Chapter 262

Under the white dome of six blazing towers, at the foot of the dark seventh, Skymning, cracking: white light pouring out of a split over his heart, out of his eyes, his mouth, his fingertips, his whole body shaking apart.

already running, ash staff in hand, chalk out, drawing a circle round the overflowing man on the grass at a sprint.

round Skymning, glowing, and nothing happening. His heart still racing, still cracking, the white still pouring out. Emma's own heartbeat thudding against the circle's edge and sliding off.

beside her, quietly, sadly, understanding.

on his knees in the useless circle, blazing, sobbing, laughing.

his fury back, kneeling outside the circle, shouting at him.

courage back, steady, eyes gold, seeing Skymning's threads: dozens, hundreds, every one running to a jar he drank, every one cut. And at the very centre, where his own thread should be, a small neat cut, very old.

beside him, staring at the blazing man with naked recognition.

A small figure walking up the seventh hill through the white dome, slowly now, tired, a week older: Iskall, the clay lamp held up in both hands, its flame smaller than ever.

stepping into Emma's circle, right up to the blazing man, and holding her lamp up to his face.

in the white light of the clay lamp: no vignette. Just a small brass price tag on a string, swinging. SOLD.

staring up at it. At what he did with the one thing that was his. The blaze in his eyes flickering.

very gently, still holding the lamp up, her face a grandmother's.

looking at her through the white light pouring out of his own eyes, a child older than his whole family line.

a long, long moment. The crack over his heart widening. And then, slowly, deliberately, he opens his mouth and tips his head back toward the dark seventh tower.

The white flame leaving him, chosen this time: not bursting out through the crack, but pouring up out of his mouth in a great twisting column of white light, out of him, up, up.

dark, cold, empty. The flame gone past it.

lowering her lamp. Her face, for the first time in the arc, exactly seven, and grieving.

collapsing sideways in the grass, emptied: no blaze, no light, a tall grey man in a dove-grey coat full of cracked vials, breathing hard, his glass eyes ordinary eyes now. And wet. Not with anyone else's joy. With his own sorrow.

crouching beside him, offering him a hand up.

And high above Lumen, in the black sky of the Deep, the white flame still climbing, smaller and smaller, until it reaches a height where nothing goes. And stops. And stays.

One single star, white and steady, hanging over Lumen in the starless dark of the Deep. Where there has never been a star at all.

at the Marka's rail far below, the Keeper's Log under his arm, staring up at it, his old sailor's heart doing something it hasn't done in thirty years.

at the top of the hill, looking up at the star her lamp became, tears on her freckles, and smiling.

Lumen with six lamps, the seventh tower dark. The Lamp-bearers coming up the hills to look at it. And above the island, fading only a little in the daylight, one star.

leaning on his lamp-pole beside Iskall, looking at the dark seventh tower.

The emptied Bottling Barge, every shelf bare, every jar cracked, its windows unshuttered and empty. And a small rowboat pulling away from Lumen into the Deep: Skymning, alone, rowing, his corkscrew and his barge left behind, steering toward the new white star.

beside Vigolas on the hilltop, watching the boat go, his will back, his grin back.

The starless Deep, black to every edge. And in it, one small lit island with six lamps. And over it, one fixed star, white, steady, the first point in the Deep anyone has ever been able to steer by.

(No balloon. Just the light.)