Chapter 341
The Current, flat and bright, and laid across it from every direction, roads of light: silver ribbons on the water, converging. On the nearest, the Marka and the Upp Igen gliding in side by side, and behind them for miles, on every road, the allied flock: Tidekant's fishing boats behind a small new skiff, lamp-boats from Lumen, a black barge with cooking-fires, troll longships with stone kings on their prows. Ahead, where every road meets: a small island of white stone, a thicket of signposts, a low inn, a bell-tower with no bell. Vägskälet.
The new figurehead, pale oak, a raised fist with a scar on one knuckle. Krydog leaning over the bowsprit, tying a strip of fresh sailcloth round its knuckles, the way he did for the old one before every voyage. Jeppson behind him, wincing.
A hundred roads of light come in over the water and cross here, but twelve of them are broad as rivers, each with its own great signpost. Travellers waiting on the white stones: a troll from Brygdar with a stone axe, a lamp-bearer child in a too-big white coat, a woman in white with the soot scrubbed off her face, Gate City fishermen. Road-Runners in dust-brown coats darting between them with letters.
Torva on the quay as the Marka's bow touches stone, arms folded, the great bark horn across her back, the gold cord of script down her throat dim. Vigolas hopping down onto the white stone beside her.
crouching (slowly, wheezing) as Mingus trots up the quay to her. She looks at him for a long moment. He licks her peeling nose.
Every head turning at once. From down the roads, from every direction at the same time: thin, brassy, wrong-sounding notes.
Down the roads into the junction, running figures: dust-brown road-coats that don't fit them, stolen from real couriers, and in their hands horns of hammered tin painted to look like bark. Twenty of them, coming in fast on every road, leaping onto the signposts.
RANK PLATE ×20: LIARS' POST RUNNER · K-II MARKED · false heralds
on top of the tallest signpost, tin horn at his lips, bellowing at the flock in huge ragged capitals that look like Torva's and aren't:
on the quay, pointing down at the deck behind him, outraged.
The ships at the back, miles off, hearing the lies come down the roads: a fishing boat coming about; a raft of plateless people turning in confusion; a barge's crew shouting to the next boat. The flock starting to fray.
one hand flat on the bark of the horn, eyes shut. Under her palm, the horn humming, faint, a bad note in it like a cracked bell.
opening her mouth to shout over them, and nothing coming out but a wheeze. She doubles over, hands on her knees.
crouched on the bell-tower's lowest ledge right beside Torva's head. She was already there. Barefoot, eight hilts in an X behind her shoulders, eyes on the running liars.
flashing dawn-gold, like sunrise through a gap in a wall. ROAD-READING: the junction drawn as pages of dust: every road a line of print, every runner's footprints glowing behind him, and ahead of him, faint, the steps he hasn't taken yet, dotted on the stone. The nearest one's dotted line ends at the inn's pump.
Torva's long arm shooting out, pointing. Rougeina: blink. A silver-rose afterimage on the ledge. And at the inn's pump, Rougeina, waiting, as the runner sprints straight into her and she takes the tin horn out of his hands in passing, like a coat off a hook. He sits down hard on the stones.
Torva pointing: "Road four. The cart." Rougeina, already on the cart. A runner arriving into her. A tin horn gone.
"Under the third sign." Blink. Gone.
Svala, from the Marka's yard, a white scarf streaking across the junction dead straight: her Flight-Line cuts the first thing in its path, a forged horn in a runner's hand, clean in two, and she can't stop or turn, KUNK, straight into the signpost thicket, and hangs there upside down in the signs. "…Got one!"
Tihi, cartwheeling between a runner's legs, bells jingling, coming up with his satchel, letters spilling out. She reads one, giggling: "DEAREST MOTHER, I HAVE DIED. (NOT REALLY.)"
The Crossroads from high above: a white-stone island where a hundred roads of light come in over the bright Current, twelve of them broad as rivers, and the allied flock strung along every one of them to the horizon. In the junction at its heart, the Liars' Post being taken apart: a dozen silver-rose afterimages of Rougeina at a dozen places round the junction at once, each one standing exactly where a running liar was about to be; tin horns raining onto the stones; Svala upside down in the signposts; Tihi sitting on a satchel reading lies aloud; Krydog planted across the road to the Mouth with a runner's tin horn bent round his fist; Mingus galloping joyfully after a fleeing liar's coat-tails.
And on the bell-tower's step in the middle of it all, sitting, wheezing, a woman with a horn on her back, pointing like a conductor.
And at the very edge of the island, where none of the light reaches: one road, dark, overgrown with grey thorns, its signpost rotted to a stump.
A runner swinging his tin horn at Krydog's head: CLANG. Krydog going down flat on the stones like a felled tree: WHUD. A thin panel, silver light leaking through his bandages: ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP. And the rise, one arc, coat flaring, the dent in his scalp closing in silver stitch-light: HUP.
(The runner looks at his bent horn. Drops it. Runs.)
The last liar sprinting away down it, fast, coat flapping. And behind him, gaining: a skinny boy of thirteen in a dust-coat with a satchel bouncing on his hip, running like the road is downhill both ways.
Hassel drawing level with the liar, plucking the tin horn out of his hand without breaking stride, and running on past him, then circling back, jogging on the spot, not even out of breath.
sitting in the dust, panting.
On every road the ships that had turned turning back. The fishing boat coming about again. Lanterns on the troll longships lifting. The fraying edge of the flock drawing in. Far in the background, on an empty side-road, a small, round man in a uniform heavy with medals is running away, clutching a tin horn painted gold.
side by side on the junction stones, among bent tin horns.
(Above them on the signpost, Rougeina is already gone.)
Roffe leading the forty-one plateless refugees up from below decks into daylight: fishermen, grandmothers, a baby on a hip, children blinking. Alongside, the rafts of the uncharted islands, plateless people waving, calling across. A woman on the Marka's deck finding a cousin on a raft and both of them weeping.
an old net-maker with a mender's needle-case at her belt (an ordinary steel one) and a cord of knots she counts on, talking to Roffe and Hassel.
Eleven of the refugees not moving: a young fisherman with his arms folded, a grandmother, a girl with a fishing-spear, a man with a baker's forearms. Planted.
The flock's lanterns on every road round Vägskälet like a city lit on the water. A fire on the junction stones, Roffe's cauldron on it, crews and travellers eating together. A troll and a lamp-bearer child sharing a bench.
Rougeina sitting on the top step, unfolding a worn paper from her bindings, reading names off it, very quietly, the way she does every night.
on the step below, listening, her hand on the horn across her knees. A long look up at Rougeina. Rougeina looking back.
(Torva nods. She doesn't ask.)
Kompis at the Marka's stern rail with Mingus, Trollmage beside him with his crow, looking past the firelight at the twelfth road: grey thorns piled over it like a hedge, the rotted signpost, no light at all. Kompis's eyes gold: on the road, not one thread.
her head tipped back against the step, eyes shut. And across her knees, the bark horn trembling on its strap, the fine crack from the Answer catching the firelight, a low hum rising out of it like something too true to keep in.