Chapter 197
The storm of shards wheeling round the plinth, ten thousand of them, and out of every one at once, the same silver hand, all reaching in the same beat. And in every shard, over her heart, a silver crack with light leaking out of it.
cracked all over, held up in Kali's one arm.
on her knees on the black sand, the Backlog still hammering through her, one ear pressed to the plinth, counting the heart she can hear in the glass.
the silver rings gone from her ankles, the shoulder bleeding. She draws all eight blades, four in each hand, and settles onto the balls of her bare feet.
stepping in and taking Rougeina's wrist. Between all of them, the Knot lighting up gold, thread after thread, heart to heart.
one voice each:
wide awake, violet pouring off him: a whole hold's worth of free-charged sleep, banked.
side by side.
Kompis throws two gold threads, and they tie round Räva's wrist and Bali's wrist, and knot into everyone else's.
at the centre of the ring, coat flaring, every shard's light on his face.
And the Minus One: every action but one, and he has to name the one he gives up.
No beat in it. His heart stopping, for one.
(Next panel: it restarts, ba-DUM, and so does everyone's, all at once, on the same beat: Mingus's. The golden dog standing in the middle of the ring with his chest rising, and the gold pulse-line running round every border on the page.)
One heartbeat.
Rougeina is everywhere. Her eight blades have become a storm of silver-rose ribbons: twelve thousand and one Swaps and strikes inside a single beat, through the whirling cloud of shards, Swap and strike, Swap and strike, a crimson-haired woman in ten thousand places in one instant. Every strike shatters the glass a silver hand is reaching out of, and never touches the hand.
Under the storm, the crew in a ring on the black sand, every heart glowing in its chest, gold threads running from each one to a golden dog at the centre, all of them carrying a share of one beat.
And across the whole spread, hanging in the air like the ribs of a cathedral, twelve thousand and one phantom trails, silver-rose, every one of them a step of a dance she will only ever do once.
Her places going out. Shards bursting, her faces vanishing out of them: ten thousand. A thousand. A hundred. Seventy-two. Twelve.
in the last few shards, and in the dark mirror on the plinth, her hair streaming, her one eye wild.
The storm over. Rougeina landing back on the plinth among her trails, all eight blades still in her hands, swaying. Round her the crew sagging: Kompis bleeding from both nostrils, Vigolas grey-lipped, Trollmage already toppling sideways into sleep, Isa flat on the sand.
Kompis touches the coin-tear in his beard-braid. It's silent.
alone now in the last mirror, the dark one, looking out at them: a ring of people tied together with gold, all on one beat. Her sister, tied in. Her kept son, tied in. Her daughter in the middle. Everyone she loves, in one heartbeat, outside her glass.
Without her.
Her clear half and her grey half, both turned toward them.
(The grey half's balloon, beside it: empty. A blank gap where an answer should be.)
She pulls: every reflection she has left, the last shards, the last glints in the black sand, every beat of every one of them (not the eight blades in her daughter's hands; she gave those away), into one body in the dark mirror. The silver crack over her heart tears wide, and light pours out of her chest like water through a split dam.
A reflection goes first. She pushes out: the dark mirror's surface bulging like a soap bubble under her palms, cracking in a star, and she steps through. One bare foot onto the black sand, then the other. Out, for the first time in three hundred years. Behind her, the mirror shatters. She falls forward, light pouring from her chest.
Rougeina, twelve feet away, sees one tear fall from her mother's eye, and Swaps with it. Tear-Swap. She's there, inches from her mother's face, and catches her as she falls.
edge to edge. One heartbeat. The overflowing beat. It starts, and it doesn't close.
Räva on her knees beside them, both hands on her sister's face. And she says it again, and this time nothing eats it. The balloon is whole.
A plate flickering into being for the first time in three hundred years. Not grey. Not blank. Solid.
TINDRA · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #778
(One place below her daughter.)
A gold thread from Kompis's hand catching round it, and knotting into Rougeina's, into Räva's, into all of them.
(No balloon. Her eye going wide. She can feel them.)
on her mother's face, one on each cheek, the way she once held a cold man's face in a study. And under her palms, line by line, the missing half filling in: a cheek, freckles, a small white scar on the chin (the barracks roof), the corner of a mouth, a second green eye, the other sleeve of a night-blue coat with its silver star-buttons. Colour flooding into her: night-blue, skin, crimson. Whole.
standing back, her hand over her mouth, the names on her arms glowing.
on her knees, one hand on her own heart, listening to the other one.
whole for one heartbeat, in her daughter's arms, light pouring out of her chest between them like dawn through a door. Both eyes on her daughter. Both sides of her mouth.
laughing and crying at the same time, the sound bright and helpless.
smiling, the whole of her smiling.
Light. The whole panel white-silver, edge to edge, and in the middle of it, barely, the shapes of two women holding each other, one of them made of light.
(Empty SFX box.)
holding nothing. Silver dust drifting down through her fingers like fine snow.
Gate City: a barber's mirror on a nail. tink. A crack, corner to corner.
Skatt: a looking-glass on a market stall, price tag and all. tink. The tag slides off.
Glasheim, a high white room: an old man's shaving mirror. tink. Hjalmar looks up.
A fishing village, any village: a girl's hand-mirror. tink.
The Pillar of Names: the black water at its foot shivers, once, all over, though there is no wind.
Astralis: the two great mirrors of the Mirror Bastion, silver and rose, splitting top to bottom. KRRRRK.
Rougeina on her knees on the little plinth of black sand, in a slow fall of silver dust. Round her, where they fell from her hands, fanned on the sand, her eight blades: the only mirrors in the world without a crack. In every one, her face. Only hers.
And by reflex, the way she was taught, she counts the thunder.
(Empty SFX box.)