Chapter 212

The Hollow Choir pouring over the rim's lip, hollow chests open, mouths wide, singing stolen voices. The crew meeting them in total silence.

Smurjan, the Triple Pulse, three Choristers flung back off the rim into the dark, without a sound.

Rougeina, Moth-Swap with a night-moth, slashing hooks out of grey hands.

Kompis, firing Tyst, which in the Silence is no quieter than any other gun.

punching a Chorister so hard it tumbles back over the rim, and grinning, mouth wide open in a war-cry that makes no sound. He looks thrilled by this.

slipping past the line toward Vider's bench, and singing at him: not a song this time. A scream. A stolen scream, a woman's, raw and terrible, in jagged handwriting.

(Fear: make him flinch, make him gasp.)

Doesn't move. Doesn't flinch. His hands rest folded in his lap. The scream breaks against him like a wave against a hill.

signing urgently to Isa, pointing at Vider.

Three Choristers come at the bench from three sides with long iron hooks on chains. Öde's Scythe-Sweep takes one. Smurjan catches the second chain in his fist. The third hook gets through.

driving straight through the back of Vider's enormous left hand, pinning it to the rim-stone bench.

Nothing. Not a gasp. Not a grunt. The hood doesn't move. The violet slots in the ring beside him flicker, all ten at once, and hold.

(No SFX. In the Silence there's nothing to print, and he wouldn't have given them one anyway.)

on the other end of the Knot, feeling it. The pain. He staggers, a hand flying to the back of his own hand.

also on the Knot, also feeling it, her face going still. She looks at the giant with a hook through his hand, not making a sound, for a crew he met an hour ago.

Rougeina, Swapping onto the chain itself, slashing it through. Smurjan wrenching the hook out of the bench and out of Vider's hand. Blood on the grey clay. Vider flexes the hand once, slowly. Then signs, with the wounded hand:

pointing past them all, her face draining.

Coming over the rim, alone, a Chorister unlike the others: small, in a ragged coat of patchwork bells, a painted smile on a hollow face. The jester. It doesn't sing a scream. It listens, head tilted, toward Sister Tecken.

opening like a mouth, and pulling. Out of Sister Tecken's throat, a thin bright thread of sound, her laugh, the only laugh she's ever had, the one that has made Vider shake with silent laughter for forty years, flying across the rim into the jester's chest.

turning to Vider, and laughing at him with Sister Tecken's laugh: warm, wheezy, ridiculous, the funniest sound in the world to him, the one sound he loves, aloud in the Silence.

They shake. The great hooded hill trembling. Silent laughter. The violet ring flickering, slot by slot. One sound, just one breath of a laugh, aloud, and a thousand years go into the jester's hollow chest.

seeing it, and there's only one way to stop a laugh before it happens. She plants her bare feet on the rim-stone, and her eyes go clear.

…ba—

(Everything in her sight stops: the jester, mid-laugh, the stolen laugh frozen in the air as solid letters, and Vider, mid-shake, his breath held for him at the top of a beat.)

holding, the Backlog already building, not breathing, and in the frozen, silent world, her thought balloon, frost-edged:

(Thought:) …hurry. · …i've got him. he can't laugh if he can't move.

Release, —DUM, and out of every hollow chest along the rim, the voices fly home: hundreds of them, thousands, bright threads of song, scream, lullaby, laughter, shanty, streaming out of the Choristers like birds out of a cage and away across the Current toward the throats they were stolen from.

a thread of bright sound flying back into her throat. Her hand to her neck. She opens her mouth, and of course nothing comes out, because it's the Silence. But she can feel it's hers again.

The Hollow Choir, emptied, mute, their chests truly hollow now, stumbling back over the rim into the dark, fleeing, singing nothing at all.

dropping to her knees in the Backlog, ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum, though in the Silence even that makes no sound. Kompis catching her. Mingus leaning against her.

And beside her, the hooded giant's shoulders still shaking, very gently: silent laughter, safe now, at Sister Tecken signing something rude at the fleeing jester.

signing to Trollmage, slow and grave.

at the rim's edge, his star-lantern raised toward the far-off white towers of Glasheim, its map wheeling, and one cluster of stars moving: things being refiled, fast, toward one point deep under the mountain.

taking the slate, writing fast, then pointing at people one by one: a plan.

nodding, hand on Mingus. He stays. Mingus stays with him. That's the rule.

the wounded one, reaching out and laying one enormous fingertip, very gently, on top of Rougeina's head. Like a blessing. Or a promise.

The Marka pulling away from the rim with half her crew aboard. On the rim-stone, small against the dark, the others standing guard round a seated mountain: Kompis, Isa, Trollmage, Smurjan, and a golden dog who still can't bark.

Black stone. One desk. One window, and through it, grey. At the desk, a tall, straight woman in black and white, grey all over, her back to us. A white-gloved hand dipping a pen.

The pen touching a fresh white page, and writing one letter, neat and terrible, in a hand that has signed away whole villages:

R