Chapter 317

Out of the black water ahead, under the white star: the Witness Wood. A forest standing up out of the sea like an island, every tree pale and leafless and still, trunks the grey of old bark, branches like the lines on a palm. Mist lying low between the roots. No birds. No wind in it. Out of it, between grey shingle banks, a grey river runs slowly into the Deep.

And at the river's mouth, the river-gate: two colossal pale trunks leaning together over the water into an arch, their roots gripping the shingle like knuckles. Across the top of the arch, laid like a lintel: a black bar.

And through the arch, far up the river, past the last of the pale trees, in the sky over whatever lies beyond the Wood: grey, pouring down out of the dark like a slow waterfall of fog. Colourless. Edgeless. Already pouring in.

carved deep in old square letters, most of it under the bar. Only the end shows.

the Keeper's Log open on his forearm.

Drekk heaving an empty water-cask over the rail. It drifts in under the arch against the slow outflowing current, drawn in like a breath, and bobs away up the grey river. He heaves a second. It drifts to the arch and stops: bumping gently against nothing, in the middle of the open water between the trunks, the air there faintly thick, like a held breath.

eyes gold, looking up the river through the arch at the grey pouring down far beyond the trees. Very quietly.

Both captains, at both bows, the same instant, the same breath:

(They turn their heads and look at each other across the gap. Slowly.)

leaning on his rail, chipped tooth, no grin.

and the grin coming back for the first time since the island in the middle of the Current: wide, crooked, chipped canine and all.

Both crews coming ashore onto grey stones, the two ships moored nose to the bank behind them, forty-one refugees lining the rails above. Daniel stepping into the middle with one hand up, looking deeply tired.

turning to Emma with a stick of chalk held out.

Vigolas shrugging off the long coat (clink, clink, clink: thirty-six shards in the lining, a pocket of bottle caps, one pocket glowing faintly where Aska's ember sits), unwinding the emerald sash of cubes after it (no tricks), and tossing the lot to Kompis: "Hold that. Don't let Levla price it." Levla: "I've only got eight rings left."

Krydog unwinding the bandages from both fists, the silver Pride script across his knuckles catching the starlight. Vigolas: "Your getting-up's a trick." Krydog: "It's a habit."

Jeppson kneeling at the ring's edge by a flat grey stone, chalk out, ready to tally.

Flexsnus on an upturned cask, taking bets from refugees, paid in buttons. "Odds on a draw?" Levla: "Nobody's stupid enough to bet on a draw a third time." Flexsnus, putting down his own button: "…I'll take it."

facing each other across a yard of grey shingle, the black bar over the arch behind them.

Vigolas going in shoulders first, the way he boards a ship, and throwing a straight right with everything behind it and no lightning in it at all, just a sailor's arm, into Krydog's jaw.

1. Krydog going over backwards all the way, flat, like a felled tree. WHUD. Dust off the shingle.

2. A thin panel: two heartbeats drawn as a doubled silver pulse, ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP, silver leaking through the script on his knuckles.

3. Krydog coming up in one unbroken arc from flat to standing, no hands, coat flaring, the split in his jaw closing in silver stitch-light. HUP.

Krydog's answer: a punch like a falling anchor, straight down the middle, into Vigolas's chest. Vigolas going down, flat on the stones. And getting up: no silver, no healing, a split lip and a grin.

Vigolas throwing the same straight right into the same jaw. And it bounces. Krydog's head barely turns.

(And the anchor-punch again, the very same one, and Vigolas down again, and up again.)

Vigolas finding new ways, one after another, Jeppson's chalk tally ticking up in the corner of each panel.

A left hook, the one he never leads with. Down. Up. "Nine!" (Krydog grading his own fall.)

An uppercut that lifts Krydog off his heels. Down. Up. "Eight. You dropped your shoulder."

A blow under the ribs: Krydog folding onto one knee, grinning. "One knee isn't down!" Vigolas sweeping the knee. Down. Up.

A headbutt. Both of them seeing stars. Krydog down. Up. Vigolas sitting down hard by accident, and getting up anyway.

A hip-throw, a sailor's throw over the hip like hauling a sail. Down. "Who taught you that?" "Captain Hild. Off the Camilla." Up.

A flying tackle into the grey shallows of the river, both of them under, both of them up, spitting dead-river water.

And Krydog, every time, with the same anchor-punch, the one he's thrown ten thousand times on the Reject Quay, and every time Vigolas goes down. Daniel, crouching by him on the stones, one hand raised, doing what referees do.

(And the numbers in his balloon glitching, going gold, jumping, the way the board's numbers do over Vigolas's head: ∞… −1… ∞−1…)

lowering his hand, looking at his own balloon with professional disgust.

circling now, slower, both bleeding: Vigolas from the mouth and a cut over the eye that won't close because nothing closes his; Krydog from nowhere, because every last blow is healed, but the shadows under his eyes getting darker with every rise, as if someone were inking them in.

stopping. Swaying.

(A long beat.)

The crews watching. Emma, white, lips moving, counting under her breath, not falls: nights. Roffe with both hands over his eyes, the ladle sticking up out of them. Tihi, deaf, on Svala's shoulders, cheering in hollow balloons, UP! UP! UP!, and signing it as well in case. Rougeina perched on a root of the arch, chin in hand.

at the ring's edge, the clinking coat over one arm, his other hand buried in Mingus's ruff. Mingus straining forward, whining, tail low, wanting very badly to go and lie down on Krydog.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Vigolas running out of ways.

The coat: he hauls Krydog's patchwork coat up over his head from behind and spins him like a capstan until he falls over. "That's a coat, not a way!" Daniel: "…I'll allow it."

A sweep, the old Gate City way, with the outside of the boot, the way kids do it on the black sand. Down.

An open-handed slap across the face, the memory of a fish. Krydog going down laughing, and that counts. Up.

Vigolas tripping over his own feet and taking Krydog with him. Both down. Both up. "Was that a WAY?" "Everything's a way if it works!"

A bear-hug, both of them toppling sideways together like two drunk men off a jetty. Down. Up. Slower.

rising: still one arc, still no hands, but heavier, like a tide coming in against the wind. The shadows under his eyes almost black now. The grin still there.

swaying in the middle of the ring, arms hanging, blood in his teeth, cut eye swollen shut. Searching himself. Nothing.

Vigolas walking forward with nothing in his fists at all, no way, no trick, no throw, and just leaning: forehead into Krydog's chest, all his weight, like a man leaning on a mast in a gale. And Krydog, who is every bit as finished, going over backwards, slowly, all the way, flat on the grey stones, like a felled tree.

flat on his back on the shingle under the gate of the dead, staring straight up. A thin panel across his face: ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP. And in his slate-grey eyes, round each iris, a thin silver ring flashing, twice.

standing over him, swaying, one eye swollen shut and the other one ringing gold on its own, Greed-sight waking without being asked, the way it does when something is worth more than it looks. And what it shows him: in Krydog's chest, the second beat, glowing like a coin that doesn't belong to the man it's in.