Chapter 322

The river-grey realm of the gentle dead: a slow, wide river under a sky the colour of rain, flowing between low grey hills. On the hills, terraced like the stands of an arena, rows of the watching dead, still, eyes closed. On the river, hundreds of small boats, drifting, each with a sleeping soul in it, curled up, peaceful. And lashed side by side in the middle of the river, too big, too loud, too alive for this place: the Marka and the Upp Igen.

The grey of the Null coming down the hills like fog with edges, and wherever it touches, the watching dead in the stands going pale, their outlines thinning, one, then a row. And on the water, a little boat drifting into it and fading, its sleeper and all, to nothing.

(No SFX. The Null makes no sound.)

at the rail, eyes gold, white-faced. Seeing threads end. Dozens. Hundreds.

fists crackling, lightning useless and he knows it.

at the Marka's bow, the names inked up both her arms (a hundred and eleven of them, Värn's people), standing very straight. Grass springing up through the deck planks round her boots.

turning to the crews.

a long breath. Then climbing up onto the Marka's rail, standing on it, facing the grey coming down the far hills, the river of sleeping boats between. Cupping his hands round his mouth.

On the far shore, at the very edge of the grey, a little boat about to fade, and in it a broad grey-bearded man curled asleep, and his outline holding. The grey reaching for his boat and stopping, an inch away, as if it had touched glass.

seeing it, his eyes going wide, and not stopping.

Across the river, one after another, little boats at the edge of the grey holding: thirty-one of them, bobbing in a ragged line, a sleeping crew from a burned merchantman, the grey pressing against the air round them and not getting in.

staring at the threads: thirty-one of them that were ending, not ending. Held. Each one tied to Vigolas's voice.

lifting both arms, the names on them, and beginning to read, steadily, the way she reads them every morning: her village's people, one after another, her grandmother's last.

The grey flowing round the held ones like water round stones, taking the boats in between: the unnamed, the ones nobody on two ships ever knew. A child's boat fading two lengths from a held one. An old man in the stands going pale between two who glow.

standing on the Upp Igen's rail, eight rings flashing, shouting not names but at the drifting boats nearest him.

(The sleeping dead don't answer. They're resting. They don't know they're being taken.)

on the Marka's quarterdeck, very still, not calling. Her blades crossed on her back. Her eyes on the far shore. On the stands there, where the grey is thickest.

finding, in the stands on the far shore, at the edge of the grey, eight empty places. Eight places in a row where nobody sits, as if eight people were sitting there that nobody could see.

beside her, following her look. Seeing nothing in the eight empty places. Then seeing threads: eight of them, faint, coming out of the empty seats, all running to her.

stepping up onto the rail beside Vigolas. Her voice not loud. Clear. Every syllable placed.

in the far stands, and someone in it: faint, flickering, a young man in an Examiner's coat, appearing, outlined in gold, because someone said his name aloud in a place where names are heard.

filling one by one in the grey: an Architect in white, a lidless man, a woman in a stencilled robe, a gate-keeper. People the whole world forgot, the people she killed, appearing in the stands of the dead for the first time since they died, because she is calling them.

on the rail beside her, his voice joining hers, saying the same eight. He's the only other one who remembers them.

(One voice is a memory. Two is a witness.)

Eight figures she killed, sitting in a row at the edge of the grey, held, glowing faintly gold, the grey breaking round them. One of them, the young man in the Examiner's coat, Torvik, turning his head very slightly in his sleep toward the voice.

Two lashed ships in the middle of the river of the dead, every person aboard calling names, hoarse, relentless, and the grey across the far shore slowing. Stalled against a hundred glowing points it can't take. Pressing, flowing round them, taking the unnamed between, but slowing.

a beat late, the only one not calling. Watching the grey.

hoarse to a rasp, still shouting the thirty-one, again, from the top, "ORVAR BLECK—", his voice cracking.

at the wheel, nodding, already organising.

And on the river, between the two ships and the far shore, a boat drifting out of the grey, not like the others: black. Long and low, its prow carved like the top of a page, and no one rowing it. It glides upstream against the slow current, toward the lashed ships, silent.

A tall thin stooped man sitting in it with an open book on his knees and a pen in his hand, his face kind, his eyes tired, half of him already grey.

on the rail, still calling, not stopping, his eyes on the black boat.

open on his knees. On the page, in neat black ink, a list. Their names. Every crew member on both ships, in a column, in his careful hand: VIGOLAS. KOMPIS. ROUGEINA. ÖDE. KRYDOG…

lifting the pen. Gently. Sorry. Like an editor who has come to the part of the manuscript he likes least.

its nib touching the first name on the page, the ink starting to spread into a black bar.