Chapter 344

The crews dropping off the last furrow onto a broad ledge of bark. And beside them, below them, running away diagonally down the vast stalk into the dark: the Cut, close now. Too big to take in with one look: a gash in Ferdinand's bark wider than a river and long as a road, its lips grey and hard and ridged like an old scar on a giant, and inside it, deep, clean indigo light. The air here is hushed, like a room with snow outside.

on his knees at the lip, brushing old bark-dust away with his sleeve. Carved into the hardened scar, worn almost smooth: a rune older than any he knows. Two long strokes side by side that never meet.

eyes gold, looking into the wound. LUST-SIGHT: every thread in the world running past the Cut, thousands of them, bending round it like water round a stone. Not one crossing it.

The Menders arriving: dozens, then hundreds, coming down every furrow onto the ledges along both sides of the wound, white robes, needles of light in their sewn fists. Calm. Unhurried. At their head, stepping onto the crew's ledge, an old woman: tiny, white hair cropped close, a thimble on every finger of her left hand, her right fist sewn shut round a needle whose light has gone yellow, like very old linen.

looking the crews over with the warm, tired face of a nurse at three in the morning.

on Vigolas's wrist: the black handprint burned into it.

kind-eyed, looking up at Krydog, at the shadows under his eyes.

(Krydog stops. A long beat. You can see him want it.)

very gentle, at Rougeina's side.

shaking from the chalk stair, a pencil rolling out of his fingers. A Mender kneeling to pick it up for him.

turning to Daniel, looking at the certificate pocket as if she can read through cloth.

smiling, not offended, patting Daniel's arm with her thimbled hand.

turning to the wound, the indigo light on her face.

very softly.

her staff planted, her braid over her shoulder.

(Emma has no answer.)

eyes gold, staring at Läka's sleeve. On the white linen, small, black, square, crawling up from the cuff like a line of ants: letters. On her sleeve. On the next Mender's. On every sleeve along both lips of the Cut.

FINISH IT.

stepping across the ledge between Läka and the lip of the wound, the crews moving up beside him one by one.

The Menders walking in, not running, never running, and the crews meeting them. Kali first, sickle up, mouth going.

(A needle flicking past her face, across her lips. One white stitch. Drawn tight.)

her mouth sewn shut with a single neat white stitch, finished, smooth. Her eyes over it the most horrified anyone has ever seen them.

staring at Kali, and giggling, helpless, bells jingling in her bunches, her rose dimples lighting.

(It catches. Kali's eyes crinkling. A snort through her nose. A laugh, behind the stitch, shaking her shoulders, and the stitch popping, like a button.)

watching from the ledge, interested, the way a nurse watches a new symptom.

Rougeina, Swapping through the Menders, a blink with every step, silver-rose trails, and a needle flicking across her face mid-blink: her eyelids sewn shut. She lands blind in the middle of a hundred Menders. No sight. No Swap. She stands very still.

(He has. Head first. Legs kicking out of the cauldron on Roffe's back.)

a sudden, bright, helpless laugh, and the stitch on her eyelids popping. Her green eyes open. On the cauldron.

Krydog, wading into the Menders, and a ring of them stepping round him in a quick neat circle, needles flashing, a seam running down his coat that binds his arms flat to his sides. He can't swing. He can't fall. He's being held, standing. His face going white. (For one panel, an inset: wet planks, a knee in a boy's back, a hand reaching out of grey.)

Emma, already walking, the iron ring at the tip of her ash staff drawing a line on the bark round him, one walk, the ends meeting: tk. SANCTUARY. Inside the line, the seam still runs down his coat, but it holds nothing: his arms come up, the thread hanging slack off him like an empty sleeve.

Bakasura, rising out of Smurjan's shadow, closing his jaws on a whole row of needles of light. Chewing. "…Tastes like… sorry."

Roffe, sweeping Sleven low, scooping a line of Menders off their feet into a gentle heap. "Sit DOWN. Eat something."

Svala, a Flight-Line straight at a needle: it passes through the light (it has no body) and she hits the next thing, the Mender holding it, and knocks her flat. "Sorry! SORRY!"

Daniel, plain sword in his left hand, standing over Öde while she scythes needles out of the air, not attacking anyone.

The crews holding the ledge, and the Menders flowing round them on every side like water round a rock: down both lips, along the ridges of scar, past them, hundreds, toward the wound.

further down. A row of Menders kneeling at the very edge, their needles raised over the indigo light, about to make the first stitch across the Cut.

on the ledge, nodding to them, kind.

in the indigo light, out of sight. A small balloon, with a thin slash across its border, in a small flat voice:

(Running across the whole page from edge to edge, ruler-straight, through every panel border above it: a single hairline of indigo light.) In the panel: the row of kneeling Menders at the lip, and in their sewn fists, a hundred needles of light falling apart, each in two clean pieces, drifting down into the wound like snow. Their faces turning. Not a sound.