Chapter 180

Grey light on black water. The crew helping the lantern-children re-light their lanterns. Ögar sits on the ledge, braiding a new lead tag into her hair, a beat before Pim hands it to her.

holding a lantern for a small blind girl with freckles who keeps nodding off against the Pillar's stone. He catches her lantern as it tips.

(Mingus, beside her, wags.)

lifting her head toward the mist, a beat before the sound.

Out of the mist glides a white barge, long and elegant, canopied in silver silk. Under the canopy, tables: rows of small glass jars, each holding one silver coin-tear, labelled in fine script. Ledgers. Scales. A dozen Seers in silver veils standing at attention. A shop.

at the barge's bow. Tall, elegant, about fifty, in white robes trimmed with silver thread, his silver-mesh veil folded back over his head. And the left half of his face is living silver: smooth, mirror-bright, as if poured. Silver veins thread down his neck into his collar. When he smiles, his teeth are silver. One eye is grey and ordinary. The other is a silver coin.

SILVERSTEN · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #640 · Seer-Prime of the Guild

inclining his head to Ögar with great courtesy.

smiling, unoffended, taking a jar from a table and holding it up to the light. A silver tear inside.

stiff.

turning his silver eye to the crew, and to Vigolas.

grinning.

placing the coin on his silver tongue and swallowing.

both of them, the grey one and the silver one, going clear and distant. Round his outline, a faint second outline in silver line, a beat ahead of him, showing exactly where he's about to be.

Smurjan leaps first, the Triple Pulse, and Silversten is simply not where the fists land, walking calmly forward along his silver line. As he passes, he touches Smurjan's elbow, there, and Smurjan's own third strike swings round and hits Kali's shadow.

Certainty. Silversten crossing the ledge at a stroll, the silver line always one step ahead of him.

Rougeina Swaps behind him, and he's already turned to face the spot, catching her blade-wrist and tossing her into the water.

Öde sweeps her scythe low, and he steps over it onto the shaft, pinning it.

Kompis fires Tyst, a silent shot, and Silversten tilts his head an inch. The bullet passes his ear.

Isa plants her feet, and Silversten walks in a perfect curve round the edge of her sight-line, never once inside it.

rising, reaching for her blindfold, torn.

quiet for once, watching the silver line.

grinning slowly.

Vigolas moves. Not toward Silversten: sideways, then back, then up the Pillar's carved stairs three at a time, then off them, dropping from a height Silversten's silver line never reached, out of nowhere.

An Emerald Knuckle to the silver side of Silversten's face. The Seer-Prime goes flying across the ledge, crashing into his own table of jars, coin-tears scattering everywhere like spilled money.

sprawled among broken jars, his silver line flickering and gone. He touches his face. A crack runs across the silver like ice. He looks up at Vigolas, astonished.

and a new silver vein, crawling up under his ear as the minute ends. He doesn't even touch it. He doesn't feel it.

softly, to him.

His Seers hauling him back to the barge, scooping up spilled coins. The barge pulling back into the mist. But Silversten stops at the rail, and turns.

sliding past Vigolas and settling, slowly, on Kompis. Kompis, with Ivar in his hands and Mingus at his side.

tilting his head, his cracked silver face catching the light. Something like recognition. Something like a clerk finding an old file.

cold to the bone.

Silversten at the stern of his white barge as it slides away into the mist, smiling a silver smile, his voice carrying lightly across the water.