Chapter 154
The tallest building on Skatt: the Bell-House, a counting-house spire of stacked vaults with the great iron interest-bell hanging in a frame at its top. In the highest window, a lamp still burning. Someone hasn't slept.
Levla at the window, coat off for once, in his cream shirtsleeves, looking down at the harbour through a brass spyglass. Drekk's spyglass. On the desk behind him: ten crumpled price tags. Ölund stands by the door, ledger under his arm.
lowering the spyglass.
catching the spyglass, bowing very slightly, as slow as everything he does.
Kompis fishing off the back of the ship, hood up, line in the river of liquid credit (nothing bites). Mingus beside him on the quay. A grey-coated collector strolls past and drops a fat, glistening sausage on the coins in front of the dog.
Mingus eats it. gulp. Instantly a ledger-chain snaps out at him to collect: the iron-book link closes round his neck, klak… and pops open again. Closes, klak. Pops open. Closes. Pops. It can't write him down. klak—pop. klak—pop.
The collectors drop their chains and do it the old way. Three of them grab Mingus's collar with grey gloves; a fourth throws a weighted net over him. More grey coats come pouring onto the quay from every alley, forty of them, hooks and nets, dragging a golden retriever by the collar across the coins toward the market.
Not slow anymore. Not soft.
The crew boils off the Marka: Vigolas over the rail, Rougeina already on a crane, Smurjan walking down the gangplank in exact steps, Kali out of his shadow, Drekk with his axe, Trollmage asleep on deck with the crow screaming at him.
fist crackling green, stopping himself mid-swing with a visible effort.
Ivar unslung. Mingus is only a few yards away, still being dragged, still close enough. Along the bottom border of the panel, the golden pulse line wakes: ba-dum. ba-dum.
The world freezes grey. Kompis walks through the still quay, through version after version, each one a ghost of him: he shoots, and the fee-board rolls; he punches, and it rolls; Vigolas swings, and it rolls. Dozens. Hundreds. Until—
(The one version where nobody on the crew lands a single blow, and every chain, hook and net on the quay hits the Ränta instead.)
Kompis's nose starts to bleed. He doesn't wipe it.
(Gold threads snap taut from him to every member of the crew at once.)
every one of them moving on Kompis's kept line:
Rougeina Swaps a collector into the path of another collector's whipping chain. klak. The chain wraps its own man. "Entered."
Smurjan steps half an inch, and the two collectors lunging at him from either side crash into each other head first.
Kali ducks; the net meant for her lands on four Ränta.
Drekk simply stands still, arms folded. A hook meant for him swings past and catches the collector behind him by the coat.
Vigolas, hands clasped behind his back, grinning like a boy, sidestepping, leaning, ducking, never once striking: "Look! No hands!"
The crow, defending the sleeping Trollmage, pecks a collector's mask. The collector looks at the fee-board, horrified. "Is a PECK a BLOW?!" CROW: CAW.
on the quay, its plates flipping the other way now: RÄNTA · OWES · RÄNTA · + INTEREST. RÄNTA · OWES · RÄNTA · + INTEREST. klak klak klak klak.
Forty Ränta wound up in their own chains, nets and hooks, every link tagged to some other collector, a grey heap of debtors all owing one another, groaning, unable to move without adding to it.
on his stool at the end of the quay, writing slowly in the Ränta's own column of the ledger.
Mingus, collar free, shakes himself off nose to tail. And then, ignoring the whole fight, he trots up the quay to the far end, where Levla has come down to watch (shirtsleeves, coat slung over one shoulder), and sits in front of him. Looks up. Tail sweeping coins. Kompis follows, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
looking down at the dog.
Levla kneels on the coin-paved quay. The coat of a hundred currencies slides off his shoulder and spills into the coins, forgotten. Slowly, carefully, as if afraid it'll cost him, he reaches out a hand with a ring on every finger and puts it on Mingus's head.
Mingus leans his whole weight into him, all eighty pounds of happy dog, and Levla nearly topples over.
All around them: the grey heap of tangled Ränta, the crew standing among them, Ölund on his stool, the Marka at her berth, the gold city waking up. On the inside of Levla's left wrist, bared by the rolled shirtsleeve, the emerald price tag with a number too long to read.
And Levla's face, for the first time since we met him: not bored.
Kompis sits down on an iron bollard beside him. Mingus settles between them, chin on Levla's knee. Kompis nods at the wrist.
stroking one gold ear, flat-voiced, like a man reading out an old receipt.
gently.
Levla's receipt-threads, every one tagged PAID, hanging off a young man on his knees with his hand in a dog's fur. Not one plain thread.
At the top of the Bell-House the great iron bell swings. BONNNG. BONNNG. The dusk bell, rolling out over the whole market. Down on the quay, Levla, hand on the dog, doesn't hear it.
on his stool, looking up at the bell. Then down the quay at his master on his knees. He makes one small mark in the ledger. Patient.
Mingus pulls away, trots off down the quay with his nose to the coins, and comes back with something in his mouth. He drops it on the coins at Levla's knees. Sits. Tail going.
It's a stick. An ordinary bit of grey driftwood, wet at one end.
Levla picks it up and holds it in both hands, the way he'd hold a contract written in a language he can't read.