Chapter 90

Kompis, wrapped in the chain of light, is being dragged backwards through the waves toward a white frame hanging open just above the water. He grabs the frame's edge with one hand and hangs on, the chain hauling at him from inside.

Mingus paddles at the line between them, bumps it, paddles, bumps it, barking himself hoarse. Along the bottom border of the panel the golden pulse line lies flat.

Vigolas and Rougeina stand back to back among fallen Sentinels, the panther crouched between them. Rougeina stares at Kompis across the lines, three of them between her and him.

looking from Kompis, to Mingus, to Smurjan alone in his box, to Drekk alone at the wheel, to the Bloom-marked crowd pressed against the light. Every one of them in a different box.

He steps over the line and starts walking down the quay toward the pier, toward Veyra.

watching him come. Only her eyes move.

on a crate beside her, with Wendlan's face in it, and his splinted hand.

Vigolas's next step lands in a white frame that unfolds under his boot, and he steps out on the fortress roof, forty metres up, facing the sea.

He swings down off the roof by a flagpole and lands on the quay. He walks. A frame: he steps out on the Marka's main yard, hanging from it by one hand. He drops to the deck, crosses a line, jumps to the quay. He walks. A frame: he steps out knee-deep in a pen full of startled Bloom-marked fishermen.

in the water, his grip on the frame's edge slipping, one finger at a time.

alone at the pinned Marka's wheel in his own little box of light. He can't see the frames. He's never been able to see them. But under the bell-rope mask, his head is tilting, the way it does at sea when he listens to the wind.

on the spokes, then lifting off them, fingers spread, feeling the air the way he feels a sail.

Drekk roars down the harbour, his voice muffled by the mask and enormous anyway.

stopped mid-step on the quay. A cold little breath of air tugs at the hairs on the back of his neck, pulling left. Toward nothing. Toward a door that hasn't opened yet.

calling it like a helmsman calls a reef.

Vigolas walks blind, steered: two short steps, a long one, a hard right. A frame unfolds where his foot would have been and catches nothing. Another one opens and shuts on empty air. He's moving down the quay like a ship through a reef.

Wendlan, frowning at his map-frame, drawing rectangles faster and faster, missing every time.

in his own box, third eye open. In his grey diagram-sight, each of Drekk's calls lands exactly where the next door is about to open.

The white serpent rises off Veyra's shoulders and strikes. Vigolas throws up his forearm, and its crystal fangs sink in. He doesn't stop. He walks on with the serpent hanging off his arm.

Vigolas steps over the little ring around Veyra's feet, the last line, and stands face to face with her on the pier. The serpent drops off his bleeding arm and coils back up her leg.

The head of the stake under her crystal gauntlets burns gold, the most valuable thing in the harbour.

He grabs it with both hands and heaves. It doesn't budge. Her crystal has grown into the stone, and her gauntlets are locked around it.

letting go of the stake. He looks at her, at the crystal armour, at the eyes that are the only part of her that can move.

He lays his open palm flat on her crystal breastplate.

Deep inside, behind the ribs, the old voice that is his and not his.

Black-green script crawls across them, letter by letter.

The rainy dock. The huge tarred hands tying red sailcloth into a six-year-old's hair. The broad woman with grey braids, the gap in her teeth, the laughing walnut face—

—and as we look, the face washes out. Like a sail left too long in the sun, it fades to blank salt-white. The lines go, then the grin, then the eyes. The braids stay. The hands stay. The voice stays.

Rougeina Swaps with a floating crate beside Kompis, blink, and her blade cuts the chain of light in one stroke.

Mingus reaches Kompis and Kompis grabs him round the neck. Along the panel border the golden pulse line roars back, ba-DUM, ba-DUM. Kompis's eyes go grey, then clear, and Lilla Ulv fires: the wolf cub runs one tight circle round the water-frame and bonks its hinge. It snaps shut on nothing.

snap. Wendlan's left ring finger.

The crystal spurs around her greaves unlock from the stone with a sound like ice breaking on a lake. Her gauntlets come off the stake. For the first time in the fight, she moves. She takes one step, unsteady, and looks down at her own feet as if they belong to someone else.

Then she's a K-IV warden in crystal armour again, and she drives a crystal fist at Vigolas's head. He takes it on the shoulder and staggers. His right fist stays shut, black-green smoke curling out between the fingers.

He fights her one-handed, left hook, block, duck, his right fist held tight against his chest like a man carrying a hot coal.

The Bloom-marked flood out of the broken pens in a shower of seven colours, frightened people with new sins sparking off them like fireworks, a stampede for the boats. The Sentinels can't hold them. In the chaos, the crew scrambles back toward the Marka.

Mingus paddling beside him. Across the harbour the little fishing girl runs, nothing between her and the far pen any more, straight into her mother's arms. The gold thread between them snaps tight and bright, a short gold line now, from one heart to the other.

Wendlan, three fingers and a wrist splinted, draws one rectangle, fast.

A frame unfolds behind Veyra. She looks at Vigolas, at his smoking fist, one long look. Then she steps backwards through the frame and is gone, the serpent pouring in after her. The frame folds shut. Her stake is left standing in the pier: just white iron now.

All over the Weir, the frames fold away into nothing. The Marka swings free under Drekk's hands, sails filling. The crew leaps aboard from the quay. Kompis and Mingus are hauled up dripping over the rail by Smurjan.

The Marka races out between the black rocks into the open Current, Bloom-marked boats scattering out of the Weir all around her like a flock.

Vigolas sits on the deck with his back against the rail, his right fist clenched against his chest, smoke still curling out of it. Kompis kneels beside him with his hand on Mingus's ribs, counting along the golden pulse line.

Vigolas's fist tears open by itself. The white knot rips out of his palm and streaks away across the sky like a shooting star, toward the far white peak of Glasheim, home to its owner. His palm is blistered and scorched black-green.

scribbling the rules in the margin of his Codex.

The crew gone below. Drekk sits down next to Vigolas against the rail, the bell-rope mask turned toward the sea.

his fingers going to the faded red sailcloth in his braid, smiling.

The smile stays on his mouth a moment longer than it should. He's holding the red scrap. He's looking for her, and there's only sun on a sail.