Chapter 411
The bare bark, healed smooth. The stands of the dead empty in the sun. Ten thousand allies sitting, lying, standing about the floor as they please. And at the centre, small in all that space, Krydog flat on his back with his arms out and his torn patchwork coat spread like a dropped sail, Mingus across his chest with his chin on a bandaged fist. Over them, arms folded, feet planted, Vigolas. In the corner of the blue sky, the empty black square balloon.
asleep. The broken nose, the split lip, the chipped front tooth showing in a slack mouth. And under his eyes, the shadows: deep, dark, years deep. His chest lifting the dog, slowly.
on Roffe's shoulders, staring down, still hiccuping.
gathering round the sleeper in a ring and looking down at him the way you'd look at a comet. Roffe with Tihi aloft. Flexsnus leaning on nothing, his tin under his arm. Daniel with his grey right hand tucked into his coat. Perne with her patch over the left eye that is gone for good. Emma on her sore knees, her white braid over her shoulder. Jeppson with his boxwood rule already out.
kneeling, a carpenter's pencil from behind his ear, writing a number on the bark in tiny exact numerals, and then looking at it, and frowning.
4,106
sliding down Roffe's front, crouching at the captain's ear and shaking her head so the brass bells in her bunches jingle right beside it.
(Krydog snores. Mingus opens one eye at her, and shuts it.)
two fingers on Krydog's wrist, her white eyelashes lowered, listening to his heart.
looking down at the sleeper, his face going thoughtful in the way that means a problem.
not unfolding his arms.
handing Tihi to Jeppson like a sack of flour, rolling up his sleeves, and bending to lift the captain. And Mingus, on the captain's chest, not moving. Eighty pounds of dog, chin on the fist, eyes shut, tail thumping once. Not getting off.
(Mingus does not shift.)
Roffe lifting: a cook as big as a door straightening with a patchwork captain in his arms like a child, and a golden retriever lying on top of the captain like a blanket that won't come off. Krydog's head lolling on the cook's shoulder. Still snoring.
at the rim of the Arena where the Bridge comes up, his long grey beard blowing, taking in the cook, the captain, the dog.
The Bridge of Every Ship at sunset: a mile of new spans that Ferdinand grew in raw pale wood between Jeppson's planks where the white let go, zig-zagging down the grey bark of the world tree to the raft-city on the sea far below. And down it, slowly, a procession: a cook carrying a sleeping captain with a golden dog lying on his chest, Vigolas walking beside them with one hand on the torn coat, the Up-Again crew behind, Drekk stumping ahead to clear the way. And all down the Bridge, the allies standing aside: Brygdar trolls pressed back against the rail, hats off; lamp-bearer children holding their lamps up; Tidekant fishwives with their hands over their mouths; plateless refugees; far below on a black barge, a woman barely lit, like an ember almost out, Ivo's hand round hers; Iskall with her clay lamp; Svala gliding silently alongside, not daring to land. Not a funeral. Every face grinning. A huge troll with a finger to his lips, shushing a whole span of other trolls, very loudly. Below, on every ship of the raft-city, captains at their rails, watching the captain of captains come down asleep.
The first span standing on the sunk bow of the Upp Igen like a pier on a stone: her mast-top just out of the black water, the bandaged-fist flag hanging wet from it. Lashed alongside, the Marka: bark hull, MARKA painted in big crooked letters, the Kettle's brass bell at her bow with the scarred wooden fist nailed beside it. Roffe stepping down onto her deck with his burden.
at the Marka's wheel, glaring at the cook laying the captain down on his planks by the mainmast. Then at the captain's boots, which are on a coil of his good rope.
(Krydog snores. Mingus sighs through his nose.)
Roffe at the Marka's rail, looking down at the mast-top of the Upp Igen in the water. Then diving: a barrel of a man going over the side into the dark sea with a cauldron-sized splash.
a moment later. Roffe surfacing, blowing like a whale, beard streaming, and in his teeth and his fists a wet canvas hammock, salt-dark, patched, the ropes at both ends tied in a sailor's knots. The most famous empty bed in the Current.
on his knees on the Marka's deck beside the sleeper, goggles down, a stick of chalk in his steady hand. Drawing, in long single strokes, the way he always draws: a little room. Three walls of planking. Two hammock-hooks. A round port. A door. Every line numbered.
The snap of the chalk line, TOK, and the berth rising out of the drawing like a pop-up book: pale as bone, hard as seasoned oak, violet tick-marks along every edge. A small plank cabin standing on the Marka's deck by the mainmast, with one round port and one open door.
already trembling. The chalk stub rolling out of fingers that won't close on it. He looks at them, and doesn't mind.
Roffe slinging the dripping hammock on the hooks. Laying the captain in it. And Mingus, who has ridden all the way down the Bridge on him, climbing in on top: all eighty pounds, turning round twice, settling across the patchwork chest with a groan. The hammock sagging until its belly almost touches the planks. Krydog, in his sleep, putting one bandaged hand on the dog's back.
Drekk coming in backwards, carrying Trollmage over his shoulder like a sack of flour: the troll-mage still fast asleep, slippers dangling, crown crooked, the blank Sloth Codex swinging on its chain, the crow asleep on his back. Drekk tipping him gently onto a coil of rope on the berth's floor.
in the doorway, leaning on her ringed staff, looking at the two sleepers and the dog. Then at Vigolas beside her.
reaching into his sash, past the black box with two full stops in it, and pulling out a stub of chalk: Jeppson's, the one pressed into his hand at the top of the Arena steps. "In case you need a door." He turns it over in his fingers.
Vigolas taking Drekk's bucket off its hook by the wheel, upturning it in the berth's doorway, and sitting on it. Back against the doorframe. Boots planted on the threshold. Coat clinking. The sleepers behind him; the whole raft-city in front.
Lanterns coming on ship by ship across a thousand lashed hulls. The Bridge going up the bark into the dark, the Arena's rim a faint line a mile overhead. And on the Marka's deck a little bone-white cabin with one lit port, and in the port, Iskall, seven years old with knee-length braids, setting her clay lamp on the sill and sitting down beside it to keep it company.
standing in front of Vigolas on his bucket, bells jingling, hiccups finally gone.
sitting down on the deck beside the bucket with a mug of tea for his brother, Rougeina perched on the berth's roof above them with her blades across her knees, the panther a shadow at her side.
on the roof, looking out over the dark water, her eyes moving the way they move when she counts exits. Stopping. Her face changing.
at the waterline, in the lamplight. Something breaking the surface without a ripple. A palm. Grey. Flat. Fingers spread. Then another beside it. Then a faceless grey head, smooth as a stone, rising out of the sea, water running off it, not breathing.
In the dark between a thousand hulls, under every lantern, grey palms rising out of the sea by the dozen: flat, spread, feeling the air the way a blind thing feels a wall. Faceless grey heads coming up behind them. And every one of them, without a sound, turning toward the Marka: toward a little chalk cabin with one lit window, one open door, and a pirate on a bucket in it.
(No balloon.)