She frowns. ‘But they’re not like the old gods?’
He skids down the side of the hill to join her, pebbles bouncing. ‘No, something simpler about them. Something missing. We might just be bad creators. Or there might be a level of craft we can’t hope to reach. That’s getting a bit too abstract anyway. All this stuff has very real consequences.’
He points out over the Barrowlands. In the gathering dark, small lights kindle haphazardly across the skyline. ‘See those fires? They’re lighting them against the dead. We’re still so scared of it all. And composites are something to be scared of. We werealways taught that they needed a vessel. A human body.’ He shoots her a pained look. ‘But they alter the person that receives them. Placing souls inside someone can change them, permanently, if it goes on too long. All those little shards of god-power stick inside you, like burrs from a hedgerow. We used to think they left hooks for the real gods to get in. To alter your thoughts, your behaviour. It’s why the Aestering hated hosts so much. We didn’t understand them. We still don’t.’
Shipwright picks a stone out the sole of her boot. ‘What happens with composites now? Now the gods are dead?’
Shroudweaver shrugs. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
She snorts. ‘That’s reassuring.’
He pats her on the shoulder. ‘The simpler solution, it seems to me, is to take people out of the equation completely. To weave a composite with no body, no vessel, just will. If I could bind all the souls in here’ – he taps his chest – ‘with all the dead of the Barrowlands, forjustlong enough, I could take out Crowkisser.’
‘Take her out?’ Shipwright’s voice is steadier than she feels.
‘Incapacitate her, I hope. I can’t think of anything more powerful.’ His voice drops, slinks low around the cooling barrow stones. ‘I don’t want to kill her, Ship.’
‘I know love,’ she says. ‘But this sounds dangerous.’ Are you sure there’s not a better way? She bites her lip. ‘I could do it again, for you. If that’s what needed. I could hold the composite.’ Even as she says it, her heart lurches with terror, and her lips grow sticky with spice.
He watches her closely, and she can see him run the numbers before he shakes his head. ‘Dropping that many souls into someone would change them so profoundly they’d never come back. I could never do that to you. I can’t have that on my conscience. There’s enough roosting in there as it is.’
He takes her hand again, his eyes bright in the failing light. ‘I can do this. Trust me. I’m the best weaver there is. I can do it.’
She squeezes his fingers and chokes down the sadness sitting in her chest. ‘You’re the only weaver there is.’ She holds his gaze for a second, before she looks away. ‘What other choice do I have?’
He kisses her softly. ‘Well, if I’m wrong, none of us will be around to regret it.’
They stop for a moment, and he leans his back against a way marker, his fingers tracing the carvings. ‘Would you look at that? Less than fifty miles now.’
Shipwright nods. ‘We’re close, but we won’t make it before nightfall. The sun’s tiring and I’m not keen to travel through the night out here.’
Shroudweaver nods. ‘Me either.’ He scans the horizon, sighing wearily. ‘Can you believe it? Burials as far as the eye can see. No wonder I’m blue. Still, there’s a lot of forest out here. Beyond the hills. Not that far away. I’d like to see it sometime.’
Her heart warms a little at that. ‘I could take you,’ she says. ‘I have friends there.’
He grins. ‘That’ll be our post-catastrophe vacation, will it?’
She tweaks his ear. ‘You got it, hot stuff. And maybe after that, somewhere by the sea. Or on it.’
‘Either’s fine, as long as you’re there,’ he says, and leans into her.
She’s quiet for a spell, as they press on in the last scraps of light, trying to imagine what the future might feel like.
‘Do you miss the ship?’ he asks, eventually.
She looks at him. ‘Only like a limb.’
The driving wind pushes her hair forwards over the angular planes of her face and feeds him strands of his own. He coughs.
‘Do you want me to take any of that?’ She gestures at his pack, hung with the bones and thread of his trade. Weavers travelled as light as they could, but that wasn’t saying much.
‘No, I’m good. We won’t be walking for much longer.’
She studies the horizon. ‘It’s getting late, and cold. There’s ruins down there, maybe a few miles off. Should get us out of the wind at least. Away from those creepy fires.’
They’re there inside an hour, setting up inside the scoured courtyard of a squat tower attached to a number of curved, low-slung buildings that might once have been byres.
The soft glow of a fire on the stones dries out his clothes and a tarp strung between the corners puts an end to the teeth of thewind. The small horse is staked out gratefully with some dry grass and a blanket over its back.
