—Archivist Splitwater
At night, when the Stump slept, even the mountains dreamt. Marked by the heavy shadows of ice, the slow drip of water, runs and channels carved out over decades until they became familiar things, a network of veins, neurons, frosted, blackened and sharded by the descent of a thousand winters.
When the Stump slept, when its bright lights dimmed to a fever glow and the sounds of life finally washed themselves into the belly of the mountain, pooling in the drinking halls and sleeping chambers, becoming a softer thread in the tapestry of the mountain’s dreaming, this was when Skinpainter liked to walk the halls. In these quieter times, these few brief moments of calm, they walked, one rag-wrapped hand cradling a cup of spiced cider, the other running broad fingered along the curving walls, feeling the Stump’s slow breath, listening to the mountain shudder and tick.
It was hardly necessary. The curves and cants of the stone were familiar beneath their shuffling soles. After all, Skinpainter was one of the old guard, a founder of the Republic – a revolutionary. They worry at their lips with their teeth. It’s quite the legacy.
The guts of the Stump open up sporadically above the valley and its outbuildings, vast, porphyric, perforated. The humped and shadowed mounds below punctuated by the snap and crack of the cairn banners, occasionally flaring with light snatched from the lamps of cottages and inkworks. The wind roars confidently from the higher peaks, sharpened by the scent of new snow. Inspots against the deepened blue of the night sky, night time raptors wheel and duck in pursuit of fast, hot-blooded prey.
Skinpainter watches them for a while, watches their spiral dance down the passes as they dip and weave. Their tattooist’s hands tremble in response. Dip and weave. Pluck and turn. Colour and keep. Decades of familiar movements.
The barrows sleep well. The dead of the past twenty years, and the years before those, are quiet, cossetted beneath earth and scree. Skinpainter can relax. The chaos roiling in the south hadn’t yet sunk its teeth into the cold ground of the north. They had some time before it stretched this far. Its mother would be here soon enough though. Crowkisser was impatient. They could feel her on the wind, skulking around the low hills outside of the mountain. The witch was riding Quickfish’s shoulders like a vulture, poor boy. They sip their cider, feel it sting a mouth grown dry from talking, from the hours upon hours debating with the council, trying to make them see the inevitability of the situation. Trying to turn their gazes outward, for once. For all the levers Skinpainter had, the Council of the Republic was still a weighty rock to shift. Staggering under the burden of everything they had won, now too scared to reach outwards, for fear the world would notice them. For fear of another war.
Skinpainter had been expecting war since the Republic was born, before the blood was even dry. The audacity of what the rebels had done had rung like a bell throughout the cities to the south. Perhaps it had even been heard north of the mountains, beyond the spires. They didn’t know. Thell, however, sat on the map like an insult. A reminder of the impermanence of empire. Of the efficacy of a little focused rage.
They sip again, pulling their robes close against the chill wind. They’d been lucky to get the scant years of peace they’d had. Before the south had burnt. Before the southerners’ gods had died. Their side aches at the thought, and they run fingers over the shape under their robes.
They shake their head softly. War had always been coming. Since Crowkisser burnt a city to glass, and hollowed out thenames of the world. Long before that, if they were honest. Since Hesper had thrown in their lot to free Luss. If they were really honest, since they had first called out to Shroudweaver for help.
Now his daughter gathered her strength on the singed rim of the south. All the traumatised survivors of that nightmare, flocking to her grey banner, just to feel some solid ground under their feet.
Their lip curls. It was hard to welcome another empire founded on fear.
They’d argued the same to the council, until their throat was hoarse. It was no coincidence that Fallon’s kid had come here. That old bull wasn’t as stupid as his roaring and hollering made him seem. Every ruler leant on their family, consciously or unconsciously.
Blood built kingdoms, Skinpainter had reasoned.
Kinghammer had nodded appreciatively at that. A point scored. Skinpainter runs a finger over their jaw, feeling it ache as the last shreds of tension flee their muscles. There was another strong man who had more in his skull than you’d expect.
The rest of the council had listened too, with varying degrees of fear. Skinpainter understood that. Understood the urge to seal the doors and turn inwards. To wait for the storm to pass, but they were kidding themselves. Crowkisser was not a storm. She was a wave that would never break.
Quickfish was the lever that Skinpainter needed to pry open the door. They had to stand with their allies, for all the thought of picking at those old wounds chafed, because Hesper was not the real target. Crowkisser wanted one thing above all. ‘Security,’ Skinpainter had said, watching Belltoller’s brows rise as she recognised the irony. Everybody wanted to be safe by being free of everybody else.
As long as Thell was independent, Crowkisser would never have control, never be secure. They were doomed by their own success.
Crowkisser had killed the gods and killed their hosts, then gathered their lost flocks in with a smile. That made her a bigdeal anywhere south of the mountain, but Thell had never had hosts. Never had gods. Because the Empire had never had gods. The Emperor had made sure of that.
That made Thell a threat. They had nothing to fear from her. There was nothing she could take from them. They’d killed their last tyrant years ago.
That meant she could either win them over, or break them. And as Kinghammer had put it, Thell had no patience for foreigners with strange magic on their tongues.
So, they’d agreed, as much as they ever had, on war.
More importantly, they’d agreed that Crowkisser would come to Thell first. The mountain was the real power in the north. That was why Fallon’s son was here, whether he realised it or not.
Granted, Hesper was a target, if you wanted to control the sea. A target with walls as high as a gull’s eye, sick with metal and weapons. The crow-witch could break herself on those battlements, and without a fleet, the sea would still be there, out of reach.
Thell had high walls, too. But more than anything, it had people. It was the biggest city outside of Hesper. Ten thousand surly souls, stacked tight within the mountain and enough blood and bone to tear the world down, or whatever Crowkisser intended.
Regardless of her desires, she needed to be stopped. Skinpainter hadn’t relished turning the screw on Belltoller or the Singers, but this was how the world worked. You did what was needed to drive in the direction of progress. Leant where you needed to lean. Broke what you needed to break.
They shift uneasily as their side flutters. Little legacies dancing in the blood. The question was whether Crowkisser was someone who could be persuaded to bend, or who needed to break.
Skinpainter needed to know more about her, to get a better sense of the pattern that pulled her towards the mountain. They knew in their gut she would come. They could feel her on the air, the cold winds scaling the mountain side touched with the barest hint of black feather.
At night, Thell was not just a mountain. Great black peaks reached up over the dark earth of the Barrowlands. The sky hung with cold, heavy with snow pushing down from the north, snow that had touched the edge of the Blades, that had come in from the east before that, over the chill sea, across the backs of whales and the creaking bows of ships.
The patterns of the world were drawn to that mountain which sat like a dagger in the heart of the weave. They bowed towards its broken rock, towards the stark hollows flickering with flame.
