Chapter 105
A long crack deep under Tyngden's crust, lit by fires. Huts of flat stone. Everywhere, people standing, bent and shaking, faces set like iron. Children practise on their knees in rows. An old man does push-ups that look like they could kill him.
on their knees by the fire, soaked and bruised. Mor Lyft stands before them, tiny and ancient, perfectly upright, trembling only very slightly.
a flat slab of rock by the fire. Mor Lyft walks along the line of kneeling crew like a drill sergeant who is also everyone's grandmother.
nodding slowly, Mingus pressed against him.
Vigolas tries to stand by punching the ground, green lightning, and the recoil slams him flat. "OW."
Rougeina practises Swapping with light things (a raindrop, a moth, a leaf) toward heavy places, again and again, landing harder each time.
Smurjan meditates, his three shadows lying flat around him like dropped coats.
Trollmage lies in a hollow in the rock with a sign beside him: TRAINING. (He's asleep.)
a boy of about ten, bent double, shaking, staring at the sleeping troll.
Mor Lyft sets each of the crew against a Riser: young, wiry, bent fighters who move in short, low, perfect motions, never lifting a foot higher than they must.
Smurjan's open palm meets a Riser girl's forearm, and she leans into the weight, using it, and he's flat on his back.
Kali swings, one-armed, at a Riser man. He doesn't dodge; he lets her swing's own weight carry her past him, and taps her. She's down.
Drekk swings his axe. The Riser steps under it and lets it fall, and Drekk follows it into the dirt.
Every crew member on their back. Every Riser standing, bent and trembling, but standing.
arms folded.
sitting up slowly, the faint crimson scars on his skin catching the firelight.
No answer. Behind him his three shadows lie on the rock, each pointing a slightly different way.
rising out of the flattest shadow, grumbling.
Fires low. The crew lies exhausted around one fire. Vigolas sits up alone, bare-shouldered, shivering, looking at his empty hands.
rubbing his shoulders where the coat used to hang.
staring into the fire.
A wide view of the canyon at night under the crushing sky. Firelight in a long ribbon down the crack. Everywhere, standing figures: hundreds of Risers, bent double and trembling, children on their knees practising, old men holding a wall. And among them, small, the crew lies around their fire. Every one of them is trying, in the dark, to get one knee under themselves.
Far above the crack the bullet-rain falls. Far away on the surface, the squat grey shape of Tyngd's Leaden Hall, one window lit, and in it, the faint glint of a coat full of shards.
alone at the edge of the firelight, sitting cross-legged, eyes closed.
Faintly, three heartbeats, out of step: ba-dum… ba-dum-ba… dum…
opening his third eye, trying. Letting go of the reins. Letting all three souls act at once.
All three shadows lift at once: Kali rises, Bakasura opens, Smurjan's palm strikes forward. For one beat, it works: three strikes, one moment, a boulder at the canyon's edge splitting in three directions—
as something floods in. Behind his eyes, from the deepest shadow, Bakasura's hunger, unfiltered for the first time: endless, aching, starving. It pours into all three of them.
Smurjan doubled over on the rock. Kali, half out of his shadow, clutching her head and screaming. Bakasura's maw thrashing, jaws snapping at nothing. Crew and Risers running toward them.