Chapter 407
The Null rolling toward the knot, a guttering sunrise inside it, wider than the floor. And in its path, kneeling on the bark, Smurjan: grey wraps, bare feet, three shadows spreading from him across the bark like the spokes of a wheel, a sleeping troll-mage laid down gently beside him with his head on a coil of the knot.
flat on the bark. The Wrath Codex's crimson line burning across his third eye. Precision. The one correct action.
The knot's braid running down into him: the cord of five colours bending from the air into his kneeling body, through his back, down his arms, into his palms, into the bark of Ferdinand. Grounded. The knot steadying like a ship dropping anchor in a gale.
three heartbeats in it, drawn as three pulses, crimson, red and black-gold, beating out of time with each other, the way they have since Trisdel's mirror split them. And, slowly, by choice, falling into step.
bursting open, and up out of it, mid-sentence, already talking: a one-armed woman with a red braid and a sickle of black glass.
and rising behind Kali, slow, huge, gaunt, all ribs and jaw, eyes like empty bowls, a shape that blots out the sunrise: Bakasura. Looking at the Null. His enormous jaw opening.
Bakasura lunging: the vast gaunt shape striding across the bark and biting the Null's front edge, a bite the size of a barn, his jaws closing on absence.
chewing. Slowly. A long, long, thoughtful chew. Tasting what it is.
(He bites again.)
Bakasura eating it. Bite after bite, a demon of hunger eating hunger, the Null's edge disappearing into him in great ragged mouthfuls, and the Null shrinking back from him, the first thing in history that has ever made it flinch from being eaten.
watching, then turning to the others at the knot, her one hand out, palm up.
Kompis, eyes gold: "Take it." His Lust going out of him in a gold thread to her open hand, and his eyes staying gold: lent, shared, not taken.
Rougeina, a long beat, then: "Bring it back." Silver-rose streaming to Kali; her blades still bright.
Smurjan, kneeling, anchoring: "You've always had mine." The crimson line on his third eye flaring into her.
Trollmage, asleep on a coil of rope, mumbling without waking: "…Mm." A thread of violet-amber drifting off him. Consent.
Vigolas, holding out his hand too, grinning. Kali looking at it: "There's still nothing in you to borrow." / "Still weird." / "Still weird!"
the four lent sins pouring into her at once, gold, silver-rose, crimson, violet-amber, her smoky eyes flashing all four colours at once, her red braid lifting, her one arm and her sickle blazing.
A one-armed woman with a red braid running across the Arena floor straight into the middle of the Null, her black glass sickle trailing four colours of light like a comet's tail: gold threads that find every weak place, a silver-rose Swap that puts her wherever she means to strike before she gets there, a crimson line of precision that shows her the one correct cut, and a slow violet-amber patience that makes every stroke land exactly when it should. Behind her, Bakasura eating the Null's edge; the kneeling anchor; the knot. And Kali, mid-leap, the sickle coming down into the heart of the nothing.
in the Null's middle, and a voice coming out of the black glass: dry, flat, mirror-cold, a twin's voice.
(She cuts left.)
The left side of the Null's middle tearing, thinning, the sunrise inside it flaring through the tear.
kneeling, anchoring, his face grey with the weight of the knot running through him into the tree. And inside his chest, seventeen voices, all at once, rising.
closing his eyes. Opening his mouth. And out of it, not his voice: seventeen voices, singing. A song with no words, the one from ch. 402, old as a lullaby, and loudest of all among them a very old woman's voice whose name nobody remembers, high and cracked and fierce.
the song going out across it: through the stands of the living, through the stands of the dead, where grey faces lift, and here and there, among the dead, someone mouthing the words that aren't there, as if they knew the tune once. And on the floor, the knot of five colours brightening with every bar.
beating in time with the song now: one beat, one anchor, the cord through him into the tree as steady as the trunk itself.
in the middle of the Null, cutting, cutting, the four colours guttering in her eyes as the count runs down.
Kali's last stroke: the sickle with all four lent sins in it, one perfect cut down the thinnest seam of the Null's middle.
leaving her at zero: a gold thread flying home to Kompis, silver-rose to Rougeina, crimson back into Smurjan, violet-amber drifting back to a sleeping troll-mage. Nobody went dark. Everyone has theirs back.
still eating, his vast gaunt form thinner than ever, ribs like a ship's frame, chewing nothing.
Its edge eaten ragged. Its middle cut thin. The sunrise inside it still burning. Shrinking: from wider than the floor to the size of a hill, a house, still dark, still pushing, but thin, like smoke you could put your hand through.
the song fading out of him, the seventeen voices settling back down inside his chest, warm, satisfied. The old woman's last note hanging. He opens his eyes.
laughing, a hand on Smurjan's shoulder.
beside them, her blades drawn, watching the thinned Null with narrowed eyes.
at the knot, his eyes gold, looking through the thinned Null. Through the smoke of it. Past the burning sunrise in it. Searching. Finding something.
wide, gold, reflecting: one thread. A single, very fine, very old thread, the only thread the Null has ever had, running out of it, out of the Arena, out past the world tree, out past the first ring, out past the First Count itself, back, back, back, to the silence before anything at all.
understanding, his face changing from a fighter's to something softer.
The thinned Null hanging over the floor like a cloud of smoke with a sunrise in it, and running out of it, so fine you can barely see it against the sky, one thread, stretched taut across the whole world, back toward a silence nobody alive has ever heard.
(No balloon.)