Chapter 32
The Marka rides in the sweet water off the slipway, the long white scar on her flank with the golden shape of Ulla's arms inside it. Behind her, on the empty slipway, the white salt statue stands with its arms open. Ahead, the fjord runs away between the cliffs toward the sea.
Drekk, face smeared with soot, hauls the wheel over.
Trollmage stands at the rail. Not lying down. Standing, staring back at the statue as it gets smaller. The crow sits silent on his shoulder. Kompis comes and stands beside him. Mingus leans his whole weight against Trollmage's leg.
on the rail, closing slowly into a fist. There's still white chalk-dust on his fingers.
Out on the fjord, the Tally comes about, her white sails filling, and turns to follow.
Saltbrand is back on his iron plate. His salt has crusted over again, lumpy and scarred where the water melted him, both arms whole but rough as rock-salt. Past the stretch the fire burned sweet, the fjord is salt again. He lowers the white-hot tip of his branding iron over the bow.
Hrafnkell, on all fours, a fresh bruise purpling across his whole jaw, licks blood off his lip and grins.
Three big harpoon ballistae on the Tally's foredeck fire at once. The harpoons trail chains of pale ledger-light behind them.
All three slam into the Marka's stern rail.
The chains go taut. The Marka lurches and slows, like a dog on a leash. Behind her, a line of white fire is lit across the fjord, and it starts racing up the water after her.
Rougeina Swaps onto the first chain mid-air (blink), cuts it, Swaps onto the second (blink), cuts it. Silver-rose trails hang across the water between the two ships.
The third chain is as thick as her waist. Her blade rings off it and doesn't even scratch.
at the stern, looking at the chain with his third eye. Then, quietly, at his own shadow.
Smurjan looks at the shadow a moment longer. Kali never thinks quietly.
at the stern, rifle up, Mingus pressed against his leg.
The world freezes, and this time the afterimages of Kompis behind him are a crowd again: dozens, hundreds, each trying a different shot down the length of that chain. The golden pulse line beats along the bottom of the panel, steady and strong.
One shot. The bullet runs straight down the length of the chain, over the water, and into the locking pin of the ballista on the Tally's deck. The pin shatters. The chain flies loose and whips into the fjord.
The fjord narrows to its mouth, and across the mouth stands the sea-gate of Brygdar: two colossal troll-kings carved out of the two cliffs, faces in profile, nose to nose across the water. Their stone lips are pressed together, sealing the fjord shut.
On both cliffs, dozens of trolls are already hauling on chains as thick as tree trunks, heaving, roaring. With a sound like a mountain clearing its throat, the stone lips begin to part.
From the Tally's fighting-top, Bastion archers loose arrows whose heads burn white. They fall among the trolls on the cliffs. Where they hit, grey stone shoulders turn white and crack.
an arrow burning in her back, white spreading across her stone. She doesn't let go of the chain.
Vigolas wrenches the last harpoon out of the Marka's stern rail with both hands, lightning crawling up his arms, and hurls it back across the water like a spear. It smashes through the Tally's fighting-top. The archers' platform collapses in a shower of planks.
The river of white fire has caught up. Flames lick the Marka's stern. The golden shape of Ulla's arms on the hull glows bright against the dead white scar around it, as if pushing back.
at the masthead, looking back across the water at the Tally's deck. Lashed to the deck beside Saltbrand's iron plate stand the Tally's water casks, the drinking water.
Blink.
She's on the Tally's deck, beside the casks, barefoot on the bark. She kicks the lid off the biggest one and shoves it over.
A wave of sweet water sloshes across the iron plate and over Saltbrand's legs.
His legs hiss and slump. He falls to his knees on the plate. Behind the Marka, the river of white fire gutters and dies.
Hrafnkell lunges at her from the bowsprit, but she's already gone (blink), back on the Marka's rail. He lands where she was and sniffs the air she left.
The sea-gate stands open. Between the two stone kings, the fjord simply ends. The water runs over a smooth lip of rock and pours off the edge of the world into a sea of light.
at the wheel. Tears are running down his sooty face, and he isn't wiping them. His hands don't shake on the spokes.
eyes fixed on the light ahead.
on Drekk's shoulder.
The Marka's bow tips over the lip. Everyone grabs something: Kompis grabs Mingus, Mingus grabs nothing and his ears fly straight up, Trollmage grabs the crow, the panther grabs Rougeina, and Smurjan grabs the mast and the falling Trollmage at the same time.
At the bow, the Kettle's bell swings up on its own and rings.
As the ship tips over, one stone eye of the troll-king on the left cliff opens, and looks down at the half-elf at the stern. Only the crow sees it.
The Marka falls a long breath through open light and lands with a soft whumph on a sea of moving starlight: no water at all, but a slow, endless tide of light that ripples and swirls and runs in currents of silver and blue. The grey-gold bark of the hull glows as it settles, floating, as if it's come home.
All around, islands drift like lanterns on the tide: a rock with a single tree, a village on a turtle-shaped hill, a black spire, a field with a house in it. Some are close enough to hit with a stone. Some are tiny lights far off.
And above, filling the whole sky, is the tree. Its trunk is out of sight in the deep; its branches spread from horizon to horizon, wider than weather. Hanging from them like fruit on a tree the size of the sky are the realms: whole worlds, each one glowing its own colour. One branch above them still drips the waterfall they just fell out of.
At the wheel, small against all that light, Drekk steers, crying.
Kompis, mouth open, while Mingus barks and barks at a passing island with a lighthouse on it.
Rougeina at the masthead, crimson hair lifting in a wind that smells of nothing at all. She almost smiles.
Smurjan at the stern, his third eye wide. Even his diagram-sight can't find the edge of it.
Vigolas at the bow, Greed-sight open: the whole Current blazes gold to him, every island, every star, every light on the tide, all of it worth something.
Trollmage sits down where he is. He turns his old sign over to its clean back, dips a finger in the soot on the deck, and paints:
WAITING. DAY 1.
He lies down next to it. His eyes are open.
Drekk wipes his face on his sleeve at last and raises the cracked spyglass.
Smurjan sits against the rail. Kali is half out of his shadow beside him, holding her stump against her chest.
High above, the waterfall pours out of the realm's edge and turns to light as it falls. Through it drops a second ship: white sails ruled with black lines, a white flag with a closed gate. The Tally lands on the starlight behind them, its bleached bark hull settling and floating.
Hrafnkell crouches there on all fours, lifts his nose to the Current, and breathes in deep.
eyes half-closed in pleasure.