Chapter 410
Quiet. The bare bark floor, regrowing over every blank patch. The knot of five colours that are one coming apart over the centre, gently, like a lantern being opened: five lights drifting down, each to its own: emerald to a pirate, gold to a boy in a hood, silver-rose to a woman with crimson hair, crimson to a quiet man, violet-amber to a troll-mage asleep on the bark with his head on a coil of rope.
the lights settling into them. Standing in a loose ring at the centre of the floor where an old man stood, on bark that remembers nothing. Not speaking.
at her stump at the edge of the floor, the book of worth in her hands. Closing it. Gently. The way you close a book you've finished and will open again.
trotting from the five to her, sitting down at her bare feet one more time, looking up. Her hand coming down on his head. Resting there. The beat and the one who hears it, in one panel, in the afternoon light.
(No balloon.)
looking at the dog. At the five beyond him. At Vigolas. And her face, which has never been surprised, doing the thing it has done three times now in the whole saga: changing, very slightly. This time, all the way to a smile.
(No balloon.)
No stump. No old woman. Moss that doesn't get wet, fading back into bark. A line of small bare footprints, walking away across the floor toward the stands of the dead, pressing themselves into the bark with nobody making them, and stopping. Mingus sitting where she was, wagging slowly at the empty air.
The grey rows rising. A thousand rows of colourless people getting to their feet, slowly, the way a crowd stands at the end of something, gathering coats, turning to go. The half that was empty, still empty. The half that was full, filing up the aisles toward the top of the stands, and over it, and out of sight.
the Gråtrut's thirty-one, Captain Orvar Bleck at the end, and Tobbe, the ship's boy, turning on the aisle to wave both arms at the floor one last time. Vigolas, at the centre, lifting two fingers to his brow. Thirty-one hands lifting two fingers back.
a dozen sailors in old black-sail coats, the drowned crew, Ture among them, getting up. And at the end of their row, a broad weathered woman with two grey braids and a gap tooth, standing last, looking down at the floor. At him. The long level look of a captain at a deck-hand.
across the whole floor. And then, at last, after three sagas, after a wave and a hold full of gold and a boy who left them on the wrong side of the rail and carried them back over it: a nod. One. Slow. A captain's nod, the kind that says that'll do.
(No balloon.)
seeing it. His face doing several things at once. He doesn't wipe his eyes; he lets them run.
A block of grey men in old birch-bark armour getting up: a sergeant, a big man, a boy of sixteen with a drum. And among them, at the end of their row, a new grey face: an old soldier who stood in the front line of a war he chose to be in. Kvar, colourless now, a cook's ladle across his knees as if he were twelve again. Sergeant Holt's hand coming down on his shoulder. The boy with the drum grinning at him.
(No balloon. Kvar looks down at the floor. At the allies. At the place where he stood. And then he gets up with his company, and goes with them, the last of them, finally not the last one standing.)
the one dead man who stood the whole time, turning at last, unfolding his arms, and walking up the aisle like a wall going home. Beside him, Old Stav. Farmor Tärna with her cracked bone whistle. In the near stands, Drekk and Svala on their feet, watching them go.
Row after row, bare bark seats in the afternoon sun. The last grey figure going over the top of the stands and out of sight. Nothing left on that side of the Arena but seats, and light.
No seal left to cross (the Null ate its ridge and its letters), and the stands of the living pouring down onto the floor: the whole alliance at once, every world, flooding the bare bark of the Arena in the afternoon light. Trolls lifting each other off their feet. Lamp-bearer children running in circles. Word coming up the Bridge from a black barge at the tree's foot: Aska, barely lit, alive, Ivo holding her hand. Isa a beat late, walking slowly, a hand on her scarred chest. Iskall with her lamp. Vaka. Njord, deaf, being hugged by Sill. Svala doing loops overhead. Perne with her eye-patch, Orka silent with open hands, Ögar blind on someone's arm, her face turned to the sun. Eken holding the mice's paper. Levla and Pyssel. Flisa riding on a troll's shoulder. And in the middle of all of it, the Up-Again crew coming down off the Ring: a cook as big as a door with a girl on his shoulders hiccuping, a shipwright with steady hands, a quartermaster in his lean, a lawyer with one grey hand, a woman with a white braid and white eyelashes stepping out of her ring for the first time since it closed.
And at the centre of the floor, waiting for them, five people who are one, a sleeping troll-mage, and a golden dog.
stepping over the gold line of the Great Ring, out onto the open floor. Stopping. Looking down at her feet, at the bark outside the ring. Then up, at Krydog.
on Roffe's shoulders, hiccuping, real ordinary hiccups, every few seconds.
(Tihi laughs so hard she hiccups twice.)
leaning on nothing, looking up at his plate: #10,000. Not moving. Grinning anyway.
sitting on the bark with Trollmage's head in his lap, the troll-mage snoring, the crow come back and asleep on his chest. Kali's shadow at Smurjan's feet very faint. Hollow.
And through the crowd, the crowd parting for him, Krydog: the patchwork coat torn to strips, the bandages black, the silver script on his knuckles dim, a man who has fallen and risen more times in two days than in the rest of his life. Walking slowly to the centre, where Vigolas stands.
face to face at the centre of the Arena. Rivals. Three duels, three draws. Brothers.
looking round at the floor. At ten thousand people from a hundred worlds standing on the bare bark where one person used to stand alone.
the old grin, the chipped tooth.
turning to the crowd, not shouting for once. Saying it the way you'd say it to one person, and the whole floor going quiet to hear it.
Ten thousand faces taking it in. A troll sitting down on the bark on purpose, and nobody pulling him up, and him grinning. A lamp-bearer child lying flat in the sun. People sitting, lying, standing, as they please, all over the Arena floor.
standing. Swaying a little. Looking down at the bark under his boots. At it as if he has never really looked at a floor before.
very quietly, almost shyly, to Vigolas.
a long beat. Then folding his arms. Planting his feet: and his feet, which haven't stopped shuffling since he gave up standing still in ch. 389, stopping. He looks down at them.
Krydog lying down: not falling, not floored, not knocked flat. Choosing. Sitting first, on the bare bark of the Arena, which he has never done on purpose in front of anyone. Then lying back. All the way. Flat. Arms out. Coat spread like a dropped sail. Eyes on the open sky. The empty black balloon small in its corner. His chest rising and falling, slower, slower.
(No SFX. No THUD. He didn't fall.)
trotting over, sniffing the patchwork captain's face, once, thoroughly. Then climbing onto him, all eighty pounds, and lying down across his chest, chin on the bandaged fist. Krydog's eyes closing. The ghost of a laugh.
A patchwork captain asleep on the bare bark of the Arena in the late sun, a golden dog across his chest, and standing over them, arms folded, feet planted, a pirate keeping watch. Around them, a hundred worlds sitting down, lying down, standing up, as they please. The bark under all of it, regrowing.