Chapter 187
The Guild re-forming, eighty Seers in a long white line, silver veils down, coins swallowed, every one a beat ahead. Behind them Silversten, full silver, the twenty-coin outlines branching round him, one fewer than before.
The line charging the foot of the stair. The crew bracing. Too many.
stepping out in front of the crew, alone, a tall grey heron before a white wave. Her hands rise to the blindfold.
falling. Silver coin-eyes blazing. Rose script lighting her whole face like a lamp.
Ögar's silver eyes meeting a Seer's eyes. A death in silver line. The next Seer. A death. The next. A death. A drowning. A fall. A fever. An old age. A knife. A cellar. A shipwreck. A fire. One after another after another. Each Seer stopping dead mid-charge as their own ending pours into them: staffs dropping, hands going to faces, men sitting down in the middle of the ledge, weeping.
And in every third panel, small, Ögar dying it with them: her heart stopping, a coin rolling, her heart restarting, the next.
at the end of it, her face a waterfall of silver coins, dozens clinking down onto the black rock round her feet. She sways like a reed.
The Guild's charge broken. Eighty Seers standing, sitting, kneeling on the ledge, dazed, veils torn off, faces wet. Half of them turning and walking back to their barges, not looking at Silversten.
collapsing. Rougeina and Isa catching her between them before she hits the rock.
And through the broken, weeping line walks Silversten, alone, untouched, the only one who didn't look into her eyes. He'd seen exactly where to put his gaze. Twenty silver outlines branching round him.
stopping before the crew, his coin-eyes on Ögar in Rougeina's arms.
Smurjan swings, and Silversten steps round it, and touches Smurjan's elbow so the blow goes into the rock. Öde sweeps, and he's past. Isa holds, and he's out of her sight-line before the frost forms. He walks through them like a man walking through a crowd at a market.
reaching out blind from Rougeina's arms and closing, weakly, round Kompis's wrist.
crouching beside her, five guns on him, Mingus at his heel.
understanding. For once, he won't have to pay for a thousand.
standing, drawing all five guns. Ivar in his left hand. Bror in his right. Lilla Ulv, Fru Gnista and Tyst slung and holstered, but their souls awake, flickering in the steel, all looking at him.
going gold, the pulse-line fracturing into slivers, and stopping at the fourth.
Five lines, drawn in gold, laid across the ledge like a cat's cradle, each one closing a road of Silversten's:
Ivar's line, straight ahead.
Lilla Ulv's, bouncing off the Pillar to come from behind.
Fru Gnista's, bursting overhead into blinding gold sparks.
Tyst's, silent, low, at the ankles.
Bror's, a wide gold shove to sweep Smurjan, Öde and Rougeina out of the way, clearing a straight path from nowhere to Silversten's jaw.
And one gap left open, exactly the width of a man in a midnight-green coat.
Kompis on one knee at the foot of the Pillar of Names, five guns firing at once: two in his hands, three floating, fired by their own souls, a grumpy old hunter, a wolf cub, a fireworks-maker, a silent assassin and a five-year-old boy, all shining in their steel. Five lines of gold light leap across the ledge.
Straight ahead, a rifle-shot. From behind, off the Pillar, a ricochet. Overhead, a burst of golden fireworks turning the sky white. Low, silent, a shot at the ankles. And sweeping wide, a warm gold wave shoving three of the crew sideways out of the line like a big brother clearing a path.
In the middle, Silversten, his twenty silver outlines going out one after another as each road closes: pop, pop, pop, pop.
And through the only gap in all five lines, running full tilt from nowhere, the one road nobody can see: Vigolas.
his silver face, his coin-eyes darting, looking for the road where he wins, and finding: nothing. Every outline gone. For the first time in thirty years, a blank future.
arriving out of the gold light, fist already cocked, green lightning to the elbow, grinning.
KRAKOOM. An Emerald Knuckle to the silver face, full force, from a road that never existed. The silver cracks like ice across a pond.
Silversten flying backwards across the ledge, crashing down onto the black rock among the silver coins Ögar wept. The silver mask on his face crazed with cracks.
sagging to one knee, a single thin line of blood from his nose. Only one. He wipes it, amazed.
unconscious in Rougeina's lap, and a small smile on her face, as if she'd felt it land.
on his back. The cracks spreading across his silver face. And through them, from the silver coin-eyes, something leaking: not blood. Coins. Silver tears, the ones he swallowed, rolling out of his eyes one by one, clink, clink, clink, onto the rock.
and as each coin falls, a little of the silver falls with it, flaking away like old paint, and underneath: skin. Grey, old, human. And with each coin, a flinch, as if something hurts.
awake again, barely, in Rougeina's lap, her blind face turned toward him.
weeping for the first time in thirty years, silver tears pouring out of him, his face half flesh, half cracked silver, both hands over it.
The last of the Guild's barges pulling away into the mist without him. The remaining Seers kneeling on the ledge, veils off, done. Lantern-children coming slowly down the spiral stair. The crew standing over the weeping man in the silver.
standing over Silversten, Bror in his hand. A long moment. He could. Bror's soul looks up at him.
on his knees now among a spill of silver tears, his cracked face lifted toward Vigolas, utterly bewildered.
crouching in front of him, elbows on knees, shrugging, almost kind.