Chapter 365
Grey longboats sliding in among the allied hulls from every side at once, no oars, no wake, grey figures standing in them as still as gravestones, lantern-light falling across their faceless faces as they glide between the ships.
A grey figure stepping over the gunwale. A big fishwife turning with a gutting-knife in her fist, and a grey palm settling on her shoulder, gentle as a neighbour's. Faint grey letters over her head: DONE. Her face going calm. Kind. Empty. She sets the knife down on the thwart, very neatly.
A troll roaring and swinging his stone axe at a hunter on the rail. The swing stopping in mid-air: not blocked, finished, its force gone as if it had landed somewhere long ago, the troll's arm hanging numb. Then a palm on his mossy shoulder. DONE. The troll sitting down on his rowing-bench with a long contented sigh.
A grandmother with a shawl over her head, a grey hand on her back. DONE. She looks up at the vast dark trunk, nodding to herself, and starts untying the raft's line from the next boat.
Boats turning for home. Sails filling, oars dipping, slow and peaceful, one after another, a whole edge of the fleet unravelling into the dark. Hassel running along the silver road between them, shouting up at the decks.
on the Upp Igen's bow, eyes gold. Across the whole fleet, threads running out from every chest toward the tree, toward the war, toward why: and all over the fleet, one after another, ending. Cut clean in grey. Like harp-strings snapping in the dark.
at the scarred fist, hauling his coat off his shoulders and throwing it to Roffe.
Emma laying her rope in a great ring round the mainmast, round the eleven islanders, round Vaka with her lamp, round the sleepers in their chalk rings, round Trollmage snoring in his with his crow, round Pyssel sitting on the ledger. The ends meeting. A faint gold line running all the way round.
Rougeina on the Upp Igen's yard: blink, a grey figure falling from the yard into the sea; blink, another; one per beat, a silver-rose afterimage on every perch she leaves.
Isa on the rail, not breathing, frost spreading from her bare feet across the planks, a whole longboat of hunters frozen mid-step at the ship's side. Her silver hair hanging in mid-swing. Roffe beside her, counting under his breath: "…forty… forty-one…"
Kali, one-armed, the black-glass sickle up. "Don't swing, don't swing, don't sw—" Swinging anyway, out of habit. The swing finished in the air, her arm going numb. "UGH! RUDE!" A faint dry voice from inside the black glass: "…Told you."
Bakasura, the colossal maw rising out of Smurjan's shadow, closing on a grey figure. The bite finished, the jaws stopping a hair short, the hunter untouched. "…Didn't eat."
laid flat on Emma's rope from outside. The faint grey D— beginning to form beside it, and not able to finish forming. Hanging there. Half a word.
Vigolas on top of a water-barrel, emptying his coat pockets at grey heads with both hands: bottle caps, tik tik tik; a fistful of rusted iron nails, tok tok; a cabin biscuit; and finally, with great ceremony, a very old, very flat, very dead fish. Every one landing and staying landed, knocking hunters backward off the rails into the sea.
grinning wildly, digging for more.
from behind. A grey palm drifting toward the inside pocket. And in the pocket, glowing faintly, the way unfinished things glow to anything that hunts endings: a folded scrap of paper. SIXTEEN SHIPS.
Vigolas twisting away, too slow. And the grey hand stopping an inch from the pocket, perfectly still in the air. Behind it, on the rail, Isa: unblinking, frost on her lashes, holding the hunter mid-reach. A beat late. Exactly in time.
on the bow, Lilla Ulv in his fist, firing at a hunter on the rail. The bottom border of the panel plain: no golden pulse line. The bullet finishing in mid-air, a hand's breadth from the grey chest, and dropping onto the deck, tink.
A grey figure standing on the planks at his back, its palm lifting toward the back of his head. And Kompis's eyes, gold, seeing too late where it's reaching: not his head. A thread running out of his chest, down the bow, down the whole silver road, warm and gold and taut as a fishing line, all the way to a root at the foot of the tree. His waiting.
frozen, understanding.
blink. A silver-rose afterimage on the Upp Igen's yardarm, high over black water. The grey figure suddenly on the yardarm, where a woman was, and tipping off it, and falling into the sea. And Rougeina standing on the bow behind Kompis, exactly where the hunter was, her hand on his shoulder.
shaking, his hand pressed to his chest where the thread runs out.
a breath.
The allied fleet at night from high above, drawn in greys: hundreds of grey longboats nosed in among a thousand ships like moths among lamps. And on deck after deck, people sitting down: weapons laid neatly on the planks, oars shipped, hands in laps, peaceful faces turned up to the trunk, and over every one of them, faint grey letters, DONE, DONE, DONE, a field of them across the whole fleet like little headstones in the dark. At the back, dozens of boats turning for home, sails filling, a long slow tide of them going out.
And at the head of the fleet, on two lashed ships on a silver road, a small knot of fighters holding: a woman with a staff inside a ring of rope; a girl standing still as a statue in a ring of frost; a crimson-haired dancer leaving silver-rose afterimages up a mast; a pirate on a barrel throwing a fish; and a big man with no coat on, hauling people up off a deck, one after another, who sit straight back down.
on a troll longship's deck alongside, hauling the troll from page 2 up by both arms.
(The troll comes up easily. Stands. Looks at him kindly. And sits back down on his bench.)
crouching in front of him. His face changing. And beside his head, a small faded inset: Lumen's seventh hill, the long grass, a big man flat on his back in it for a day and a night with his eyes on the sky and nothing in him to get up with.
looking at him.
a long beat. Then putting his hands on his knees. And standing. Slowly. Not because he wants to. Because the man in front of him is standing. And staying up.
Krydog going boat to boat across the lashed hulls, hauling people up: a Gate City skipper, a lamp-bearer grandfather, a boy from the plateless rafts. Each one getting up easily. Each one sitting back down. His hands bleeding through the bandages.
on his knees on a fishing boat's deck among people sitting peacefully all round him, his chest heaving. Emma watching him from inside her ring on the Upp Igen, unable to leave it.
inside Emma's ring, standing on the rail with her fists clenched, bells in her hair, forcing a laugh out to un-hold them all the way she always can. And what comes out is a sob.
The fleet shrinking. The whole back third of it going out into the dark under filling sails. Svala on the Upp Igen's bowsprit, watching them go.
One by one, the lanterns on the finished boats going out: put out by calm hands, because the people holding them are going home. The fleet getting darker. And darker. Until in the black between two hulls there's almost nothing. And then, low down, near the water: a small white flame, rising. Not a lantern. A flame with no heat.
A little lamp-boat between two dark hulls, an old man of a hundred and four at the oars, and standing up in it, chin high, bare feet planted, a copper-braided girl of seven holding a clay lamp as high as her arm will reach, its white light falling across a hundred empty, peaceful faces.