Chapter 80
Astralis: a black sky crowded with stars that sit too close, like lanterns. Floating in the starlight, enormous standing mirrors, thousands of them, each as tall as a tower, angled every which way so the sky is reflected in the sky. Black panthers prowl between them, eyes like coins.
its hull scraping onto a shore of black glass sand. The crew climbs down, squinting at the mirror-forest.
reading.
looking at two mirrors far away on the horizon, larger than any others, one silver, one rose, facing each other across a dark field.
Between the two great mirrors stretches a meadow of nettles, waist-high, green-black, every leaf furred with stinging hairs that glitter in the starlight. Where nettles grow thickest the ground is cracked, as if something was broken there.
kneeling, looking at the cracks. Sinless, he has no threads to read, so he reads the ground like a tracker.
The nettles part. Walking out of them comes a woman, lean and wild, covered head to toe in stinging hairs, green-black skin welted red on every surface, even her own palms. Her hair is a thicket of nettles. She has never worn gloves, and she never will.
NÄSSLA · FERDINAND-6 · the Nettle · Scalelist: — (the Scarwood are not counted)
looking at the crew one by one, nostrils flaring as if she can smell lies.
stepping forward, eight blades out.
Rougeina Swaps behind her. Nässla doesn't turn; she expects it. Her bare arm sweeps back, the stinging hairs brush Rougeina's cheek, and a red welt blooms there instantly.
Rougeina against Nässla among the nettles.
Rougeina's blades cut nettle-stalks into a green blizzard. Nässla walks through it, welts blooming on her own skin, unbothered.
Every touch is a sting. Rougeina's forearm, her knuckles, her neck: welts rising.
Rougeina Swaps with a mirror-shard on the ground. Nässla is already where it was, because in Astralis Swaps can be seen coming, reflected in a hundred mirrors.
panting, welted, furious.
circling.
They flare, red to white-hot, and a small nettle pushes up out of the skin on the back of her hand, green and stinging.
pushing out of Rougeina's wrist, right through the silver ring of her sin-mark.
In the middle of the Nettle Field, between the two great mirrors, silver on one horizon and rose on the other, Rougeina drops to her knees in a swirl of torn nettles, welted and burning, eight blades scattered around her. The whole crew stands frozen at the edge of the field.
And in both great mirrors, enormous, Rougeina is reflected, but not as she is. In the silver mirror (Pride) she stands alone, untouchable, on top of a mast. In the rose mirror (Envy) she sits at a crowded galley table, squashed between a pirate and a man with a dog, laughing with her mouth open.
Nässla stands over her, stinging-hairs glittering.
looking up at the rose mirror. Tears and welts. And she says it, because she can't say anything else.
The nettles on her skin wither and fall away, and the welts cool from white to pink. The truth doesn't burn.
Nobody moves. Nobody says anything. Vigolas has taken his hand off his coat. Kompis has his hand over his mouth.
very quietly, just loud enough.
looking down at Rougeina for a long beat. Then at her own welted palms, which have never touched anyone without hurting them.
wiping her face with a stung hand, hard again, a blade's worth.
Nässla turns toward the space between the two great mirrors, where a faint path of starlight leads into the dark, toward a far-off octagon of light.
and her own skin burns: welts flaring white on her neck, a nettle pushing out of her collarbone, because what she's about to say costs her.
Nässla, burning with her own truth, looking at the distant octagon.