Chapter 417
Krydog's face in the sagging hammock. His eyes opening: slate-grey, clear. And under them, for the first time on any page, no shadows. None. A face that looks, for the first time, its own age.
not moving. Because on his chest, chin on his fist, tail beginning to thump, is eighty pounds of golden retriever looking at him. Krydog's mouth going up at one corner. Mingus licking his whole face, once, thoroughly.
staring at the plank ceiling. At the hammock-hooks Jeppson built by hand. Puzzled. Rested. Not knowing what to do with it.
from inside. Vigolas's back in the door, on his dented bucket, his coat filthy, his head against the frame, the emerald ring round his boots.
on the chalk threshold, and the emerald ring round his heels going out, softly, like a lamp turned down. The fight over. The vow kept.
Vigolas standing up off the bucket, and swaying, and toppling forward out of the doorway like a felled tree, asleep before he's halfway down. And Krydog coming up out of the hammock in one unbroken arc, the way he rises, no hands, Mingus leaping clear, the torn patchwork coat flaring, and catching him before he hits the deck.
holding the pirate up by the coat, Vigolas's head lolling on his shoulder, eleven days of beard, already snoring.
Krydog laying Vigolas in his own hammock, tucking the long midnight-green coat round him. Mingus hopping straight up onto the new sleeper's chest and settling, chin on his fist. On the floor, Trollmage stirring on his coil of rope, crown crooked, one eye opening.
Krydog stepping out of the little chalk cabin into the sun. And everyone there: the Marka's crew, the Up-Again crew, the deck packed to the rails, the raft-city beyond with every face turned this way, the field of gold flowers on the root with sixteen people standing in it. Silence.
at the front, her bells not making a sound.
(She hits him at a run, all of her, arms and legs round his middle, and he doesn't even rock.)
crowding round, staring at his face.
at his slate on the foremast, tapping his tin three times, then holding out a fat purse to Jeppson.
pushing a bowl into the captain's hands. Krydog eating standing up, the old way, fast.
lowering the bowl. Looking past his crew. At a giant woman sitting cross-legged on the deck with a small no-shadowed girl between her knees, braiding the girl's hair, an iron anchor on a chain beside her, salt in her braids, a chipped front tooth, staring right back at him.
sizing each other up across the deck: two giants, two broken-and-mended faces, two chipped front teeth, two of the biggest grins in the Current. And Krydog, without looking, hooking an empty water-barrel with his foot, rolling it into the middle of the deck, standing it on end, and planting his elbow on it.
getting up off the deck the way a hill gets up, rolling her shoulders, planting her elbow opposite his. Two hands locking: a bandaged fist with silver script glowing through the weave, and a rope-burned palm that once held a jaw open.
Night on the Marka's deck, lanterns on every rope, and at the centre of it, a water-barrel with two elbows on it and two locked hands, not moving an inch: a patchwork captain and a giant woman with an anchor at her feet, sweating, grinning, laughing in each other's faces. All round them, the whole raft-city crowded in: on the rails, in the rigging, on the roof of the little chalk cabin, on the lower spans of the Bridge, on the decks of the next ships: trolls pounding the planks, Flexsnus chalking odds that change every minute, Roffe ladling to everyone, Tihi on Roffe's shoulders screaming, Kali on Smurjan's shoulder talking without stopping, the sixteen from the field with bowls in their hands, Gunvor sitting on a coil of rope singing something old and loud and off-key. Lamp-bearer children asleep in heaps. And over it all, the moon crossing the sky, and the two hands on the barrel, still locked, still dead level.
Still locked. Marka's braids stuck to her face. Krydog's bandage soaked.
quieter, heads close over the barrel.
Vigolas staggering out of it, Mingus at his heels, his hair flat on one side, blinking at the crowd and the lanterns.
sitting down on his dented bucket outside the door, by choice this time, no ring round his boots, Mingus leaning on his leg. Watching.
The crowd thinner, half of it asleep where it stands. The two hands still locked. Marka and Krydog talking low over the barrel like old friends at a bar.
the first grey of dawn on it, and a crack running down one stave, then another, the hoops groaning under four hours of two giants leaning on it.
The barrel bursting into staves under their elbows, and both of them going down together onto the deck in a heap of wood and hoops and laughter. Krydog flat on his back, knocked down. And on the next beat, the doubled silver pulse leaking through his bandages, ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP, and up he comes in one arc, coat flaring.
at the berth wall with his chalk, drawing a line under eleven strokes and an afternoon, and starting a new count beneath it, very small, the way a new book starts on a clean page:
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holding out a hand to Marka on the deck among the staves. Hauling her up, the Hand Up, no magic, just a hand. The two of them standing in the wreck of a barrel at sunrise, chests heaving.
at the wheel, looking at the staves all over his deck.
Krydog walking to the Marka's rail and looking over it. Down. At the foot of the Bridge of Every Ship, in the gold water, the mast-top of a sunk carrack sticking up out of the sea, and from it, wet and heavy, a black flag with a bandaged fist on it.
coming to stand beside him at the rail, looking down at the mast too.
unwinding the soaked old bandages from his fists, the silver script on his knuckles bare and glowing in the sunrise, and winding on fresh linen from his coat pocket, tight, the way he ties them before every fight and every voyage.
The patchwork captain standing at the Marka's rail with fresh bandages on his fists and the sun behind him, his whole crew lining up along the rail beside him (Roffe, Jeppson, Flexsnus, Perne, Emma, Tihi, Daniel), and below them in the water, a mast-top and a wet flag.