Chapter 232
The Beam swung away to the far side of the sea. Darkness round the black rocks of the Mouth. And everywhere, on every reef and rock, the false lights: warm golden beacons, a harbour lantern, a cottage window, a church tower's lamp, a signal fire, all of them looking like home.
at the bow, squinting at them, and despite himself his chest tightening. One of the lights looks exactly like a lantern on a dock where a boy once ate a stolen apple.
staring at one false light on a reef. It looks exactly like a farmhouse window in a summer field. Her hand going to her arm.
eyes gold, looking at the false lights, and seeing no threads to any of them. Nothing. They don't lead anywhere.
a little ahead of the Marka, turning, her bow swinging toward a cluster of warm false beacons on the rocks that look like a busy harbour.
at the Upp Igen's masthead, her eyepatch over her right eye, her left eye, the one she used for the long look all morning, staring, milky, unfocused.
at the Upp Igen's wheel, frowning at the harbour lights, at the silver thread from the last sweep fading off the bow.
on the Upp Igen's bow, fading out entirely in the dark. Gone. And the ship sliding toward the warm, welcoming, empty lights.
at the Marka's wheel. The silver thread on the Marka's bow is fading too, but Drekk holds on to it: staring at the last faint silver line, his old eyes fixed on it, seeing it long after anyone else would have lost it.
at his side, not talking. Her hand on the wheel beside his. Her eyes shut, because she can't see it and doesn't try.
The rocks in the dark.
The Marka threading between two reefs by a hair, Drekk turning the wheel by a silver line nobody else can see, the rocks scraping her bark hull, SKRRRRK.
Bror's shove, BRA-DOOM, into a reef, pushing the Marka off it by a hand's width.
Isa holding a rock that was about to rip the hull, …ba—, while Smurjan and Trollmage pole the ship off it.
Öde throwing grass down the deck so nobody slips as the ship heels hard over.
Wreckers on the rocks: ragged figures in tarred oilcloth with long hooked poles and lanterns, leaping onto the Marka's rail as she scrapes past, trying to hook her rigging.
RANK PLATE ×30: WRECKER · K-II MARKED · false-beacon gangs
Rougeina, Swapping from Wrecker-lantern to Wrecker-lantern along the rocks, snuffing them, putting out the false lights one by one as she goes, eight silver-rose blades flashing in the dark.
Vigolas, deeper Greed-sight on: over the false lights, no gold at all. They're worth nothing. And over the true sea-lane, faint, an emerald glow where ships have passed safely for four hundred years.
The black rocks of the Mouth at night, scattered with a hundred warm, welcoming, false lights: a cottage window, a harbour, a mother's lamp, a farmhouse in summer, each one a lie. Threading between them: the Marka, her bark hull scraping, her crew fighting Wreckers off her rail, and at her wheel an old grey-bearded navigator steering by a single faint silver thread running from her bow through the dark, invisible to everyone but him.
Behind her, off to the right, the Upp Igen, blind, turning toward the warmest lights of all.
at the Marka's stern, looking back, seeing the Upp Igen turn.
at the Upp Igen's bow, hearing, turning, too late. Under his bow, the black water heaving over a reef.
The Upp Igen hits the rocks. Full speed. A crash that shakes the sea. Timbers splintering, her bow riding up onto a black reef, masts whipping, her crew thrown across the deck.
Krydog thrown clean over the bow by the impact, flying, and plunging into the black sea between the rocks.
And the Wreckers pouring onto the wreck: dozens of them leaping from the rocks onto the tilted deck with hooks and sacks, Wrecker lanterns everywhere, stripping her rigging, prising her hatches.
on the canted deck, drawing a chalk circle round the hatch where Tihi and the others are scrambling up from below, staff braced, calm.
(The Wreckers' hooks reach the chalk line, and stop. Nobody inside can be made to go.)
through the gap, safe in the dark water past the reefs. The crew at her rail, staring back at the wreck.
staring at them both.
between the rocks where Krydog went in. Nothing. Bubbles.
Krydog sinking, a reef-edge having opened a long gash across his chest. And the gash closing, knitting shut as if it had never been, his eyes opening in the black water.
(One heartbeat. Then two. The Get-Up Beat.)
On the reef beside the wreck, the Wrecker captain hauling a sack of the Upp Igen's ropes, and behind him, out of the black sea, a huge wet hand slapping onto the rock.
bandaged at the knuckles, water pouring off it, the bandage torn and the skin under it healed.
Krydog hauling himself up out of the sea onto the black reef, water streaming off his coat of a thousand patches, his chest whole, chipped-tooth grin wider than ever, standing up to his full height in the light of a dozen Wrecker lanterns.
cracking his neck, looking at the Wreckers on his ship, his voice a happy roar.
(Across the dark water, from his whole crew at once, from the wreck, from inside Emma's circle:)