Chapter 243

The flying island passing overhead in its storm of birds, ten thousand wings roaring, its waterfall drifting down over both ships as rain. On its rim, small, a girl in a long white scarf bouncing on her toes, waving. On the two decks below, both crews soaked to the skin, mouths open.

Vigolas, dripping, grinning, waving back with both arms. On the Upp Igen's bow three metres away, Krydog doing exactly the same.

on the Marka's bow, beside himself: front paws on the rail, nose straight up at ten thousand birds, tail a gold blur, barking at all of them at once.

a lantern in his fist, held a little too close to his chest. Rougeina beside him at the rail, rubbing the last of Hallbard's soot off her eighth blade with her thumb.

on the Upp Igen's Perch, right eye to Fjärran's scope, a single crimson tear running from it. tik. shhhhk.

Huge box-kites, pale as moths, riding the wind on lines a mile long, each one dragging a dark bundle underneath it. Painted on every kite, gold on grey: a griffin clutching a net.

at the Marka's rail in his plain shirt, owning nothing, going pale.

Two kites dipping. Two bundles opening, and out of the dark, falling straight down on both ships, two great grey nets, wide as mainsails, the cord glistening with lime, the rim weighted with lead cast in the shape of little birds.

Kompis swinging Bror off his shoulder and firing it straight up.

A wide wave of warm gold force hits the falling net from underneath and holds it up off the deck, like a hand under a sheet.

The second net lands. Roffe, Tihi and Krydog underneath it. The lime takes hold. Krydog, caught standing, wrapped to the shoulders, unable to fall and unable to get up, every muscle locking, and on his scarred face something the reader has never seen there: panic.

Down the kite-lines, sliding out of the dark on hooked rings: Fowlers. Grey oilcloth, hoods trimmed with feathers, hooked poles, pots of bird-lime on their belts, throw-nets coiled on their shoulders.

RANK PLATE ×30: FOWLER · K-II MARKED · the House of Grip

The girl has stopped waving. Her bright black bird's eyes on the nets below. She pulls the white scarf tight, drops into a crouch at the very edge, and points one finger straight down at the Marka. A thin crimson line on her right arm, shoulder to fingertip, blazes.

The line doesn't stop. It can't. Past the cut, straight on, straight into the Marka's mainsail: RRRRIP, through the canvas, off the mast with a KUNK, and onto the deck in a sprawl of scarf and coat-tails.

flat on her back on the planks, eyes wide, chest heaving. Along the panel border, her heartbeat drawn as a pulse with a gap in it, then racing: ba— · · · ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum, fast and light as a bird's. And over her, upside down, filling the panel: a golden face, tongue out. Mingus, who ran the whole length of the deck and was already there where she landed.

staring up at the dog. Mingus licking her whole face.

leaning into the panel above her, grinning.

already on the Marka's rail, perched: crouched on her heels, fingers hooked round the wood, panting, the crimson line on her arm gone dull. Looking across the water at the Upp Igen, where Fowlers are dragging a netted giant toward a kite-line.

eyes going gold, reading her. Around the bouncing girl, threads: a few, and every one of them short, cut off a hand's length from her, ends fluttering loose.

stepping up to the rail beside her.

the crimson line climbing her arm again, flaring as her breath comes back. A quick, bright, chipped-tooth grin.

The second line, a straight crimson streak across the gap between the ships: tsiiiip — SHHK. The kite-line parts; the net goes slack. And the line carries on into the Upp Igen's rigging: Svala hitting a yard at full speed, wrapping round it, and ending up hanging upside down from it by her knees, scarf dangling.

Both crews, against thirty Fowlers.

Rougeina Swaps onto the Upp Igen's deck, blink, a silver-rose trail behind her, and cuts the limed net off Krydog in four strokes. He staggers free, grey-faced, and doesn't say anything.

Smurjan's shadow splitting in three: Kali bursting up out of it with her black-glass sickle, Bakasura rising behind and biting a Fowler's lime-pot in half. BAKASURA: "…Sticky."

Roffe sweeping four Fowlers off the rail with Sleven in one long stroke. "Sit DOWN!"

Perne, one shot from the Perch: a kite-line parting a mile up, and a panel later, small and far: …krak.

Öde walking through the nets on the Marka with her grandmother's scythe, grass springing up under her boots, mowing cord like barley.

The Fowlers cutting their own lines and retreating up into the dark, kites wheeling away, the riders hauled up after them like fish on hooks.

still hanging upside down from the Upp Igen's yard, heart still racing, looking across at the Marka. On the Marka's rail, Mingus, barking at her across the water, tail going. He couldn't follow her over the sea. So he's standing exactly where she'd come back to.

wriggling out from under the slack net with Roffe, bells jingling, holding up something she's stolen off a Fowler on the way past: a small brass whistle shaped like a bird.

(She blows it. Out comes a bird's call, perfect, and a dozen birds peel off the flock overhead and dive at the Upp Igen.)

swinging down off the yard in a flash, snatching the whistle out of Tihi's mouth and snapping it in half. The dozen birds wheel back up into the flock.

springing up to perch on the Upp Igen's rail, looking up at the island, her grin going softer.

From its prow, far up, a whistle: old, rough, and with a crack right in the middle of it, like a bell with a flaw. And ten thousand birds banking together at the sound, the whole island turning slowly through the dark like a ship coming about.

From the dark on the other side of the sky, far off, the same whistle. Perfect. Note for note. But clean. No crack. Then another, from another direction. And another.

The flock splitting: whole streams of birds peeling away from under the island toward the false whistles in the dark, and the island lurching, tilting, dropping a sickening fathom out of the sky, its waterfall swinging over the ships like a loose rope. On the Upp Igen's rail, Svala, gone white.