Chapter 264
Black sea, black sky, and one white fixed star. The Marka and the Upp Igen sailing side by side toward it, a lit wick from Lumen swinging in each one's rigging.
Exactly where ch. 263 left it: Kompis and Drekk on the ladder, lamp held out, and at the bottom of the hold, standing in the split bark of the keel like a girl standing in a doorway, Flisa. 1.10 m of broken cork-oak fitted together like a jagged puzzle. A carved girl's face, sharp at the chin. A spiky crown of cork shavings. Knot-hole eyes with a sap-gold glint deep inside, that never blink. Round her neck, a necklace of iron nails.
FLISA · FERDINAND-1 · unranked (Order threat class K-IV) · not on any board
picking a splinter out of her gums with a fingernail of bark, looking up at them, bored.
padding down the ladder past Kompis's legs, all the way to the bottom of the hold. Not growling. Sitting down in front of her, tail sweeping the bilge-water, the way he sits in front of an old friend.
ears down, very slightly guilty. Then lying down beside the knot in the keel exactly the way he did once, in Saga II, one night, and thumping his tail.
purple, the lamp shaking in his fist.
Flisa sinking backward into the keel like someone stepping back into water: gone, the bark closing smooth over where she stood. A tiny gold glint in the grain where she was.
the crew asleep in a heap round the fire, Vigolas awake on the rail. And then, all over the deck, out of the wood:
Her hand out of the mast, flicking Trollmage's hat off. "Sleepy."
Her face out of the wheel, between the spokes, nose to nose with a startled Ysel. "Boo."
Her arm out of the soup ladle Roffe left on the rail, stirring the air.
waking with her blade half-drawn, and Flisa's small splinter-hand coming out of the wooden sheath after it, holding on to the blade.
The crew waking, scrambling, swinging at a girl who's never where she was. Smurjan's shadow closing on the deck where she stood (nothing). Krydog, across the gap on the Upp Igen's rail, shouting "WHAT IS IT?" Tihi delighted: "A WOOD-GIRL!"
on his feet, grinning, emerald lightning crawling up his forearms, looking for her.
The wooden heel. A gold glint. And out of the heel, very small and very close to his ankle, her carved face.
at the top of the ladder, his eyes going gold, thread-sight opening.
In his gold sight, the entire ship lit up: a gold glint in every plank, every spar, every rail, every barrel-stave, thousands of them, each a tiny thread-end with a sliver of her on it. The Marka glowing from keel to masthead like a lantern full of sparks.
The Marka from the side, cut away like a ship-builder's drawing: every timber, every rib, every plank of her, and in every single one a tiny gold glint in the grain. Thousands. The keel a river of them.
And standing on the deck, in the middle of the crew's swinging, glaring, half-dressed chaos, a small jagged child of cork, picking her teeth, perfectly calm, at home.
crouching to her height on the deck, lightning gone, honestly curious.
her knot-eyes on him, unblinking, the glint deep inside them burning.
a beat, and then the grin, the old one, the greedy one.
hat back on, sitting up, very much awake for once.
Flisa going into the deck at Vigolas's feet, gone, and Vigolas lunging, greed-sight blazing, at the brightest gold glint in the planks, where she's about to come out: a fist of emerald lightning slamming down onto a plank by the mast as her head comes up out of it.
folding in on itself with a sound like a drawer slammed shut: a fist-sized cube of bark, and on one face of it, squashed flat in the grain, her furious little face.
holding the cube up by the lantern, delighted, the little face glaring out of it.
eyes still gold, watching the cube. One glint in it, dimming, not going out.
The deck quiet. The cube in Vigolas's sash. And then, from everywhere at once, out of every plank, her voice, cracked and dry and too close to everyone's ear:
at the wheel, feeling it before anyone else: the wheel jerking in his hands, a long shiver running up through the Marka's whole body, under their feet.
The knot by the water-barrels, the one that weeps, swelling: the gold glint in it growing, growing, a splinter thickening into a stake, a stake into a beam, the bark around it cracking outward.
standing up off the knot, backing away, whining, the first time he's ever moved off it.
The Marka's keel splitting: one long crack running from the stem to the stern along the whole length of her spine, bark peeling back, the black sea of the Deep pouring in.
the crew grabbing the rails, Öde's grass sliding, Levla catching the Kettle's bell as it swings. Krydog across the gap on the Upp Igen, already throwing a line.
The Marka listing, low in the water, the Upp Igen racing in alongside. And ahead of them on the horizon, lit white by the fixed star: roots. Roots higher than mountains, arching up out of the sea and back down into it like the ribs of something buried, a whole forest growing on their backs. And every root, every arch, every rib of them glinting gold, thousands of tiny lights in the grain.
A knot in the sinking Marka's bilge, and in it, small and smug, her face.