‘Because of Skinpainter?’
He nods. ‘A little. Because of the mountain, and the dead.’
Her fingers stop working. ‘And then you’re going to try raise a god. One of those composites. Without a vessel. Uncontained.’
He demurs. ‘If it comes to that.’
She tilts his head towards her. ‘You know it’ll come to that,’ she says, and there’s a shake in her voice. It feels good to say it though, to look it in the eye.
He takes her hands. ‘I know it’s not ideal, but like I said, we need something big. Bigger than ever before. A deterrent.’
She resumes stroking his hair. ‘Because your daughter is so easily deterred.’ She sighs, ‘I’m sorry, it’s just … not exactly a neat solution is it?’
He takes the tips of her fingers, squeezes them. ‘No such thing as neat solutions.’
She kisses the crown of his head. ‘They died in the south, that’s what you mean.’
He wriggles his shoulders downwards, settling into the cool grass at her feet. ‘If I can unbind the dead, weave them into a composite, even for a few moments, we give Thell a weapon Crowkisser can’t fathom. With a little luck she’ll struggle to match us, no matter what she has up her sleeve.’ He picks blades of grass, splits them with a thumb. ‘If we can make it too expensive for her to lay siege, she’ll have to rethink. And she can’t stay penned in the south forever. The land won’t support it indefinitely. She’ll starve.’
Shipwright flops down onto her belly, her face close to the fire. ‘You mean expensive in bodies, don’t you? That scares the shit out of me.’
He splits the blades again. ‘It’s what she understands. Raw power. It’s what’ll stop her. She cares about her people.’
Shipwright raises an eyebrow. ‘How do you know that?’
Shroudweaver twists his lips. ‘Why else try to eke out a living in the south, why not throw everyone at Hesper straight away? Damn the cost? She wants her people alive, and she wants the people of Thell alive.’ He sucks his teeth. ‘Mostly.’
Shipwright runs her hands through her hair, half-heartedly twisting braids. ‘That’s an awfully thin assumption to stake this on.’
‘I know my daughter, Ship.’
‘Youknewyour daughter. How many years since you were both together?’
‘Twenty. Twenty-one, though that cuts my heart to say it. Even if I hadn’t seen her for a hundred though, I’d know she hasn’t changed. She’s still clinging on to what she cares about. Regardless of the cost.’
Shipwright frowns. ‘How can you know that for sure, Shroud?’ It’s hard to keep the frustration out her voice.
He splits the grass down to the base, loses it into the earth.
‘Because I’m still alive.’
64
Little larks. Tongues of the same. A scattering of hillsheaf. A quart of clear water. The darker berries from beneath the hill. Two hours over a low flame.
—Good Food for Bad Work, Coglifter
A day later. Dregs of soup in the pot. Not her finest batch, but it’s calmed her down enough to talk about this shit with a full stomach. Hollow blood made her panicky. More panicky. And it was already a panicky topic.
Shipwright clears her throat. ‘So, even if we do break Kisser at Thell, what then?’
Shroudweaver laughs. His hands are busy, working small rounds of dough on a flat stone, scattering the tops with seeds, ready to bed down over the embers of the fire.
‘Good evening to you too. Small talk out the window then?’
She glares at him, sluicing the pot and tipping it into the grass.
‘I’ve been wrestling a seaspit stomach since you brought this up. Humour me.’
