Chapter 128
off the high terrace, ash-grey and quiet, snow not quite falling into it. The crew carries Rougeina in and lays her down against the wall. Her lips are pale. Her heart stutters.
a hand on her chest, gold eyes wide, feeling both ends of their knot: her heart, slow and heavy, like something sitting on it.
gasping, trying to sit up.
tired, ordinary, from the far end of the alley:
At the end of the alley, sitting on an overturned crate as if he has always been there, is a tired, ordinary man: about forty, stubbled, in a leather coat burned at the hem and one sleeve. Hung all over him like moss on a tree, thousands of cut threads.
KVAR · RÖNNKVIST-5 · not on any board
not getting up.
recognising him, three shadows going still.
standing up slowly, walking over and crouching beside Rougeina, looking at her with tired, kind eyes.
very still.
Rougeina in the ash-grey alley, drawn in two layers. Her real body, pale, against the wall. And behind her, faint as a double exposure, five figures standing around her, each one's hand resting on her heart: a warden-sergeant holding a child's drawing of a horse; a kind old man with a silver pen; a lidless man with blood tears; a woman with silver-white hair in a crown braid, wearing her own face; a lean, wind-bitten man in goggles. They aren't cruel. They're just there, and they're heavy, because nobody else in the world holds them up.
Under the spread, along the panel border, her heartbeat: ba……dum…… ba………dum……
quiet.
white.
fierce.
looking between them. Then down at the thousands of cut threads hanging off himself.
staring at him.
Boots. The alley mouth fills with white armour: Sentinels, a dozen, collars glowing at their throats, spears down.
standing, lightning sparking.
putting a hand on Vigolas's shoulder, gently pushing him back down.
Kvar walks to the alley mouth, unarmed, tired, coat burned, threads trailing. He stands in front of twelve Sentinels.
The Sentinels charge. Spears come at him from twelve directions. And every spear misses, just, as if the world bends a hair round him, glancing off, skidding, tangling with the next spear. A dozen soldiers stumble into each other.
still standing in the middle of the collapsed charge, not having moved.
The Sentinels scramble up and back away: from an unarmed, tired man who is somehow impossible to hit. They retreat down the stair-street.
coming back, sitting down beside Rougeina, slowly.
after a long moment, very quiet.
closing his own eyes, taking it in. A new thread hangs off his coat now, among the thousands: thin, a little bloody, and tied with a gentle hand.
The pulse line, a fraction steadier: ba-dum…… ba-dum…… One stone lighter.
Rougeina on her feet again, unsteady, supported by Vigolas, looking up the last stair-street to the top of the Spine. A small wooden door with warm light under it, and from inside, high and clear and homely, a kettle, whistling.