Chapter 61
Vigolas, Kompis and Mingus walk between red walls. Vigolas is pressing his lips together very hard.
nose down, tail up, pulling ahead.
overgrown with copper thorns. Mingus pushes his nose into the thorns and wags. Behind them is a gap: a hollow in the wall, curtained with old sail-canvas.
A cave in the red stone, lit by stolen lanterns. Hammocks strung from wall to wall. Piles of loot: purses, boots, a ship's figurehead, a stuffed owl, someone's grandmother's teapot. And a dozen children, fox-fur hats and pinned-on tails, frozen mid-dinner, staring at the intruders. At the front, little Ekorre, holding a ladle like a sword.
hands up, grinning.
He's not looking at the children. He's looking past them, at the loot pile, his Lust-sight flickering on.
Among the heap of stolen junk, all of it grey and dead in his sight, one thing glows: a small soul, warm and nervous, curled up inside something wrapped in an oilcloth.
It whimpers. An actual sound, very small, like a puppy behind a door.
following his eyes.
unwrapping the oilcloth. Inside: a pistol, short and heavy, its barrel engraved with a little running wolf, its grip worn smooth by some long-ago hand. Old, beautiful work.
as Kompis sees it: inside the steel, curled up tight, a wolf cub, gold-grey, too-big paws, ears flat, eyes huge and scared. A cub who never grew up.
He stops. He sets the pistol back down on the oilcloth very gently, and takes his hands away.
kneeling, looking at the pistol, his hand on the wooden box at his hip (Ivar's pieces).
The cub-soul inside lifts its head. It sniffs. It's caught a scent, from the box at Kompis's hip.
The pistol slides across the oilcloth on its own, a few inches, the way a puppy wriggles, and noses up against the wooden box. The cub-soul inside lies down with its chin against the box, and its ears go soft.
staring.
The cub's soul, pressed against the box. And it speaks, not in words but in the way souls speak to Kompis: a feeling, a picture, a voice that's mostly a yip.
his breath catching.
He laughs, wet, a hand over his eyes.
hovering over the pistol.
The canvas curtain over the cave mouth tears away. Ledger-light floods in. Hounds' grille-masks sniff in the doorway.
Children scream and scatter. Ekorre swings the ladle. Vigolas puts himself between the doorway and the kids, lightning crackling.
A dozen Hounds pour in. Chains of Ledger-light lash out, not at Vigolas but at the children, netting three of them at once, dragging them toward the door.
still on his knees by the loot pile, the pistol in front of him, watching a little girl in a fox hat being dragged across the floor, reaching back for help.
He picks up the pistol.
ears shooting straight up, tail going.
Mingus presses against his side. The golden pulse line flickers alive along the bottom of the panel. ba-dum.
The world freezes grey. In the grey, Kompis lives the shot again and again: a thousand angles, a thousand ricochets, until he finds the one.
Then colour snaps back and he fires once.
The bullet leaves the wolf-engraved barrel as a streak of gold-grey light shaped like a running wolf cub, ears back, paws flying. It ricochets off the red stone wall, then the ceiling, then the stolen teapot, then the stuffed owl, bounding around the cave like a puppy let off its leash, and cuts every Ledger-chain holding the children in a single happy, zig-zagging, yipping path, before it bonks the lead Hound on the forehead and drops him like a sack.
Twelve Hounds stand frozen, staring at their snapped chains. The children stand freed and staring. Kompis, on one knee, smoke curling from the little pistol, nose bleeding, is grinning.
the cub-soul inside bouncing in delight.
Vigolas and Mingus hit the stunned Hounds. Lightning, teeth, chaos. Ekorre brains one with the ladle. The Hounds retreat out of the cave.
holding the pistol up, looking at the little engraved wolf.
overjoyed, chasing its own tail inside the steel.
ladle on her shoulder, looking up at the crew with new respect.
pointing inward, toward the heart of the maze, her voice suddenly small and serious.