Chapter 401
The bark floor torn in pale patches where the Null touched it, places that were never there, smooth and blank like unprinted paper. Above the centre, the cord: a knot of five colours (emerald, gold, crimson, silver-rose, violet-amber), braided tight, and caught in it like a star in a net, the Null: a hole in the world, struggling, and over it, for the first time in all of history, a plate.
THE NULL · COUNTED · Scalelist #0
standing round the knot's foot, each holding a strand of it, exhausted, scorched, bleeding. Mingus in the middle of them, panting. Nobody speaks.
his hand on the green strand, looking at the other four. One after another. Kompis. Rougeina. Smurjan. Trollmage. Slowly. The way you'd look at four photographs of yourself you'd never seen.
saying it first, because he always speaks first.
Nobody laughing. Nobody arguing. Kompis's eyes gold, seeing the threads between all five of them, thick as hawsers, grown, not tied, every one of them running back to the same root. Rougeina not looking away from Vigolas. Smurjan's three voices silent inside him at once, listening. Trollmage's ears not twitching.
Black square letters, the ones that burned out mid-word in ch. 148 and again in ch. 390, finishing themselves in the Arbiter's hand, slow, from wherever it stands cracked at the floor's edge:
looking at the letters. Then at Rougeina.
a hand going to her own heart, where it stopped on the same beat as his.
The five on the floor of the Arena, and around them, drawn in faded inset panels like old pages blowing past, every fight they ever had with each other: a pirate and a spy on a beach in the first chapter, the spy's gun at the pirate's head; a woman with crimson hair and a hooded boy, blades and threads, on the bare floor of the Arena the first time it Called them both; a quiet man with three shadows and a troll-mage, lightning and ink; a pirate's fist and a quiet man's third eye; Vigolas vs Trollmage, the spy vs the quiet man, Rougeina's blade at Vigolas's throat. And in every inset, the same thing is now visible that nobody saw then: one thread running between the two who fought, gold, grown out of both of them like a branch out of one trunk.
And in the middle, the five, looking at all of it at once.
sitting down on the bark, suddenly, as if his legs decided. Mingus climbing into his lap, all eighty pounds of him, and Kompis's arms going round the dog.
all three voices at once, for the first time ever in the same word, Kali's and Bakasura's under his own:
his ink-stained hands, looking at them. Then at Vigolas's hands. The same shape. He's never noticed.
staring at Kompis on the floor with the dog in his lap.
standing very straight, the only one of the five who hasn't moved. Her crimson hair across her face. Looking at all four of them, one at a time, the way she looks at a list.
her eyes on Kompis, then on Vigolas.
VIGOLAS: …More.
KOMPIS (from the floor, the dog's head under his chin): …More.
SMURJAN (three voices, one word): …More.
TROLLMAGE: …Mm. · More.
ROUGEINA: …More.
where the allies crowd the rail (the seal long gone): the Up-Again crew; Krydog, limping back from the centre of the floor with Mörda beside him, the edges of his memories gone, and setting one boot back over Emma's line; Isa with a hand on her scarred chest and a frost-streak on her collarbone; Lärka inside the Ring; Vider on the bottom step; the trolls, the lamp-bearers. None of them can hear what's being said on the floor. All of them can see the five standing together, and every one of them knows that something has just been decided.
the knot of five colours pulsing, tightening once round the Null as the word goes through it, more, and the Null shrinking in the net. Then, at five points round the knot, fraying: strands lifting off the braid, unravelling, the colours bleeding back toward their own owners.
his strand slipping in his fist.
All five hauling on their strands. The knot shaking. The Null inside it swelling again, testing the net, the plate over it flickering: THE NULL · COUNT—
still on the floor, his eyes gold, seeing exactly what's wrong: five threads trying to be one thread and not able to finish the knot, every strand reaching for the others and missing by a hair, like five hands reaching for one handshake.
holding his strand with both hands, his face grey with effort, understanding.
looking up into the stands of the living, at a thousand allies, at Emma, at the Up-Again crew. Then across at the stands of the dead, the grey rows, the empty half.
the strand burning his palm, gritting his teeth. And remembering, out of nowhere, a grey wood, an old woman on a stump, a book, the first morning of his eighth life.
fraying faster now. The Null pushing at the net. Jorvand, at the floor's centre, the open door in his chest, the Null's tail still running through it like a river through a gate, watching the five with his kind tired face. Not helping. Not stopping them. Waiting, the way an editor waits for the last line.
on the floor, his arms round the dog. And the dog going still in his arms. Ears up. Head turning. Not to the Null. Not to the five. To an empty patch of bark at the edge of the floor, a little way off, where there's nothing at all.
working. His tail going, slow. The way it goes on a quay when he smells someone he knows coming down the gangplank who hasn't come into sight yet.
looking down at him.
climbing out of Kompis's lap. Standing on the bark. Facing the empty patch. Every hair on him lit gold by the knot overhead.
from low down, his front feet planted, his head up, and his chest filling, the way it filled once before, on the bow of the Marka at the end of the world, a long time ago.
The Arena, the fraying knot, the struggling Null, five people hauling on five strands, and in the middle of the bare bark, a golden dog with his chest full of air, about to bark. At the edge of the floor, the empty patch of bark he's looking at. Still empty.
(No balloon.)