Chapter 418

Krydog's question going out from the Marka's rail and coming back from every deck at once, the way "Plank!" went and "Rope!" went on the night of the Bridge: ship to ship, hull to hull, a thousand voices. And down the Bridge of Every Ship from the Arena a mile above, hand over hand, span by span, a rope coming down: a thousand and four ropes knotted end to end, the Great Ring, paid out down the bark like a river.

at the Bridge's foot, her white braid, her white eyelashes, her ringed staff, feeding the great rope through her hands as it comes down. At one knot she stops: a tarred black Order rope tied to a white cord nobody ever tied. And a little further on, where three ropes were eaten on the night of the Last Watch, a long soldier's scarf knotted into the gap: wool in the colours of a hundred armies, faded, mended, holding. She runs her thumb along it.

on the Upp Igen's mast-top, knee-deep in the sea, one eye shut, his boxwood rule held out at arm's length, sighting up the first span of the Bridge where it stands on her sunk bow like a pier on a stone.

and sitting on it, ninety centimetres of jagged grey-brown cork-oak, a spiky crown of shavings, knot-hole eyes with a sap-gold glint, a necklace of iron nails. Flisa. Picking a splinter out of her gums.

Flisa dropping off the troll into the sea at the trunk's foot, sinking, and pressing both small hands to the great pale root under the water, her burl flaring sap-gold. And the root swelling: rising, broadening, a shelf of living wood climbing up out of the sea beside the sunk carrack until it stands like a pier, and the first span's foot sliding off the Upp Igen's bow and settling onto it with a long groan.

climbing out onto the new pier, sap on her chin, panting, glaring at Jeppson.

Jeppson on his knees on the Marka's dry deck, goggles down, chalk in both hands, drawing in long single strokes at a run: a crane. Jib, mast, drum, pulley-blocks, every line numbered, the jib reaching out over the Marka's rail above the sunk ship.

Divers going down the Great Ring's rope into the green water: Roffe like a barrel, two Brygdar trolls, a Tidekant fisher-girl, Krydog first, fresh bandages on his fists. Slinging the rope under the Upp Igen's keel, through her gunports, round her masts, tying it off in sailors' knots a fathom down, bubbles streaming.

Trollmage stumbling out of it at last, crown crooked, slippers on the wrong feet, the blank Sloth Codex on its chain, his crow on his head, yawning so wide his tusks show.

his violet eyes glowing with something banked, already lifting one ink-stained finger to write in the air.

MACRO : LIFT =

The Great Ring's rope paid out from the sunk ship, up over the jib of the chalk crane, and away across a thousand lashed decks, and every crew in the alliance taking hold of it: Brygdar trolls, Tidekant fishwives, lamp-bearer children in a row like beads, the plateless, Ivo hauling from the deck of a black barge, and behind him on its planks a slim charcoal woman, cooled grey, her cracks barely glowing, watching (Aska), the sixteen from the gold field, Order sailors fished out of the sea a fortnight ago, Levla and Pyssel, Njord deaf and grinning with Sill in front of him. Marka with her anchor-chain wrapped twice round her fist and the rope round the chain. Vigolas taking a place on it halfway down, not at the front, like any deckhand.

at the head of the rope on the Marka's rail, looking down the whole length of it, a thousand worlds holding one line. Beside him, Kompis on one knee with his hand on Mingus's back, and along the bottom border of the panel, the golden pulse line: ba-dum. ba-dum.

The Upp Igen's keel still sucked into the sea at the stern, the rope taut as iron, a thousand arms shaking, giving. And one man taking the main cable off the crane's drum in both fists and leaning back on it alone, a cook as big as a door, his beard full of seawater and the horn spoon still in it, the way he hauled it alone at the end of the first night.

The keel clearing the water with a sound like a cork leaving a bottle. And Jeppson along her side on the new root-pier with chalk in both fists, drawing patches over every hole she took on the night of the ending: one stroke each, TOK, TOK, TOK, bone-white patches rising over the wounds. Every one of them keeping, because every plank of her was built by his hand.

Krydog going over the Marka's rail and across the gap in one leap, fresh bandages, torn coat flaring, landing on the streaming deck of his own ship, first aboard, the way he was first aboard in the mud.

The crew coming over after him one by one: Roffe, hauling himself up with Mätt on his back; Jeppson, Emma, Perne, Daniel with his grey hand, Flexsnus leaning before he's even landed. Tihi, running straight to the bell by the mainmast and swinging on its rope with her whole weight.

The great pile of planks on the Marka's deck, every one trued by hand over eleven days, passed across hand to hand to the Upp Igen's rail, and fitted along her side above the cork-brown band, one after another, by a hundred people with mallets and Jeppson moving among them setting every joint. A thousand different woods: black Brygdar oak, salt-white Tidekant pine, a painted lamp-boat board with a child's drawing of a lamp on it, grey raft-wood from the plateless, a strip of birch from Flyttfågeln, a plank of bark from the Marka herself.

holding up one more plank: black and silver, salvaged from one of the Order's wrecked hulls on the root-shelves.

The Upp Igen afloat beside the Marka, pumped, patched, a new foremast chalked bone-white where the old one fell, her sails drying, and along her side at the rail, a sixth band: a stripe of a thousand colours and a thousand grains, the most ragged and the most beautiful band she has ever worn.

walking the length of the new band with his bandaged hand trailing along it, plank to plank, touching each one. On each, small, the mark of the ship it came from: a troll's rune, a fish, a lamp, a swallow, a crooked letter M, a chair painted over in black.

sitting on an upturned cauldron on the Upp Igen's deck, a thick book open on his knees, its pages chalk-dusted, salt-stained, written in small exact print: the Book of Works. Turning back to an old entry. His steady hand writing under it.

ENTRY 611 · UPP IGEN

Carrack. Three masts. By hand.

Sunk five times. Raised five times.

Sunk a sixth time, holding the first span of the Bridge of Every Ship.

Raised a sixth time.

SIXTH BAND: one plank from every ship.

the brass Kettle's bell, the bark plank that reads CAMILLA THE SERAPHIM, and nailed beside them, a carved wooden fist with a bandage on it and a scar cut into one knuckle. Krydog with a pry-bar. Drekk with his arms folded.

leaning on the Marka's rail beside the bell, patting it the way you'd pat an old horse.

Krydog at the Upp Igen's bow, nailing the scarred fist back onto her stem where it belongs, TOK. TOK. TOK. Then, as he has before every voyage of his life, unwinding a strip of sailcloth from his pocket and tying its bandage round the wooden knuckles himself.

The two ships lashed side by side at the foot of the world tree, the Marka with her crooked name and her bell, the Upp Igen with her fist and her six bands, lanterns on both, Roffe's Long Table running across both decks, the gold field glowing on the root behind them.

Five people sitting on it in a row with their legs over the side above the dark water, the way you sit on a harbour wall at the end of a long day: a pirate, a hooded boy with a golden dog leaning on his knee, a woman with crimson hair, a quiet man with a white braid, a troll-mage with a crow on his head. And beside them, sitting too, on purpose, a patchwork captain.

on the Marka's deck beside Drekk's wheel, the herald's horn on her back, its split length bound in Jeppson's whipping. Trembling on its strap. She lays a hand on it. Her eyes going far away, the way they go when she reads a road.

looking up: up the dark bark of the world tree, a mile, to the rim of the Arena.

The trunk of the world tree going up into the night, the Bridge zig-zagging up it, and a mile above the two lashed ships, at the curved rim of the empty Arena, five faint lights at five points round the bowl, like lanterns somebody has left burning in five windows of a house, so you can find your way.

(No balloon.)