Chapter 153
It's never really dark here: lamplight bounces off the coin-paved streets until the whole city glows like the inside of a purse. The Marka at her berth. Over her, the brass fee-board ticks on its post: clack. MOORING · ACCRUING. clack.
at the bow, sitting cross-legged on the rail beside the Kettle's bell, counting on his fingers, lips moving. He hasn't slept.
sitting down on the rail next to him. Mingus flops on the deck between their boots with a groan.
held up. Not many fingers are bent.
klak. klak. klak. Down the quay, out of the lamplight, the Ränta come in their grey line, chains coiled. In the middle of them a folding stool unfolds, and Ölund sits.
standing up on the rail.
The ledger-chains slither aboard over the rail like eels, too fast and too quiet. One coils round Drekk's spyglass on his belt and plucks it off. The iron-book link snaps shut round it, klak, and a dry little whisper comes out of the chain:
spinning round, grabbing at nothing.
below decks, by lamplight. Four wooden bowls in a row. A chain slides down the hatch, feels along the shelf, passes the first three… and coils round the fourth. Lifts it.
bursting up out of Smurjan's shadow on the deck, and for once she isn't joking. Her face is white.
asleep in his coil of rope, crown slipping, crow on his chest. A chain touches his forehead, lightly, and draws out a long glowing violet thread, winding it onto a little iron spool on the chain like silk off a cocoon. A nap, coming out of him.
jerking awake, horrified, patting his own head with both hands.
The crew pours off the Marka after the chains, across the coin-paved quay and up into the night market:
Kali, one arm, swings the black-glass sickle down on the chain holding her bowl. CLANG. The chain parts. Over the street, a brass fee-board: ka-CHING. + INTEREST. Another chain snatches the bowl before it hits the ground.
Smurjan opens his third eye, walks the Sightline to the one link holding the spyglass, and splits it with an open palm. ka-CHING. + INTEREST.
Rougeina Swaps with the falling spyglass. She's holding it. A chain wraps her wrist, klak, "Entered", and the spyglass is gone again, with + INTEREST on her line.
Vigolas's lightning blasts three collectors into a stall of bottled years. Bottles pop. One collector gets a year older and looks annoyed about it. ka-CHING. + INTEREST + DAMAGES.
Kompis fires Fru Gnista into the sky, and a firework bursts gold and green over the street to blind the chains. ka-CHING. + INTEREST (DISTURBING THE PEACE).
over the street, plates rolling and rolling and rolling.
crouched behind an overturned stall, Mingus pressed against his leg.
walking behind the fight on his long thin legs with the stool folded under his arm, writing as he walks, never hurrying.
The Ränta withdraw in perfect order down the lamplit street, chains coiled, carrying away a brass spyglass, a plain wooden bowl, and an iron spool wound with glowing violet thread. At the corner, Ölund tips his bald head.
sitting on the coins in the middle of the street, staring after the bowl. Smurjan stands over her. His hand on her one shoulder.
Slow clapping. clap. clap. clap. At the end of the quay, leaning on an iron bollard (it's his bollard), coat chinking, coin spinning: Levla. He has been watching the whole thing.
stalking up the quay toward him.
(Behind him, at the street corner, Ölund pauses for one beat, hearing it, and says nothing.)
eyes going gold, looking at Levla.
Levla hung with threads, hundreds of them, more than anyone Kompis has ever read. But every single one is edged in gold like a strip of receipt paper, and from every one hangs a little price tag, marked: a tailor, PAID; a dock-master, PAID; a thin man somewhere far away who used to be #1,000, PAID (TO LOSE); a thick grey cable running off into the dark toward the Ränta, PAID, EVERY BELL. Not one plain thread. Not one without a tag.
very quietly, to Rougeina, who has dropped down beside him.
to Vigolas, the coin spinning.
Mingus trots up the quay to Levla's gold-tooled boots and sniffs them, thoroughly, one and then the other, tail going. Kompis follows a step behind.
The little tags flicker up in his irises… spin… and come up empty. Not zero. Nothing.
(He frowns, and flicks a ring.) ka-CHING. A glowing tag on a string flies at the dog's back—
—and slides off, like rain off an oiled coat. Levla flicks again. And again. And again, faster, every ring flaring, all ten fingers out: a blizzard of glowing paper tags with numbers on them, snapping onto a golden retriever and sliding off his fur one after another, piling up round his paws like autumn leaves.
Mingus thinks it's the best game ever invented. He pounces on a tag; it slides off his nose; he sneezes; he spins round after another one, tail a gold blur, ears flying.
Around them on the lamplit quay: the crew, staring. Kompis with a hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh. Kali, on the coins, forgetting to be sad. And in the middle, the richest man in the Current, coat flapping, rings blazing, losing to a dog.
All ten rings dimming, one by one. His coin lies forgotten on the bollard behind him. He stares at the dog sitting in a drift of tags.
Levla crouching on the quay, eye level with Mingus, coat pooling in the coins. Mingus leans in and licks his ringed hand, once, slow and thorough. Levla doesn't pull it back.