Chapter 247
One heartbeat, enormous.
Wind. Dawn light, real dawn, the kind there's never any of in the Deep. She's crouched on a rim of turf with a white scarf blowing across her face.
Flyttfågeln's rim, three years ago, at dawn. Perfect. A Fowler raid: a net-wall strung across the sky from four kite-ships, grey cord glistening with lime, birds tangled in it screaming. On the rim, a sixteen-year-old Svala crouched to launch, flight-line blazing, aimed at the net-wall's great anchor-knot. And climbing the net toward that same knot, small, quick, a marlinspike between his teeth: a Fowler boy of twelve, in a jacket too big for him, a cowlick, tar on his fingers.
And rising round the memory on every side, out of it, built from clay nest-houses and net-cord and cloud: tiers of seats. And in them, silent, the dead.
On it, where she never stood that morning, the memory adds her: Grip, tall, thirty-five, the Lace over her arm, looking round at the dawn with mild interest.
nineteen again in the sixteen-year-old's place, staring at the net-wall. And the memory slipping: the great anchor-knot isn't a knot any more. It's the Lace.
A few short rows. Six Fowlers in grey oilcloth, sitting very still: men her lines have cut through, over the years, in raids on her island. And in the front row, hands folded in his lap, the jacket too big, the cowlick, the tar on his fingers: the boy.
seeing him. Her balloon empty. Then, very small:
Not a few rows. Hundreds. Thousands. Islanders in goatherds' smocks and fishing oilskins and feathered Flock cloaks: everyone who ever drowned in one of her nets, or died after one. A long row of grey-haired men and women of forty in the House's grey, old before their time: her own children, and their children. And among the Flock cloaks, a woman with blue-black hair cut short like feathers and a long white scarf.
her hand going to her own scarf.
(And in Grip's front row, in the same too-big jacket, with the same tar on his fingers: the boy again.)
glancing up at her stands the way you glance at weather.
The Arena hands the stronger sin its advantage, and it does it by changing the memory: the net-wall thickening, four kite-ships becoming eight, the net strung across every line Svala could fly from her perch. And on every line, climbing toward its knot with a marlinspike in his teeth: the boy.
Grip spending years. A rose glow rising through her skin; her hair glossing blacker, her face smoothing back toward twenty, a girl's face, a girl's speed. She moves like a hawk off a glove: the Lace snapping out from the platform, once, twice, at Svala.
Svala Skimming: hops, loops, glides along the rim, no line, no cut, just a quick small bird dodging a net. Never launching.
Svala perching, crouching, her arm blazing, aiming at an anchor-knot. The boy, on the line. The blaze dying. Aiming at another. The boy. Dying. Another. The boy.
on her knees on the rim, breath ragged, though she hasn't flown a single line.
That morning, as it really was: sixteen-year-old Svala launching at the anchor-knot, tsiiiip, the streak dead straight, faster than tempo. And the boy, climbing, reaching the knot to tie it, stepping onto it just as the line arrives. She can't turn. The panel goes white.
eyes shut, in the middle of the Arena, saying it out loud for the first time in her life, to no one. Only the dead hear it.
young, on her platform, coiling the Lace.
(In Grip's front row, the boy stands, slowly, and turns his back on her. In Svala's front row, the same boy sits where he is, watching Svala.)
Remembering. A small inset panel of the Wing-Keep that morning, Rougeina sheathing a blade:
Svala on the memory's rim, perched: crouched, arm lit, not launching. Perfectly, utterly still, for the first time in her life. Waiting.
And across from her, Grip, young and fast and burning, the rose glow of spent years pouring off her like heat off a forge. Every beat she burns, the Arena is keeping.
A fine line creeping back in at the corner of one eye.
The boy in the front row stands up. That's all. He just stands. The dead can't speak. What they feel, they show.
Grip, out of patience, every second costing her, throws the Lace herself, straight at the perched girl. And the throw draws a new line through the morning air, from Svala's perch to Grip's own hand, with nothing in it but a net.
Svala launching. tsiiiiiiip. The streak through the flying Lace, SHHK, the net cut clean in two (the first thing). And no stopping, and Grip, mid-throw, with nowhere to step:
KRAK. Svala hitting the Netmaster at full speed, body to body, both of them going off the platform and onto the memory's rim, rolling through the turf.
on her back. Her Spring collapsing: the girl's face draining back through thirty-five toward forty. Reaching for the Gaff. Svala kneeling on her chest, breathless, heart racing like a bird's, a swallow-blade at the Netmaster's throat, and not cutting.
eyes wide open, not blinking, even now.
(The memory goes still.)
Svala's hanging plate settling, and Svala dropping out of the air onto the rail, missing it, falling to her knees on the stone, gasping. Mingus there at once, under her, against her. She puts her face in his fur and holds on.
SVALA · DRIFTING-5 · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #1,196
kneeling beside her.
(Rougeina doesn't ask. She stays.)
Grip dropping out of the air onto her own deck. Her net-captains stepping back. She straightens. Touches her face. Lines at the corners of her eyes. Lines at her mouth. A white streak at her temple. The first in eighty years.
GRIP · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #9,215 · Netmaster of the House of Grip
perfectly calm, never blinking, to the ring of frightened faces.