Chapter 112
Kompis kneels before the great anvil and sets down the wooden box. Malm climbs down off the anvil and crouches beside it, coal-eye glowing. The crew stands back. Mingus sniffs the box and whines.
untying the string gently, as if it were a bandage. He lifts the lid: splintered wood, cracked engraved steel, the fragment with the bear and the little hat.
MALM · DRIFTING-9 · K-IV SHAPED · the Smith of Souls
beside the anvil. In its heart, among the coals, a single gold spark is bouncing furiously, like a firefly in a jar.
laughing, tears running into his beard.
chuckling, a low rumble.
sitting on an upturned bucket, hands on his knees.
quiet for once.
and he starts humming, absently: a hunter's tune, then a child's tune, then a sailor's.
on the mountainside below: apprentices at forges, sparks flying. A boy of fifteen runs up the path, whistling a cheerful three-note tune, soot on his nose.
skidding to a stop, grinning, and instantly on his knees in front of Mingus.
apart, at the rack of half-finished blades. Every blade on it is leaning toward hers. She draws one of her eight and holds it up to the forge-light.
glancing over, and his coal-eye flares. He stops humming.
turning Rougeina's blade in his soot-black hands. Thin, single-edged, blue-grey steel that reflects too well. The coal-eye studies it for a long time.
(She stops.)
handing it back slowly, choosing his words like a man stepping around a hole.
Down the mountain, bells: alarm bells. Smoke. Screams.
under attack. Melters pour up from the harbour, gauntlets dripping black oil. They're kicking in forge-doors, dragging soul-weapons off racks, dunking them in cauldrons of oil right there in the street. Swords stop humming. Spears go grey.
The crew charges down the mountain:
Vigolas, lightning, bowling Melters off the path.
Smurjan, Triple Pulse, cauldrons split in three directions, oil spilling harmlessly into lava.
Rougeina, wiping her blades, fighting without letting oil touch steel, Swapping with sparks.
Glöd swinging a smith's hammer, whistling to keep his nerve.
Malm walking through the fight like a slow landslide, each blow of his bare fist sending a Melter tumbling.
Kompis, Lilla Ulv drawn, Subtick: the cub-bullet ricochets down the street, knocking cauldrons over one after another. bonk. bonk. bonk.
A figure walks up the burning street. Big and slow, leather coat to the ankles, and both gauntlets so thick with black oil it drips off his elbows. His face is perfectly calm. His eyes are flat, like painted glass, with nothing behind them.
SLAGG · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #902 · Foreman of the Melters
reading his threads, and there are none. Not black, not greased. None. As if the man were a machine.
stopping dead in the street, his voice gone hard.
Lilla Ulv's wolf-cub bullet comes bounding down the street at Slagg, ricocheting off a chimney toward his chest, perfect, happy, yipping, and Slagg reaches out one oil-black gauntlet and catches it. Not the bullet: the gun. In one impossible motion his hand closes on the pistol in Kompis's grip, wrenches it free, and plunges it into the black oil that coats his other gauntlet like a pool.
A gout of black oil swallows the little wolf-engraved pistol. The cub's light gutters. Her yipping stops mid-yip.
When it comes out, Lilla Ulv is black. Dull. Silent. The little running wolf on her barrel is clogged with oil.
empty hand outstretched, eyes gold, looking for her thread, and it's there. Faint. Thin. Covered, like a candle under a blanket. She isn't gone. She's under.
(No soul-text. Nothing.)
turning the black pistol over in his gauntlet, calm.
Slagg raises the black, silent pistol, Lilla Ulv, and points her at Kompis.
The trigger. BANG: a plain grey bullet, no wolf, no bounce, no joy, straight at the man she chose.