The room feels close, stuffy, the wan light washing over the thunder in his temples. Maybe things could change. Maybe the sword diplomacy could start now. No. Stupid. Ship and Shroud are depending on him. Hesper depends on him. He breathes, long and ragged. In through the nose, out through the mouth, like Arissa taught him.
As if reading the room, Hammer raises his hands. ‘Look, leadership or provenance disputes aside, it doesn’t change the brute facts. We need the bodies. We need the money. From outside Hesper. We need new blood.’
‘And,’ Rookspit says, eyes savage now, like flint struck on emerald. ‘And, I need to know if I’m the goddamn snail.’
Fallon snaps at that, steps forwards, and gods it’s good to see them both flinch. Even if it’s just a little, even if it’s quickly hidden.
‘What is your point, Spit?’
Rookspit steadies themself, those lean fingers adjusting a belt beneath that ragged robe. Their dangling mask swings now, the grey cut of his chin sharp as he speaks.
‘My point is, Fallon, that them as hides themselves away sometimes survives, and sometimes they get squashed by toes they never even imagined. My point is that I don’t know where the crow-witch gets her shit from. It’s weird. My point is that there are bigger forces at play then we can even see. And I’m wondering – is we the snail? Or is we the foot?’
They crawl forwards on to the table until Fallon can smell them, the acrid snap of lockpicker’s acid, and the mildewed damp of hours spent on the belfries and roofs.
‘My point is are we the snail, or are we the toe? Because we sure as shit ain’t theboot.’
Hammershy says nothing, already standing. The meeting over for him. Fallon’s lost them both. Rookspit follows him, scampering along the table. They cast a look over their shoulder, a flash of sour green as the mask is drawn back below their eyes.
‘I need to know, Dec, I need to know what we’re dealing with. I’m not moving until I know the shape of the boot, and that’s the all of it.’
Hammershy holds open the door graciously for Rookspit, who tumbles off the table, and brushes themself down.
As he moves to pull the door closed, the forge-master catches Fallon’s eye, and the two huge men regard each other for a moment. Dust hangs in the yellow light.
‘New blood would mean a tighter grip, Fallon.’
Fallon nods.
‘You need a tighter grip, Fallon.’
Fallon nods.
Hammershy tips his head. ‘Otherwise, well.’ And he taps something at his hip beneath his robes that rings with steel. ‘Otherwise, we’ll forge something new.’
The door clicks softly closed.
Fallon walks to the bullseye window, to that yellow light, grubby and old with filth and flies in the corners, for all it seems grand. Beyond that, distant, like another smudge across the skyline, the great mountain kingdom. The unspoken weight pressing down everyone on both sides of this war.
His last benighted resort.
Thell.
14
there is a deer who has come by the cairn in recent years.
a pale deer, and alone
its eye frozen on the line of birches
it sees nothing
not shadow, not new grass
not ancient blood
—Lament for the Back of the Land, excerpt
