Bulkington’s voice lowered. “The Möbius Beast.”
“It’s a myth,” Dawlish replied. “A great white Leviathan longer than any you’ve seen, hide all pitted with craters and a hundred wicked eyes all gleaming its evil intent.” He laughed, which was a strange sound through an artificial larynx. “It’s a skyfarers’ tale.”
“It’s real as you or I”—a note of warning crept into Bulkington’s voice—“I’ve seen it, all the mates have seen it. Tell him, Truelove.”
Mr. Truelove once again did not like being given orders, but he wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to exposit his worldview. “I havealwaysheld that the skies were full of monsters. The Möbius Beast is one of them. Neither greatest nor least.”
“Not the greatest,” Bulkington agreed, “but to the captain perhaps the one that matters more than any other. Tore her boat apart it did, cast her out into the open sky then snatched her up in its great mandibles. If her leg’d not come off in its jaws it would’ve had her whole.”
“Bullshit.” This was Dawlish again, surprisingly skeptical for a man mostly machine himself. “She’d never survive a suit breach.”
Bulkington gave a half shrug of his broad shoulders. “Auto-seals. Closed round what was left of her thigh. Still, the cold did a number on the nerves. I hear she’s half in agony most days, all in agony the rest.”
“Don’t spread rumors about your betters, Bulkington,” said Truelove with an air of command that felt out of place.
That went down sourly with Bulkington, and indeed with everybody in the room not wearing a trapezohedron. “I count nobody my better,” he said levelly, “nor myself another’s. Not even you.”
There were two ways that could have been meant, and Truelove chose to take both at once. He stood, bowed his head in a very forced show of respect, and fucked off, taking Marsh with him.
“Wisdomers,” Dawlish muttered into his mush. “Fucking weirdos.”
Bulkington nodded sagely. “I daresay we seem just as strange to them.”
Keen to turn conversation back to something I was actually interested in, I tried to return us to talk of the captain. “And has nobody seen her since her last voyage?”
“Nobody,” Bulkington told me. “Save maybe the owners.”
The Pretty Vestal looked nervous. “That doesn’t seem right. You say we’ll hear great and terrible things about the captain, Mr. Bulkington, but so far what I’ve heard has been much closer to terrible.”
“Quid audistis?” asked Q. Then she clarified, “What?”
The Vestal seemed to shrink into himself. “I don’t like to say.”
With what I can only call serene disapproval, Bulkington looked down at him. “Speak, lad,” he said, “or be silent, but don’t hint at things you won’t talk about.”
“I’ve heard,” the Vestal continued at last, “that she bows before dark gods, that she hoards illegal technologies, that she went stark staring mad after her last trip and now she lurks in the dark, hobbling about on a mechanical leg—”
“And what,” asked Dawlish, very pointedly leaning his mechanical chin on his mechanical hand, “does her having a mechanical leg have to do with anything?”
Realizing that he’d fucked up in front of somebody who substantially outranked him, the Vestal backpedaled.“Nothing. Of course. I just… well… she must have been through a lot, and that must make a person do unusual things.”
“What does it matter if it does?” asked Dawlish. “One captain’s much like another, and we’re all unusual in our way. I’m the last to take against a person just because they’ve been reconfigured.”
The whole exchange caught me off guard. It wasn’t her reconfiguration that drew me to the captain, or to the idea of the captain, but the suggestion that it might be touched nerves I did not want touched. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to—” I began, then finished with a shamefaced, “You’re right, we shouldn’t be speculating.”
Dawlish laughed. “Speculate away, everybody does. I’m sure you want to know how I came by this”—he indicated his jaw—“and this”—his chest—“or even this”—he pointed his mechanical arm back at itself. “Just as no doubt there’s a story to tell about whereyoucome from.”
I’d spat out a “No” before I could remind myself how sus that would look. “That is, nothing interesting. Just a skyfarer.”
“Typical shipboard nobody?” suggested Bulkington with the kind of warm smile that only a very few men are capable of. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of those. And we’ve all got tales we’d rather not share.”
On which note he too departed. And when Dawlish finished eating he went as well. But on the way out he laid a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, girl,” he whispered. “We’re voiders. We choose our pasts.”
It was a comforting thought. Though I wasn’t really sure what past I wanted to choose. Or what future, for that matter.
CHAPTER
THIRTEENA
