Chapter 48
The crew sits in a ring around Kompis, who is wrapped in a blanket with a bandage around his ribs. Smurjan stands apart.
flipping through his Codex, the crow peering over his shoulder.
an old woodcut: a woman perched on a sleeping man's chest, a horse's head looming in the window.
inked over the woodcut:
MÖRDA · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist: — (Sömnen is not counted)
a lump on his forehead.
hand on the wooden box.
Vigolas stands up and claps his hands once.
Day one: Vigolas sings at him. Badly. Very badly. Mingus howls along. Kompis is awake but in pain.
Day two: Drekk dumps a bucket of ice water over his head. Kompis, dripping: "…Thank you, Drekk."
Day three: Trollmage brews troll-coffee, thick and black. The crow sips it, vibrates visibly and flies backwards for an hour.
Day four: Kompis is propped against the mast with his eyes held open by Kali's one hand, which keeps poking out of Smurjan's shadow. KALI: "Blink and I poke."
Grey-faced, hollow-eyed, shaking. A thin line of blood runs from one nostril, the price of Subtick bursts he hasn't even been using. He's falling apart from the inside.
sitting beside him on the deck.
staring at nothing.
quiet.
Seen through his Lust-sight, the golden threads running from him to the crew. They're fraying now, frost forming on them. And one thread, very old and thin, runs from his chest down into the deck, into the dark. Into somewhere nobody else can see.
beyond the rail. Something moves beneath it. Something rising.
A sound like ice cracking. Then hands reach up out of the Current and grab the Marka's hull: black, glistening, too many fingers. Dozens. Hundreds.
at the wheel, seeing it.
They come over the rail like a black tide, creatures made of fear. Each one, as it lands, takes a shape: the worst thing the nearest person can imagine.
Before Drekk: a huge woman in a sea-coat with an anchor on a chain, braced between closing jaws the size of a house, her bare arms shaking. Marka, holding the world's mouth open. Only this time she isn't grinning, and this time the jaws are winning.
Before Trollmage: an old stone-skinned troll woman with her arms spread, on fire, burning white with salt-fire. Grandmother Ulla.
Before Vigolas: a wall of black water, rearing up out of the deck itself, the wave.
Before Rougeina: a hundred mirrors, and in every one of them, her own face slowly fading out.
Before Kompis: something small. A little boy, five years old, in a burned shirt, holding out his hand. He has no face.
At the centre of all of it, Mingus stands four-legged in front of Kompis, barking at the dark until his voice cracks.
frozen, staring up at the burning shape of his grandmother.
axe dropping from his hand as the jaws close on Marka, inch by inch. He can't look away. He can't move.
Vigolas punches the wave. Green lightning, everything he has. The wave swallows the punch and keeps coming. Fear doesn't care how hard you hit.
third eye blazing crimson, the Codex script glowing on his skin.
Rougeina Swaps, again and again, through the mirrors, cutting at reflections that are her. Every cut she lands opens on her own arm.
Smurjan walks the Sightline through the black tide, his crimson line drawn from his eye to the one Nightmare that isn't a shape at all: a knot of black thread at the very middle of the swarm, where they all come from. He strikes it with an open palm.
The knot unravels. The Nightmares shudder, losing shape for an instant: the wave goes slack, Ulla's fire gutters, the jaws around Marka blur. Not gone, but weakened.
breathing hard, following the unravelled threads with his third eye. They all lead back to one place: Kompis.
on his knees before the faceless boy, Mingus barking in front of him. His eyes are drooping. He's fighting it, fighting it.
tilting his head the way a little brother would.
shoving through the dissolving swarm toward him, reaching.
eyes half-closed now, head tipping toward Mingus's warm golden neck.
closing. Mid-word. Mid-breath.
Every Nightmare on the deck turns its head toward him at once, like dogs hearing a whistle. Then they melt back down through the planks, back into him, all of them. Silence.
In grey ink, a thin grey hand comes to rest on Kompis's chest. Red-rimmed eyes. A long sigh, almost fond.