Chapter 74

Trollmage's rain still falls on the Compost Fields, soft now, steady. The Marka sits on Mosscap hill. Halfway down the slope, the little white circle of salt where nothing grows, and around it, come up overnight, a ring of small white flowers. Inside the ring: nothing at all. Someone has left it exactly as it is.

A barefoot man sits alone on a rock in the rain, his pockets turned inside out, his hands open in his lap. He's been sitting there since Vigolas unfolded him last night. Vigolas and Kompis walk down to him, Mingus trotting ahead.

looking at his own open hands as if they're holding something heavy.

grinning, crouching down to his level.

lying in the mud nearby, where the Bastion's sled-ship left it in its hurry. Its pages flicker, and a projection rises out of them: Architect Ten, looking down at the man on the rock.

He looks up at the projection. Calm.

From the direction of the gate, five Bastion guards in slate-blue come running down the slope, Ledger-chains crackling in their fists.

Five chains of Ledger-light lash at Någon at once. He catches all five, turns once, and gives them back: each chain wraps its own owner, and the guards topple in a clinking, cursing heap.

Vigolas lays out the last guard standing with one green punch; Mingus barks the rest of them back up the slope. Up at the gate, the Bastion's sled-ship lurches into motion and slides away through the curtain of soil. The lectern-book's projection fizzles out mid-word.

looking down at his own hands.

Någon stands. He turns his trouser pockets the right way out, looks at them, empty, and after a moment turns them inside out again. Habit. Then he walks off into the rain toward the mushroom forests.

Trailing behind the walking man, stretching and stretching across the field and not breaking, one whole gold thread, running back to Vigolas.

The crew's fire on the Marka's deck under a sailcloth stretched against the rain. Mushroom children peek over the rail at the warmth. Trollmage is asleep against the mast again, already growing a new mushroom. Drekk sits at the wheel, mask on.

out of the shadow, ladling soup from the pot into bowls one-handed. One. Two. Three. Four. She sets four bowls down on her side of the fire, looks at them, frowns a little, and doesn't take one away. Nobody says anything.

on the sailcloth behind Smurjan, lying quiet. He doesn't reach for the pot. For the first time anyone on the ship can remember, he isn't hungry.

sitting down beside Smurjan, who sits a little apart from the fire with the fracture shard in his hands and mushrooms still sprouting on his shoulders.

looking into the fire. Then he starts.

The whole crew has gone quiet around the fire, listening. Kompis with the dog. Vigolas cross-legged. Drekk turned round on his stool at the wheel.

quietly.

She opens her mouth again, as if there's a name of her own she could say out loud too.

She stops. Closes her mouth.

At the edge of the firelight, out in the rain, three long steps from the hull, Röta stands, dripping, mushrooms bowed under the weight of the water.

standing. He steps over the rail onto the wet soil.

rising out of his shadow beside him.

Röta takes Smurjan into her arms. A tall woman of moss and black leaves holding a grey man in the rain. At once, moss creeps up his robe; white mushrooms bloom across his shoulders; the tip of his braid goes green. He doesn't step back.

over his shoulder, eyes shut, beetles stirring in her hair. Ten thousand years of growing things and never once holding one.

eyes shut, moss on his cheek, breathing through it.

letting go. One step back. Two. Three.

The fire is low. Smurjan sits by the Kettle's bell, mushrooms on his shoulders, moss on his cheek. Kompis sits down beside him; Mingus flops between them.

A sound that only he can hear: one single heartbeat, BOOM, so loud the whole panel shudders. The crimson line across his third eye burns white.

He's gone. Mid-sentence. Where he sat, his rank plate hangs in the empty air above the deck, pulsing slowly, like a heartbeat:

SMURJAN · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #1,602 · Wrath

A square balloon, hard-edged, white on black, like text carved in stone:

THE CALL IS ANSWERED.

opening his eyes. He's on his knees on cold white tiles. There are chains on his wrists. His three shadows lie on the floor around him like spilled ink.

One plate hangs in the rain above the bow, pulsing. The crew is on its feet around it.

Mingus sniffs at the hanging plate and whines. Drekk walks up and stands beside it, arms folded, rain running off the bell-rope mask: a man standing watch.

And beneath it, where the second name should be, a hard, empty square.

searching the stands. Row upon row of grey faces. He's looking for one: an old man with a white beard and a ferryman's hat. He isn't there.

A thin young man in a robe of printed black and white sits with his hands folded. Ink-stained fingers. Spectacles with no glass in them. Dark hair, thick and neat. On his knees, the two halves of a split scroll. Across his chest, through the robe, a thin crimson line: the scar of one perfect strike.

In the rain above the white room, hard square letters write themselves, white on black, each one landing like a stamp:

reading it aloud, in his dry, steady voice, the way he reads everything.

Sigvat stands, and walks down out of the stands onto the cracked white tiles, the two halves of his scroll in his hands. In the air, a new square:

Young. Thirty. Looking across the soil-cracked floor at the kneeling man in chains.