Chapter 106

Training everywhere. Smurjan sits alone on a rock, recovering, his three shadows apart from each other like quarrelling children. Kompis and Mingus run drills with the Riser children.

in his hollow in the rock, flat on his back, hands folded on his belly, the crow asleep on his chest. The TRAINING. sign beside him now has a second line, written by someone else: (STILL.)

standing over the hollow, scowling down.

kneeling beside the hollow, lowering his voice like a man explaining a sacred rite.

looking at the sleeping troll with new eyes.

opening one eye at her, smug.

Rougeina stands bent at a slab of rock with a row of targets painted on it, and above them, tied to strings, light things hanging: a feather, a leaf, a moth in a jar, a soap bubble.

panting.

Rougeina tries:

She Swaps with the feather above a target. The feather drops, and she drops on the target like a hawk.

She Swaps with the soap bubble. It pops, and she's left hanging in the air for an instant before slamming into the ground. Crack.

She clutches her side.

curled up on the rock, gasping.

Rougeina, ribs bound, sweat on her face, Swaps with the moth, which is light but alive, and its wings carry the Swap like a sail. She lands on the target exactly, softly, and then lets her weight fall into the strike. The target shatters.

standing, bent and shaking like a Riser, but standing.

The crew trains: Vigolas walking on his knees, Kompis teaching Riser kids how to read people without powers ("Watch the shoulders"), Smurjan meditating. Trollmage in his hollow, unmoving. Seventy-two hours now. His sign: TRAINING. (STILL.) (STILL!!)

Behind them, faintly, a violet glow that has been getting brighter for three days.

Scraping. From the canyon's rim: hooks biting rock, armour scraping stone, dozens of them.

Ballast pouring over the edge of the crack, crawling down the canyon walls on hooked pikes like spiders. Fifty. A hundred. Tyngd's soldiers come for the Risers' camp.

The Risers fight back, bent and trembling, using the Ballast's own weight against them. But there are too many, and children are crying.

Rougeina Swaps with a moth over the Ballast captain and drops onto him. One down, ribs screaming.

Vigolas, on his knees, punches lightning sideways, and three Ballast are bowled down the slope.

Kompis fires Lilla Ulv along the rock: "ground wolf!"

Smurjan tries the three-at-once again, and the hunger floods him. He goes down, Kali screaming.

The Ballast reach the fires. Huts collapse. A hooked pike catches Mor Lyft's ankle, and the old woman goes down on her knees for the first time in forty years.

on her knees in the dirt, shaking, horror on her face.

Trollmage's eyes open. Violet. Blazing.

Trollmage sits up. On Tyngden, where everyone crawls, he just sits up, as easily as getting out of bed on a Sunday. Then he stands, fully upright, the only person in the whole canyon standing straight, yawning enormously, the crow flapping off his chest.

from his knees, grinning wildly.

The heartbeat ends. Everything drops, but the Risers were ready; they've waited their whole lives for a moment of lightness. They land on their feet, and the Ballast land on their faces. The Risers pin them before they can crawl.

landing standing, perfectly upright, on her own two feet.

Trollmage sways, yawns, says "…Good," and falls asleep standing up. He topples like a tree. Drekk catches him on his knees like a sack of flour, as always.

eighty years old, standing over the snoring troll in the wreck of the raid, looking down at him with the respect of a master for a master.