He shakes his head. ‘Not all. Not enough. Half of that is just bones and dark earth.’
She hisses between her teeth. ‘So, the rest are somewhere else?’
He nods.
‘And we need to loose them to make the composite? All of them?’
He nods again.
Awkward silence for a few moments more. The horse’s feet beat damply along the road. Ahead, the Stump presses against a sky which seems to buckle with its weight. Distantly, Shipwrightglimpses the first cairn flags, hears them snap in the wind.
‘We’re setting loose all the dead,’ It sounds ridiculous even as she says it and she snorts. ‘The Empire’s dead.’
‘Yeah,’ Shroudweaver says. ‘If I can.’
There’s something far too familiar in his tone. A truth skimmed above a lie. She stiffens reflexively. Tries to hide the frustration in her voice. She needs to know.
‘What would stop you?’
He shifts awkwardly. ‘Well, nothing. It’s keeping the dead bound that’s always been the trouble, but …’
‘But what? Don’t be so bloody cryptic.’ She jabs an interrogatory elbow.
He flinches, and she regrets it immediately.
He’s quiet for a while, his breath flickering against her neck, the rhythm of his ribs playing against her spine.
She gives him room. This is the most he’s spoken since leaving the stitched villages of the coast.
The words come slowly, falling against one another. ‘The end of the Emperor. The binding of the dead. The foundation of the Republic? Skinpainter.’
She makes a noncommittal noise in her throat.
His fingers tighten in her belt. ‘All of it. All of it wasn’t what it seemed.’
She tastes it then. On her tongue, even as she asks the question. Tastes it coming. The revelation she never wanted. ‘What was it then?’
Shroudweaver lifts his head, looks at the Stump in the distance, watches its shadow fall across the mounded ranks of the quiet dead. ‘We needed a victory. Clean and clear. We needed to see our enemies gone.’
She sees his eyes close. The faint lines tight at their corners.
‘But the dead were never our enemies.’
His hands tighten, thread flashing bright and red.
He taps her shoulder to slow the horse and dismounts, sandals and thin legs down into the mud. Slowly stoops to wet his fingers in it. The air’s cold here, slick with damp.
When he looks up at her, the wind pulls his thin hair across his face.
‘All bindings need a vessel, Ship. All of them. Largest to the smallest.’
She watches him. ‘Like in Hesper. When we saved Fallon.’
He nods. ‘Like in Hesper. You were the vessel then. For the god.’
Shipwright coughs to clear her lips of a sudden sweet stickiness. She’s angry, but that’s not going to get her answers. She chokes the spite down with the sugar and composes herself.
‘I’m with you so far.’
