Chapter 69

Through the falling curtain of soil slides a ship built to cross earth: an iron-hulled sled-ship on long iron runners, white sails, a white Bastion flag. It glides out onto the Compost Fields and hisses to a stop on the loam.

The Twin Clerks, both hands bandaged from the nettle, unrolling a fresh scroll. Cleaners loading sacks of white salt onto low iron sleds, grey hounds harnessed in front. And at the bow, standing on a plate of iron, a broad, hooded figure: a body of cracked white salt with light glowing in the cracks, iron soles on his boots, a long iron branding iron in his one good fist. Older scars than last time: a shoulder re-crusted, an arm grown back lumpy.

SALTBRAND · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #3,870 · Bastion Four

A barefoot man sits on it with his hands open in his lap, palms up, as if he's waiting for someone to put something in them.

bolted to the deck, a heavy book open on it. Its pages glow, and above them a projection flickers up: Architect Ten, Aldhrun Vesparid. Broad as a door, grey-bearded, his face a map of scars over scars, a Registry collar buttoned to the throat, ink on one cuff, and eyes that haven't slept properly since a thief robbed his Archive.

slow and dry, as if every word costs him water.

On the hill, the Marka lies beached on the soil, the crew on deck in the soft rain, all turning to look at the white sails at the gate. Below the hill, Röta stands among her mushroom folk, very still.

at the sled-ship's bow, reading together, fast and loud:

The rain greys in mid-air. Every falling drop across the whole sky goes colourless, then isn't there at all. The sky goes silent. For the first time in ten thousand years, nothing is falling on the Compost Fields.

Far off, from the foot of the hill, a single scream: Röta's.

The Cleaners fan out across the drying soil with their sleds, pouring salt from the sacks in long, straight, ruler-perfect lines. Lines that cross. Lines that box the fields into squares.

Saltbrand steps off the sled-ship's plate onto an iron salt-sled, never touching the soil, and lowers the head of his branding iron to the end of a line.

Vigolas vaults the rail, green lightning blazing up both arms, and charges down the hill across the black squares between the burning lines. Behind him, Rougeina, Kompis and Mingus, Smurjan.

In his path, the barefoot man has simply… arrived. He's standing on the soil between two lines of white fire, palms open. A plain grey shirt too big for him. Trousers whose pockets hang turned inside out, like two little white flags. Hair cropped short by somebody else's hand. A calm, plain face.

____ · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #5,040 · Bastion Four

thin gold rings coming up in the emerald: Greed-sight.

The world by value. The soil glows faintly. The salt sleds glow a cold, hard white. Saltbrand on his sled burns like a lamp. Behind him, his crew blazes gold, all of them, worth everything. And in front of him, where the barefoot man stands: a man-shaped hole. Grey. Nothing at all. As if someone had cut a person out of the picture with scissors.

Rougeina Swaps in from his left, blink, eight blades closing in a ring. The barefoot man catches one by its flat in mid-swing, plucks it from her hand, turns it, and presses it back into her palm, point-first, so the tip rests against her own throat.

perfectly still with her own blade at her own throat. Her eyes flick to his plate: Bastion Four. A flicker in her face that nobody else could read. Then blink: she's gone, three metres back.

Vigolas throws out his open hand and closes it.

Space folds around the barefoot man: soil, air, drifting salt-ash, all creasing inward along lines of green light, shrinking to a cube that drops into Vigolas's palm. And the barefoot man is still standing exactly where he was, untouched, outside it. Vigolas stares at the cube: a fistful of dirt and air.

Vigolas swings: Emerald Knuckle, full charge. The barefoot man doesn't block it. He takes the fist in an open hand, turns with it, and gives the whole punch back: Vigolas's own weight and momentum swung round into Vigolas's own jaw.

Vigolas swings again; it comes back to him. A kick, given back. A shoulder-charge, given back. A green burst of lightning, caught by the wrist and handed back into the soil at his own feet, throwing him.

Vigolas on his back in the black soil, bleeding from the mouth, dazed. The barefoot man stands over him, palms open, not even breathing hard.

a line of white salt-fire burning across the soil, straight toward the fallen captain. Fast.

Smurjan steps between the fire and Vigolas. Third eye open, crimson-rimmed, reading every flame for a gap. There is no gap. A wall of white.

Blink: Rougeina Swaps to Vigolas's side, grabs his collar, blink, and both of them are twenty metres away on clean black soil.

The salt-fire reaches Smurjan. And a heartbeat before it touches him, the soil beneath his feet opens like a mouth and swallows him whole. The white fire roars over an empty hole, and the hole closes after it.

The barefoot man looks at where Smurjan was. Then at Vigolas, in Rougeina's grip, spitting soil. Then he turns and walks away across the dry fields toward the sled-ship.

up on one elbow, furious, blood on his teeth.

The salt lines have burned out to white scars across the fields. The crew is back on the Marka, battered. Beside the hull, the soil heaves, and Smurjan climbs up out of the earth again, streaming loam.

where his robe has torn: a little ring of tiny white mushrooms has grown there, like a necklace. The moss in his braid is thicker.

half out of the shadow, staring at him.

His mouth stops. He's reaching for a word, the way you reach for a stair in the dark, and the stair isn't there.

very quiet.

Smurjan's gold threads to the crew, all of them, are thinner than this morning. The brown root-thread from his chest is thick as a mooring rope now, and pulling down.

No rain. Smurjan stands alone at the rail, looking down at the soil. Vigolas comes and leans beside him, a bruise darkening on his jaw.

Below the hull, the soil opens like a door: roots folding back on either side, and a stair of living roots spiralling down into a warm brown dark, lit faintly gold from somewhere far below. Smurjan steps up onto the rail.