Chapter 118

The Melters' platform is wrecked. The crucible lies cold on its side. Slagg kneels in the black oil, shaking, hands over his face, weeping, while the forge-folk stand in a ring around him. Nobody knows what to do.

through his fingers.

walking slowly across the oil to his old apprentice, his coal-eye dim.

looking up at him, ruined, human.

Shouts from the harbour below. The Melter ships are casting off: black hulls riding low in the water, holds stacked with cauldrons of quenched weapons, hundreds of silenced souls, heading for the blockade gap and the Order.

with soot on her cheeks, pointing, screaming.

The whole of Smedjan moves:

Fru Gnista, from Kompis's hand, launches a firework that bursts over the lead ship's sails and sets them alight.

Tyst silently severs the anchor-chains of two ships so they swing into each other.

Smurjan's Triple Pulse snaps a mainmast in three places.

Forge-folk row out in a hundred little boats with hammers and tongs, swarming the black hulls.

Slagg, still weeping, runs into the harbour, up a Melter gangplank, straight into his own men.

Slagg tears the oil-gauntlet off a Melter's hand and flings it into the sea, then another, then another. Without the gauntlets, the Melters flinch. A few of them are starting to hear something too.

The Melter fleet founders in the harbour, sails burning, chains cut, forge-folk climbing over the rails. The Melters surrender one by one, sitting down on their own decks. The cauldrons are hauled ashore.

on the dock, kneeling beside a cauldron, reaching into the black oil with his bare hand, and lifting out a quenched sword. He holds it against his chest. He hums to it: badly, awkwardly, a song he doesn't know the words to.

Under the black, faint, a soul stirs.

watching from the dock, arms folded.

not looking up from the sword.

Malm alone at the great anvil, humming Glöd's three notes. Rougeina comes up the path. She has been waiting all arc to ask.

drawing one of her eight blades and laying it on the anvil.

lifting the blade to the forge-light, turning it. The coal-eye glows. Every blade on every rack in the forge leans toward it.

laying the blade back in her hands, very gently.

white. She looks down at the blade in her hands. In its too-perfect surface, her own face looks back. For one heartbeat, behind her reflection, there's a warmth, like breath on cold glass.

stepping back, sheathing the blade too fast.

watching her go down the path, humming slower.

where the Melters' confiscated junk has been piled: broken tools, dull blades, a tangle of chains. Malm sorting through it alone by lamplight.

pulling something out of the heap: a small, old, cloth-wrapped knife, a child's hunting knife, the cloth faded with a label in Trisdel script: CONFISCATED · NURSERY · INTAKE K. He turns it over. His coal-eye flares. He wraps it again, carefully, and puts it in his apron without a word.

on the dock in the dark, looking up at the empty fifth loop on the bandolier. His hand rests on his apron pocket.

puzzled, but he nods. Malm walks away, humming Glöd's three notes.

The small golden knot of his sin-mark burns, warm, then hot, glowing gold through the night.

Out of the air in front of him, out of nothing, a book materialises into his hands. Heavy, bound in gold thread woven like a net, its pages edged gold, and a heavy clasp locked. On the clasp, in glowing gold script:

READ WITH A FRIEND.

Kompis staring at the book. Above the harbour, in the night sky, one star splits in two: violet on one side and rose on the other, two halves of one light pulling apart and touching, like a heartbeat.