Chapter 92
in a roaring wind. Mingus shakes himself from nose to tail. Trollmage sits up, blinking, the crow on his head screaming at the sky.
looking around at the orchard of doors, at the man on the stool, at the sky. He's been here before.
looking from frame to frame. Crimson stars. Violet. Grey river. Three suns. White glare.
The highest terrace of Glasheim, the only seat of power under the sky.
A ring of white stone floating above a sea of moonlit cloud, the glass dome of the Council Hall glinting on a lower peak nearby. Across the terrace stand a hundred white iron frames in rows, like an orchard of doors, and through every one shines a different sky: the crimson stars of Astralis, the violet of Codexia, the slow grey river of Thanatos, the three suns of Trinity, the blinding white of Helios. Wind roars out of all of them at once.
At the terrace's edge stands the Sea Frame, a door the size of a mountain's face. Through it, far, far below, glitters the starlit Current, and on it a tiny ship.
At the centre, a stone pillar inside a ring of open doors, and on it Veyra at her stake, crystal spurs grown into the stone, the serpent on her shoulders.
At his workbench, Wendlan, stool pushed back, goggles up, left hand in splints, chalk in his right.
Down the mountain's side runs the Thousand Steps, and far below, a long snake of lanterns is already climbing them.
standing up, wiping chalk off on his robe.
Rougeina doesn't wait. She Swaps with the chalk-stick in his hand, blink, and in the same instant, without Wendlan lifting a finger, a frame unfolds where she lands. She drops through it and comes tumbling out of another frame on the far side of the Yard.
tapping his temple with the chalk.
The serpent pours down off Veyra's pillar, slides out through one door of the ring, comes out of another across the Yard, and writes. Lines of white light race over the stone and the crew is boxed again, pen by pen: Vigolas alone; Smurjan alone; Kompis, Mingus and Trollmage together.
waving a splinted hand at the one person still outside a pen.
lying down flat on the white stone in the middle of a war, hands folded on his belly, crow on his chest.
(He's asleep before the balloon ends.)
Vigolas steps out of his pen, on foot, and charges Wendlan across the stone, right fist cocked, green lightning coiling up to the shoulder.
A frame unfolds in front of his fist exactly as it lands. The punch goes in.
A sky so white it hurts, white mountains under a crown of emerald lightning. Out of a white iron frame hanging in nothing, a column of green fire as thick as a tree trunk blasts into the glare, and hits nothing at all.
back in the Yard, staring at his own fist, smoking.
Not angry. Strangely delighted, like a boy hearing about a country he's going to visit one day.
In Smurjan's pen, Kali bursts out of his shadow and hurls her black-glass sickle at a Sentinel stepping out of a frame. A door opens in front of it, and the sickle comes back at her from behind. Bakasura's jaws rise out of Smurjan's shadow and catch it an inch from her braid.
Rougeina, alone and loose in the Yard, comes at Wendlan again and again. She Swaps with a hinge on his bench, and a door drops her into the sky above the Yard. She Swaps with the top bar of a frame, and a door spits her out on the far wall. She Swaps with a falling rivet—
—and for one split second she comes out of a frame right beside him, close enough to touch, before he flicks two fingers and she's gone again through another door.
Where she was for that split second, a silver-rose phantom trail hangs in the wind: a faint, glowing afterimage of her, crouched, blades out. Wendlan doesn't look at it. Rougeina, panting on the far side of the Yard, does.
back in his pen after the punch, staring at the pillar in the ring of doors, at Veyra on top of it.
He tries anyway. One step toward the ring, a frame, and he steps out on top of the terrace wall, the sea of cloud below him.
climbing back down, his hair blown flat by twenty winds at once.
Smurjan walks out of his own pen, on foot, robe snapping in the wind, all three shadows trailing behind him, and stops beside his captain.
The third eye opens, crimson-rimmed.
The world as grey diagram lines. Every frame in the ring is a solid black square, a hole. And winding between the black squares, through the ring to the foot of the pillar, one thin crimson line: the only path of plain stone.
Smurjan walks the crimson line into the ring of doors, step by perfect step, bare feet on white stone. Behind him Vigolas places his boots exactly in Smurjan's footprints, arms out for balance like a boy on a fence. On either side the open doors breathe the winds of other worlds.
Two figures threading through a forest of doors, the tall white-braided one in front, the captain behind him, one bare footprint and then one boot-print in the same place.
noticing. He thinks, and a new frame unfolds right on the crimson line, ahead of Smurjan's foot.
stopped on one foot. In the third eye, the crimson line bends around the new black square. He waits half a heartbeat, half an inch. He steps.
Another frame. Smurjan waits. Steps. Vigolas follows, breathing through his teeth.
watching them come through her ring of doors. She can't move. Only her eyes.
The white serpent uncoils off her shoulders and strikes at Smurjan's face. He moves half an inch, the crystal fangs close on air, and his open hand closes behind its head and holds it, writhing.
the serpent thrashing in his grip, his voice perfectly even.
Vigolas steps off the end of the crimson line and onto the pillar. Face to face with Veyra, close enough to see the old scar on her jaw, the wind whipping both of them.
No way to step back. No way to lift a hand. Her eyes on his.
Vigolas lays his open palm on her crystal breastplate.
The white knot is pulled out through his palm. His fist closes on it, black-green script blazing up his arm. And across the whole Gate Yard every white line snaps at once, TWANG TWANG TWANG, like the strings of a giant harp cut together, bursting into showers of white sparks that blow away on the wind.
on the far side of the Yard. She feels the air change. Her eyes light up silver-rose.
dropping to one knee with his hand flat on Mingus's ribs. Along the bottom border of the panel, the golden pulse line: ba-DUM.
flat on his back, fast asleep, mumbling.
clenched around the knot of white light, smoke pouring out between his fingers.
Wendlan steps away from his workbench into the open middle of his Yard. He isn't afraid. He rolls his sleeves up past the elbow, splints and all, and around him a hundred frames unfold at once, fanning open in a great white wheel like a peacock's tail.
grinning into the wind, a hundred doors at his back.