Chapter 186
burning through above the doorway, sagging, splitting.
in the doorway on his knees, his left hand held out of it and gripped by Pim's small hands outside, the wrapped bundle in his right. The exact panel from the vision, in colour now.
(The beat Ögar gave him, back in ch. 182. The same beat. He's been carrying it.)
inside the beat. Not gold. Just brown. Just his. And behind them, for the first time, a face: gap-toothed, cowlicked, laughing.
He tears the bundle open with his teeth and one hand. Forge-wire snapping. Sailcloth falling away in burning shreds.
A sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun, short and heavy, of dark blued steel with a faint gold vein running through it like Ivar's. Its grip is worn birch: the handle of a child's whittling knife, its old blade worked flat into the stock like an inlay. Along the barrels, engraved in Malm's deep, careful hand: two boys and a dog, running.
And the soul inside the steel, a small faint shape of light, turns.
It looks at him: a five-year-old's face, cowlick, brown eyes, two front teeth missing, very serious for a moment, then breaking into the biggest gap-toothed grin in the world.
his face breaking open, inside the one beat.
swinging the shotgun up one-handed, straight at the falling beam over his head.
The burning doorway at the foot of the Pillar of Names, and a man on his knees in it, one hand still held out to a child, the other firing a sawn-off shotgun straight up. Out of both barrels: not shot, not fire, but a wide wave of warm gold force, like a shove from someone who loves you, that catches the falling beam and holds it, then drives it up and back into the rock with a boom that blows every flame in the hall out. Smoke rolling away. Lantern-light pouring back in.
In the gun's steel, faint and golden, the shape of a small boy with both arms up, pushing.
Kompis tumbling out of the doorway into the air on top of Pim, the doorway behind them standing, the beam wedged up in the rock where the blast drove it. Mingus bounding out after them.
blind face turned up, gasping, grabbing Kompis's sleeve.
across the ledge, both hands over her blindfold, two silver coins rolling down her cheeks. Not from any death. From the opposite.
watching all this, his silver face unreadable. Then turning to his Seers, crisp, a merchant again.
Thirty Seers peeling off from the fight and converging on Kompis, sitting in the ash with a child and a new gun. Silver nets. Ledger-chains. Hooked staffs. To take him away.
stepping between Kompis and thirty Seers. Ears flat. Tail still. And gold coming up behind his brown eyes like a sunrise.
Where a golden retriever stood, a golden sabre-toothed lion the size of a cart-horse, his mane a blaze of gold, fangs like ivory scimitars curving past his jaw, his great paws planted in the ash in front of Kompis. Only the eyes are the same: warm, brown, a dog's.
He roars, and thirty Seers who could all see a beat ahead saw this coming and still couldn't make their legs move.
frozen, silver veil trembling.
The Sabre Lion charging the line of Seers: not biting, not clawing, just arriving, a wall of gold, and the Seers scattering like gulls off a jetty, nets tangling, staffs flying, a dozen tumbling off the ledge into the black water.
Kompis, on his feet now, Bror in his right hand, Ivar in his left, firing beside the lion. Bror's gold blast shoves a whole knot of Seers off their feet and back into their barge, not hurting a single one. Just out of the way.
grinning in the ash and smoke, a gun in each hand, the golden lion at his side.
a grumpy old hunter's face flickering in the gold-veined rifle, peering sideways at the new gun.
All Kompis's guns, holstered and slung, flickering, their souls looking at the newcomer: Lilla Ulv yipping like a cub, Fru Gnista popping a tiny celebratory spark, Tyst saying nothing at all, but bowing his head.
laughing, wiping his eyes with the back of his gun-hand.
The Seers falling back from the Lion in disarray. The crew re-forming round Kompis at the foot of the stair. The Lantern Hall standing, smoking, beam wedged in the rock. The lantern-children on the stair above, cheering in thin voices.
fighting his way to Kompis's side, seeing the new gun, seeing his face, and understanding everything at once. He doesn't say anything. He just headbutts him, gently, forehead to forehead.
shrinking, gold settling into fur, until a golden retriever sits panting at Kompis's feet in the ash, singed whiskers, tail starting to wag again.
across the ledge, very still among his Seers, his twenty-coin certainty still burning round him in silver outlines. And for the first time, one of the outlines flickers out.
standing, Bror held loosely in his hand, looking down at the engraving on the barrels: two boys and a dog, running. He traces it with his thumb.
the five-year-old face looking up at him out of the dark steel, tilting its head, the way small children do when grown-ups say something that makes no sense.
the gap-toothed grin, the cowlick, and wonder.