Chapter 295

The black pyre-hill, five hundred years of the Ember King's ash, smoking. A hundred Everlasting in white robes and soot halos ringing its steps, chanting. At the summit, Aska in white-hot chains staked into the ash, arms spread. And below her, the King's ash stirring, a crowned shape of flame struggling to stand up out of it, flickering, failing.

her cracks blazing white, a new one opening across her chest toward the ember-knot at her sternum with every flicker of the crowned flame.

half risen, a king's shape, face blank, mouthless, guttering. And every time it gutters, the chains pull, and the crack across Aska's chest widens.

at the bottom of the pyre, eyes gold, seeing it: Aska's thread, ember-orange, and running out of her into the crowned flame, being pulled out of her like a wick out of a candle.

at the foot of the steps, lightning blazing up both arms.

Both crews at the foot of the pyre-hill. Battered from the branch, singed from the Hearth Beat's fire, the cook carried behind them in Bakasura's jaws. Facing a hundred white robes and a hill of ash.

The charge. Up the pyre steps, the ash sliding under their boots, the Everlasting meeting them with white-hot chains swung like flails. Smurjan's shadow wrapping three of them. Kali, full for the first time in her life and furious with it, her black-glass sickle flashing. Levla's price tags flipping over pilgrims hiding at the pyre's foot (PRICE: ONE MINUTE. "Nobody takes them for less.").

Krydog in front, going down under a white-hot chain across the chest, getting up, going down, getting up, a step higher each time.

(Behind him, Jeppson on his knees on the ash, chalking a stair under his captain's boots as he rises: "Upstairs!")

halfway up the steps, turning, watching them come. Shivering. Steam pouring off his lips. His ribs dark, burned out from the branch.

The Kindler turning to the pyre itself, kneeling on its slope, pressing his face into the King's ash, and inhaling: the five-hundred-year fire of the Ember King's pyre streaming up out of the black hill into his mouth like a river reversing.

The pyre-hill dimming as he drinks it, its glow pouring into one man. And the man growing: three metres, five, eight, his ragged coat splitting, his ribs a blazing iron grate, his body swelling into a furnace-giant, a walking hearth of iron-red heat with a face of scarred white lips and eyes like open stove doors.

looking down at the charging crews. And for the first time since a square in Gate City, not shivering.

A furnace-fist the size of a cart swinging down the pyre steps: Krydog and Vigolas thrown off the hill, Smurjan's shadow burned back, the chalk stair shattering. A breath like a forge pouring down after them.

the crews sprawled on the black branch, smoking. Above them, at the top of the burning hill, the furnace-giant standing between them and the chained woman. Behind them, the kitchen: the cooking fires, the chalk tables, a cook passed out in a maw's jaws, the warm black footprints of a woman who sat down for a minute.

standing on Aska's footprints, the last warm ones at the foot of the pyre. Hackles up. Looking up the hill at the furnace-giant, at the chains, at his fireplace.

warm brown, going gold.

The Manticore leaping up the pyre-hill in three bounds, wings beating the smoke away, landing between the furnace-giant and the crews, and the furnace-fist coming down on it, and stopping: caught on a gold-feathered wing like a hammer on an anvil.

staring at the golden beast holding his fist off with one wing. Sniffing. Confused.

(The Manticore's amber tail curls up over its head, glinting, and doesn't strike. He guards. The crew wins.)

Behind the Manticore's wings, the crews charging again, up the hill under the gold, past the furnace-giant's feet. Rougeina blinking from shadow to shadow up the slope, one Swap a beat. Vigolas behind her, lightning on both fists.

perched on the Manticore's shoulder, pointing at the summit, at the chains round Aska, the crimson mark blazing.

Svala's Flight-Line, one straight streak up the last of the hill, the chain round Aska's throat cut clean in two, and Svala unable to stop, crashing straight on into the next chain, the one across her chest, white-hot, and bouncing off it, burned, tumbling down the ash.

her throat free, the chains still on her arms and chest, gasping smoke. The crowned flame below her flickering, pulling. Her cracks spreading. The one across her chest reaching the ember-knot at her sternum.

the furnace-giant, turning from the Manticore back to the summit, his stove-door eyes on her.

The Everlasting hauling on the remaining chains, the crowned flame lurching half up out of the ash, and Aska screaming, her ember-knot flaring white, cracks racing across her whole body.

Chaos on the pyre-hill: the Manticore holding the furnace-giant back wing to fist, the crews fighting up through the Everlasting on the slope, Rougeina nearly at the summit, Vigolas behind her, Krydog falling and rising. And at the pyre's foot, where the kitchen meets the hill, Kvar, standing in the fighting, everything missing him: chains, fire, a falling Everlasting, all routing around him, as they always do, onto the ground behind.

the heavy brown jar under his arm. A flung white-hot chain whipping past him, missing him, as everything does, and the end of it catching the jar under his arm instead.

cracking. The old wax seal splitting. And grey ash, a great deal of it, spilling out over Kvar's coat, over his scarf, onto the black charcoal of the Burn.

looking down at it. Very still. A man whose whole life is things that miss him, looking at the one thing that didn't.

starting to glow: the branch's rule taking it, whether anyone wants it or not. Grey turning orange at the edges. Shapes beginning to stir in it. Many shapes. Boots. Hands. The edges of old coats.

at the summit, in her chains, dying, her coal eyes turning, past the furnace-giant, past the fighting, down the hill to the glow spreading round a tired man's boots. And recognising it. What it is. Whose it is.

At the foot of the pyre, round Kvar, the spilled ash rising: shapes standing up out of it, dozens of them, in old coats and old scarves, armed with old spears and old swords, a ragged regiment made of glowing ash, pictures only, faces blank, silent, flickering. The branch lighting them. Only as pictures.

standing in the middle of his first company, the colours of their scarves round his own neck, looking from blank face to blank face, and then up the hill, at the one woman who could give them back their heartbeats. Who is in chains. Who is dying.