Chapter 72
The salt lines have been relit; the grid burns white across the black earth again. Between the lines, Vigolas runs, coatless, shirt flapping, green lightning boiling over his knuckles. Behind him, Kompis and Mingus, running too.
Ingen walks between two burning lines toward the root gate, unhurried, the midnight-green coat over his arm. clink. clink. Beyond him, at the gate, the Bastion's sled-ship waits, the brass lectern glowing on its deck.
closing the distance, eyes ringing gold.
The coat on Ingen's arm blazes: thirty-six shards, the most valuable thing in the whole realm, glowing like a lantern made of treasure. The arm that holds it, and the man attached to the arm: a grey, man-shaped hole.
He lunges for the gold. Ingen simply lets go of the coat. Vigolas's hand closes on it— and Ingen takes the lunge by the wrist and gives it back, Vigolas's own weight swung round into Vigolas's own ribs. The coat slips from his fingers. Ingen catches it before it touches the soil. clink.
Vigolas fights, and everything he throws comes home:
Emerald Knuckle, given back.
A column of green fire, thick as a tree, blasted point-blank: Ingen steps aside, takes him by the elbow and turns the column down into the soil at Vigolas's own feet. The blast throws him three metres.
COMPACT on the space around Ingen: the cube drops into his palm, full of nothing but air.
calm, the coat still over his arm.
Kompis skids up, Mingus at his heel, Lilla Ulv drawn.
eyes filming gold. Lust-sight.
Ingen, as Kompis sees him: hanging off him like frayed rope, dozens of threads, every one of them cut. Gold ends trailing in the dry wind. A mother's thread. Brothers'. A friend's. Others. And every cut is clean, and every cut is the same: made by the same hand.
flinching. He knows exactly which school under Glasheim.
Vigolas gets up roaring and charges again. Ingen gives it back. Vigolas goes down flat on his back in a black square of soil between two lines of white fire, and this time he doesn't get up straight away.
on his back, looking up at the dry, silent sky. Breathing. Thinking. And slowly his grin comes back, but different. Rueful.
sitting up slowly in the dirt, elbows on his knees, not attacking.
For the first time, he's listening.
looking straight at him. Greed-sight off. Just his own green eyes.
very still. The coat, forgotten, hangs from his hand.
grinning now, the real one, chipped tooth and all.
Between Vigolas and Ingen, out of nothing, a new thread spins itself: thin, gold, and whole. The only uncut thread anywhere on him.
Vigolas switches it back on. The man-shaped hole is glowing. Dimly: a gold as faint as a candle seen through paper. And at the centre of his chest, one point brighter than all the rest.
looking down at his own chest as if he can feel it there, warm.
getting to his feet, brushing off soil.
His face does something it hasn't done in years. He doesn't know what to do with his hands. The coat slides a little down his arm.
opening, palm toward the glowing man.
Vigolas's open hand closes, and this time the fold grips.
Space folds around the glowing man: the soil and the dry air and the drifting salt-ash crumple inward along creases of green light, corners turning into corners, smaller and smaller, and Ingen folds with it. His face is caught in the instant: not afraid. Astonished. As the fold closes, the midnight-green coat falls out of it, spinning, thirty-six shards flashing in the white light of the burning grid.
Kompis and Mingus in the foreground, blown back by the pull. At the centre, a pirate with his fist held out at a man who just became worth something, roaring.
dropping into Vigolas's outstretched hand. clink.
A dice-sized cube, glowing faintly gold. Inside, tiny and folded, a barefoot man with his pockets inside out, and a name.
grinning, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
His ears shoot up. He turns toward the far side of the Fields and whines, high and frightened.
Beyond the last white line, Saltbrand stands on his iron sled with both arms spread wide, white fire running up his whole body like a living torch. And over him, rearing, blotting out half the sky: Bakasura's colossal shape.
The jaws opening over the white fire. And tiny, running across the black squares between the burning lines, far too far away: a grey man with a white braid, and a one-armed woman beside him.