Chapter 245

A box-kite the size of a sail dipping over the island's rim, a platform of lashed oars swinging under it, and stepping off the platform onto the meadow as lightly as onto a quay: the woman from the prow. The Flock scattering back to their doorways. Both crews closing in round her.

hanging over her as she straightens her net-cord coat.

GRIP · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #1,197 · Netmaster of the House of Grip

The two sisters face to face: Tärna, tiny and bent, ninety-nine, leaning on the Wing-Keep's doorpost; Grip, straight and tall and thirty-five, smiling down at her.

Pale grey, each iris ringed in rose. From the corner of each eye, fine rose script runs down her cheeks like the tracks of tears, made of sentences, creeping toward her heart. And the eyes do not blink. Not once in the panel. Not once in the chapter.

In the doorways of the nest-houses, the Flock's children peeking out at the stranger. And from their faces, faint, a rose haze lifting off them like pollen on a breeze, drifting across the meadow into Grip's open eyes. A little girl in a doorway yawns, suddenly, enormously tired. Grip's skin smooths, a shade.

eyes gold. What he sees: hundreds of fine rose threads running out of Grip's eyes to every young face on the meadow, and drawing in, slowly, the way you reel in a fishing line.

slumped asleep on Smurjan's shoulder, crooked troll-iron crown over one eye, opening a single violet eye at the gilt birdcage on her hip.

Grip turning her eyes on the crew, one by one.

On Isa: nothing lifts off her. Not a breath of haze. Grip frowning.

On Vigolas: nothing.

On Mingus, sitting at Kompis's heel: the haze slides off his gold coat like rain off a roof.

stepping forward, ashen, in his plain shirt.

to the crew, very quietly.

turning back to her sister.

perched on the Wing-Keep's rail above them, scarf whipping, staring at the Netmaster.

The crimson line on her arm blazing from shoulder to fingertip, white-hot. She drops into a crouch.

not looking at Svala at all. Lifting one gloved hand an inch.

(Far below, on the Gilded Cage, a Fowler at a huge skin drum raises a mallet.)

The line ends inside the silver net. Svala hits it at full speed and it wraps her like a moth in a web; she tumbles out of the air onto the meadow, limed, knotted, thrashing.

Two crews and a Flock, under forty nets.

Öde, scythe sweeping, mowing nets out of the air above the Flock's children. "Get UNDER me!"

Roffe lifting Mätt off his back and holding it up like a roof, six Flock children under the cauldron.

Kompis on one knee, Mingus pressed against him, the golden pulse line live along the panel border, the world going grey for an instant (Subtick), then one Ivar shot that cuts a net's draw-cord in mid-air. A thin line of blood from his nose.

Ysel slicing knots three at a time. "Best knots on any boat. Means I know how to undo them."

Krydog under a net, held standing again, white to the lips, roaring.

on a nest-house roof, staring down at Svala in the Lace: kicking, swearing, scarf caught in her teeth, coat-tails knotted over her head. And Tihi starting to giggle. It isn't funny. She does it anyway. Rose bubbles lettered tihi drifting out of her balloon.

The rose bubbles drifting into her balloon, turning her curses into giggles. And Svala, furious, laughing anyway, and for one breath, drawn with Tihi's freckles across her nose.

And round her, the Lace sagging: plink. She slips out of it like a fish out of a hand.

The giggle spreading across the meadow: Flock children under nets catching it and laughing, and their nets sagging, plink plink plink; Fowler net-hands with nets in their fists catching it and laughing, and the nets drooping out of their hands; Krydog laughing, and the lime-net round him going slack enough to shrug off.

bells ringing, the rose marks on her cheeks glowing exactly where dimples go.

The giggle reaching her. And at the corner of her mouth, for the first time in eighty years, a twitch. Her eyes going wide with something like terror. Her jaw clamping shut.

The rose-red book inside it hurling itself against the bars, again and again, straining toward the sound, toward the roof where the little girl is laughing, like a caged bird at an open window.

turning her head slowly, and looking at Tihi. It's the most frightening look a child has ever been given. Tihi's giggle stopping. Her bells stopping.

stepping out in front of Tihi in his clean grey coat. His hand at his side. Not raised.

free, perched on a nest-house roof, gasping, heart racing like a bird's, the crimson line on her arm lighting again as her breath comes back.

Svala launching at Grip, tsiiiip, and Grip has already stepped one pace aside before the line leaves the roof, because she watched Svala's arm light up and saw where the line would go. The streak passing her shoulder, cutting her kite's tow-line (the first thing in it), and carrying Svala on, at full speed, into the Wing-Keep's stone wall. KUNK.

Grip stepping onto a second kite-platform that swings down for her. The drum on the Gilded Cage beating a different rhythm: retreat. The forty nets reeled up into the dark, the kites pulling back, and the lanterns of the fleet settling into a wide ring round the whole island, at a distance. A blockade.

sitting down hard on the roof, ribs aching, and: hic.

on the meadow among the cut nets.

on the Wing-Keep, looking out at the ring of lanterns where her sister's ship lies.

Grip with her back to forty net-captains, holding the gilt birdcage up in front of her face. The rose book still beating against the bars.

eyes wide open, never blinking, and for the first time a crack in the pleasant voice.