Chapter 302

The sap-light coming back down the bowl like dawn down a valley, the amber falls brightening ring by ring. Down the new stair from the first ring comes Mingus at a gallop, straight across the grove and into Kompis, who drops to his knees and catches eighty pounds of dog in both arms. Behind, at a walk, Vigolas, coat clinking, trying very hard to look as if he hasn't been awake all night.

(Mingus sneezes, which is neither yes nor no.)

on her rowan stool, not turning her head.

(Vigolas sits on the floor of the grove, and then, after a moment's thought, sits on his own hands.)

Both crews sitting on the floor before the Rune Wall in an untidy half-circle, the burning silver runes towering over them. Krydog standing at the back, arms folded.

(He does.)

her great hands opening on her knees, palms up, the black burned-in scars of the first runes shining.

Smoke rising from the scars. Her sap-amber eyes brightening like a lamp turned up. And in the air above her hands, outside any balloon, a glyph of burning silver writing itself, three clean strokes: FIRE.

The glyph diving into a heap of shed bark beside the stool: flame, clean and bright.

In every listener's eyes at once, the same three strokes flashing, and settling: Kompis, Rougeina, Daniel, Emma, Isa a beat late, Bakasura's shadow-eye.

Tihi, looking down at her own fingers as she counts, "…THR—", and the silver strokes flashing past her eyes, over her shoulder, missing.

A small dry pop in both ears. Her bells still swinging, and no sound coming off them: the little tingeling lettering drawn as empty outlines. She frowns.

The whole crew turned toward her, mouths moving, every balloon empty.

unmoved.

Kompis, beside Tihi, catching her eye, and signing slowly with both hands:

(Tihi watches his hands once, and signs it straight back to him, perfectly, the first time. Kompis blinks.)

And Tihi bursts out laughing: enormous, helpless, rose bubbles lettered tihi pouring out of her balloon and drifting into everyone else's, her dimple-marks blazing rose. Deaf, she has no idea how loud she is, and she is very loud.

half out of Smurjan's shadow, one-armed, black-glass sickle held up, grinning at Runa as if she's been dared.

(A small silver glyph writes itself off her lips and drops onto the tip of her sickle, and the black glass catches, burning like a candle.)

(Then her palms smoke again, and a new glyph writes itself in the air: WAY. It dives into a rib of solid grain at the grove's edge, thick as a tower, and a perfectly round passage opens through it, daylight-amber on the far side, as if the wood had always had a door there.)

The glyph sinking into the floor, and fine silver roots running out across the grove under every boot, every bare foot, every paw, and taking hold.

Krydog, tipped off balance by the sudden grip on his boots, falling flat, WHUD. The doubled silver pulse, ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP, silver light leaking through his bandages, his body beginning the great one-arc rise. And stopping. His feet won't come up. He can't get up.

Krydog's face. Not angry. Afraid. For one panel, an inset behind his eyes: a fishing jetty, planks, a knee on a boy's back. "Stay down and it stops."

KRYDOG: "LET ME UP—"

RUNA, at once, not cruel: "Root holds until I say. I say. There." The silver roots letting go.

Krydog up in one motion, breathing hard. Emma watching him from across the grove.

(They sit. Krydog too, after a look from Emma, on an upturned bucket, which he says doesn't count. And the glyph: REST, soft-edged, writing itself in the air and falling over the grove like a few slow flakes of silver snow.)

Half the grove asleep, instantly: Svala mid-bounce, slumped sideways; Levla with his chin on his chest; Bakasura's huge shadow-jaw snoring on the floor behind Smurjan; Trollmage, who was already asleep, now asleep more. Then, a few minutes later in the same panel's next beat, every one of them waking: stretching, blinking, looking wonderfully rested.

(Only Rougeina didn't sleep: sitting bolt upright with a blade across her knees, as she always sleeps, wide awake. Runa looks at her for a beat longer than at anyone else.)

goggles up, standing close to the Wall, at its end, by Runa's right hand, looking at the last rune in the line: four clean strokes, two uprights and two bars, like the frame of a door with its hands joined. Burning brighter than any of the others.

looking past it at the blank space after it, where the grain swirls slow and round.

turning her great head toward the swirl for the first time. The sap-light in her eyes going hard.

at the back, sitting on his hands, frowning at the swirl. A faint hum from inside his coat: the verdict cube, black, starlight letters crawling over it, buzzing against the shards in the lining, the way it does when something is listening.

flat on his back in the middle of the grove floor, cheek on the warm wood, the crow on his chest, the lesson going on over him.

turning on her stool toward Smurjan, standing very straight at the edge of the class, three shadows behind him, his third eye closed.

Smurjan standing before the Rune Wall with his hands open, saying the names of the consumed, one by one, in his quiet measured voice. Each name lettered small, in its own little balloon, too many and too small to read, running along the strip like beads on a string. And with each name, somewhere in the grain of the grove, a thread of sap-light brightening, as if the wood were writing it down.

his voice dropping.

(A thread of sap-light in the floor brightening, and staying lit, steady, though there's no one to answer it.)

the last name. Drekk, at the back, looking up sharply.

(The light in the grain under Drekk's boots brightens most of all. Drekk looks at the floor a long time. No voice answers. None needs to.)

The lesson breaking up. Runa's sap-amber eyes resting on the eight blades crossed on Rougeina's back: the thin blue-grey steel that reflects too well. Runa sees at a glance what they are: not forged. Cut. Cut out of something whole, like eight slivers of a mirror. Her mouth opens a little.

And closes. She says nothing.

who has noticed the look. Her hand going to the hilts over her shoulder. Runa turning her head away, slowly, with a creak, back to the Wall.

The sap-light ebbing. The crews bedding down round Roffe's fire inside the Rowan Ward. Outside it, alone, sitting on the bank of a narrow sap-river that runs past the grove: Levla, ten rings on his fingers, his coat pulled round his shoulders, nothing in his hands. His right hand reaching for his pocket out of old habit, for a coin to flip, and finding nothing there.

The grain going smooth and grey, a groove of nothing sliding along the bank toward him, the sap-light dimming where it passes.

young, beautiful, and so tired. Beside his ear, a balloon in his own voice: his ruled, receipt-bordered balloon, but drawn grey, with a hairline crack, and no tail.