Chapter 17
Black water, a rim of new ice along the rocks, a sky still full of stars. On the shore the crew sleeps in a hollow under the cliff around a dead fire, wrapped in troll moss-blankets. One small figure stands apart at the water's edge: DREKK, pulling off his boots.
His breath smokes. He lays his spyglass on his folded coat, carefully, like a man setting down the last thing he owns. He looks out at one spot on the black water. He knows exactly which spot.
He dives.
Drekk kicks downward with his cheeks puffed and his eyes stinging open. Far below, in the silt, lie the charred ribs of a small, ugly, beloved boat.
MINGUS stands at the water's edge with his front paws in the ice, whining. KOMPIS jerks awake under his blanket.
MINGUS · NOT RANKED
KOMPIS · K-II MARKED · Scalelist #9,880
A pair of boots. A folded coat. A spyglass on top.
VIGOLAS sprints barefoot down the rocks, coat flapping, thirty-seven shards glowing through the lining.
VIGOLAS · ∞−1 · OFF THE LIST
ROUGEINA is already on a ledge above the water, barefoot on the ice, her black panther pressed against her legs.
ROUGEINA · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #777
TROLLMAGE doesn't move from his blanket. His crow sits on his chest.
TROLLMAGE · K-II MARKED (assigned) · Scalelist #120,331
At the very edge of the shore stands SMURJAN: slate-grey skin, a white braid woven with one black and one red strand, a third eye on his forehead. In the starlight he throws three shadows in three directions.
SMURJAN · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #2,201
Drekk reaches the wreck. The Kettle's dented brass bell lies half-buried in silt at what was her bow, still on its iron bracket. He grabs it with both hands and pulls. It doesn't move. Bubbles stream from his mouth.
lungs burning, eyes furious. He plants both bare feet against the Kettle's blackened hull, the way you brace against an old friend, and heaves.
The bracket tears free. Drekk kicks for the surface with the bell clutched to his chest, and the bell drags at him like it wants to stay where it sank.
Smurjan walks out across the fjord as if it were a floor, a perfect ring spreading under every step, and stops above the spot. He kneels on the water and reaches one grey hand down into it.
Drekk bursts up through the surface, gasping, the bell in his arms, right in front of that offered hand.
Drekk and Smurjan face to face, a hand's width of freezing water between them. Smurjan's hand stays out. Drekk looks at it.
Drekk turns away and swims for the shore one-armed, the bell pulling him under every second stroke.
Vigolas wades into the fjord up to his chest, swearing at the cold, grabs Drekk by the collar and hauls him up onto the rocks.
Drekk on the rocks, blue-lipped, shaking. Kompis throws his own hoodie over him, the one older than empires. Mingus lies down across Drekk's legs like a warm golden blanket. Drekk hugs the bell to his chest.
Smurjan still kneels on the fjord, alone, his hand held out over nothing. He lowers it.
Turf roofs, chimney smoke, enormous moss-backed Brygdar trolls. Two of them drag forward a sledge the size of a fishing boat, hitched to two shaggy mountain goats as big as carthorses. GRANDMOTHER ULLA, in her shawl of woven roots, leans on her staff beside it.
Trollmage is already lying on top of the cargo with the crow on his chest. He props up a hand-painted sign:
WAITING. DAY 1. DO NOT DISTURB.
(a) The sledge on a switchback road up the Marhold Spine, the goats leaning into the snow.
(b) A troll-cut tunnel through the mountain, lined with giant carved troll faces, their stone eyes closed.
(c) Rougeina walking barefoot along the snowy ridge above the road. When she sits down, the panther lies across her feet.
Smurjan walks behind the sledge. He holds out a grey palm and watches flakes land on it, frowning, like a man trying to remember the name of an old friend.
driving the sledge, not turning around.
Drekk's face: furious with himself for answering.
The sledge crests the cloud line. Below lies an endless white sea of cloud. Above it, rising from the peak of the Marhold Spine: GLASHEIM. Hundreds of white towers, slender as needles, linked by bridges; a colossal Scalelist board blazing with millions of names at its heart; one tower taller than the rest, a long gallery near its summit glowing from inside like a lantern full of fireflies. And above the whole city, faint and upside down, like a reflection in still water, floats a city of glass: the Archive.
The crew on the sledge are tiny silhouettes against all of it.
A white checkpoint arch spans the pass, closed by a massive gate of iron bars woven with light. Wanted posters are nailed to it: ∞−1 · KOMPIS #9,880 · TARGET · ROUGEINA #777 · and a silhouette with three shadows: THE TRINITY · UNCOUNT ON SIGHT. A squad of Sentinels blocks the road. At their head stands a broad officer whose crimson sin-mark has crawled up one side of his face.
RANK PLATE ×8: SENTINEL · K-II MARKED · Scalelist #211,904
CHECKPOINT CAPTAIN · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #11,207
Vigolas stands up on the cargo, cracking his knuckles. Smurjan steps past him and stands between the sledge and the spears.
Smurjan says one word: "Kali." The shadow to his left stands up off the snow and becomes a woman: ash-grey skin, red markings, a long wild red braid, a sickle-sword of black glass in each hand.
KALI · aspect of the Trinity · (counted with Smurjan)
(a) Eight spears of light thrust at once. Kali cuts four of them in half in mid-air.
(b) Rougeina blinks, Swapping places with a Sentinel's thrown spear, and lands behind the line, leaving a faint silver-rose afterimage of herself hanging in the air where she stood. The Sentinel ends up face-first in a snowdrift on the ridge, holding his own spear.
(c) Kompis fires twice from the sledge. Ivar's ghost grumbles on the barrel. Two chains of light snap.
The world goes grey, and the collar seam on every Sentinel burns gold: the most expensive part of each of them.
Smurjan walks through the squad without hurrying. Two fingers, one tap, exactly on each gold seam. Each collar cracks. Each Sentinel folds. There isn't a single wasted movement.
impressed and a little jealous.
The Checkpoint Captain backs through the arch and slams the great gate shut. Bars of iron and light drop into sockets in the rock. Spears of light bristle from the wall above.
looking up at the gate without expression.
The snow under Smurjan's second shadow bulges and splits. BAKASURA rises: black hide, an amber glow deep in the throat, and mostly mouth, a maw as wide as the gate itself, small mournful eyes high above it.
BAKASURA · aspect of the Trinity · (counted with Smurjan)
The maw closes over the gate: iron, light, hinges and a good stretch of the arch.
Where the gate was, there's a neat, gate-shaped bite out of the mountain. The Captain stands in the gap holding one bent hinge-pin. His Sentinels are already running down the far road.
chewing slowly.
The Captain turns and runs. Vigolas pats the side of Bakasura's enormous jaw, very carefully.
Kali laughs and steps back into Smurjan's shadow. Bakasura sinks into the snow after her.
Through the bitten gap, the sledge rolls on into a dark troll tunnel that climbs inside the mountain toward the city. Drekk drives, with the bell lashed to the front of the sledge. Everyone is talking at once. Except Kompis.
The old troll stonework gives way to newer white Trisdel brick. A painted sign on the wall: UNDERWAY 9. Kompis has stopped walking. Mingus has stopped beside him and is looking up at him.
At the height of a small child's shoulder, scratched into the brick long ago: a little stick-figure boy and a little stick-figure dog.
lit by the sledge lantern behind him.