Chapter 30

The white fire reaches land. It climbs up out of the fjord onto the shingle with a sound like ice cracking, leaving a crust of white salt behind it. Steam everywhere. Trolls scoop troll children off the cliff edge by the armful and carry them up the paths.

At the bottom of the slipway, Vigolas and three trolls roll barrels of launching grease away from the creeping fire, coughing in the steam.

Out of the steam glides the white ship, close now, its iron-sheathed bow parting the flames. On the stern, in neat black letters: TALLY.

at the top of the slipway beside the hull, staring up at it.

The lean figure is still crouched there on all fours. He lifts his head and takes one long, slow sniff of the air.

He leaps. A long arc, high over the burning water, coat streaming behind him, arms out like a diving bird.

He lands on all fours on the slipway, right at the crew's feet, so lightly that the frost doesn't crack.

Tall and gaunt as a starved hound. Long iron-grey hair tied back with dozens of little paper ledger-tags, each with a number. A long sharp nose whose nostrils never stop moving. Yellow-brown eyes. A slate-blue Registry greatcoat stitched all over with columns of tiny silver numbers, like a page from an accounts book. His bare forearms are covered in tally-mark tattoos. At his throat, on a chain, hangs a small silver tag with a closed-gate crest. A number was engraved on it once and has been scratched out.

HRAFNKELL, the Ledger-Hound · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #1,512 · Bastion Five

still crouched, looking up at them with a polite smile.

facing him: Kompis with Ivar up and Mingus at his feet, Rougeina with two blades, Trollmage sitting up in his blanket with the crow on his head.

He moves along the line on all fours, nose an inch from each of them.

(Kompis) HRAFNKELL: Ink. Gunpowder. Dog. And a deserter's sweat. Architect Three's little asset. I read your file.

(Rougeina) HRAFNKELL: Ink and blood. Lots of blood. And something like roses.

(Trollmage) HRAFNKELL: Old ink. Very old. Moss and dust and… (he wrinkles his nose) …is that porridge?

nose to nose. Mingus sniffs him back, very interested. Hrafnkell frowns, sniffs again, and frowns harder.

standing up at last, tall, nostrils flaring at the steam.

Rougeina doesn't wait. She throws a blade past his ear. Blink: she's behind him, where the blade is, the second blade already swinging for the back of his neck. Silver-rose trails hang in the air.

He's not there. He's ducked under it without turning around, nose first, like a dog under a fence.

Trollmage is on his feet, blanket falling off him, the crow flapping up. Three weeks of waiting glow in his violet rune-markings. He starts writing in the air with one finger, glowing violet letters:

MACRO : WALL = 21 D—

turning to look at the letters. He seems almost sorry.

as he throws his head back. The silver tag swings.

half-written in the air. They go grey. Then they fall, one by one, like lead type, and clatter on the slipway stones.

on one knee under the iron plate, staring at the dead letters. The violet glow in his rune-markings has gone out. The crow lands on a fallen W and pecks it. It doesn't move.

His face does something we have never seen it do. He's scared.

Hrafnkell comes for Kompis, fast and low. Kompis, teeth gritted under the plate, one hand on Mingus.

The world freezes, and Kompis starts living the moment again and again, but this time there are only seven afterimages behind him instead of a crowd: one dodges and is caught, one shoots and misses, one is kicked in the throat, one in the jaw… The golden pulse line along the bottom still beats, but the grey snaps back after the seventh like a door slamming.

He keeps the only version he survives: he turns his shoulder into the kick instead of his throat. It still throws him into the hull. Blood from his nose.

Rougeina Swaps, aiming for the Tally's flagpole, to cut the crest down.

She lands ten paces away, on the slipway, nowhere near it. Her silver-rose trail stops short in the air like a rope cut off.

Hrafnkell is already there, nose first, following the trail by scent. A backhand sends her into the scaffold. Planks rain down.

Smurjan is on his feet, running for the slipway. Between him and the fight, the white fire has climbed out of the water onto the shore in a low, crackling wall.

Kali flies out of his shadow ahead of him, sickle raised, to leap it.

The world as diagrams: edges, weights, angles. Every ordinary fire he has ever seen through this eye has an after, drawn faintly behind it: ash, smoke, new grass. This one has nothing behind it. The world beyond the white flames is a blank.

Kali looks through his eye. She goes quiet, and Kali is never quiet.

Hrafnkell walks to Trollmage and lifts him off the stones by the collar, one-handed. Trollmage hangs there under his iron plate, feet off the ground.

Ulla, a troll child under each arm, roars down at the slipway.

Trollmage can't.

Through the steam, up the slipway, Vigolas is walking into the howl.

The ruled lines of the howl reach him, and bend, like water around a stone. No iron plate comes down. Above his head, faint as always, his line on the board flickers gold, ∞−1, and the howl slides off it, finding nothing to grab.

He stops three paces from Hrafnkell. Green lightning crawls over both fists.

turning. His nose wrinkles. He can't place it, not through the salt steam.

Vigolas's fist, wrapped in green lightning, lands square in his face.

Hrafnkell flies the length of the shipyard, straight through what's left of the scaffold, and bounces across the shingle until he skids to a stop on all fours at the very edge of the white fire.

The howl breaks. The ruled lines in the air snap like threads. The iron plates vanish. Trollmage drops onto the stones, gasping. Kompis sucks in a breath like a man coming up from deep water. Rougeina is already on her feet, blades out.

on all fours at the fire's edge, blood running from his nose, steam curling around him. He's laughing: quiet and breathless, like a man who's just been handed a gift. His nostrils flare. He sniffs once, deep.

The pupils go wide, like a hound that's just seen the hare.

Hrafnkell at one end of the shipyard, Vigolas at the other, the white fire between them climbing toward the hull.