Chapter 2
People are walking out of the surf in soaked clothes, confused and looking at their own hands. These are the newly reborn. Some are in bodies that clearly aren't theirs: an old man in a child's coat staring at his small hands. Trisdel clerks with clipboards wave them into queues.
(No caption. The image is the explanation: here, souls wash ashore.)
Four golden paws. A wagging tail.
Pan up: MINGUS, a golden retriever with a soft gold coat and kind brown eyes, sits patiently at the feet of a man leaning against a fish-market wall.
MINGUS · NOT RANKED
KOMPIS: golden-tan skin, a braided beard with a single strand of lake-weed tied into it, a hoodie older than most empires, and a long rifle wrapped in cloth on his back. He looks tired in the way kind people look tired.
KOMPIS · K-II MARKED · Scalelist #48,112
A masked TRISDEL HANDLER slides a sheet across a crate: a printed copy of the Scalelist with one line circled, ∞−1 · UNNUMBERED.
Mingus, under the crate, puts his chin on Kompis's boot.
Through his eyes, the metal is faintly translucent. Inside it sits the ghost of an old hunter with a grey moustache, arms crossed.
SOUL OF THE RIFLE, IVAR (small ghostly balloon): I don't like this job.
Kompis walks; Mingus trots beside him. He talks to the dog without looking at him.
Mingus stops and looks up at him. Just looks.
caught.
·
Chairs flying. Standing on the central table in a borrowed shirt, kicking a drunk off his ankle, is Vigolas.
MARKA, enormous and laughing, swinging an anchor on a chain like a flail, three men hanging off her arm.
DREKK, wiry and sharp-eyed, a spyglass behind his ear, ducking a bottle without looking.
YSEL, hooded and quiet, sitting perfectly still in a corner while the brawl breaks around her like water around a rock.
grinning down at the room.
The whole tavern freezes mid-punch. Silence.
Then: "HAHAHAHAHAHA" from every direction. People fall off chairs laughing.
Marka is not laughing. She puts her anchor down.
Ysel says nothing. She just stands up, which is somehow the same thing.
The room looks different through his eyes. Thin glowing threads run between people: friendship, debt, love, hate. Fresh golden threads already run from Marka to Vigolas, and from Drekk to Vigolas.
And from Ysel? Nothing. No threads at all, to anyone. As if she isn't attached to the world.
a small frown.
The tavern door explodes inward.
A squad of Sentinels pours in behind a SENTINEL CAPTAIN: heavier armour, the helmet split open to show a scarred face. A crimson sin-mark glows on his neck and has spread down his arm in crawling script.
SENTINEL CAPTAIN · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #9,330
He raises his arm. A crossbow made of red light forms in his hand, its bolt already notched.
Marka's anchor smashes two Sentinels through the wall. Drekk flips a table onto a third. Vigolas leaps from the bar, laughing, cube in his fist, punching a helmet in half.
The Captain doesn't fight the chaos. He waits. He's patient, precise. His red crossbow tracks one target: Vigolas's back, while Vigolas is busy.
Click.
The bolt leaves the bow, a red streak aimed straight at the spine.
In the doorway, without hurrying, he puts one hand on Mingus's head.
The whole world turns grey and frozen: flying chairs hang in the air, beer hangs in droplets, Marka's anchor stops mid-swing. The red bolt hangs one centimetre from Vigolas's spine.
Only Kompis is in colour. Behind him stretch dozens of translucent afterimages of himself, each taking a different path across the room: one shot, one dives, one is hit, one dies. He is living the moment over and over, keeping only the version where he survives.
Along the bottom edge of the spread runs a thin golden pulse line: Mingus's heartbeat, steady. Thump… thump… Subtick only lasts while that line keeps beating next to him.
(a) The red bolt is in Kompis's hand, plucked out of the air.
(b) The Captain's crossbow is in three pieces, cut apart by shots nobody saw fired. Ivar smokes on Kompis's shoulder.
(c) The Captain staggers back, staring at an empty hand.
The price: he's soaked in sweat, breathing like he has run for an hour, and a thin line of blood runs from his nose. His knees shake. Mingus leans his whole weight against Kompis's leg to hold him up.
Vigolas turns and sees the bolt in a stranger's hand, aimed at where his spine was. He stares, delighted.
crouching down to the dog, completely serious.
The Captain retreats through the broken door, clutching his ruined arm, shouting:
Outside, through the doorway, the city's great Scalelist flickers. Three numbers that were nowhere a moment ago jump up the ladder: Marka's, Drekk's and Kompis's. Ysel's never moves.
Vigolas slams a rolled sheet onto the one table still standing and unrolls it: a blueprint of a city made of glass, floating in a twilight sky, with staircases going nowhere.
His face says nothing. His eyes say everything: this is exactly what Baldr wanted to know.
Mingus, looking up at Kompis.