Chapter 233
The Upp Igen hard aground, her bow up on black rock, masts at a drunken angle, and swarming with Wreckers: tar-coated figures with lanterns and hooked poles, stripping rope and prising hatches. On the reef beside her, dripping, grinning: Krydog.
picking up the reef-rock that gashed his chest, a jagged black stone, weighing it in his bandaged hand.
A Wrecker swinging a hooked pole at Krydog's head. It connects, THWACK, and Krydog goes down on one knee on the reef. Then stands up. The cut on his scalp closing. He rolls his shoulders.
The Wrecker swinging again, the same pole, the same blow, and this time it bounces off Krydog's forehead as if he were made of oak. The Wrecker staring at the bent pole.
on the canted deck inside her chalk circle round the main hatch, the crew crowded inside it, her ash staff braced against the tilt, the iron ring at its tip ringing softly.
at the edge of the circle, chalk in both hands, goggles down, already drawing: a crane, on the tilted deck boards, fast, precise, every rivet. "Nine minutes," someone once said. He's faster now.
scrambling up the drunken mainmast to the Perch, eyepatch flipped to her blind left eye, her right eye pressed to the scope of her long brass rifle. Looking only within the horizon. A single crimson tear running down her cheek, and the colour draining out of her vision: everything she sees through the scope goes grey.
Perne's rifle, Fjärran, cracking once, twice, three times. Three Wrecker lanterns on the reef shatter, and three Wreckers in the dark become easier to see than to hide.
leaning against the rail at an angle no human spine should allow, tapping his snus tin three times, flicking a finger at the rope a Wrecker is sawing through.
(The Wrecker's knife skates off the rope as if it were cable.)
coming up out of the galley hatch with his cauldron Mätt on his back and his ladle Sleven in his fist, wading into four Wreckers and swatting them off the deck like flies.
scampering across the tilted deck between the Wreckers' legs, bells jingling, and as she passes each one, robbing him blind: a purse, a knife, a lantern, a hook, a hat, piling them into her too-big jacket, giggling.
reaching to grab her, and she laughs in his face, bright and contagious, and he laughs too, he can't help it, and his grip slackens, and she's gone.
A battered carrack aground on a black reef at night, lit by a hundred Wrecker lanterns, and her crew fighting for her: a giant in a coat of patches on the reef, Wreckers' poles bouncing off him; a calm woman in green inside a glowing chalk circle with a crowd behind her; a wiry man in goggles drawing a crane in chalk across the deck, and the crane rising off the boards, solid; a hooded sharpshooter on a drunken mast, one crimson tear on her cheek; a lanky man leaning on nothing; a barrel of a cook swatting Wreckers with a ladle; a small girl with bells cartwheeling past with an armful of stolen hats; and at the wheel, a quiet man in a clean grey coat, one hand raised, waiting.
Across the top, out of eight throats:
UPP IGEN!
And out of the dark behind the reef, the Marka, coming about, back toward the wreck she'd escaped, her crew lining her rail.
landing on the reef beside him, shrugging.
Both crews together.
Smurjan's Triple Pulse and Roffe's ladle, side by side, a dozen Wreckers into the sea in one beat. Bakasura, from the shadow, eyeing the cauldron on Roffe's back: "…Is that soup?" / Roffe: "After."
Kompis with Bror and Perne with Fjärran on the same mast, the gold shove and the precise shot, Wreckers falling between them.
Rougeina Swapping between Wrecker lanterns, snuffing them, landing in Emma's circle and finding she can put her blades down in it, just for a second, without being afraid.
Isa holding a reef-wave about to swamp the wreck, …ba—, and Tihi, beside her, clapping both hands over her own mouth so she won't giggle.
Jeppson's chalk crane, solid now, its hook dropping, catching the Upp Igen's keel, and lifting, the whole carrack groaning up off the reef, inch by inch, while Krydog and Smurjan and Vigolas haul on the counterweight rope together.
The Upp Igen sliding off the reef into deep black water, upright, afloat, a long gash in her bow but floating. Both crews cheering. The Wreckers scrambling back onto the rocks in disarray.
sitting down hard on the deck, his hands shaking violently. He looks at them in disgust.
at the wheel, watching the two crews, very quietly, to Emma.
on the reef again, pulling the reef-rock out of his coat, taking a needle from his pocket and beginning, then and there, to sew it on as a patch, among a thousand others.
A hammer. Tonk. Tonk. Tonk. From the wreck's bow, still on the edge of the reef.
On the Upp Igen's bow, at the very spot where she hit, a big man in a tarred coat with a beard like steel wool and a gravel voice, nailing something to the hull with a hammer, while Wreckers gather round him.
RASP · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #6,060 · Wrecker Boss
turning, grinning with brass teeth, hammer on his shoulder.
at the wheel, going very still at the word.
slapping the hull, where something gleams under his hand.
frowning.
The Wreckers all round the reef raising their hooked poles, not to fight, but in a kind of salute, toward the brass on the hull. And from the rocks, from every Wrecker gang, voices, chanting, flat and sure:
on the Upp Igen's deck, her chalk circle flickering, as if something heavy were pressing on it from outside.
stepping back from the hull to show his work.
where the bow touched the reef: a brass plaque, freshly nailed, old and green with age, stamped with the cold square seal of a dead Architect:
(Ingrith's seal. Ingrith is dead. The law isn't.)