Everything danced along that weave. Everything sought power, and fell towards it like a stone down a well.
Much as rivulets of water traced the mountain’s skin from high streams, power slicked the winds that gusted and guttered around the Stump. Learn the movement of that power, and the patterns beneath it would unveil themselves as clear as the rock etched by that cold, mountain water.
Tonight, there is something on the wind beyond snow; something on the lips beyond spiced sweetness. The pattern is eager to be found. Like a lost dog, it noses at the edges of anything seeking it. See, here, in the hiss of windblown grass – the breath of a woman. There in the scut and shadow of clouds, the march of soldiers. In the kiss and cry of pennants, the memories of stolen names.
The wind is thick with the ghosts of names. A wonder it blows so strong.
Some are fiercer than others, exploding on their gums in a riot of taste. The first couple, old and strong. From the south. Always a pair. A particular, personal orbit, neither leaving the other for a second.
Saltpetre, sandalwood, red and burning. Loss and binding. Worn nails and thin legs. Shroudweaver.
Shroudweaver comes to Thell, again, stinking of desperation and hope. Skinpainter does not fret. They know well the shape of his heart – their oldest confidante, their staunchest ally. Others will not accept him so easily. There are survivors of the war with the Empire that remember him less fondly, children bornafterwards that have never seen his face. Those holding too tight to power and those that have never known it. Regardless, it will be good to see him again. They’ve missed him, his smile, his quiet humour, that merciless, dry teasing that seemed to have been a feature of the men and women from the south. Skinpainter shudders – all that humour and joy burnt away in a firestorm of fizzing black glass.
Shroudweaver may have been the best of them. He was certainly the last of them, but charming as he was, not everyone in Thell would be happy to see him return. There were some secrets in the foundations that were not yet ready to see the light. Fretting, they breathe deep of the night wind, cleanse their palate with ice. Best they focus on the wind, for now, and on the patterns of names under the wind.
The shape of the other name that accompanies Shroudweaver has no surprise to it. Would you taste the inhale without the exhale? Polish, canvas, bellows-brass. The scutter and skitter of trapped things. Regret. Love and a stubbornness like lead.
Shipwright. Skinpainter smiles. They like her too. Shroudweaver may have given the Republic its victory, but she gave them something more personal, a taste of worlds beyond their own, a sense of that dark ocean to the east where whales sang. Their fingers pull at their hood, touch their face. Fine memories.
The wind lies a little tonight, though. Skinpainter tastes something else here. Sweet as honey. Gold and gold and gold. God fragments still sifting through the air in eddies from the south. The silty remnants of the great things that had burnt to ash, three long years ago.
The air was never quite clean afterward; always dusty with the dregs of divinity. Contaminants. Crowkisser’s last idiot gift. Something must be done about her, and the mess she has left behind. Skinpainter growls deep in their chest and plucks the last little scraps of god from the air, stretching out with their power for just a moment. Filaments of ribboned frost feed shreds of gold into lips pursed with disapproval. Skinpainter chews and swallows, until the sticky sweet taste is gone.
Stone and spit for southern gods. Skinpainter focuses again on Shipwright and Shroudweaver, their names riding the cliff wind like the blue-winged hawks circling above. The pair have always offered such a simple pattern to unpick. Skinpainter has known them too long, too well, has been collecting stories of their adventures over the decades since the fall of Empire. The raid on the black lakes. A summer almost lost in the Midlands swamps, seeking evidence of the Green. Shipwright’s years with the Burners, and Shroudweaver’s strange, circuitous journeys north beyond the mountains, fancying himself unseen. A few hectic months chasing rumours of bladedrinkers that turned out to be nothing but moonshine. And finally, that doomed mission to the south that near tore Skinpainter’s heart from their chest when they lost touch with them both. The surge of relief they’d felt as the whisper of their names somehow returned, once the sky in the south cleared, and the great purple storms ceased roiling across the battered lowlands.
Latterly, the pair had been raiding again and again from Hesper at Fallon’s request, punishing Crowkisser and her people as best they could; Shroudweaver starving out his daughter’s supply routes with apparently merciless efficiency. A busy life, and wide-ranging, with a conspicuous space around the mountain, the cairns, the Stump. Nearly twenty years and they had never returned in person, sending only a few shamefaced letters laced to the frozen talons of messengers. Absences edged with fear, and hardened by the Councils’ insistence on closing their borders with blades, and burning the memory of the gods from Midlands earth. Nearly twenty years they’d stayed away, and yet here the shadows of their names were, drifting slowly north. Skinpainter smiles a little, there was something satisfying in the inevitability of it all. There is only one reason that old pair would risk returning to Thell.
The collection of debts. The reforging of alliances. The harvesting of the dead.
Skinpainter isn’t worried. Everything they owe, everything that Thell owes, is long past due, and this is expected. Debts weremade to be paid. A satisfying pattern woven tight, closed off.
They shiver as a gust of ice skirls up the mountain from the cairns below, huddling closer to the brazier that gutters on the cliff’s edge. Perhaps that’s enough questions for one chill evening. Time for more cider, and a high-banked fire. Their side aches, and their brain is weary from jousting with old friends and their hard heads. The world will not end if they raise a cup, and toast a few nuts in the embers. The night has told tales aplenty. They are about to turn in, curiosity satisfied, until something catches at the back of their mind. A little snake’s tongue of suspicion. Not quite a hunch, but enough to make their cold fingers reach out and send their curiosity a little deeper into the night. For a moment, the air flashes with the geometrics that mark their body, seeming for a brief moment to hang barely over their skin.
Filaments of power drift on the edge of their fingers, then fray as rock shifts behind them. They curse a little under their breath, and turn. There are no truly quiet spaces in this mountain. Here’s Icecaller, Kinghammer’s daughter, stalking sleepless again. Skinpainter gestures her to an alcove, placing a finger to their lips and shifting their body between her shadow and the light of the night. It might be useful to have another pair of eyes up here. It feels like something’s coming, the night air hangs tense as an uncut string.
They steady their breathing, and reach out again, the shiver of their geometrics touching the ice of the air.
It seems, indeed, that the wind lies a little tonight. Something is hidden beneath its curves. As if it feels itself unmasked, the cairn-wind rises, then drops to nothing. Skinpainter feels it leave. The air at the edge of the mountain goes still with the weight of a held breath. On the cairns, the flags fall flat and listless. The clouds slow and even the ice in the hills sings softer.
Skinpainter waits. They are not worried. They are, for the first time in a long while, surprised.
Slowly, cautiously, they unravel a few slender rags that gently sift the still air. Their arms shimmer with tattoos lifted just off the skin.
There’s been another taste here all along, watching them ply their trade. Someone better at the name-magic than they are, by far. Or, someone who thinks they are. Someone confident enough to slink right up the halls of their mountain and try to pluck secrets from their tongue.
Cheeky. Skinpainter enjoys the idea, but not enough to be kind. They grab the edge of that watching pattern, wrench, pull and swallow.
It tastes black on their tongue, thick as ash, smooth as glass.
They sense betrayal, the slow fall of rain. A sky that is not sky. A beach made of burning and blades. A sense of leaving and finding. Love. Hate. Love. Sundering. An eater of golden things. A devourer of gods. A sea that burns the ships that sail upon it. And then wings, wings on the night.
It is a presence, a person. A shape familiar from the stories. From the burning of the south. Skinpainter watches as she rides the ravelling threads into the back of their brain and they sink slowly against the rock to steady themselves.
A sip of cider. ‘Hello,’ Skinpainter says.
In front of their eyes, cross-legged on the edge of the mountain, a figure breathes itself into life from feather and shadow. ‘Hello,’ Crowkisser replies.
And in the quiet moments after, the patterns multiply and multiply and multiply.
