Chapter 119
The Marka sails toward a light on the horizon that is two lights: violet and rose, pressed together like two hands, pulling apart and touching again, rhythmically, like a heartbeat.
at the bow, the gold-bound book under one arm, its clasp locked: READ WITH A FRIEND. Mingus at his heel. His four guns murmur on the bandolier.
A newborn star hanging in the Current at the border where Codexia's violet sky meets Astralis's crimson starfield: an island of solid light, half violet and half rose, split down the middle by a jagged seam of white fire. The two halves strain apart and are pulled back together, again and again, a cosmic heartbeat. Gold threads run across the seam like stitches, hundreds of them, holding.
On the rim of the star, small against all that light, a woman stands with both hands open in front of her at chest height, palms up, as if carrying something hot. Every gold stitch on the seam runs back to her hands.
The Marka noses up to the light, which is warm and solid underfoot, like sun-warmed stone. The crew climbs down, squinting. The woman doesn't turn round; her hands don't move.
Long-limbed and calm, deep brown skin, a hairline seam of starlight running down her face from hairline to chin. Left eye violet, right eye star-black with a crimson ring. A tunic split down the middle, ink-black on the left and crimson star-map on the right, a half-cloak on one shoulder. Both hands open, magenta light leaking between her fingers.
ORKA · VIKTOR-5 · K-IV SHAPED (certified) · Scalelist #880
glancing at the crew. Every sentence she speaks is two balloons joined by a small gold "&" bridge.
holding up the book.
Out on the Current, oars. A dozen narrow black skiffs slide toward the star, each one carrying grey-coated figures with shears: steel blades as long as oars, double-handled, gleaming.
RANK PLATE ×24: SEVERER · K-II MARKED · Rank Certification
her face not changing.
awake for once, reading the Codex fast.
a slow smile.
The Severers hit the seam: shears biting into the gold stitches, snip, snip, threads parting, the seam gaping, white fire flaring. And Orka binds as fast as they cut, speaking in pairs:
"This edge, & that edge." A severed stitch holds as if never cut. A gold "&" glyph burns between the two ends. ting—ting.
"Your shears, & your own sleeve." A Severer cuts, and his own coat sleeve falls off. He gapes.
"His footing, & that skiff's." A Severer slips on the star, and his skiff tips over at the same moment.
The crew dives in: Vigolas bowling Severers off the rim, Smurjan's Triple Pulse, Rougeina Moth-Swapping with drifting embers of starlight, Kompis firing Tyst silently at the shears, cutting the cutters' tools.
both hands full now, sweat on her brow. Every binding sits in her hands like cold.
Fru Gnista lights the sky, a firework bursting over the skiffs, and the Severers are blinded long enough for Smurjan to snap a dozen shears.
The Severers fall back to their skiffs, beaten off for the night. The seam holds, gaping a little wider than before, white fire pulsing.
lowering her hands slightly. Never all the way. Her fingers are grey at the tips.
her split eyes on the dark water.
looking down at Mingus, sitting against his leg, tail sweeping the warm starlight. Gold eyes: the thread between them, thick as a rope, glowing, the strongest thread he has ever seen.
a hand on the dog's head.
tightening in the gold fur.
a little later. One more skiff glides out of the dark, alone. A single figure stands in its bow: tall, thin, in a grey coat with too many pockets, every pocket stuffed with snipped ends of thread, gold and red and grey, trailing behind him like a comet's tail.
A pair of shears, slim and silver, no longer than a forearm, so sharp the starlight bends round the edges.
pale, calm, blank. Not cruel. Unattached, like a balloon whose string was cut.
SAX · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #1,330 · Master of the Severers
Sax steps off the skiff onto the star's rim before anyone sees him do it, three steps behind the crew, between Kompis and Mingus.
opening in the air, in the empty space between a man's hand and a dog's head, exactly where the thread runs.
snip.
Along the bottom of the panel, the golden pulse line, the one that has always run beneath Kompis whenever the dog is near, goes dark.