Chapter 347
Hundreds of needles coming down at once along both lips, starting at the healed inch at the shoulder end and racing downward: white thread zig-zagging across the wound from lip to lip, drawn tight, stitch after stitch. A seam, a mile long and growing.
moving toward each other with a deep groan of bark, the indigo light between them narrowing. And on Dolk's chest, in the same beat, the same thing: his own wound pulling shut from the shoulder down, stitch by stitch, in time with the great one.
Dolk on his feet, the dog behind him, blade up. "Sorry." A hairline across the page. "Sorry." Another. "Sorry—" Needles coming apart up and down the seam, and every one becoming a white strip winding onto him.
the white strips over his eyes now, wrapped blind, slashing at sounds.
perched on a ridge of scar near the seam, looking down at her own white scarf. Fraying: thread pulling out of thread, thread turning to fluff, fluff drifting off into the indigo. Before leaking in where the line closes.
A hairline, blind but true, slicing through the leading thread at the seam's front, and the whole seam behind it unravelling: a hundred yards of stitches pulling loose, lips springing apart, indigo light flooding back.
The Menders tying knots of light at the seam's front, and blind hairlines finding every knot and cutting it. Tie, cut. Tie, cut. Strips piling onto the child.
panting under the strips, talking to nobody, the way a child mutters a lesson to keep going.
hearing it. Her tired eyes turning, slowly, from the child to the ledge above him. To Kompis, and the golden pulse line running along the bottom border of every panel he stands in, ba-dum, ba-dum, in perfect time with the dog's.
very gently, to the Menders round her.
Levla, stepping in front of Kompis, flicking his ringed fingers. A glowing paper tag on a string snapping into being on Kompis's chest.
looking at the tag a long moment. Then smiling, the most tired smile in the chapter.
(She touches the tag with her thimbled hand.)
burning PAID IN FULL, and something going out of Läka's face as it burns: a light at the back of her eyes, the one that looked at the sea every evening. Levla staggering as the payment pours into one of his rings: twenty-six years of someone else's waiting.
A hundred needles flicking out from the walls, and hooks of white light catching in Kompis's hoodie, his sleeves, his bandolier loops, his bootlaces, threads snapping taut, and Kompis yanked off his feet, dragged across the ledge toward the lip of the wound. Along the bottom of the panel, the golden pulse line stuttering: ba-dum… ba—… dum…
Krydog, diving, grabbing Kompis's arm in both bandaged fists.
(Needles flicking past. A stitch through his sleeve and Kompis's together.)
(Both of them dragged, Krydog's heels gouging the bark.)
Rougeina: blink, Kompis swapped with a loose chunk of scar, three yards back. Dragged again. Blink, swapped with a Mender's dropped thimble. Dragged again. Blink— and then nothing: the air between her and everything she could swap with full of white thread, a web of it, hundreds of strands. She can't see past it.
The whole Cut from above: a wound wider than a river running down the grey stalk of the world into the dark, and along both of its lips hundreds of Menders sewing, needles flashing like a field of sparks, a seam of white light zig-zagging down its length from the closed shoulder end, the lips grinding shut behind it, the indigo light narrowing to a strip. Down both lips, the Arbiter's black square letters: THIS WOUND IS FINISHED.
And from the open end of the seam, a hundred threads of white light fanning up out of the wound to one point on the ledge: a small hooded man being dragged across the bark toward the lip, a big patchwork captain sewn to his arm, digging his heels in, a golden retriever running at his side.
In the middle of the wound, a small mummy of white strips, blind, slashing hairlines at nothing.
blind, his head turning toward the sound of the dragging.
being dragged on his back, eyes gold. LUST-SIGHT: the hooks in his clothes, a hundred white threads, and among them, unmistakable, warm, his own gold thread running from his chest to the dog beside him.
(A blind hairline. A white thread parting.)
(Another.)
blind, sweeping in toward the gold thread between Kompis and Mingus, a hair's breadth from it.
frozen in the air a hair from the gold, trembling. The child under the strips shaking.
For every thread Dolk cuts, ten more needles hook in. Kompis and Krydog dragged to the very edge of the ledge, the lip of the wound under their boots, and below them the narrowing indigo and the last open stretch of the seam waiting.
on the lip beside them, close enough to touch, the light gone out of the back of her eyes. Speaking to Kompis like a nurse to a frightened patient.
white-faced, being pulled backward toward the drop.
Vigolas leaping for Kompis's collar, Captain's Pull, and needles stitching his boots to the ledge mid-leap. His fingertips stopping an inch from the hood. "KOMPIS!"
Emma running alongside with her staff, trying to draw a ring round a man who won't stay still. "Hold STILL!" / "I CAN'T!"
Daniel, his palm half-raised at the black letters down the lips. Looking at the blind child. Lowering it. "…Not while he wants it." / Flexsnus: "Then ASK him!" / "He can't hear me."
Kompis's heels at the very edge, the threads hauling him over. And Mingus, stepping round in front of him, between him and the drop, all four feet planted on the lip, chest against Kompis's chest, pushing back. Needles flicking at the dog and sliding off the gold like rain off a duck.
looking at the dog. Almost apologetic.
(Mingus doesn't move.)
his face pressed into the dog's neck, both fists in the gold fur, the threads pulling at every part of him, his boots slipping.
along the bottom border. Stuttering. ba-dum… ba—… And then steadying. Not Kompis's. The dog's. Strong and slow and certain.
Kind. Brown. Looking at his person being taken away.
At the very edges of the golden fur, the gold beginning to glow. And on the scar-wall behind him, thrown by the indigo light, his shadow: far too big for a dog, with two long curved shapes hanging from its jaw, like scimitars.
(No balloon.)