Chapter 256
held up to Vigolas's face, the white flame filling his eyes.
a vignette blooming in the white light, soft and painterly. Not gold. Not a hold full of treasure.
The Marka's deck, at night. A small fire in a brazier. The whole crew asleep round it in a heap of blankets: Kompis with his head on Mingus, Rougeina curled on her side, Smurjan's three shadows lying side by side, Trollmage snoring, Drekk at the wheel nodding, Öde in the planter box, Isa flat on the planks listening for whales, Ysel in the bilge hatch, Levla with his coat over his face. And one person awake, sitting on the rail, watching them all sleep. Himself.
very still. The grin gone. His eyes wet.
nodding, satisfied, lowering the lamp.
turning to the rest of them, holding the lamp up high, high, over all their heads.
The white circle widening, spreading over both crews standing on the seventh hill. And above every head at once, vignettes blooming, one after another, like lanterns being lit at a festival.
Both crews on a dark hill in a circle of white light, every face tipped up, and over every head, their happiest moment, in soft, painterly colour:
Kompis: a dark room under a mountain, a small boy in a too-big hoodie refusing to eat, and a golden dog pushing the door open with his nose.
Rougeina: a woman with long crimson hair at a cottage door, calling a little girl in from the rain, laughing: "Little storm!"
Isa: her mother's slow smile, finished at last, after three days.
Öde: Farmor sitting down in a furrow, laughing, a dropped basket of seed all round a six-year-old.
Smurjan: three shadows walking side by side on a beach, in step, for the first time.
Kali: four bowls of soup on a table. Four. (And one of them is pushed toward a crack in a mirror.)
Trollmage: a nap. Just a nap. On a warm stone. With a crow on his chest.
Drekk: two young sailors and a giant woman on a scruffy boat called the Kettle, laughing so hard one of them falls overboard.
Ysel: big hands braiding her hair on a dark deck. Marka's.
Krydog: a grey dawn on a cave-quay, eight rejects round a raised ship, and someone pointing at him: "Him. He's still standing."
Emma: a white-iron collar failing to close round a woman's neck, and the woman laughing in astonishment.
Daniel: a clerk's voice saying one word: "Heard."
Tihi: a clown on a painted show-boat juggling fish, and a little girl on her shoulders.
Roffe: a small boy in a hoodie, finally, cautiously, eating a potato.
Jeppson: a keel laid perfectly true.
Perne: fog, and a foghorn, and her mother's hand on the horn.
Svala: wind, a flock, and falling with it, laughing.
staring at the vignette over his own head, the golden dog in the Nursery door, and then down at Mingus, sitting at his feet.
(Mingus thumps his tail.)
staring up at a woman with crimson hair calling a child in from the rain, very still, a hand over her heart. Her mother, whole, before the routing.
at the edge of the circle, looking up, waiting for his vignette.
And above his head, in the white light, there is one. But it's not a memory. It's a small brass price tag, hanging on a string, swinging gently. SOLD.
going white.
beside Levla, looking up at his own vignette. And going very still.
a summer day. A crowded market-street on a golden coin of an island. Two boys, nine or ten, running between stalls with a kite made of a stolen ledger page, the string in one boy's hand, a battered tin in the other boy's pocket. The kite climbing. Both of them laughing so hard they can't breathe.
And the boy with the kite-string, the one laughing hardest, is wearing rings on every finger, far too big for him.
staring up at Flexsnus's vignette. At the boy with the rings. At his own face, ten years old, laughing, in someone else's happiest moment.
not looking at him. Looking at the kite.
reaching up toward the vignette over Flexsnus's head as it fades with the beat. His fingers closing on nothing.
a long, long silence.
lowering the lamp. The flame smaller now, shrunk by half, the price of the Circle. She looks, for a moment, exactly seven, and tired.
crouching to her height.
Boots on rock. The Dimmers coming back up the hill, all of them, forty, fifty, and every one of them with a blindfold of grey cloth tied over the eyeholes of his mask.
Fighting the blind.
Iskall holding up the lamp, and the Dimmers not flinching, blind, charging straight through its circle.
Smurjan's Triple Pulse and Roffe's ladle meeting the charge.
Kompis, eyes gold, calling their threads: "They're blind, but they're holding hands! Cut the chain!"
Svala diving through the line, swallow-blades cutting the cords tying the blindfolded Dimmers together; they stumble apart, lost.
Tihi pickpocketing their jars one by one as they grope past her, giggling under her breath, hand over her mouth.
Krydog, down under five blindfolded Dimmers, and up, healed, tossing them off. And Vigolas beside him.
The blind charge breaking against both crews. Dimmers stumbling back down the hill, groping for each other, jars smashing, light streaming home to the seventh tower.
ear to the rock of the hill, then lifting her head sharply, a beat late.
Rolling slowly up it, pulled by six grey-masked Dimmers: a cart. Long, heavy, iron-wheeled. Stacked on it, row on row on row, a hundred corked glass jars, every one glowing faintly with something stolen: warm gold, soft blue, fierce red. Joy. Hope. Courage. Love.
close up: each one with a neat paper label, written in an elegant hand. FENWICK, BOATWRIGHT · FIRST CHILD'S FIRST STEP. ARLA OF THE SALT-PANS · WEDDING DAY. UNKNOWN SOLDIER · LETTER FROM HOME.
staring at the jars, a dealer's eye, and going cold.
Walking behind the cart, unhurried: a tall, elegant man in a dove-grey coat whose lining clinks with dozens of small corked vials. A corkscrew on a silver chain at his waist. A long, pale, handsome face. And eyes like glass: pale, clear, empty.
SKYMNING · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #2,212 · Chief Dimmer
lifting a small vial of warm gold light from his coat, looking at it fondly, at the little girl with the lamp, at the two crews.