, their lovers went back over the mountains with the women and never returned to the Empire.

“Is this true?” Orca whispered.

“Yes.” Djola squeezed the boy’s hand, wanting to believe also. “True.”