Chapter 249
A hundred candles burning in brass sconces and never allowed to go out. Hammocks slung in rows: in them, asleep, the Flock's youngest children, taken off the rim in the Sky-Net. Cages of songbirds hanging from the beams. And in the middle of the floor, a gilded birdcage the size of a wardrobe, and in it, knees up, bells tied silent with a ribbon, Tihi.
in a tall carved chair facing the cage, the lines from the Arena at her eyes, the white streak at her temple. Eyes open. A faint rose haze drifting up off the sleeping children into them.
leaning back, settling in, patient as a heron.
The whole long cabin: a hundred candles, rows of sleeping children in hammocks, cages of songbirds, and along both walls a hundred mirrors, new ones, bought since every old mirror in the world cracked, all angled so that from her chair the Netmaster can see every young face in the room at once. From every face, the faint rose haze rising like steam off a winter lake, drifting through the candlelight into her open eyes. And in the centre, in a gilded cage, a small freckled girl biting the side of her own hand.
Two net-captains, ordered to juggle, dropping everything. Tihi's mouth twitching. She bites her hand harder.
A Fowler pratfalling on purpose, badly. Tihi screwing her eyes shut.
Grip herself, reaching through the bars with a long grey feather. Tihi rigid, eyes squeezed, shaking.
drawing the feather back, sitting back. For the first time, something almost uncertain in her face.
flat, not smiling at all.
A long silence.
watching her through the bars, head on one side.
(Grip, very still, for a very long beat.)
Svala on the meadow, unable to keep still, pacing, perching, launching nothing. On the highest nest-house roof, Perne (carried up from the Perch), her right eye to the scope, looking past the edge of the world. tik. shhhhk.
lowering the scope. Her right eye going milky. A crimson tear. She flips the patch over it and notches the stock twice.
(The crimson line on Svala's arm goes dark.)
Roffe feeding the Flock and both crews off Mätt. Mingus's bowl filled first. Roffe's own bowl, empty. And Roffe, without a word, setting down one more bowl at a place where nobody's sitting, filling it, and leaving it there. Tihi's place.
at the end of the table, sitting up. Not sleeping. Eyes raw.
cut free of the net on her stool but grey with tiredness, at the Wing-Keep, listening to her birds in the mesh below.
at the rim, looking down at the two great kites that hold the net over the roost-cliffs.
Two boats sliding through the black under the net, no lanterns. Ysel at the bow of the first, pointing without looking back.
And behind her, climbing: Rougeina, Kompis with Mingus, Smurjan, Svala, Krydog, Flexsnus.
Flexsnus, halfway up a kite's guy-rope, a line knotted round his waist, tapping his tin at the kite's anchor-shackle, tk tk tk, about to bend it a little looser. And in the corner of the panel, a tiny emerald notch-icon: pling. His own waist-knot slips. He drops, and catches the rope by one hand, dangling over a hundred feet of dark.
a hand already on his collar. A rope round him in three seconds, a knot nobody else on the ship could have tied that fast.
on the anchor-ship's deck. His third eye opening, crimson-rimmed, the script on his chest beginning to glow. And from it, across the dark, a single thin crimson line, drawn to one exact point: the kite's anchor-shackle, a hundred yards up.
Svala, perched on the ship's rail, the crimson flight-line on her arm lighting along his: two Wraths, one line. tsiiiiip — SHHK. The shackle cut clean, the anchor-kite reeling away into the dark, the net over the roost-cliffs slackening, and underneath it, ten thousand birds gasping, breathing.
The second kite. Same line. SHHK. Svala clinging to the kite-ship's topmast at the end of it, gasping, grinning. Smurjan below, his chest-script smoking.
The kite-ship's crew coming up from below with poles and nets. At their head, a net-captain with a "9" stitched in white on his grey collar: young-old, a face of thirty-five on a body that moves like nineteen. He looks up at the girl on the topmast and knows her.
NET-CAPTAIN · K-III TESTED · the House of Grip
(He comes at her with real hate in his face. She doesn't know why.)
Krydog stepping between them. Nine's Gaff across his jaw. WHUD. ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP. HUP. And the raiders dropping back to their boats, the job done, Nine left on the deck staring after the girl in the white scarf.
Nine, back on guard outside the gilded cage, a bruise coming up on his cheek. Tihi watching him through the bars.
(Tihi, very quiet, for a long time.)
alone, curled up at the bottom of the cage with her bells tied silent, crying without a sound, for a long time, because there's nobody here who needs her laugh and nobody here who'd be safe if she used it. In her chair, the Netmaster watches, and never blinks.
The raiders climbing back aboard. Krydog, last over the rail, exhausted, catching his foot and going down flat on his own deck. WHUD. And Mingus, who has been lying on his bed by the mainmast, gets up, trots to the bell, takes the bell-rope in his teeth, and pulls.
The sound carrying across the black water, through the hull. DONNNG. DONNNG. And faint, behind it, a whole crew's ragged shout: "…UPP IGEN!" Tihi lifting her head off her knees. She knows exactly who's ringing it. A dog. And the corner of her mouth twitches.
leaning forward out of her chair, eyes enormous, never blinking, one gloved hand reaching toward the bars.