He levers himself up slowly, painfully, feeling the old tightness in his legs again. She can see the stoop in his tendons pulling down his whole body. The road’s hard on him.
‘Ideally, we capture her. The composite should just hammer her to knees. Along with whatever and whoever she’s brought with her.’
Shipwright breathes in slowly. ‘So this depends on you raising something more powerful than Crowkisser. Oh. Good. From what I’ve heard about her since the south fell, that’ll be impressive.’
He smiles narrowly. ‘I suspect at least some of that is rumourfeeding on rumour. She’s smart, but young. Power takes time. Always.’ He pauses. ‘Do you want to get your boots?’
She shoots him a look. ‘What?’
‘Do you want to get your boots?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Because this scares you. And you’re happier when you’re working on them.’
Shipwright’s silent for a minute, jaw muscles working. ‘You …ugh.’
She turns, reaches to unhook them from her kitbag. ‘Not a word.’ She gets her kit, sets it out neat – boots, rag, polish to keep the rain off – dips the cloth in and sets to.
‘Socks could use work too, judging by the state of those toes.’
‘Shut it.’
He shuffles next to her, stretches out a hand. ‘Give one over then.’
He shoves his wrist inside, coats the cloth and gets to work. ‘I can control it. I know I can.’ His voice is low, tentative.
She buffs, turns the boot. The moon’s an odd one tonight, buttered by rising clouds of summer pollen.
‘I’m not saying you can’t, but it seems veryfinal.’
His nod is curt. ‘It has to be, I think. If we don’t knock her down hard, she’s going to bring to bear whatever tricks she has to hand.’
Shipwright stops, digs in her pack, pops a twist of something fibrous in her mouth. ‘And we don’t know what those tricks might be?’
Shroudweaver keeps working, the boot buckles chiming softly. ‘Not really. I could hazard a guess.’
She chews, shuffles the clump around her mouth with a thumb. ‘Go on then. Not like I’m scared witless already.’
He smiles softly. ‘Course not.’
He sets the boot down, counts the options off on his fingers.
‘Easier to say what they aren’t, maybe. Not shroudweaving. She never had the patience for it.’ He laughs. ‘Never had patience at all.’
Shipwright spits. ‘That’s not as charming as you think, Shroud. We don’t all have the luxury of being her father to keep us safe.’
He holds up a finger. ‘Still. Not shroudweaving.’
‘Not spinner magic either,’ she interjects.
He looks at her. ‘No?’
‘Definitely not. Not personal enough, not local enough. Whatever magic Kisser’s using, she’s doing it over milesandto herself. Spinners don’t work like that. You stick ’em, one or two at a time on people or things. To make a network, or to make one big enough to push the kind of magic she’s using?’ Shipwright shakes her head. ‘Not going to happen. If we ever knew how to do that, we don’t now.’
‘Plus,’ she says, wriggling a sock off, ‘Running them for too long on living stuff? There’s consequences. Frays things down. You can gallop a horse, but you can’t gallop it a thousand miles without its heart going off. Same thing.’
Shroudweaver watches the sock, the sudden appearance of needle and thread. ‘I didn’t mean you had to do those now.’
