Chapter 89
The crew tumbles down through an endless violet sky. Far below, catching the light, rise the golden spires of the Library of Codexia, towers made of stacked books, with loose pages wheeling around them in flocks like starlings.
Rising up to meet them out of the violet: a white iron frame, lying flat in the sky like an open trapdoor.
They fall straight into it.
And they fall out of another frame hanging high in the air above the Weir: the white walls, the pinned Marka, the glowing web of lines far below, and in the middle of the quay the same open floor-frame waiting for them, violet sky showing through it.
On the Marka's deck, Drekk lifts his masked face as they pass overhead. He can't see them. He feels them go by, a rush of wind across the deck.
They plunge back into the floor-frame and come out into the violet sky over the Library again, a little faster than before.
One giant ring of falling bodies, drawn as a single continuous circle that runs down through the open floor-frame on the quay, out through the violet sky of Codexia, up into the frame hanging over the Weir, and down again. Speed lines thicken as they go round. Vigolas, coat flapping like a flag; Rougeina spinning, the panther clinging to her back; Smurjan perfectly upright even in free fall, arms folded; Trollmage tumbling with his Codex clutched to his chest and the crow flapping desperately after him; Kali shrieking; and Kompis with Mingus in his arms. Each lap they're faster. Behind them, the golden spires of the Library flash past, then the white walls of the Weir, then the spires again.
upside down, ears streaming.
Falling beside them, a tiny white frame, hand-sized, keeps pace, and in it, Wendlan's face, chin on his fist, mildly interested.
Ideas fly as fast as they do.
falling, holding Mingus tight against his chest, his face grey with fear.
Ears flying straight up, tongue streaming out of the side of his mouth, tail going round like a windmill. The dog is having the best day of his entire life.
laughing in spite of himself, tears blown sideways off his face.
Along the panel border, the golden pulse line, strong and happy: ba-DUM. ba-DUM.
Everything stops mid-fall. The loop hangs frozen like a necklace in the sky, and Kompis lives the next heartbeat again and again. In version after version, somebody is halfway through a frame when it snaps: Vigolas's boot, the panther's tail, Kali's braid. Each failed version is a faint gold line that ends in a small ✕. He keeps looking. Nine hundred tries. Nine hundred and fifty.
Then one. The top of the loop. For one heartbeat, every one of them is in open air between the two frames at once, the whole crew bunched together high over the Weir, nobody inside either door. And past Smurjan's shoulder, far below, the gleaming hinge of the floor-frame on the quay.
Colour snaps back. At the top of the loop, Kompis twists in the air, braces Lilla Ulv on Smurjan's shoulder and fires straight down.
The wolf cub of light runs down the sky like a dog down a hill and bonks the floor-frame's hinge.
The floor-frame folds shut into solid white stone. Nobody halfway. Nobody anywhere near it.
Wendlan drops to one knee beside his bench, clutching his left wrist. It hangs at a bad angle.
Beside the bench stands an open frame that looks out onto the pier at the Weir, and through it, far away, Veyra, still locked to her stake, has turned her head toward him. It's the only part of her that can move.
getting up, waggling the broken wrist with a craftsman's annoyance, as if it were a sticky drawer.
The loop is broken. The crew is no longer falling in a circle. They're falling in a line, at the speed of a dozen laps, straight down toward solid stone.
still clutching Mingus, realising.
falling, eyes snapping open violet. He writes in the air with one big finger, glowing letters streaming upward as he drops past them:
MACRO : UPDRAFT = 1 QUAY
The whole quay's air heaves upward in one enormous breath. Sentinels' cloaks fly up over their heads; crates, hats, a fishing net and a very surprised seagull go straight into the sky; and the crew, a body-length from the stone, slows as if they'd fallen into a feather bed. They land in a soft heap on top of each other.
Rougeina lands on her feet, of course. Everyone else lands on Smurjan.
flat on his back, eyelids drooping, the crew still on top of him.
They untangle themselves, and the web is still there: the white lines across the quay and the water, the pens, the pinned Marka, the Bloom-marked crowd behind the light. They're back in their boxes. And at the end of the pier Veyra hasn't moved an inch.
Around them, new frames unfold, patient as a tide. Sentinels step out of them again.
Kompis backs up toward the edge of the quay, Lilla Ulv up, Mingus at his heel, a Sentinel's shield coming at him.
Under Kompis's boots a frame unfolds, a narrow one, and he drops straight through it.
He comes out of a frame just above the harbour water, on the far side of a white line that runs along the waterline, and plunges in. Splash. He surfaces, coughing starlight-water. Between him and the quay: the line.
Mingus doesn't hesitate. He leaps off the quay and swims, paddling hard toward his person, and bumps against the line as if against glass. He paddles again. Bump. He can't get across. Swimming isn't walking.
Out of another frame on the water, a chain of white light whips round Kompis's chest and starts to drag him toward a third frame, hanging open just above the waves. On the chain's far end, a Sentinel's voice:
chained, dragged through the water, reaching back toward the dog. Mingus is paddling against a line he can't cross, barking and barking. Along the bottom border of the panel, the golden pulse line goes flat.