At their back, they feel Shroudweaver begin to work, that old familiar pluck and tug, like a nail under a scab. They send lightning down, buying him time for whatever he has planned. Their heart races. The mountain hums along with their sorcery, the angles in its slopes resonating with the geometries. The air grows thick with the cold feel of ritual magic, like ducking slowly under dark water. They’ve never really understood weaving. Never really understood the between, but they can feel it close to their skin, like a great lake on the other side of their lungs. The dead shoal in its wetness, in hollows created by the weaver’s movement.
Skinpainter’s chest aches. Behind them, Shroudweaver staggers like a bar-room drunk. He exhales, and on the out-breath come the dead. Abruptly, Skinpainter is not alone; a feeling like a snapped twig, and the air suddenly full of spirits.
They turn in horror. Shroudweaver can’t even meet their eyes. His whole mind is lost in the between. His body hangs limp in Shipwright’s arms, and flowing from it, the unbound souls of the Empire. Skinpainter staggers against the invisible torrent of the dead, ethereal bodies brushing their face like feathers. A thousand, thousand light-limned lives, swelling in murmuration, then arrowing down to where Crowkisser races towards the mountain.
An unbinding. An unbinding of the Emperor’s dead. That’s what Shroud had proposed, bald-faced, and Skinpainter, fool that they were, had never paused to consider, what, exactly, that might look like. For years, they had wondered how he had freedall the Empire’s bound souls. A feat beyond reckoning. A feat that had won them the war. And of course, the explanation, like all explanations, was simple. The weaver hadn’t. He’d bound them. Swapped one cage for another. And kept it quiet for decades.
Skinpainter hadn’t pressed him on it when the pair had first arrived, far too concerned with keeping face with the entire mountain watching, but now they think about it, they’re furious. At the betrayal. At the secrecy. At the sheer fucking idiot risk of it all. It must show in their eyes, because Shipwright catches their gaze and flinches back protectively.
That’s all it takes. One small movement of fear.
Skinpainter shakes their head ruefully. This battle needs to be won. There’ll be time for recrimination later. It’s not like they don’t hold secrets of their own. As the indignation fades, it dawns on them they have absolutely no clue how Shroudweaver’s planning to pull this off. A small thread of curiosity pulls their gaze from Shipwright, from Shroudweaver’s senseless body, and towards the weaver’s work. Excitement and terror lights in their heart.
Out on the Barrowlands, above the torn cairns, snapped flags and broken bodies, something forms. A bare space in front of Crowkisser’s charging feet, filled with drifting motes of gold, the dead souls of Empire gathered and spun into something far greater. It’s at least thirty feet tall, or more. Skinpainter struggles to look at it, to make sense of it. The shapes of the dead within it move like fish under glass, and beyond them, the outline of something else. Eyes liquid as the shifting deep, limbs swaying in drifting shoals. It is beautiful. Terrible. Perfect. It stinks of spice and sweetness. God-magic. Their lip curls in disgust.
All around, the armies on the plain fall to their knees. Even on the battlements, Skinpainter can see soldiers staggering forwards for a glimpse, their jaws hanging slack with wonder.
Skinpainter feels a twitch under their ribs, and places a hand against their side as they run their eyes critically over the adoring crowds. Like watching cattle at market. They look again at the abomination Shroudweaver has raised and feel nothing kind.Too many short-sighted people always wanting to call something bigger, stronger. Stupid. They sigh. At least this will be over soon.
It takes a second before Crowkisser stutters to a stop before the glowing monstrosity, pulling herself into shape from a squalling mess of feathers. The edges of the flock becoming her edges, crows on crows that are suddenly thin limbs. Skinpainter’s almost pleased to see her, so small and so human against this roiling blasphemy, her familiar outline stick-legged and black against the burning sun of the new god.
That empathy lasts for all of half a second, until Crowkisser raises a hand, and in her fingers, they see a small scrap of flesh and bone. Skinpainter has a second to notice its absence among their trinkets. A vertigo spike of panic. A slipped belt-loop. A second to flash back to a moment of closeness, of touching, of betrayal. A second more to see how the pieces of this puzzle fit together before they feel the pulse of its unveiling, feel it calling to them. The Emperor’s finger. Rightmost hand, smallest digit. Skinpainter’s learnt its shape over the years. Watching it every night, using it to feel out the madness of its owner as he slowly choked down in the dark, his lungs filling with stone and blackness until he fell quiet. The bone shivered every night at first, then every week. Then perhaps every month or so. Eventually, it dwindled to nothing but a reassuring presence on their belt, never shuddering to life, so never noticed. Skinpainter had learnt to live with it, as they’d learnt to live with all their other horrors. Content to keep the Emperor forever separate from the dead.
And now, that grisly little memento is gone. Crowkisser has it.
Crowkisser winds back her arm and throws, the composite exploding even as the curse leaves Skinpainter’s lips. The Emperor’s flesh touching the souls of the mountain’s dead for the first time in twenty years. And as it does, somewhere in the depths, the rest of the Emperor awakens, and calls out. Singing through the blood of everyone who once lived in the Empire. Singing through the veins of their children and their children’s children. Skinpainter staggers. Blood bubbles against their teeth. Their flesh awakens, and in response the tattoos on their body blaze upon their skin.The pain is incredible. But pain means it’s working. Pain means the geometries hold. As long as the tattoos remain unbroken, the dead can’t get in; the Emperor can’t claim them.
They stagger again as below their feet the mountain blooms with acrid black smoke, and the great gate explodes. Their heart sinks. A smaller, less bitter defeat. More expected, more direct, but still deadly. They’ve badly underestimated Crowkisser. But she doesn’t know what they’ve survived. She is young. Too young to understand that even suffering can be a weapon.
On Skinpainter’s body, their geometrics burn. They watch as the mountain shudders, while in front of it, Shroudweaver’s new god dies. And from its body, like flies blown from a corpse, through the blood, the gold and the hammering rain, the numberless dead of the Barrowlands flood towards Thell.
After them, armed with knives and hooks and rage, follow the people of Astic. Distantly, Skinpainter hears Kinghammer command them to keep the wall. They wave a hand dismissively. They’ll do better than that. Pain is nothing. Crowkisser is nothing. There is only the old equation. People they must keep alive. And people who need to die for that to happen. There are people they love within the mountain. The geometries must hold. Thell must hold.
For that to happen, nothing must get in. Nothing must get out.
Skinpainter grits their teeth and ignores the writhing in their bones as best they can. A twist, a wrench of their hands, and the storm is battened. They can feel the Emperor rising under the skin of the earth; a surge of nausea, a buzzing red fever washing in from the sundered hills and hollows. Years of Skinpainter’s work balances on a knife-edge. Ancient things are stirring at their old enemy’s call. They stagger as another wave of sickness batters them. The Emperor is growing strong, and quickly, fattened by all the souls Shroudweaver just laid out like lambs under the knife.
They shake their head. Wipe spit from their lips.
Enough of this, they have responsibilities. The mountain has not fallen yet. As they watch, Thell’s warriors hammer into the depths of the Stump, following after Kinghammer and Icecaller,clashing with grey-skinned fishermen in narrow passages, dancing the blade-dance. Step, flick, lick, turn.
Skinpainter sweats, curses their churning gut. Mad as it seems, Astic’s army is not the real problem. Time is running out.
They feel small salted lives wink out, ten by ten, before they take a deep breath and throw themselves downwards, their bones bouncing gracelessly off the mountain’s stone. Dizzy as a drunk dog, eyes full of stars and a skinned knee raw with blood, but still grabbing arms and shouting instructions, until their voice becomes a litany. ‘Guard the lines, let no man do you harm.’
Brave bodies fall in line with their tumbling descent. Broad shoulders, wary spears blocking the passages deeper into the Stump.
Skinpainter feels the first few cuts personally. These fishermen are unskilled, but they have something in their eyes. A determination, a steel. Theybelievein that ragged, murderous girl they follow. And every damn cut that breaks a tattoo opens a gate for the dead. Skinpainter reaches the first of the fallen in time, greeting the injured open-palmed, wrenching the dead clear of each shining wound. They reflow ink at speed, mending as fast as their fingers can fly. The dead chatter around them like locusts. They feel nails on their cheeks, teeth on their sweating neck.
They bind, they break. Their heart lurches as they realise they’re not fast enough; could never be fast enough.
Around them murder swills, the Stump clotted with people, voices living and dead. If Crowkisser is here, they can’t feel her. They have to get deeper. Find the Deadsingers, build something stronger to hold back the dead, to stop the crow-witch making things worse. They beckon a few soldiers forwards to clear a path through the melee. As they run, they stagger into a clot of scared young foreigners who heft clubs uncertainly, every one of them barely as old as Icecaller. The guards at Skinpainter’s shoulders lash out. Spear-points punch through sockets and screaming mouths. Wearily Skinpainter ducks a hastily swung club, brushes a bill-hook aside. Punches, withdrawing an arm wet with teeth and tongue, letting the blood run down into the black geometrics oftheir arms and sending it back with a flick. Ink follows and scatters briefly across bare muscles. Like cobras at their back, Skinpainter’s rags flare, sway, strike. Stripping skin. Flensing down the bone.
It’s over in seconds. As the last of the Astic boys gurgles into quiet, Skinpainter steps carefully over the mess, and beckons their own wide-eyed soldiers closer. ‘Intact?’
No one misunderstands the question. They nod shakily. Check arms, wrists, legs. One redheaded girl is sick over her shield.
Lightmender. Skinpainter remembers making her first warrior marks. They motion her forwards. She moves gingerly over ripped and broken things that were once men. Skinpainter’s heart aches a little at the look in her eyes. They take her face in their hands. ‘It’s horrible, I know. But it will be worse if we let them win. Breathe for me.’ To her credit, she does, shuddering air into her lungs like a skittish horse. Skinpainter busses her cheeks, runs a finger over her mercifully unbroken marks. ‘I know you. You can do this.’ Her face steadies. They take her jaw, turning it to either side, letting a little ink flow gently over her features, darkening, straightening. ‘I’m so proud of you, Light.’
