Chapter 133
The crack reaches the edge. The white iron falls away in two pieces and rings on the study floor. The one on her wrist follows. Clink.
The silver ring and the rose script blaze back to life, and her heart, heavy, keeps beating.
All round the study, collars break: Vigolas's, clink, and green lightning leaps back to his fingertips; Kali's, clink, "FINALLY!"
All over Glasheim, faint and then louder, a sound like ice cracking on a thousand lakes: crack, crack, crack-crack-crack.
Across the whole world, every collar breaks at once.
A montage drawn as one great spread split into fragments like a shattered mirror:
On Glasheim's walls, Sentinels drop their spears and touch their throats as the glowing collars fall away, faceless helms turning, sins waking under them: crimson, amber, violet.
In an Order prison deep in the mountain, prisoners' marks blaze in the dark like lanterns lit all at once.
In a fishing village, an old woman's long-suppressed Gluttony wakes as a warm amber glow, and she starts cooking for the whole street.
A Sentinel boy of fourteen pulls off his helmet in the snow, collar gone, and stares at a little violet glow on his hand: Sloth, stored potential, a baker's patience.
And at the centre, in the Routing Study, a huge stooped man stands with his eyes closed, humming a lullaby backwards, and a pile of collars on the desk in front of him crumbles into white rust.
Chaos. Hundreds of Sentinels, collars gone, sins suddenly awake inside them for the first time in years. Some fall to their knees, some laugh, some panic. A Sentinel's newly woken Wrath flares crimson down the stairs and scatters a crowd.
in the market square, backing away from soldiers whose eyes are suddenly glowing.
The crew pours out of the study down the stair-streets, between the frightened Sentinels and the frightened people:
Vigolas catches a Sentinel's runaway crimson strike on his own forearm, wincing. "Easy! Easy! It's new, I know, breathe!"
Smurjan walks the Sightline gently, palm to the exact point of a panicking Sentinel's flaring Wrath, and settles it. "Precision. Not anger. Precision."
Kompis runs from soldier to soldier tying each one to someone in the crowd who loves them (a mother, a sister, a friend) so they can feel them and come down from the panic.
Trollmage, with hands again, gives a Sentinel boy with a violet hourglass on his hand the best advice he's ever given: "Lie down. Seriously. Lie down and wait. It gets easier."
Slowly, terrace by terrace, the riot quiets. Sentinels sit on the steps with their helmets off. Townsfolk bring them blankets.
sitting on the stairs, collar-scar at his throat, looking at the crimson glow on his palm.
The study door opens. Freystjarn steps out, ducking the lintel. No apron. No collars. No keys at his belt. Just a huge, stooped, tired man in a white robe, walking slowly down the stair-street past the crew.
stepping aside to let him pass.
pausing for one beat beside Rougeina.
On the Ninth Chair, a Signet lifts off nothing, flickers, and goes dark: not by death, by leaving. Around the ring, six Architects stare at it.
(the First Chair, long white beard) slowly counting the dark chairs: Third. Sixth. Seventh. Eighth. Ninth. Twelfth.
Six Architects on a floor of glass, and in the centre the glass stays dark: a decree tried by six Signets, and nothing lights.
Outside Glasheim, far below the white towers, on a snowy hillside under one tall dark pine. The huge stooped figure of Freystjarn, Keeper of the Collars for longer than anyone can remember, lies down in the snow on his back with his hands folded on his chest. Snow falls on his face. He doesn't brush it off.
Above him, across the darkening sky over the whole world, the lights of a thousand woken sins rise from villages and towers and barracks like lanterns drifting up.
(Whether it is sleep or something more, the snow doesn't say.)
at anchor at the foot of the Marhold Spine, night. The crew on deck, exhausted, wrapped in blankets. Glasheim's towers above them glitter with a thousand small new lights.
at the rail, list unfolded: BALDR, KATRIEL, WENDLAN, EDVAR crossed off. Below them: MEIRWEN. INGRITH. Then, at the very bottom, in a different, older ink: SOLVIG.
sitting on the rail beside her, a new thread on his coat for Stillmark.
(He's gone the next panel, as if he was never there.)
curled up in his blanket by the mast, the crow on his chest, both of them back where they belong. Asleep, smiling, flexing his fingers in his sleep.
Far away, from the mountains to the north, a horn: deep, ancient, the sound of stone breathing. It rolls across the sea and the snow and the towers of Glasheim.
far to the north, under the stars. Along the great troll-cut gorges, the carved stone faces of the troll-kings, thousands of them, ancient, mossy, eyes closed for three hundred years, open their eyes. All of them at once. Glowing.
on a mountain, a horn of stone the size of a tree at her lips, blowing a call nobody alive has heard. Around her, troll halls lighting up one by one.
Trollmage wakes, sitting bolt upright, tears running down his grey-green face, and he doesn't know why. The crow stares at him. Far away, the horn calls again.