Chapter 230

The Marka under full sail through a starlit sea with gaps in its stars. Every horizon a little too close. Grass on the deck. Barley in the planter box. The Kettle's bell and the CAMILLA THE SERAPHIM plank at the bow. The Kettle's red pennant under the flag.

The whole crew lying on blankets under the stars in one great heap, the way they did at the end of the last saga, but more of them now: Vigolas, Kompis, Rougeina, Smurjan, Trollmage, Drekk, Öde, Isa, Ysel, Levla. And Mingus, who has decided, as always, that he is the watch.

on his back, the music box open on his chest playing four notes, very softly.

his head on Mingus, Bror propped beside him.

Vigolas: thirty-six pockets. A white cube with a grey line in it. A grey cube of a thousand decrees. Seven sheets of seven lives. An empty jar. A music box that plays four notes. His mother's face, his captain's face, Ture's name, the sea with an apple in his hand. He can't taste salt. He can't remember Hild's star. He's afraid of the dark now, and he goes toward it anyway.

Kompis: five guns. A five-year-old in the fifth, called Slimo, who doesn't want to hurt anyone. A silver coin-tear in his beard. A brother's face he has seen.

Rougeina: a plank with every name crossed off or unwritten, and two words her mother left her: little storm. Her hands, learning to hold things that aren't knives.

Smurjan: seventeen voices, Marka's among them; three shadows and a faint fourth (Bali, living in Kali's black-glass sickle); one with a white streak through its jaws, who remembers a whale that never was.

Trollmage: a crooked crown he doesn't want, a hungry book that waits, and a stone on a cairn at the edge of the world.

Drekk: a beard. A second hand at the wheel. Not losing a third thing.

Öde: a hundred and ten names, TINDRA in silver, and in the darker ink, Fjällmå, Lövholm, Snöberga, Ekeskär, Rougeina, a blue door and cardamom. A field she gave away. A ship's garden.

Isa: a heart that beats at the world's speed now. A clock with no hands at her throat, and the hands in a cube beside it.

Ysel: no shadow. A finished tune. A red pennant.

Levla: two-thirds of a coat. Nothing to his name. It's very light.

Mingus: a chewed stick, a strip of green coat, and the whole saga's worth of gold forms he'll never mention.

lying flat on the deck, ear to the planks, a beat late, softly.

Above the Current, faint among the remaining stars, the sentence the Arbiter wrote in the sky two sagas ago, still hanging there, still missing its full stop: ONE MATCH. OF MANY

looking up at it, eyes open.

hanging on the mast, thirty-six pockets. In one of them, the verdict cube, the Arbiter's full stop from Saga II, folded small, humming faintly, the way it hums when something on the other side of the sky is listening.

lifting his head, ears up, looking at the sky-sentence. A low, thoughtful wuff.

The Marka sailing into a pale morning. And far ahead, at the very edge of the too-close horizon, a light: not a star, not a sunrise. A beam. Long and white and slow, sweeping across the sea from somewhere past the edge of the world, round and round, like a lighthouse the size of a mountain.

at the wheel, Ysel beside him, lowering his spyglass, his voice hushed.

sitting up from the deck, a beat late.

Behind the Marka, cutting through the morning sea under a press of patched sail, gaining on her: a broad, battered carrack. Her hull striped with five bands of different-coloured planks. Her figurehead a raised fist with a bandage across its knuckles. The same fist on her black flag, snapping in the wind.

coming up alongside, a wild crew of eight lining her rail: a huge round man with a ladle the size of an oar; a lanky man leaning at an impossible angle, a battered tin in his hand; a wiry man in goggles with chalk on his face; a hooded woman with an eyepatch and a long brass rifle; a calm woman in a moss-green coat with chalk circles round its hem; a small freckled girl with bells in her hair, mid-cartwheel on the rail; a quiet man in a clean grey coat, one hand raised, palm out. And at the front, one boot on the bowsprit: a big man in a coat of sewn-on patches, both fists bandaged, grinning with a chipped tooth.

cupping his hands, bellowing across the water:

grinning so wide it nearly splits his face.

mid-cartwheel, giggling so hard that, across the water, Isa, mid-hold on nothing, snorts, a beat late, and laughs.

grinning across the water at Vigolas, both of them hanging off their bowsprits.

on the Marka's bow, barking across the water. And Krydog, spotting the golden dog, going quiet for one second, a strange soft look on his scarred face.

The two ships racing on. And the Beam sweeping round again, slow, enormous, from far beyond the horizon, and as it passes over the sea ahead of them…

For one second, lit white: the water opening. A vast round shape in the ocean, like a mouth, lips of foam, a throat of dark, as wide as an island, opening, and then, as the light moves on, gone, just sea.

at the wheel, frozen, spyglass dropped.

across the water on the Upp Igen, laughing, pointing at the place where it opened.

at the bow, afraid of the dark and grinning anyway, the music box playing four notes in his pocket, his crew behind him, the Compass in his hand pointing straight back at them.

The two ships plunging on toward the edge of the world, toward the light, toward the place where the sea opened.

The whole map of the world: nine realms hanging like fruit on the great dark shape of Ferdinand, the cork-oak; the Current between them, smaller than it was, its edges grey; islands drifting like lanterns; a great white Beam sweeping from the rim of the map. And far, far down, two tiny ships racing side by side toward the edge.

In the sky over all of it, the old unfinished sentence: ONE MATCH. OF MANY, still missing its full stop.

Small, in the corner of the sky, as if someone were reading over our shoulder: a black square balloon, empty. Waiting.

(It can keep waiting.)