Chapter 260
Moored off a black beach: the Bottling Barge. A long floating warehouse of grey timber, three decks, every window shuttered. Faint light leaking through the cracks: gold, blue, red, the colours of stolen feelings. And a small rowboat, two in fact, pulling silently toward it through the dark.
In one: Vigolas (no fury), Kompis (no courage, shaking, Bror in his lap), Rougeina (no resolve), Smurjan (Bakasura's shadow not hungry), Levla, Svala, Mingus. In the other: Krydog (no will, up anyway), Flexsnus, Tihi, Perne, Daniel.
already gone from the boat, a streak of white scarf flying up the barge's side, landing silent on its rail, swallow-blades out, and dropping two Dimmer sentries before they turn round.
The raiders climbing aboard. Crates stacked everywhere, stencilled: LUMEN-LIGHT · DOUBLE GRADE, FOR SKATT · RÄNTA ACCOUNT. And a great open hatch leading down into the warehouse.
The barge's hold, seen from the top of the stair: shelves. Floor to ceiling, aisle after aisle, like a library, and every shelf lined with corked glass jars, thousands of them, each glowing faintly with something taken. Gold, blue, rose, red, white. Every one labelled in the same elegant hand. WIDOW HARALD · HER HUSBAND'S LAUGH. THE PEDERSEN TWINS · THE DAY THEY LEARNED TO SWIM. A SENTINEL, NAME UNKNOWN · THE MORNING HIS COLLAR BROKE. A WHOLE VILLAGE (SÖDERBY) · SUMMER.
The raiders on the stair, small, staring.
remembered, a small inset: "Those are people's."
shaking, reading a label: A BOY, AGE NINE · HIS DOG'S FIRST WAG. He puts his hand on the jar. Doesn't open it. Not yet.
The raiders splitting up, moving silently between the shelves, looking for their own. And Dimmers in the aisles, grey-masked, sorting, labelling, crating.
Silent fighting in a library of feelings.
Perne, no colour in her eye, shooting the lanterns out one by one with Fjärran; the aisles going dark but for the jars' glow.
Rougeina, without resolve, standing frozen in an aisle as a Dimmer comes at her, and Tihi popping up behind him and tickling him. He laughs, he's un-held, and Rougeina, startled into it, just hits him. "…Thanks?" / "Anytime!"
Smurjan's quiet shadow wrapping a Dimmer and pulling him behind a shelf.
alone in an aisle near the back, at a shelf marked LOTS 1–100 · AUCTION STOCK, going still.
on the shelf in front of him. Old. Dusty. A cork sealed with wax. Glowing faintly gold. The label, in the elegant hand:
L. — SKATT — CHILDHOOD (LOT ONE · BOUGHT AT AUCTION · THE BOTTLER)
reaching for it. Stopping an inch away. His face working.
walking down the aisle toward him, hands in pockets, for once not leaning on anything.
a hollow laugh.
pulling out of his waistcoat a fat leather purse, heavy, clinking: every coin he won betting on the draws, at the Mouth, on the rocks of Fyren.
and below it, a small brass price tag, the Bottler's own: LOT ONE · RESERVE: 1,000 CORK.
at the end of the aisle: a brass box with a slot, chained to the shelf, stamped THE BOTTLER · ALL SALES FINAL. Flexsnus emptying his whole purse into it, coin after coin, every last one, the till clanking.
(Ding.)
lifting the jar off the shelf. Bought. His. He holds it a moment. Then turns and holds it out to Levla.
hearing his own words, the words he said at Glasheim, said back to him, and his face breaking open.
breaking the wax, pulling the cork.
Gold light streaming out of the jar into Levla's chest. And with it, everything: a market-street on a golden island. A small boy with rings far too big for his fingers, stealing a ledger page off his father's desk. Another boy, lanky, with a tin in his pocket, folding it into a kite. Running. The kite climbing. Laughing so hard they can't breathe. A summer. A friend.
on his knees in the aisle, the empty jar in his hands, tears pouring down his face, laughing.
turning to him, whole for the first time in twenty years.
Slow, deliberate clapping, from the top of the aisle.
At the end of the aisle, between the shelves, Skymning, applauding softly with long pale hands, the silver-gold vial in his breast pocket glowing, a dozen others in his coat-lining. Behind him, Dimmers closing in from every aisle.
The raiders converging on him from every aisle: Vigolas, Krydog, Svala, Rougeina, Smurjan, Perne, Daniel, Tihi. The Dimmers meeting them. A brawl among the shelves of joy, careful, desperate, nobody wanting to break a jar.
backing away down the aisle toward the stern, toward a heavy locked door at the end of the hold, its keyhole leaking white light.
A small room, and in the middle of it on a velvet stand: a great glass carboy, corked and sealed, and inside it, burning, swirling, a white flame, enormous, furious, alive. The seventh lamp of Lumen.
cornered, the raiders bursting into the doorway behind him, his glass eyes on the white flame in the carboy. Something in his empty face, for once, that isn't empty. Hunger.
Skymning tearing the seal off the carboy and pulling the cork with his corkscrew.
Skymning lifting the great carboy to his lips, and drinking: the white flame of the seventh lamp of Lumen pouring down his throat, lighting him up from inside like a lantern, his glass eyes blazing white, his face transfigured, for the first time in decades, by a joy so vast it isn't his.