Chapter 124

The violet half and the rose half drifting apart across a canyon of white fire, twenty metres, thirty. As the halves part, the light of each one dims, two dying stars.

on the violet edge, grey to the shoulders now, her split eyes fading.

who woke when the star cracked, staring at the gap.

running to her, kneeling on the edge, gold script blazing on his arms.

gasping, trying. Her mouth shapes words.

trembling, and something in her face sharpens.

lifting both hands toward the drifting rose half, and her two balloons, for the first time, are joined by a new bridge: a small gold "with".

A gold glyph burns across the gap, with, and the two halves of the star shudder. The drift slows. It doesn't stop.

looking at the gap, at the thread of the star itself, a vast gold thread running between the two halves, cut by Sax's shears, its two ends drifting apart in the white fire.

Kompis leaps off the edge into the canyon of white fire, Mingus barking on the rim, and catches one cut end of the star's thread in both hands.

Sax steps onto the gap from the rose side, walking on nothing, untethered, gravity not even holding him any more, his slim shears open.

Cut and tie.

Kompis reaches for the other end of the star's thread. Sax snips it shorter.

Kompis ties a knot. Sax snips the knot.

Kompis ties two. Sax snips both.

Vigolas leaps in, lightning, and Sax snips the thread between Vigolas and his own jump, and Vigolas just stops mid-air and falls back onto the violet half.

Rougeina Moth-Swaps to Sax's back. He snips the Swap's line and she arrives nowhere, tumbling into the white fire. Smurjan catches her by the wrist.

in the fire, nose and ears bleeding, tying faster than he has ever done anything. Gold knots blooming in his hands like flowers.

cutting, cutting, his pale face for the first time puzzled.

on the violet edge, Greed-sight blazing, looking at Sax. Searching for value. Sax glows almost nothing: a man who has cut everything worth having.

But deep in Sax's chest, faint, one thread glows. Thin, frayed almost to nothing, unnamed. The one bond he hasn't cut.

eyes going gold, finding it: one frayed thread in Sax's chest, running down into the dark of the Current, toward something very far away and very old.

his hand going to his chest, and for one panel his calm face cracks.

quiet, holding out a gold-scripted hand across the fire.

staring at the hand. Then at his own shears.

Sax turns his shears on himself. On the one frayed thread in his own chest.

snip.

Sax, cut loose from the last bond he had, cut loose from the star, from gravity, from everything, simply drifts. Off the gap. Out over the Current. Away. No one and nothing holding him. Growing smaller against the starlight sea.

reaching after him, too late.

rising from the rifle on his back.

With Sax gone, nothing is cutting. Kompis seizes both ends of the star's great thread, one in each fist, gold script blazing to his shoulders. Orka on the violet edge, hands open, gold "with" blazing across the gap.

Kompis ties: a knot as big as a ship, a fisherman's knot of pure gold thread in the middle of a canyon of fire, pulled tight with everything he has.

The crew drags Kompis up out of the seam onto warm magenta light. He's grey, shaking, bleeding from the nose and ears, grinning.

sitting down slowly on the warm light, her hands finally lowering, all the way, for the first time in twelve years. They're grey and cold. The star holds on its own now, knotted.

A tiny figure drifting on the starlight sea, unanchored, untethered, slowly spinning. Sax. Pockets full of snipped threads streaming out behind him like a comet's tail, still drifting away from everything.

calm again. A single tear floating up off his cheek into the dark, weightless, held by nothing.