Chapter 149
holding the pamphlet in both hands on the morning deck, reading it again and again.
the grin completely gone.
beside him.
reading over his shoulder.
crumpling the pamphlet, fist shaking.
very quiet.
in the Shallows, a crowded market town with stalls on the quay. The Marka puts in for supplies. Everywhere, people point at the new CODEX column on the town board, murmuring.
Under CODEX, a handful of names have appeared, among them — · GREED · VOL. IV · #? with the ink still wet.
At the end of the quay, a crowd scatters. In the middle, a girl of about sixteen, ragged, barefoot, a fish-gutting knife in one hand and an emerald Codex clutched to her chest in the other. Emerald light pours out of her eyes. She's terrified.
Around her, closing in: Shelf-Wolves, eight of them, wolf-pelt hoods, book-chains and nets.
The crew hits the quay:
Vigolas comes in first, lightning, furious, the ache in his chest turning to fire.
Smurjan, the Triple Pulse.
Kompis, Fru Gnista: a firework over the quay, and the Wolves blinded.
Rougeina, Moth-Swap from a gull overhead.
Mingus herds the girl behind a fish-crate, guarding.
The girl, terrified, looks at a Shelf-Wolf, and her new Greed-sight shows his weak point glowing gold, exactly like Vigolas's. She stabs the gold spot with her fish-knife without thinking. The Wolf drops.
mid-punch, seeing her do it, his move, the Gold-Point, from a stranger.
staring at him: at the glitching ∞−1 plate over his head, the emerald script glowing under his coat.
The quay in chaos, Shelf-Wolves everywhere, crew everywhere. In the centre, back to back: Vigolas and the emerald-eyed girl, two Greed-bearers, both seeing the world glow by value. They strike the same gold weak points on the same Wolves in the same instant, his lightning fist and her fish-knife, a mirror of greed in two sizes.
Around them the market is a riot of gold glow: everything they look at shows its worth, and the Wolves glow almost nothing.
The Wolves retreat to their skiffs, beaten. The quay is quiet. The girl stands panting with her Codex and her knife, emerald eyes dimming.
holding out a hand, friendly.
looking at his hand. Then at him, with the Greed-sight she's had for one day. She sees his value. And her eyes go wide and hungry.
She runs. Off the quay, into a fishing skiff, out into the Shallows, looking back over her shoulder at him with an expression that isn't fear any more. It's want.
hand still out, empty.
eyes gold, following her thread across the water.
Vigolas alone at the bow, the crumpled pamphlet in one hand and the Compass on its cord in the other: the battered brass compass that spun for years, and that since Brygdar has pointed steadily, warmly, at the crew.
pointing back down the deck at the sleeping crew. As it always does now.
It trembles. For the first time since it found its north, it wavers. Off the crew. Out over the rail.
frowning, holding it up.
swinging, slowly and deliberately, away from the crew and out over the dark Current toward a faint golden glow on the far horizon: a planet like a coin, glittering.
staring at it, the pamphlet crushed in his other hand.