Chapter 120
frozen, looking down. Mingus at his feet, wagging, looking up. Nothing has changed. The dog is right there.
Something has gone out of it. He reaches down and touches Mingus's head, the way he has ten thousand times.
where the golden pulse line should be: dark. Empty. Silent.
very quietly.
ears dropping, whining. He leans against Kompis's leg, and Kompis doesn't lean back.
Sax stands three paces away, folding his slim silver shears, the snipped end of a gold thread dangling from them. He tucks it into one of his many pockets, among hundreds of others.
lunging, lightning on both fists.
Sax doesn't dodge. He opens his shears in the air between Vigolas and Kompis, snip, then between Vigolas and Rougeina, snip, Rougeina and Smurjan, snip. Gold threads only Kompis used to see fall away like cut fishing line.
mid-lunge, and he stops. He looks back at his crew, puzzled, as if he walked into a room and forgot why.
The Severers come back over the rim. The crew fights, badly:
Rougeina Swaps to cover Smurjan's back and arrives half a second late. She doesn't feel where he is any more; she has to look.
Smurjan's Triple Pulse comes apart: Kali and Bakasura still agree with him, but none of them can feel where the crew is.
Drekk swings to protect the sleeping Trollmage, stops, and hesitates.
Vigolas punches a Severer, turns to see who's behind him, and is surprised to find anyone.
They're strangers: competent fighters, each alone, colliding with each other on the star's rim.
both hands open, binding stitches as fast as Severers cut them.
standing still in the middle of the fight, not drawing a gun. Eyes gold. He can still see threads, his Lust is his, but between him and everyone he loves the threads are cut, hanging loose, snipped ends drifting in the starlight.
A Severer's oar-shears come down at Kompis's back. Mingus is there, just a dog, no thread, no reason, and bites the Severer's wrist and hangs on.
turning, staring at the dog who saved him without being tied to him.
The star's rim at night, white fire pulsing in the seam. The crew fights apart: five figures in five directions, each alone, no gold threads joining them. The snipped ends drift in the air between them like seeds.
In the centre, Kompis stands in the middle of the battle with his hands empty, looking down at Mingus, who is standing in front of him growling at the Severers anyway, guarding a man he's no longer tied to. Just because.
Behind them on a pile of crates, Sax watches, calm and detached, the comet-tail of snipped threads streaming from his pockets.
The Severers withdraw before dawn, skiffs sliding into the dark. The seam holds, wider again. Sax steps back into his skiff, still unhurried.
watching him go, then turning to look at his crew, a man looking at strangers he knows he should love.
The crew sits apart. Nobody sits close. Kali isn't talking. Smurjan meditates alone. Rougeina perches high on a spike of starlight, far away.
sitting with Mingus's head in his lap out of habit, his hand on the warm fur, feeling nothing, tears running down his face anyway.
walking over slowly, hands still open, sitting down beside him.
looking at the gold-bound book on the starlight beside him.
The clasp is locked. READ WITH A FRIEND. And for the first time the gold script on the clasp is warm, glowing brighter.
looking up across the starlight at Vigolas, sitting alone at the rim, staring out at the Current.
It's hot now. Gold light pours from the edges of the pages. The clasp's script flares, as if it's shouting:
READ WITH A FRIEND.
Kompis looking from the burning book to the pirate alone at the rim of the star, with a golden dog lying between them, not tied to either of them, watching both.