Chapter 131
Freystjarn in the doorway, humming. The crew sways on their feet, every one of them fighting a yawn. Rougeina, collared at wrist and throat, stands in the middle of the room.
humming a new note, looking at Vigolas.
A white iron collar snaps shut round Vigolas's wrist. The green lightning crackling on his fist gutters and goes out, sleeping, an ember.
Another note, and a collar snaps round Kali's one wrist. The borrower can't borrow. She swears colourfully, then yawns in the middle of it.
A collar snaps round Smurjan's throat, and the crimson script on his skin doesn't dim. It glows brighter under the white iron. The collar cracks.
pausing mid-hum, frowning, tired.
from Kompis's shoulder, a tiny triumphant squawk.
Freystjarn hums at Kompis. A collar snaps round his left wrist, right over the gold knot of his sin-mark, and the gold script up both his arms flares through the iron. The collar won't close. It hangs open, useless, its eye-shaped lock spinning.
staring at it.
But the lullaby is still in the room. Kompis's eyes droop. Smurjan sways. Mingus is the only one not yawning at all; he stands in front of Kompis, growling at the huge stooped figure in the doorway.
looking down at the dog, a long, tired look.
recovering, smoothing the sealed slip, crossing the study toward Rougeina, who is collared and sinless and swaying.
collared, no Swap, no sin. She doesn't hold still. She takes one step toward Edvar. Then another. Barefoot. Blades in her hands.
watching her walk, collared, sinless, still coming, and something moves behind his bruise-dark eyes.
seeing it: Freystjarn's threads. Thousands, white iron threads running out of the Collar-Smith in every direction, out of the windows, down the mountain, to every collar in the world. To every Sentinel. Every prisoner. Every child with a sin pressed down to an ember.
very quiet, eyes gold, the Knot burning in his hands.
reaching out across the study, taking hold of all of Freystjarn's iron threads at once, a great bundle of white iron light in both fists.
Kompis ties them: one gold knot binding the Collar-Smith's thousand iron threads to the thousand people at their ends. For the first time in centuries, Freystjarn feels them all back.
Through the knot, the study fills with them, drawn as faint figures crowding every inch of the room: a Sentinel boy who wanted to be a baker, collared at fourteen; an old woman whose Gluttony was a love of cooking for strangers, pressed to an ember; a prisoner whose Wrath was only ever about protecting her sister; a child with a sin she never got to find out about. Thousands. All of them asleep, all straining very gently against white iron, all tired of sleeping.
At the centre, the huge stooped Collar-Smith stands in the doorway with tears running into the soot on his face.
his huge scarred hands trembling at his sides.
bleeding from the nose and ears, because both ends of a thousand collars are going through him at once.
and the tiredness in his face is a different kind now. Not the tiredness of a man who can't sleep. The tiredness of a man who has finally put something down.
sharply, from the desk.
Freystjarn walks into the study, past the crew, past the collared assassin still walking toward Edvar, to the little writing desk. He unhooks the collars from his belt, one by one, and sets them down on the desk. Clink. Clink. Clink.
piling on Edvar's desk among the slips and the red wax: a jailer's whole ring of keys, laid down.
staring at the pile, then up at the giant.
turning his head to Rougeina, who has stopped walking to watch.
collared, sinless, nodding once.
the sealed slip in his hand, alone now, backing toward the window. For the first time, afraid.
(None come. On the stairs outside, the crew's fight has stopped. Everyone is listening.)
The pile of collars on the desk. The Collar-Smith standing beside it, hands empty, humming nothing. The crew, freed from the lullaby, wide awake. And Rougeina, collared at wrist and throat with no power at all, walking the last three steps to the shivering man at the window.
reaching up with both bare hands toward Edvar's face.