Chapter 192
The Marka grinding up onto a shore of black glass sand, Astralis's lantern-stars close overhead. Black panthers come down to the waterline to look, eyes like coins. Rougeina's panther drops off the bow onto the sand and stops dead, hackles up, at the woman standing with her back to the sea.
turning round at last: sharp foxy face, a grin with too many teeth, laughing amber eyes, loose red hair, the bushy tail curling.
RÄVA · DRIFTING-7 · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist: — (wearing her own, for once)
at the rail, his bell-rope mask turned straight at her. Very quiet.
the grin going thin, looking past them all at Rougeina.
very deliberately not looking at the water by her boots.
unimpressed.
The crew walking inland across the black glass. Räva trailing after them, complaining, one hand held flat over her eyes like a visor.
Tower-sized mirrors floating in the starlight on every side, angled every which way. As Rougeina passes each one, the half-faced woman appears in it and turns to watch her go. But many of the towers are flat grey, dead, reflecting nothing: whole avenues of them.
A dark meadow of waist-high nettles, green-black, every leaf glittering, and at either end of it a mirror bigger than any tower in the forest. On the left a silver one (Pride), on the right a rose one (Envy), facing each other across the field.
And because they face each other, between them, inside both, there is a corridor: an endless hall of reflections, mirror inside mirror inside mirror, running away into the distance, each reflection a little fainter than the last, until far, far down, at the vanishing point, the reflections stop, and there is only a smudge of grey.
At the near edge of the field, very small: the crew. And one woman with a fox's tail, standing with her back to all of it.
at the field's edge, looking down the endless corridor.
whirling round.
Rougeina turns her back on her and walks into the nettles. Räva lunges and grabs her arm.
letting her go. A breath. Then she spins on her heel toward the crew with the most dazzling, dangerous grin in the Current.
waking on Drekk's back, unable to help himself, his comedy-rival reflex kicking in before his brain does.
1. Trollmage snorts, a huge helpless troll-snort that shakes Drekk: "…That's TERRIBLE—" SFX: snk. His face smooths over to blank skin, the crooked crown sitting on nothing.
2. And where Räva stood, Trollmage: two metres of half-troll in a patched thirty-pocket waistcoat, tusks, long ears, the crow on her head shrieking in confusion, a fox's tail sticking out behind.
TROLLMAGE · K-II MARKED (assigned) · Scalelist #120,331
Räva-as-Trollmage plants herself across the path between the crew and the field, arms spread, a wall of troll. Vigolas runs straight into her and bounces off.
speaking in Trollmage's exact slow, nasal, comfortable voice, eyes amber behind his face.
Rougeina Swaps with a black panther far out in the nettles, flick, a silver-rose afterimage left on the path, and she's halfway across the field.
A long troll arm swings through the air and closes on her harness as she lands. Räva got there first by running straight down the phantom trail.
The thread between the big troll-shape and Rougeina: old, thick, tangled, and red-gold. The exact colour of the thread that ran from Rougeina into the bucket.
The nettles part, and out of them walks a lean wild woman covered head to toe in stinging hairs, welts on her own palms, a thicket of nettles for hair. She leaves no reflection in either great mirror.
NÄSSLA · FERDINAND-6 · the Nettle · Scalelist: — (the Scarwood are not counted)
She takes Räva-as-Trollmage's wrist in one bare, stinging hand.
not letting go. Red welts blooming on the borrowed grey-green skin.
(A welt flares white. A nettle pushes out through the borrowed cheek.)
(A smaller burn this time: one welt at the hairline, one small nettle. But a burn.)
Räva lets Trollmage's face go, snk, and it flies back onto the real Trollmage, who gasps and grabs it with both hands.
And Räva on her knees in the nettles in her own fox face, Nässla still holding her wrist. She blinks, dazed, as if she's dropped something.
standing over her, very still. She answers before she knows why.
(Räva looks up at her. Neither of them moves.)
crouching, still holding the wrist, almost gentle.
(Nothing burns.)
on her knees, under the sting, unable to lie. Her tail flat in the nettles. No grin at all.
(The welts on her wrist cooling, pink to nothing. The truth doesn't burn.)
looking up at her niece at last. Not a fox. Just a woman who has been running a long time.
Behind them, across the field, the great silver mirror, and in it, enormous, filling the glass from frame to frame: a woman with long crimson hair drifting and half a face, looking down at the two of them with the softest smile in the whole arc. She doesn't speak through the great glass. Her voice comes, soft, from much closer: from the eight blades on Rougeina's back.
(Räva doesn't turn round. She shuts her eyes.)