Chapter 122
Kompis and Vigolas, and Mingus, are no longer in the cleft of the star. They stand in a vast space of gold thread: threads in every direction, woven like a net, a web, a ship's rigging, stretching into a golden dark. Every thread hums with a voice, a memory, a name.
turning in a slow circle, Greed-sight flaring. Every thread glows gold.
floating in the air in front of Kompis, letters forming as he looks:
LUST · VOLUME I · IN COMPANY.
Read your threads. All of them. Let your witness see.
swallowing.
warm and thick, glowing amber: Mingus. Cut, its two ends drifting apart in the gold dark, still warm.
gruff and bristling: Ivar, knotted, mended with gold seams like his new barrel. Beside it, a tiny excited thread, Lilla Ulv, chasing its own tail. A fizzing one, Fru Gnista. A silent one, Tyst, perfectly straight.
thin and hard, grey, running off into the dark: the Nursery. Mother Sela. A knife taken from a child's hands.
white and cold, with a silver signature on it: Baldr. His handler. The man who signed Kompis's whole life, now forgotten by everyone but Rougeina. Here, in Kompis's own soul, the thread is still there, a scar.
looking at the white thread. Then at Kompis.
The white thread twitches. It pulls on all the others. Out of the gold dark, along it, comes something: a knot of threads, grey and white, tangled into the rough shape of a man in a grey uniform. Kompis himself, at nineteen, a Trisdel asset, rifle in hand, cold-eyed.
the asset, with a flat voice.
shaking.
The asset-knot attacks: threads whipping out of it like rope-ends, lashing at Kompis, pulling on every thread he has. Pulling Ivar's, Lilla Ulv's, the crew's (cut and dangling), trying to tie them all back to the white thread. To Baldr.
Kompis fights it with no gun, no Subtick, bare hands in a storm of thread, tearing knots apart, being dragged toward the white thread.
standing at the edge of it all, fists clenched, lightning sparking, desperate to dive in.
burning in front of Vigolas:
The witness may not fight. The witness may only SEE.
every muscle locked, forcing himself to stand still and watch.
on his knees, the white thread wrapped round his wrist, being reeled toward the asset-knot. He looks back at Vigolas.
in a place where everything is true.
something breaking open in his face. He looks at the asset-knot, his own nineteen-year-old self, cold and lonely and obeying.
Kompis takes the white thread wrapped round his wrist, and instead of breaking it he ties it: a knot, gold over white, binding the asset's thread to the crew's dangling ends. The cold thread warms.
The whole golden web of Kompis's soul lights up at once, every thread blazing gold, the white thread of Baldr re-tied into the web as one strand among hundreds, no longer the centre of anything. The asset-knot unravels into a young man who lowers his rifle, looks at Kompis, and nods.
And across the gold dark, script writes itself: gold letters racing up Kompis's arms from both wrists like rigging, over his shoulders and down his back, a net of glowing text.
THE LUST CODEX · VOLUME I · OPENED.
Beside him Vigolas stands, a witness, his eyes reflecting the whole web, seeing all of it, and he hasn't moved an inch.
the first technique, writing itself in front of Kompis:
THE KNOT. What you can read, you can tie. Tie a thread between two souls and they will feel each other. You will feel both ends.
looking at his hands, the gold script on them, the rope-calluses he got from a life of fishing.
The book closes. They're back in the cleft of the Dawnstar: Kompis glowing with gold script to the elbows, Vigolas beside him, Mingus between them, the book shut in Kompis's lap.
floating over Kompis, updating on every board in the world: KOMPIS · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #1,288
shaky, wiping his eyes, grinning.
From above the cleft, a terrible CRACK, like the sky's ribs breaking. The cleft widens. Violet and rose light pour in, pulling apart.
On the rim of the Dawnstar stands Sax, alone, his slim silver shears opened wide, wider than shears should open, their blades set around the whole seam of the star, a white-fire line a mile long.
calm, unattached, beginning to close the blades.
(And the Dawnstar begins to SPLIT.)