Chapter 303
Levla sitting alone on the bank, the grove's firelight behind him, the narrow river of amber light running past his boots. The grey groove lying in the grain beside him like a sleeping snake.
his pale-gold eyes half shut, no price tags in them, nothing in them.
(His lips parting on the next word. The grey groove sliding the last inch toward his ear, the grain greying under his hand where it rests on the bank.)
A long arm in a cream shirtsleeve held up by a brass garter, a hand with six cheap rings on it, grabbing Levla by the collar from behind and hauling him back off the bank so hard he goes over on his back on the floor of the grove.
flat on his back, blinking up. Flexsnus leaning over him at an impossible angle, the one escaping strand of slicked black hair hanging over his forehead, a pinch bulging in his upper lip, not smiling.
The grey groove turning in the grain toward Flexsnus. A new balloon by his ear: his own lazy drawl, the outline leaning, one tiny notch kinked into it, but drawn grey and cracked and tailless.
tk tk tk. And nothing: no emerald ruled line across the panel, no notch to pinch. He looks at the tin, mildly surprised.
(He leans on the nearest rib of grain, at an angle that should drop him, and doesn't fall. The grey balloon slides off him like rain off oilcloth.)
sitting up, rubbing his throat, staring at his friend.
And the groove withdraws: a long stripe of nothing sliding away across the grove's edge through the grain, the grain-lines bending round it like water round a stone, the sap-light dimming over it as it passes and coming back behind it. In the floor its shape is almost a rune: three strokes that keep trying to settle and never do, like a word on the tip of the tongue.
And above it, where a rank plate would hang over anyone else on the board, an empty plate: the frame of a plate, drawn once, with nothing on it at all. No name. No rank. No number. Not even a dash.
The crews coming running with lanterns. Mingus first, stopping square in the groove's path, legs planted, lips back, the deepest growl he owns. The groove curving round him as if he were a rock in a stream.
out of Smurjan's shadow to the waist, one-armed, her one hand shooting out to grab the groove the way she grabs a sin.
(Her hand closing on the grain. On nothing.)
the lining buzzing, the verdict cube humming so hard the shards clink against each other.
Runa on her rowan stool under the Rune Wall, not having moved. Everyone turning to her.
For once, the sap-light in her eyes low.
shrugging, a grin, the easy answer.
square-cornered balloon, one hand on the folded certificate in his breast pocket.
Both crews climbing behind three silent Bark Monks with long-handled lamps. Perne at the front, patch on her right eye today, the left glowing crimson with the Long Look, a single crimson tear on her cheek.
A vast ring-gallery, a nave of grain stretching away and away into amber haze, its ribs rising like a cathedral's into a ceiling of wood.
And filling it, standing in it, hundreds upon hundreds: grey-wood statues, smooth as driftwood, each caught mid-gesture, each with a face of perfect peace.
A knight mid-bow, helmet under his arm. A woman with the back of her hand at her brow, mid-sigh. A small child mid-yawn. An old sailor mid-shrug. Two people mid-turn away from each other, never quite apart. A troll with a lantern, mid-step. A Trisdel Sentinel in white armour, mid-kneel, his collar hanging open. A table of Bark Monks, brushes lifted, mid-copy. A woman holding a baby out to nobody. People in the clothes of a hundred centuries: furs, silks, Order whites, fisher-wool.
Every one of them finished.
At the gallery's mouth, small and lit by a few lamps, both crews, stopped dead. Mingus with his hackles up.
A man with his eyes shut and the beginning of a smile, as if he's just put something heavy down.
A girl mid-letting-go of a doll, the doll grey too.
An old woman with her hands folded in her lap.
A Bark Monk, ancient, wearing a fresh robe of bark that someone has laid over his wooden shoulders since. They still dress their Finished.
scythe on her back, kneeling by a long table where a Bark Monk keeps a ledger of shed bark: rows of names, each in sap-ink. And many more rows with no name at all, only a line.
a beat behind, standing in front of a statue of a woman standing perfectly still, hands at her sides, chin up, eyes open, no breath.
his hand going up, palm out, the way it goes up before any appeal, the double border already forming round his balloon—
(—and stopping. His hand stays up a moment. Then comes slowly down.)
hood down, no shadow at her feet, standing in the middle of the gallery among the statues, looking at them the way she looks at a locked door.
(Everyone turns.)
apart from the others, in front of a Finished swordsman whose blade is lowered, point to the floor, his face soft with relief. She looks at him too long. Her hand drifts up to the hilts on her back.
bouncing on her toes, then not.
looking down the endless gallery, lamp held up.
his third eye opening, crimson-rimmed. THIRD-EYE POV: the gallery as grey diagram lines. In every statue, the grain of the body runs up to the mouth, and stops there in a small closed point, like a full stop at the end of a line. A hundred statues, a hundred full stops.
frowning, gold-eyed.
(Smurjan's third eye stays open a beat longer, looking down through the floor toward the grove, unsure. Then closes.)
The Up-Again crew drifting through it in a loose group, lamps raised: Roffe, Jeppson, Perne, Daniel, Flexsnus with Levla, Tihi holding Emma's sleeve, deaf, reading lips. Krydog ahead of them all, walking along a line of statues the way he walks into any fight, shoulders first, looking at every face.
stopping. In front of him, a statue of a big man lying on his back on the floor of the gallery, hands folded on his chest, asleep: perfectly, deeply, forever. The one thing Krydog has never once done on purpose. Krydog looking down at it for a long time. The shadows under his own eyes very deep.
a few steps behind, stopping. Her head turning. She can hear it.
standing very still over the sleeping statue, his bandaged fists hanging open at his sides. By his ear, a balloon in his own big warm voice: his flat-based, squared balloon, the one that always looks as if it's standing up, drawn grey, cracked, with no tail, and for the first time in the series, sagging.