Chapter 319

The lashed ships gliding slowly up the grey river between pale leafless trees, the chalk join between them, Mingus asleep on his bed in the middle of it. The trunks rising on both banks, grey as old bark, branches meeting overhead like the lines on an open palm. Moss on every root, grey-green, dry, though mist lies on it. No birds. No wind. The sails hanging slack and the ships moving anyway, upstream, against a current too slow to feel, as if the Wood were drawing them in like a breath. Far ahead, through the bare branches, the grey still pouring down out of the sky beyond the Wood.

(No SFX anywhere in the Wood. Nothing here makes a sound that isn't spoken.)

at the Marka's rail, three eyes wide, and Kali leaning out of his shoulder to whisper in his ear.

on the Upp Igen's rail, deaf since the tree, the only soul on either ship not bothered by the silence. Her balloon drawn hollow, the letters outlined and empty, and huge:

(Tihi reads it off twenty mouths at once and grins enormously.)

at the Upp Igen's bow, and something gone out of his face that is always in it: the tiredness. He looks like a man who has slept for a week. Emma looking at him sideways.

sliding past. Footprints, pressing into it one after another, walking down to the water's edge, with nobody making them. Bare feet, booted feet, small feet, a dog's paws. And others coming the other way, up out of the shallows into the trees, the moss dimpling under weight that isn't there.

eyes gold, a hand on Mingus's sleeping back. Threads: thousands of them, faint as cobweb, passing through the Wood in both directions, in and out among the trees, like a crowd crossing a square.

Both captains propped up against Mingus's bed, side by side, unable to lift their arms. Roffe kneeling in front of them with a bowl of broth and a spoon.

(Krydog opens. Spoon.)

(Vigolas opens. Spoon.)

watching the footprints on the bank. Answering a question nobody asked yet, a beat late:

The river bending round a clearing: a wide flat bank of grey moss in a ring of pale trees, mist lying on it like a sheet. In the middle of it, a stump. And on the stump, small and upright, knees together, a book open across them: an old woman. Writing.

on the join, sitting up with an effort that makes him go grey. Staring at her.

Drekk easing the lashed ships in against the moss. The crews stepping ashore one by one onto ground that gives like a carpet and makes no sound: Kompis with Vigolas's arm over his shoulders, Roffe with Krydog's, the rest behind, every one of them treading as if in a house where someone is asleep.

on his bed on the join, awake now, chin on his paws, ears up, looking at the trees. Not getting up. Kompis, half over the rail, looking back at him.

(Mingus doesn't move. His tail stirs once on the chalk.)

stopping in front of the stump, Kompis holding him up. Looking down at the small old woman. His voice coming out much smaller than he means it to.

(She writes.)

her pen still moving. Her balloon small and pale and plain, sitting a little lower than it should, as if it were heard rather than spoken:

turned very slightly toward him, the way she always turns it toward the soul it's about, so that we see the page at a slant: a line of ink in a column, and where a rank should sit, ink that won't settle, numerals sliding and glitching gold on the paper like his plate does in the air. No number readable.

a long breath.

Fenna's eyes moving from one of them to the next, never to their faces, always to whatever is being counted, and her pen writing one line for each. We see the eyes and the moving pen. We never see a number. Her hand, the angle, the edge of the panel always over it.

Kompis's big careful hands, and the gold knot on his wrist.

Krydog's chest, where a heart beats twice.

Roffe's belly, always empty.

Jeppson's fingers, beginning to tremble.

Öde's arms, inked with a hundred and eleven names.

Smurjan's three shadows on the moss, and a faint fourth.

Isa's bare feet, perfectly still.

Ysel, where her shadow isn't.

Levla's empty hands.

both leaning in at once, trying to see the page.

(She writes.)

(She writes.)

at Krydog's line, pausing. One beat. Her head tilting a fraction, the way someone tilts their head when they're listening for a sound that should be there and isn't. Then writing on.

(Behind Krydog, Kompis, gold-eyed, looking at the one thread on the big man that has always ended in nothing. Saying nothing. He's said nothing for a whole saga.)

stepping up to the stump, neat and formal, one hand behind his back, like a clerk at a counter.

(He steps back. Emma looks at him. He doesn't explain. He looks like a man who has just put something very carefully into a very safe drawer.)

stepping up last, barefoot on the moss, her crimson hair ragged at the jaw, eight thin blades crossed in an X on her back. She doesn't crouch. She stands very straight.

turning pages, back and back, a long way back. Stopping. On the page: eight lines in her own small exact hand. And her milk-pale eyes on them, and the words sliding off her eyes like water off glass. She looks, and looks, and can't hold on.

very still. Very quiet.

lifting her eyes from the page for the first time: not to their faces. To the space between them, where something is being counted that no one else can see. And her face changing, very slightly. Draw it as an event: the smallest movement of an old mouth, the kind of change that face has made perhaps three times since there were faces.

(She looks down again and writes something in the margin. Small. We don't see what.)

(Fenna turns the page.)

who has wandered up while nobody was looking and sat down cross-legged on the moss right in front of the stump, deaf, chin in her hands, simply staring up at the old woman's face to read it. Then lifting her small hands and signing, slowly, carefully:

her pen stopping. And, without looking up from the book, lifting her own free hand off the page, small and exact, and signing back:

(Tihi's mouth falling open. Her rose dimple-marks lighting up. The biggest silent grin in the history of either ship. Behind her, Kompis blinking.)

still on Kompis's shoulder, steadier now.

turning to go, leaning on Roffe, and stopping, looking down at the moss beside the stump. Old footprints. Set deep, long, a tall man's, the toes turned in toward the stump, close, the way a man stands who has stood in one place for a very long time reading over someone's shoulder. And in each print, dried into the moss, a drop of ink.

And a new footprint, pressing into it now, fresh, slow, a tall man's, as the crews watch. Then another, going past the stump toward the far side of the clearing, toward the river and the way on. Nobody making them. In the first one, a small black drop, still wet.

Still not looking up. Her pen still moving. But her head turning, very slightly, toward the edge of the panel, toward someone the reader can't see.