Chapter 82
The crew spreads out across the mirrored floor. The seven sin-shapes turn slowly overhead. Katriel doesn't stand up. She dips her crystal quill in an inkwell of liquid light.
blades up.
writing a line in her ledger without looking.
The cold silver ring of her Pride-mark tightens, like a hand closing.
Rougeina Swaps, aiming at a mirror-shard behind Katriel's desk.
She arrives inside a Mirror-Ward's reflection in the wall, between two panes of glass, crushed, blades jammed, gasping, and the reflection spits her out onto the floor at Katriel's feet.
explaining, almost kindly.
Rougeina Swaps again, desperate, toward Vigolas's side. She lands in front of a Ward's silver baton, mid-swing. CRACK. She goes down.
Smurjan comes at the desk, third eye open. Katriel raises her quill, the tip glowing, and reaches toward the crimson line across his forehead to peel his Wrath like a stencil.
against the crimson script on Smurjan's skin. It won't lift. The quill scratches and slides off, like a pen on glass. The script just glows brighter.
frowning. Actually frowning.
the open palm stopping an inch from the desk because a Ward has thrown itself in the way.
asleep on Drekk's back, mumbling.
turning her quill toward Trollmage's hand: the violet hourglass of his Sloth. She tries. The quill slides off that too.
grinning, bouncing on his toes.
smiling again, slowly, the face shifting to a stranger's.
She dips her quill into the gold sin-shape hovering above her: the golden knot. Kompis's Lust, held in her office since ch. 77. The quill drips gold.
Katriel flicks the golden quill at the largest Mirror-Ward in the room. The gold sin flies across the octagon as a ribbon of light and slams into the Ward's chest.
The Ward's silver mask fills with gold. Its eyes behind the mirror film over, gold, Lust-sight, Kompis's Lust. It sees threads: golden lines blaze out across the whole octagon, binding the crew together, every bond and love and fear drawn in light. And the Ward turns its gold-filled mask toward the brightest thread of all: the one between Kompis and Mingus.
The Ward moves with Kompis's precision, the precision of a man who reads people. It finds every gap. It knows where Vigolas will step before he steps, which crewmate Smurjan will protect, and that Drekk can't see his left side.
It tugs on a thread, Kompis's own Thread-Pull, and Drekk turns toward Smurjan with his axe raised, pulled by the old grief, before he catches himself, shaking.
watching his own power used on his friends, white with fury and helplessness.
The gold-masked Ward reaches for the thread between Kompis and Mingus, and pulls. Mingus whines, a terrible sound, as the thread tugs him toward the Ward.
Kompis, sinless, throws himself on the Ward bare-handed, tackling it to the mirror floor. No powers, no shot, just a man and his dog's thread.
Mingus, released, bites the Ward's robe and pulls it off its feet. Just a dog, no form, all fury.
The crew is losing. Rougeina is down, bleeding, and every Swap puts her somewhere worse. Smurjan is wading through Wards. Vigolas is getting slammed by his own reflected lightning every time he forgets. Kompis is wrestling his own stolen soul-sight on the floor.
writing calmly in her ledger.
standing at the edge of the octagon, unreflected, watching. She hasn't moved. She's waiting for something.
rising from Smurjan's shadow, one-armed, panting, sickle up, standing over the fallen Rougeina.
glancing at her with real interest for the first time.
of the octagon's eight walls. Its surface ripples, gently, the way water ripples when someone steps into it carefully.
Bali steps out of the tallest mirror onto the octagon floor: black braid, mirror-scale coat glittering, twin sickles drawn. Every Ward in the room bows to him. Echo's herald.
looking past everyone at his sister.