Chapter 284
A great round well of still air, walls of black storm rising on every side, turning slowly, endlessly, a disc of pale blue sky far above. The water at the bottom glass-flat and grey. And in the middle, standing on the water as if it were a deck: a ship's wheel made of cloud, turning, always turning, and at it, his back to them, a man.
gliding to a stop in the still water, Njord standing, the silver line running from his rod straight to the man's back, where the barbed bone hook is caught in his sodden coat between the shoulders. Vigolas in the bow. Behind them, the hawser running taut back into the black wall.
turning his head. Hagel, the man: not a face of cloud now. An old captain, tall, gaunt, grey stubble, an admiral's coat soaked through and black with water that never dries, epaulettes green with three hundred years of sea. Water dripping from his cuffs, his hair, his chin, endlessly, into the still lake. At his throat, the dead lantern. His eyes, grey-white, the lightning inside them now.
looking at him. At the dripping coat. At the hands on the wheel, which never stop turning it.
a dry laugh.
turning it, a quarter, back, a quarter, back, never still.
in the skiff, the line taut in his hands, listening to none of it (deaf to now), reading Vigolas's lips. His eyes on Hagel. On the man who drowned his sons.
stepping out of Old Pike onto the still water, and the water holding him, flat as a floor. Walking toward the wheel.
looking up the black walls of his own storm, turning, turning.
a few paces from him now, the green lightning crawling up his arms, straining toward Hagel like a dog toward its old master.
turning fully from the wheel for the first time, one hand still on it, looking down at Vigolas, at the lightning.
a long beat. Thinking about it honestly.
the pulls of a life: a dog's teeth on a coat-collar in the surf at Gate City · Kompis's hand reaching down into a hole · Krydog's fist on his collar on the dock · Rougeina's Swap a chapter ago · the hawser behind them, taut, running back into the storm.
staring at him.
The eye of the storm: the still well of air, the black walls turning, the disc of sky. And in the middle, on glass-flat water, two captains face to face: one gaunt and dripping at a wheel of cloud, grey-white lightning in his eyes; one in a long coat with cubes in his sash and green lightning wrapped round both fists. Mirror images in every way but the colour.
Between them, rising off both, the same lightning: grey-white from Hagel, emerald from Vigolas, the two reaching for each other across the gap.
And behind Vigolas, an old man in a tarred skiff, a silver line in his hands, hooked into the drowned admiral's back.
Hagel letting go of the wheel with one hand and reaching: grey-white lightning pouring off him at Vigolas, not to strike: to pull, the green lightning in Vigolas's arms tearing toward it, dragging him forward a step, two.
digging his heels into still water, the lightning straining out of his arms in green ropes toward Hagel's hand, and then stopping fighting it. Eyes closing. Listening.
And the eye of the storm as he feels it: Hagel's lightning wanting him, his own wanting Hagel, and under both, deeper, one long path the whole storm has been leaning along for three hundred years: down. Into the still water. Into rest.
Vigolas opening his hand, and the lightning, green and grey together, going where it was always going: not into Hagel, not into Vigolas, but straight down, into the glass-flat lake at their feet, a braided bolt answered into still water, twice as hard.
The bolt hitting the still water under the wheel, and the whole eye jolting: the black walls of the storm shuddering, the turning faltering, the wheel of cloud jerking in Hagel's hand, slowing, for the first time in three hundred years.
wrenching the wheel round, hard, desperate, and the storm lurching, the walls of the eye contracting, tightening, the black cloud closing in on the still water.
The storm's eye collapsing inward: the black walls rushing in, wind screaming back into the still air, rain and hail crashing down from every side onto the little skiff and the man on the water.
knocked flat on the water by the wind, sliding back toward Old Pike, grabbing the gunwale.
in Old Pike, the line screaming off the rod as Hagel heaves the storm away, his hands torn and bleeding on it, his boots braced on the thwart, and the skiff bucking under him in the returning storm.
running from Old Pike's stern back into the storm wall, toward two ships and two crews hauling for their lives somewhere out there, taut as iron, singing in the wind.
Old Pike caught between them: the hook pulling her one way into the heart of the storm, the hawser pulling her the other way back toward the ships, and a forty-year-old tarred skiff stretched between a dead admiral and two whole crews.
groaning. Seams opening. Tar cracking. Water spurting in between the strakes.
hauling himself back over the gunwale, grabbing Njord round the middle again.
looking down at the planks under his boots. At his boat. A long, long look.
under the bilge-boards, cracking: a long split running down the old tarred timber from stem to stern.
holding the line, his face wet with rain and something else, feeling his boat break under him.