She laughs. ‘We’ll have to do something about that enthusiasm, Rope.’
As she talks, her hands pick carefully at the ship’s wheel, flicking the small levers that loosen the brackets and restraints on the rig spirits.
Ropecharmer watches her work. She shoots a lidded glance at him. ‘One more thing. Anybody we can’t take, you tell the otherCaptains that if they ship them out the city, clean and fair, I’ll owe them a right-handed debt. We clear?’
Ropecharmer beams. ‘Clear as … I mean, yeah, got you.’ His eyes flick up to the spirits which chirrup overheard. ‘Where did they come from?’
Shipwright reaches down and straightens the collar of his shirt. ‘I suppose you could say I prayed for them, and then I made them.’
Ropecharmer nods. ‘They’re gods, then? Amazing.’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘No, not your gods. Just me in the end, and a little eastern tradition. I have as little to do with your gods as I can.’ The words leave a sweet, sticky taste on her lips, like spiced honey. Heartshamer’s voice in her head,‘a little more foreign’.
Ropecharmer is gone soon after, sliding down a dock rope, fingers curled around a copper hand grip. He’s ashore in seconds and off, moving with purpose; awash in errands, that boy.
The docks run a gangplank up and she watches as Shroudweaver embraces Fallon before he makes his way slowly up the thin span. The breeze picks up as he moves and for a second she sees him sway out over the water, the wind lifting his robe and flashing the silver scars on his legs.
In a moment, she is back under the blistering southern sky.
Three years unspooling in the span of a breath, pulling her mind back into the fire, into the desolation, into the first fight she ever lost. She’s picking Shroudweaver up, dragging him out of the ruins of the city, lifting him free of that tangle of rock and glass, as the air splits overheard and men burst, burn and boil around her.
The clouds stutter, the stars torn and wheeling and, for the briefest of moments, something that mimics the purple shadow of a second moon, until it blinks.
Shroudweaver’s fingers tighten on her wrist, his lips a thin line as she pulls him onwards, the glass teeth of the ruins digging deep into legs which had always been thin, so thin. They run through pulses of golden light in the shattered streets, skirting the howls of dying gods – Crowkisser’s gift to world.
The sky’s a lurching thing, poorly pinned to the earth, and beneath it, their beautiful fleet burns from its touch. Every crew almost lost in this nightmare of smoke and searing stone, doomed, were it not for Fallon. Even as the sky burns, he’s everywhere at once, one arm hanging loosely at his side, writhing with something dark and feathered which worries ceaselessly at the rents in his flesh, exposing pale bone. The other hand holds a brutal club, slick with brain and blood. Behind him are the remains of their army; scared boys, stumbling men and women, hair on fire and eyes lost in smoke-blackened sockets. They’re merely bodies gathered for a war that never came; bones thrown onto the pyre Crowkisser had built. There had been no war. No contest. Crowkisser had moved straight to the killing.
A thump followed by a sickening slide, and the earth tears again, buildings disappearing, the planes of the land shifting and sliding. Walls swallowed, towers upthrust.
Shipwright is still stumbling, running for the burning shore, betrayed at some point by the ground, some sudden shifting that swallows a group of cowering sailors, their wails lost in the depths of the air. She’s thrown onto her back and Shroudweaver is tipped from her arms to sprawl dazed beside her, his fingers still strung with scorched thread, his lips moving ceaselessly. It takes a moment for her to find herself, breath rasping, looking up at the stars, at the purple belly of the moon, and seeing movement within it like the twitching of a sleeper’s lid. She watches it crack like an egg and from inside its parting halves, she again feels the sensation of an eye, vast and alien and suddenly intent on her.
Its gaze is hungry as a fisherman’s hook, tugging on her heart, worrying at her like a scrap of meat. Her fingers grope weakly for Shroud even as the ground betrays her again, sliding at new strange angles. Her breath lurches in her throat as he slips inexorably into the depths.
She forces herself up on screaming muscles, dimly noticing a woman spun, caught in the flames of falling stars, her hair a bright white candle, her eyes running like wax.
A jump, a slide, a desperate scramble after Shroudweaver’stumbling body, a leap that interlocks their fingers with the strength of prayer. Every bone in his hand is a gift and her body curses her heart as she pulls him back, inch by scorched inch, gathering him into her arms like a child, like breath.
In the remains of the city, men tear the teeth from their heads as the sky sings to them. The eye roves over the ground. Where it alights, the gods die and men change. Gold-blooded ghosts sprout eyes, limbs and tails as they are pulled shrieking into the void. Shipwright watches in horror as the moon sheds the last of its lies and becomes the eye it always was. Around her, strong women, brave women, fall to their knees, and rise again twisted and howling in the burnt light.
Still, amid it all, Fallon. Setting his own arm aflame with a burning brand, driving the feathered shadow from it with gritted teeth and curses. He has a sailor under his other arm, her limp body pulled step by gruelling step towards the sea and the ships.
Shipwright feels her mind sliding loose as she hoists Shroudweaver and staggers to join him. She sees Fallon recoil as the air shudders, watches him glance down at the woman under his arm, realising her legs have been left far behind. Sees him kneel, whisper an apology, and break her neck with a swift twist.
The stars spin and list. The eye looks down, and on the shore their ships burn. The great fleet which saved Luss and defeated the Empire burns. Marines throw themselves into a blue sea alight with the heat of dying gods. Even as they touch the water it rises up to meet them, bright and hungry, pulling the flesh from their bones. Great chunks of stars hammer into the roiling ocean, and detonations sound in the deep.
Shipwright sees the ship at the same time as Fallon. Somehow still whole, the fire only just at its edges. They run, a few marines trailing in Fallon’s shadow like kicked dogs. She follows them with Shroudweaver slung over her shoulder, limp as wrung cloth. Her legs are meat, but her bones are brass. A spinner hums her nerves to lightning. She thunders across the beach, across the pieces of men who had once been soldiers, women who had once been knights. Men and women who had followed her throughthe ruin of Luss now burnt to ash in the ruin of the south. Terror pushes her legs onward. As she runs, Shipwright can feel the eye on her, can see it suspended, swallowing the sky, bleak and limitless. Under its gaze, the horses they had brought kick loose their traces and fall on each other, teeth suddenly sharp.
The ship somehow, still waits. It burns, but it does not sink. Another chunk of sky thunders down, and it lists in the smoking swell. Her muscles running on memory and habit alone, Shipwright shins a thin plank up from the shore, and starts up it. Choking down the panic that fills her chest. Tearing her eyes from the wallowing sails, the broken masts and backs of the other ships as they slide into the fizzing water. A few survivors of theHart’s Prideand theMaiden of the Forestslimp at her back. Not much consolation.
Fallon is still behind her, almost alone now, the bodies of the soldiers who’d died in his shadow fallen to ash, or twitching, ready to rise again, swallowing star fire into themselves and staggering upwards. Falling on each other, rending, repurposing arms, legs, fingers, blades; becoming things which could survive under the gaze of that great eye.
Shipwright feels its weight on her. Somehow she gains the deck, her arms shrieking with effort as she throws Shroudweaver over the rail. Fallon vaults after her, pulls bodies in behind him, some still breathing. Something still to save.
For a second, she catches her balance and watches the world dislocate in front of her. Shipwright stands on the ship, looking up at a sky that is no longer a sky. At a moon that is no longer a moon, but rather a great roving eye, and she knows that it sees her. Not the black glass of the burning city, not the melting sea, not the falling stars. The eye seesher. And she feels it calling. It wants sacrifice. Something in it moves through her veins, and she knows what she must do, even as she reaches down with blistered hands and hoists Shroudweaver by the scruff of his neck. She can hear the blood in his body, and she can feel the hunger of the great eye calling for him. She knows what she must do. Even as the tears run down her face, even as they evaporate from hercheeks above the burning sea. She knows what must be done. With great care, she extends Shroudweaver’s limp body out over the hungry sodium sea – an offering; a farewell. The thundering terror in her heart is shushed by the pulse of blood in her ears, by the call of the eye.
A second before she lets go, Fallon tackles both of them to the deck like a charging bull.
Shipwright’s shoulders splinter the boards, and she hisses in pain, but Fallon’s warm hands are on her eyes and his voice is in her ear. ‘Keep them closed, keep them closed, it’s OK. I love you. He loves you. Keep them closed. Don’t let it see you.’
