Chapter 350

The indigo light running steady down the whole length of the wound, a river of it, shoulder to hip of the world. On the scar-ledges, the Menders sitting in rows with their dead grey needles, like a hospital corridor at dawn. The crews moving among them with water and ordinary bandages, Emma kneeling by a Mender with a twisted ankle, Roffe setting up Mätt on a wide ledge. The child standing in his wound, the flat of his blade resting on its lip, Mingus asleep across his bare feet.

trying to put her dead needle down on the scar. Her fist won't open. She tries again, with her other hand prising at her own fingers. White stitches across the knuckles, old, faded, holding.

coming along the ledge to her, slow, the blade held out at arm's length, away from everyone. Stopping in front of her.

(Läka flinches. Then, after a moment, holds out her fist to him.)

One still beat. (Then, across the bottom tier only, through one border: a short hairline of indigo light.) The white stitches across Läka's knuckles parting. Her fingers uncurling, stiff, slow. The dead needle rolling off her palm onto the scar. Her hand open.

held up in the indigo light. Lined, soft, a pale groove across the palm where the needle lay for twenty-six years. She's crying.

staring at the open hand. At what his cut did. Kompis crouched beside him.

Every Mender in the wound holding up a sewn fist. Hundreds of them. Not a word. Asking. And the child going down the rows: "Sorry." "Sorry." "Sorry." Hairline after hairline, hands opening all down the wound like flowers at morning, needles dropping onto the scar. And with every cut, a strip arriving, winding onto him: his arms, his ribs, his throat, his chin, his mouth.

overwrapped again to the eyes, still cutting, muffled. And a hand coming into the panel, palm up, in front of his face.

(Dolk unwinds one and lays it in the palm. Another hand behind it, big, bandaged.)

taking a strip, reading it the way she reads a name on her own arm, slow, careful.

taking a strip, folding it into eighths, exactly like the certificate, and putting it in the breast pocket beside it. Then the small black docket, open on his knee, and his pen, steady now.

crouching in front of Läka, holding out his ringed hand. In one ring, a soft glow, like the last light on the sea in the evening.

(He presses the glow into her open palm, the first open palm in twenty-six years. And the light comes back on at the back of her eyes.)

eyes gold, looking at Läka. LUST-SIGHT: a thin gold thread from her chest, out of the wound, over the rim, out across the Current, a very long way. Not ending in grey.

at Mätt, ladling broth into cups, Menders first. Handing one to the child. Dolk taking it in his one hand, carefully, the way you'd take a bird. And the cup falling apart in his fingers, two clean halves, broth splashing his bare feet.

by the fire with a cup, and a tiny emerald notch-icon flashing in the corner of the panel.

(Every button on his embroidered waistcoat popping off at once, pinging off the scar in every direction. Then both trouser seams.)

(Tihi howling. Roffe already threading an ordinary steel needle.)

sitting cross-legged in front of Dolk, pulling her best faces, ears out, tongue out, bells jingling, until the corner of the child's mouth twitches, and it comes out looking like a wince.

sitting down beside him, closer than anyone has sat. Very still. Dolk looking at her sideways.

kneeling by Dolk, the dog between them.

digging through his sash and coat: a black cube, iron nails, buttons, bottle caps, a fish he should have thrown away. Holding out a bottle cap.

(And stopping. Looking at the small grey hand that cuts everything it holds. Closing his fist on the cap.)

The Giant's Stair, its top twenty hollows still sewn shut. And the child, blade held out, saying "Sorry" to a staircase: a hairline up the wall, and the Menders' old stitches parting, and the great bare footprints of a thousand-year-old climb opening again in the bark, one above the other, all the way to the rim.

sitting down on the scar beside the wound, her open hand in her lap, her dead needle left lying where it fell.

The crews climbing the Giant's Stair, one boat-sized footprint at a time. And Mingus, last, going back down three steps to lick the child's face, once, thoroughly, and then trotting up after Kompis.

on a footprint halfway up, turning to wave down at the small figure in the indigo light.

The crews climbing out over the lip onto the sand-gold stone, empty balloons again. Vider on his bench. And the great hood turning, not to them, but down, over the edge, to the wound and the child in it.

lifting. One sign. Slow. Clear. Tecken's caption under it, small:

The child looking up at the rim, a thousand feet above him. Lifting his one small grey hand. And copying the shape. Badly. Carefully.

on the rim beside the bench, her hand at her mouth, tears running into the lines of her walnut face. Beside her, the great grey hands coming to rest on the giant's knees. The hood bowing. Once.

(No balloon.)

moored on the road at the rim. Torva on her coil of rope with the split horn across her knees, binding the split with her own red signal-cloth under Jeppson's direction. His hands still shaking from two stairs. Hers not.

The two ships sailing on along the rim of the world toward Ferdinand's side, the allied flock behind them strung out for miles, lanterns like a city on the water. On both decks, the sleepers in chalk rings. Krydog awake at the Upp Igen's mast with his tally, three new strokes on it. Rougeina on the Marka's rail, her list in her hand, her lips moving through eight names, her eyes closing.

Rougeina's: a rain-dark Astralis street, her mother's voice, going white. Isa's: the whales singing under the ice, going white. Vigolas's: a deck at night, everyone asleep round the fire, going white from the edges in. Torva's: a road, whitening. Daniel's: the Docks, three echoes, whitening. One after another, every dream on both ships, white up to the faint chalk line round it, and pressing there. Not black. White.

And one dream that hasn't gone white, over a hooded sleeper with a golden retriever pressed against his back: a cabin of pine logs in deep snow, its window gold, a fire inside, smoke going up. A single rusted nail in the lintel above the door. And at the very edge of the firelight, out in the snow, one grey shape, standing still, faceless, snow settling on its shoulders and not melting.

(No balloon.)