The Weight of the Hunt

How much water could a human body lose before the blood turned to sludge?

My tongue felt like dry leather against the roof of my mouth. Every breath through my nose tasted of hot zinc and scorched dust. Empathic tracking had burned through my hydration like tallow in a blast furnace. If I did not drink clean water soon, my throat would split.

In the lower bunk of Berth Fourteen, Countess Shizuka rested against my coarse wool blanket.

Her silver-threaded sleeve spilled over the wooden frame. In the dim amber glow of the emergency gas valve, she looked less like a monster and more like a pampered passenger waiting for late-night tea service.

"You are shaking, steward," she said.

Her voice had the smooth chill of well water. Even two feet away, her presence cooled the stifling heat of the engine deck.

"Dehydration," I croaked. I pressed my palm against my temple. The headache was returning, a dull iron mallet striking behind my eyes. "The gift feeds on water. When I stretch my senses across three companionways, my body burns whatever moisture it has left."

Shizuka tilted her head. Her dark eyes reflected the tiny flicker of the wall sconce. "Then fetch a drink. Or do you prefer to dry into dust on your floorboards?"

"There is no running tap on Deck Six," I told her in a rough whisper. "The boilers take priority. Servants draw rations twice a day from the pantry lockers. If we miss the whistle, we wait."

"A tedious arrangement." She smoothed a crease from her cuff. "I require you functional, Kazuki. A dead steward makes an inconvenient shield."

"Your concern warms my heart, Countess."

I pulled my dark service coat over my damp linen shirt. My ribs ached where Commander Haruki had pressed his pneumatic cane, but the brass cargo passkey was safely transferred from my apron into my inner pocket. I grabbed an empty canvas satchel from the floor hook.

"Stay behind the bolt," I told her. "If anyone knocks with two taps and a scrape, that is me. If anyone knocks with an iron baton, dissolve into the vent and do not look back."

Shizuka offered a faint, razor-thin smile. "Go, little water-carrier. Do not make me hunt for another keeper."

I slipped into the corridor and eased the hatch shut.

Deck Six smelled of coal sludge, boiled cabbage, and tired bodies. Eight bells had struck ten minutes ago. The second-shift stokers were stumbling toward the washhouse, boots dragging on the grates.

I kept to the shadow of the steam main.

Two purger inspectors in gray canvas smocks stood by the forward stairs, respirators unlatched. I waited behind a stack of grease drums until their boots clattered up the ladder toward Deck Five, then hurried down the trench toward the scullery.

The main pantry sat between the potato bins and the dry-stores vault. Head Stewardess Miyako kept it under a heavy brass padlock. More than that, she had rigged a thin copper tripwire across the upper jamb, hooked to a tin bell inside the scullery office. Anyone who forced the door without disarming the wire would wake three cooks and two night watchmen.

My hands trembled with thirst, but my fingers remembered the work.

I knelt by the threshold. I reached into my coat collar and pulled out a four-inch piece of piano wire, bent at the tip with steward pliers. Slipping the wire through the crack above the latch, I hooked the loop of the tripwire and pinned it against the wooden frame with a small wooden wedge.

The bell did not make a sound.

Next came the padlock. It was an old four-tumbler brass cylinder from the Togawa workshops. I inserted my tension bar, tapped the second pin until it clicked, and twisted the plug. The lock popped open with a greasy clink.

I slid inside and pulled the heavy door shut behind me, leaving it unlatched by an inch.

The pantry smelled of brine, dried ginger, and cold lard. My nose twitched, taking in the faint sour trace of vinegar barrels and the chalky aroma of mineral salt.

I did not dare strike a match. The purgers watched the lower grates for unauthorized light.

Instead, I moved by memory and scent. I stepped past the hanging racks of cured pork to the third iron shelf on the left. My fingertips found the cold, condensation-slick metal of the high-altitude water canteens. These were heavy copper cylinders, each pressurized with a hand pump to prevent vapor bubbles in thin air.

Beside them sat the ration boxes of mineral salt tabs, prescribed for crewmen working the fireboxes to keep their hearts from stopping.

I unstoppered the first canteen and drank.

The water was flat, tasting of tin and charcoal filter, but to my scorched throat it tasted like heaven. Three deep gulps chilled my burning stomach and dulled the pounding behind my eyes.

I loaded three copper canteens into my canvas satchel, wedging two tins of salt cakes between them so the metal would not clink. The bag was heavy, a reassuring drag against my shoulder.

With this, Shizuka and I could survive in Berth Fourteen for three days without showing my face on the upper decks.

I turned back toward the pantry door.

A thin sliver of light cut through the gap in the doorway. It was not the yellow lantern glow of a stoker, nor the blue arc-light of a purger sniffer. It was a soft, steady beam from a brass reflector lamp.

The scent came a second later, drifting through the seam of the wood.

Starch. Bitter green tea. And the pungent, peppery stench of cold suspicion.

My stomach dropped.

The door swung inward with a slow, deliberate creak.

Head Stewardess Miyako stood in the doorway.

She wore her dark woolen uniform coat, fully buttoned to the throat despite the sweltering heat of the boiler decks. Her gray-streaked hair was pinned tight beneath her stewardess cap. In her left hand, she held a shuttered bullseye lamp. The focused beam dipped from my face into the gaping mouth of my canvas satchel, catching the polished copper necks of the three canteens and the red enamel of the salt tins.

In her right hand, she held a yellow paper form bearing the red ink stamp of Haruki's office.

"Three canteens," Miyako said. Her tone was completely flat. "And two tins of boiler salt. You always did have expensive tastes, Kazuki."

I did not move. The heavy satchel hung from my fingers like an anchor. "The heat in the service tunnels was bad tonight, Mistress. My throat was parched."

"Do not insult my intelligence," she snapped, stepping into the pantry and letting the heavy wooden door swing shut behind her. The small room suddenly felt smaller than a coffin. "A parched steward takes a ladle from the scullery tub. He does not pick a four-tumbler lock and pack twelve pounds of emergency rations into a traveler's bag."

She raised the yellow paper. In the lantern light, I saw the printed heading: Pneumatic Purger Division—Contraband and Irregularity Notice.

"Haruki's dogs spent the last hour tearing apart Deck Three," Miyako said, lowering the lamp until the beam washed over my boots. "They found camphor oil in the vents. They found burnt eucalyptus in the corridor grates. And Commander Haruki specifically asked me why my senior cabin steward smelled like a medicinal boiler."

"I explained that to him," I said softly. "Baron Minato had an altitude seizure."

"Minato is an indebted drunkard who could sleep through an artillery barrage," Miyako retorted. Her sharp eyes fixed on mine, hard as obsidian. "He did not order three canteens of Deck Six crew water. And he is not hiding in the lower berths."

She held the yellow paper steady, but my raw nose caught what her stiff posture tried to hide. Beneath the pepper of her anger lay the sour, cold sweat of someone holding an empty hand. The signature line at the bottom of the purger notice was blank. She had not reported me to Haruki. Not yet.

"You have five minutes, Kazuki," she said, her voice dropping into a harsh murmur. "Tell me what is inside Berth Fourteen, or I sign this form and walk it to the watchroom myself."

The weight of the three copper canteens pulled at my shoulder, cold and unyielding against my ribs. I had Minato's cargo passkey in my pocket and an ancient horror resting on my cot, but I knew the head stewardess well enough to know she did not bluff twice.

I set the satchel down on the wooden prep table.

Running was impossible. Lying would only hasten the rope. If I wanted to keep Shizuka hidden and my skull intact, I had five minutes to find the one secret Miyako feared more than Haruki's purgers, and lay it bare before she signed that sheet.