Chapter 126
anchored off the Dawnstar's fading glow. Rougeina alone at the rail, the red-wax slip in her hand: The Routing Study. Glasheim. Come in — the kettle is on. — E. Solmunden.
folding it into her bindings, next to the list. She picks up her blades.
She sets one bare foot on it. And stops, because she can feel them: six threads, tied, pulling at her chest like hands on a sleeve.
The whole crew is standing behind her on the deck, in nightclothes, arms folded. Mingus wagging.
jaw tight, but the threads are warm.
from his shadow.
The Marka sails toward a coastline: grey cliffs, snow, and rising out of them the immense white Marhold Spine, a mountain like a cathedral's backbone, its peak crowned by the white towers of Glasheim, impossibly high.
yawning at the bow, the crow on his head.
Fog rolls off the cliffs onto the water. Out of the fog, silent, come grey boats: long, narrow, each rowed by figures in grey clerks' coats, faces calm, satchels on their hips stuffed with papers.
RANK PLATE ×16: COURIER · K-II MARKED · Reincarnation Routing
opening his satchel. Inside, stacks of slips, each folded and sealed with a blob of red wax.
recognising them, pale.
The Couriers throw. Slips spin through the fog like cards, dozens of them, red wax glinting.
Vigolas punches a slip out of the air with lightning, and it bursts in a puff of red wax. Fine.
A slip touches a gull flying overhead, and the gull's soul is gone in a ribbon of light, delivered. The gull's body flies on, puzzled.
Smurjan's Sightline cuts three slips in half.
Rougeina Swaps with a falling slip, and it lands on the empty deck where she was, harmlessly.
Kompis fires Fru Gnista: a firework bursts in the fog and burns twenty slips at once.
The Couriers keep throwing: calm, silent, endless, satchels bottomless.
waving his arms, still half asleep, shouting.
spinning through the fog toward Trollmage's chest, red wax gleaming. The crow on his head sees it and flaps down in front of him to block it, loyal.
The slip touches both of them at once, the crow's breast and Trollmage's robe, and the red wax melts. Two ribbons of light, one violet and one black, lift out of them, cross in mid-air, and go back in. The wrong way round.
Silence. Trollmage stands perfectly still on the deck. The crow sits perfectly still on the rail.
The huge half-troll in slippers and grandmother's scarf slowly turns his head in a sharp, jerky, bird-like way. His heavy-lidded violet eyes are now bright, black and beady. He opens his mouth, and out comes:
And on the rail, the scruffy black crow fluffs up to twice its size, opens its beak, and in a tiny, furious, unmistakable voice:
Around them, the Couriers row back into the fog as silently as they came, their work done. The crew stares.
The troll-with-a-crow-inside spots something shiny: the cube in Vigolas's sash, the Hound-ship, glinting. With a delighted KRAA, he snatches it and runs across the deck flapping his arms, slippers slapping.
The crew chases a three-hundred-pound troll round the mainmast. He hides the cube in a coil of rope, very pleased with himself.
hopping onto Kompis's shoulder, wings drooping.
eyes gold, looking at the two of them: a violet thread running into the crow, and a small black thread running into the troll's body. Delivered. Crossed.
looking up at the white towers of Glasheim on the peak, her hand on the red-wax slip in her bindings.
The Marka sailing into the fog toward the Marhold Spine. On deck, a giant troll proudly sitting on a stolen cube, cawing at the gulls. On Kompis's shoulder a small crow with its head in its wings.