Chapter 104
Tyngd stands over the kneeling crew. Rain explodes off his shoulders. The Ballast lie flat around him like a carpet.
on his knees, lightning sputtering on one fist, glaring up.
looking at Vigolas's coat, at the faint clink of shards in its lining.
grinning through gritted teeth.
opening, palm down, toward the coat. A slow, heavy gesture, like pressing a lid shut.
The coat gets heavy. The midnight-green fabric sags, the lining pulls, the 36 shards clink and then grind, and Vigolas is slammed flat on his face into the deck with a crack that splits the planks around him.
face crushed into the wood, the coat on his back pressing like a mountain. He can't breathe.
on his knees, reaching for him.
Rougeina Swaps toward Tyngd with a light thing, a raindrop, to fall onto him. Tyngd doesn't look at her. He flicks a finger at her eight blades, and they suddenly weigh a ton each. She drops out of the air onto her back, pinned by her own steel.
Smurjan opens his third eye. Tyngd glances at his shadow, and it becomes so heavy it can't rise. Kali and Bakasura are trapped under it like stone. Smurjan crashes forward onto his hands.
Everything gets heavy:
Kompis raises Lilla Ulv, and Tyngd makes the pistol weigh a cart. Kompis's arm slams down. Lilla Ulv: "i'm too HEAVY—"
Drekk swings his axe from his knees, and Tyngd makes the axe-head weigh a house. It buries itself in the deck.
Mingus lunges, and Tyngd looks at the dog. Nothing happens. He can't make Mingus heavy. Mingus bites his boot and hangs on, wagging.
looking down at the dog on his boot, puzzled.
(He nudges Mingus off with his foot, gently, almost respectfully.)
under the mountain-coat, face in the wood, looking sideways across the deck: Rougeina pinned by her blades, Smurjan crushed by his shadow, Kompis's arm trapped under his pistol, Drekk's axe buried. Everyone held down because of him. Because of the coat.
Greed-sight flickers on by itself. The coat blazes gold: thirty-six shards, the files of everyone's fate, the most valuable thing he owns. And across the deck, his crew, glowing brighter.
wheezing, to Tyngd.
surprised.
Vigolas, flat on the deck under a coat that weighs a mountain, wriggles his arms out of the sleeves, one, then the other, with lightning sparking along his arms from the strain, and crawls out from under it. Coatless. Shirt torn. On his knees in the bullet-rain.
Behind him the midnight-green coat lies on the deck like a fallen flag, so heavy it has sunk into the planks, the 36 shards glowing faintly through the lining.
Across the deck the crew watches the greediest man they know give up the treasure of the world without a word.
a long look at the coatless pirate. Then he lifts his hand. The weights lift off the crew: Rougeina's blades, Smurjan's shadow, the axe, the pistol. They all gasp.
Tyngd picks up the coat. To him it weighs nothing; he decides it weighs nothing. He throws it over his huge shoulder like a towel.
on his knees, rain hammering his bare shoulders.
Tyngd turns and walks away through the rain, upright, the coat over his shoulder, toward a dark shape on the horizon: a squat hall of grey lead. The Ballast crawl after him.
crawling over to Vigolas, putting a hand on his bare back.
a crooked grin with rain running off his nose.
The crew, on their knees in the wreckage, too heavy to stand, too heavy to sail. The rain hammers. The bell is embedded in the deck. They don't know where to go.
A slit in the rock, like the Ballast came from. Something moves inside it.
Hands come out of the slit: callused, strong, trembling. They grab the crew by the ankles and wrists and pull them down into the dark, one by one.
lit by fires, hidden under the planet's crust. Around the fires, figures. Not crawling. Standing: bent double, trembling, every muscle shaking, but up, on their own two feet, proud as kings. In the middle, an ancient woman, eighty if she's a day, straighter than all of them.