Chapter 46
deep night. The lanterns on shore have gone out one by one. Starlight laps at the hull.
Everyone is asleep where they fell: Drekk against the wheel, Rougeina curled around her panther, Trollmage snoring in a coil of rope with the crow on his belly. Smurjan sits at the mast, eyes closed but not sleeping, the faint crimson scars of script along his arms rising and falling with his breath.
Vigolas and Kompis, still sitting there, the humming long since stopped. Mingus is snoring between them, paws twitching.
looking up.
The stars are moving. Slowly, like iron filings under a magnet, they slide across the black and gather into straight lines, sharp corners and perfect right angles.
the grin fading.
Burned across the whole sky above the Shallows, horizon to horizon, in the Arena's hard square letters, made of stars:
ONE MATCH.
eyes snapping open. His third eye flares crimson.
A Trisdel fortress. Sentinels on a wall, helmets tipped back, faces lit white.
A troll hall in Brygdar. A huge old troll steps out with a tankard and drops it.
A drifting island. A slight grey figure sits alone on a rock with her hands pressed to her ears, staring up at the sky as if it were screaming. It's Lärka.
A white room with no walls. An old woman with milk-pale eyes, Fenna, doesn't look up. She smiles at nothing.
The market island. Drunken bounty hunters fall over themselves backing away from the board.
Beneath the first line, more stars slide into place:
OF MANY.
staring up, half dressed and clutching weapons.
crow on his shoulder, both of them looking up.
his third eye fixed on the letters, reading something under them.
The bottom corner of the letter O in OF cracks loose from the sky. A piece of it, a square-cornered slab of solid starlight, begins to fall.
It isn't small. It gets bigger and bigger as it falls, until it's clear the slab is the size of the island they're anchored next to.
Rougeina Swaps her blade with the anchor chain, and the chain falls into the sea in two pieces.
Drekk spins the wheel with both arms, his numb one too, howling.
Trollmage slaps a rune of wind onto the mainsail with an open palm, and the sail booms full.
The Marka lurches forward across the starlight.
Behind them, the slab of the letter O hits the Current. It doesn't splash. It lands, like a tombstone hitting a floor, and the whole sea jumps. A wave of starlight, white and roaring, rears up and comes after them.
More letters are coming loose now. The N of ONE. The M. The full stop after MANY, a perfect black-edged square of star-iron the size of a mountain, tumbling down end over end.
The Marka rides the front of the wave, nose down, the whole ship screaming. Bakasura rises out of Smurjan's shadow and bites a falling chunk of the N. He chews it, winces, and spits it out, because it tastes like a decision.
Kali, one-armed, grabs Trollmage by the collar as the deck tips and hauls him back from the rail one-handed.
at the wheel, soaked in starlight spray, teeth bared.
filling the sky, falling straight down onto the Marka. Its shadow covers the whole ship.
climbing onto the bowsprit, one hand on the Kettle's bell. Green lightning crackles weakly at his fingertips; there isn't much left. He raises his open palm toward the falling square.
Vigolas's open hand closes.
The whole sky folds. The mountain-sized full stop, the falling M, the curl of the giant wave and the air itself are all pulled in toward his fist, crumpling like paper, shrinking, folding, corners turning into corners turning into corners. Green light streaks along every crease of space. The crew are flattened to the deck by the pull, hair and sails streaming forward.
At the centre, on the bowsprit, a pirate with one fist held out at the sky, roaring.
Silence. The sea is calm. The wave is gone. Above them, the sentence still burns in the sky, ONE MATCH. OF MANY, minus a full stop, an M and a corner of an O.
In his palm sits a cube the size of a dice, perfectly black, with tiny square starlight letters crawling over its faces. It hums.
gasping, dripping.
peering at the cube with a monocle made of crow-feather and glass.
pocketing it happily.
quietly, so only Vigolas hears.
The crew is asleep again in a heap of wet blankets. Kompis sits alone with the wooden box in his lap, looking up at the sentence still hanging in the sky.
Vigolas drops down next to him.
quiet.
not joking for once.
Vigolas has fallen asleep sitting up. Kompis's head is drooping. Mingus is curled across his feet. His arms are wrapped tight around the box with Ivar's pieces. His eyes close.
Grey. The same bow, the same box in his arms, but the sea is ash and the sky is a ceiling. On Kompis's chest, light as smoke and heavy as a stone, a grey woman has sat down, her long hair hanging over his face, and behind her a horse made of shadow stands on the water, breathing frost. She leans close, almost tender.