Chapter 271

Flisa pinned to the dead root by the iron ring-spike through her shoulder, inside the ring of nails, sap running. Strippers gone after their master. The crews picking themselves up off the roots.

twisting against the spike, every door round her dead, her splinter-teeth gritted.

crouching at the edge of the ring of nails, his torn palms still bandaged from the last ring, looking at the nails, at the spike, at her. Then reaching into his sash and taking out the bark cube: fist-sized, her squashed face asleep in one side of it.

The gold glint deep inside it, alive, warm. Never cut. Never nailed. Never touched by iron. Folded away safe since the night she came out of the keel.

Vigolas tossing the cube underhand into the ring of nails, landing at her feet.

unfolding like a box opening, a drawer pulling out, a flower: back into a plank of the Marka's old deck, lying on the dead root at her feet, and in its grain one gold glint, burning bright. A living door, inside the ring.

Flisa dropping out of her pinned body into the plank like a stone into water, leaving behind an empty shell of bark on the spike that crumbles into dead shards. Gone.

outside the ring, and Flisa climbing out of it: whole, small, a little smaller, sap still leaking from her shoulder. Staring at Vigolas across the harbour.

picking up the plank, turning it over, rueful. The cube is gone. Just a plank.

walking back to him across the roots. Stopping a foot away. Looking up.

a long beat. Then turning, her back to him, toward the Great Root on the horizon.

Both crews running across the root forest behind a small jagged figure who flickers from root to root ahead of them, splinter-stepping, showing the way: over arches, down hollow root-tunnels, across bridges of living wood. And Jeppson, hands working again, chalking as he runs: a ladder up a root-face, a plank across a gap, TOK, TOK, TOK.

Perne, flat on an arch high above, Fjärran at her eye: one shot, and the Foreman's draw-knife spins out of his hand.

Flexsnus, a hand on a stripper's nail-gun: "One notch." The barrel bends one notch; the next spike curls out of it like a fern.

Roffe, ladle-less, bonking strippers with a frying pan. "I've got SPARES."

Emma, chalking a circle round three wounded Up-Again lads: "Inside!"

Jeppson drawing at a dead run along a sap-river's edge, a chalk bridge rising under the charging crews as they reach it (VRRRMMP), and a chalk stair rising under Krydog as he gets up off the ground, so he finishes his Rising Fist from above.

At the Great Root's foot: two strippers at each end of the great iron saw, its chain-blade as long as a ship, biting into the bared heartwood: cutting a step into the root for their master, a place to put his teeth. Sawdust pouring. The root groaning.

perched on a root above it, pointing, the crimson mark on her arm blazing.

Svala on her Flight-Line: one straight streak of white scarf faster than any heartbeat, and the great iron saw's chain cut cleanly in two in the middle of its stroke. The two halves whipping away, the strippers at both ends falling over backward.

crashing into a pile of bark-bales at the end of her line (something unexpected in the path), sitting up dazed, scarf over her face.

stepping forward through his strippers, toward the bared heartwood, rubbing his huge hands. Sap-drool. Napkin.

landing in front of him out of Smurjan's shadow, black-glass sickle in her one hand, looking up at the amber book glowing in his oak chest. And breathing in.

The amber Gluttony script streaming out of the bark toward Kali's open mouth like smoke into a chimney, and the book in his chest going dark.

opening his iron jaw at the root, and nothing happening. He can't bite. He doesn't want to. For the first time in twenty years, he isn't hungry.

A count drawn in the panel corners: 60… 52… 44…

Vigolas: an Emerald Knuckle into the man half of Gnag's chest, the gold spot, and this time Gnag feels it, staggering back a step.

Krydog on a chalk stair: Rising Fist to the jaw. "UPP IGEN!"

Rougeina Swapping in and out of his reach so fast he's punching phantom trails.

Smurjan's shadow lashing round his legs.

Bakasura's great jaws rising out of the shadow and biting a chunk of Gnag's oak side, chewing, and spitting it out on the roots. "…Tastes like a ship."

36… 28…, the amber hunger roaring in her, her eyes huge, staring at the bared heartwood of the Great Root. Her mouth opening. Leaning toward it.

grabbing her round the waist from behind and hauling her back off the root.

20… 12… Gnag down on one knee at the foot of the root, battered, the man half bleeding, both crews round him, Krydog and Vigolas side by side over him, panting.

on a root above them, frantic, seeing what nobody else does: Gnag on one knee exactly where the strippers bared the heartwood, his face a hand's breadth from the pale living wood.

3… 2… 1…, the amber script tearing itself out of her mouth against her will, streaming back across the air.

The Gluttony book blazing back to life in the oak, amber light pouring through every crack in his bark. And his eyes, the human one and the knot, opening wide.

Gnag, on one knee at the foot of the Great Root, turning his head the last few inches toward the bared heartwood of Ferdinand. Both crews lunging at him. Too far.

The iron jaw unhinging, wider than any mouth should open, a sawmill of iron teeth framing a single panel of pale, living, glistening heartwood.