Chapter 155
Vigolas has climbed to the crosstrees to think, the way he always does, legs hooked round the yard, the coin-glow of Skatt below him. At the foot of the mast, Kompis sits on a coil of rope with Mingus's head in his lap.
holding up one hand, fingers spread.
set around Vigolas like jars on a shelf, each one framed with a little hand-written tag:
THE WAVE. A black wall of water, and gold glinting in the hold of a black-sailed ship.
A CAPTAIN'S VOICE. A dock, a woman with two grey braids, no face, only a voice: "Nobody gets left on the wrong side of the rail."
A SPY ON DAY ONE. Kompis in a tavern doorway, hood up, a golden dog at his heel, lying very badly.
A WINK. Marka, huge and laughing, holding a colossal maw open with her bare arms, mouthing GO, and winking.
A SALUTE. Under the Arena's storm, a drowned crew raising two fingers each.
A BOWLINE. Drekk on a rolling deck, grumbling, teaching him the knot again with his big hands.
the list run out. His hand open in the night air. Nothing left on it to bend.
looking up the mast.
and he goes completely still. When he stops moving entirely, it's serious.
A small harbour, early morning. A skinny boy of six, barefoot, dusty to the knees from a long road down out of the hills, an apple in his fist that isn't his. He has just come round the corner of a warehouse, running — and stopped dead.
What the boy sees: the sea, for the very first time. All of it. Light lying on the water like a road of coins running all the way to the edge of the world. Gulls wheeling. Out at the harbour mouth, red sails.
A hand on the back of his collar. A tall woman with two grey braids, and where her face should be, only soft, blank light, because he has already lost it. But the voice is there, and it's laughing.
Vigolas, eyes wet, smiling.
Vigolas swings out of the crosstrees and slides down a stay to the deck, landing in a crouch beside Kompis and the dog.
The crew walks in under the ka-CHING of the door. Levla is behind the counter, looking like he didn't sleep either. In both hands, still, he's holding the stick.
glancing down at it, low, to himself.
at the counter, both palms flat on it.
The tiny price tags in his irises spin… and spin… and stop, perfectly level, like two pans of a scale coming to rest.
Levla sets the red-sailed jar on the counter. Beside it, an empty jar, lid off.
klak. klak. klak. The Ränta file into the hall between the towering shelves, and the stool unfolds in the middle of the aisle. Ölund sits.
Forty chains uncoil at once from forty grey hands, every one of them snaking along the floor toward the empty jar on the counter.
Nobody throws a punch. They've learned.
Smurjan plants himself in front of the counter, third eye open, and walks the Sightline backwards: every chain that whips at him misses by exactly half an inch.
Rougeina Swaps the empty jar with a jar on the top shelf. Then that one with another. Then another. The hall flickers with silver-rose trails; the Ränta snatch the wrong jars out of the air (TAGS: A FIRST KISS · GRANDFATHER'S PIPE-SMOKE · A RAINY TUESDAY).
Kali holds out her hand: "Lend it." Rougeina lends her the Swap, and nobody goes dark. Kali's eyes flash silver-rose, and she juggles jars round the shelves one-armed: "Wrong! Wrong! Also wrong! Ooh, that one's nice—"
Drekk plants himself across an aisle like a door, arms folded. Chains bounce off his chest. "Not hitting. Standing. Bill me for standing."
Trollmage, bank low since the stolen nap, writes a small one in the air, violet: MACRO : SLIPPERY = 1 AISLE. Ten Ränta go down like skittles, on their own feet. The fee-board over the door doesn't move. "Falling over's free!"
Still too many. Chains everywhere, a grey forest of them, reaching for Vigolas's hand as he reaches for the empty jar.
Mingus pressed against his leg. The golden pulse line along the bottom border: ba-dum. ba-dum.
A gold thread snaps taut between Kompis and Vigolas, and Vigolas moves on the one version Kompis kept, where no chain touches him: under one, past two, between three. His hand lands flat on the empty jar. He closes his eyes.
The memory pours out of Vigolas, down his arm and through his palm into the jar, as light. Across both pages it is painted the way he saw it at six: a barefoot boy at the corner of a warehouse, the whole sea opening in front of him; light lying on the water like a road of coins to the end of the world; gulls; red sails at the harbour mouth; a hand on his collar; a laugh. All of it gold and blue, streaming in one long ribbon across the spread into a small glass jar on a counter.
At the far edge, Levla's ringed hand flat on the counter, and from it one heartbeat rings out across the hall like a ripple in water. In that single beat the price is named, met and settled. The empty jar's lid spins shut by itself with the sea inside it, and across its glass, glowing emerald, a seal stamps itself: PAID IN FULL.
And every chain in the hall slams down onto the counter one heartbeat too late. klak-klak-klak-klak-klak.
looking at forty chains lying on an empty counter. Mild.
(Behind him the Ränta coil their chains and withdraw.)
opening his eyes. He looks at the jar with the sea in it. Then at his own hand.
Its lid begins to unscrew itself, turning slowly, tk… tk… tk… Inside, the tiny ship sails one last circle round the mist, and dissolves into a single thread of white smoke.
The smoke curls up out of the jar, drifts across the counter like pipe-smoke on a still day, past Kompis, past Levla's stick, and slides into Vigolas's ear.
going wide. Red sails reflected in the emerald, filling with wind.
The whole crew leaning in. Mingus's ears straight up. Levla behind the counter, the stick forgotten in his hand. And for the first time since chapter one, Vigolas says his ship's name out loud: