It has the desired effect. She smiles, wet-eyed.
‘I need you to do something for me, OK?’
She nods. ‘Anything, Painter.’
They raise their voice, so the rest of the little group can hear. Run their eyes over the expectant faces surrounding them. ‘You have to hold them here. As long as you can. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out.’ Skinpainter straightens, flings a hand out towards the distant wreck of the gates. ‘Crowkisser’s brought the dead with her.She’s brought the dead with her. Most of you won’t remember the Empire, won’t remember what that means. But mark this, we have to stop her here. We’re in between. We’re the border. We’vealwaysbeen the border. Below you the Deadsingers, below your children.’ They pause, pointing a steady finger at the young warriors. ‘Only you can keep them alive. They need your time, your breath, your life if needs be. For the mountain.’
‘For the mountain,’ they murmur.
Skinpainter pauses, their heart aching at the sea of trusting faces. ‘I love you all. And Iwillend this.She will not have us.’
As the little group mutters assent, Skinpainter pulls Lightmender close, their voice husky against her neck. ‘I need you to take something, Light. Keep it safe. It’ll keep you safe too.’ They glance at the scared faces lingering over her shoulder. ‘And them. Come near. And be strong.’ Lightmender steps closer still, and Skinpainter pulls her in, hard against their ribs, stomach to stomach. Her breath flutters against their hips. Half a question hangs on her lips, but she’s too well-trained to give it voice.
Skinpainter murmurs a quick prayer to all the dead gods, as they dig beneath their robes. Get their nails tight around the gift, its wet little contours, the strange softness flecked with gristle and tendon. Close their eyes against the pain, and pull. Under their ribs something rips, moves of its own accord, drips across the brief space between their bodies and lodges against Lightmender’s stomach. She gasps and staggers. Skinpainter remembers the sensation well. They hold Lightmender’s head and smile at her, ignoring the tightness in their heart. ‘Try to breathe through it. It will get easier to bear.’
She grits her teeth, touches her side tentatively, lifting away fingers flecked with blood, ‘This will help?’
Skinpainter nods. ‘It always has.’
Lightmender’s eyes are wide as she looks up at them. ‘What is it?’
They smile tightly. ‘Leftovers. A little something I picked up in the south.’ They rub her shoulder reassuringly. ‘I’ll teach you all about it once we’re out of here. For now, just know it’ll keep you alive. And we need you alive.’
Skinpainter turns Lightmender’s head with their fingers, watching the progress of the gift through her eyes. The briefest flare of gold in the sclera, the faintest taste of honey and spice on her breath. ‘Hold them here, Light. Hold them here.’
She nods, and her soldiers form up behind her. Skinpainter can already see the gift’s effects. The straightening of Lightmender’s back, the lifting of her voice. They can already feel the cost too.They touch a hand to the bloody remnant that still pulses against their ribs, and pray it’ll be enough to see them through.
As Skinpainter forges downwards, that thin brave line of young men and women closes behind them. A line against the dark, against the dead. They’re thankful for the minutes it’ll buy them.
The battle fades to the edges of their mind, as it always does. See enough of war, and the patterns become familiar, pulses of movement like feet on a loom. The warp and weft of bodies. As one cohort stumbles forwards, grey and bladed, another enters from the side, red and blackened. Metal is threaded through muscle with precision. Pulse, push, shift, lock. Another line in the pattern.
Skinpainter moves with it. The ink clings loosely to their body now, crawling over their skin like a cat’s tongue, following their outstretched fingers and clenched fists. Waiting to strike down any invaders stupid enough to get too close, but above all warding against the dead that hang in the air on the edges of breath, as they circle, waiting for an opening. They don’t have to wait long. Crowkisser has made this a mountain full of openings, more wounds than they can ever hope to stem.
Skinpainter does what they can. Grasping wrists, shoulders, and familiar faces between their open palms and striking hard, purging the dead for the barest second before leaving them hanging in red mists of rage, ink slapping down onto the bone before infection can take hold.
A few are saved this way. Safe until the next rip or tear, at least. Too often, Skinpainter is too late, finding the dead already burrowing in like maggots, lighting the fallen with rage, and filling their mouths with the voices of the Empire’s numberless dead.
Skinpainter curses. It breaks their heart, but they can’t stop. To fight here is to bail amid the sea. They have to move onwards. The only way to stay sane is to abstract it all. To fall back into the weave of battle, where enemies move like tears along a seam and loved ones are bright knots in the wider pattern. High above them, they catch a distant flare that can only be Lightmender, and their stomach twists in recognition.
And behind it all, Skinpainter feels a weight on the fabric, tugging at the threads, at the edges of their mind – Shroudweaver. They need to find him, he needs to fix his fucking mess, and bring his daughter to heel. Or Skinpainter will. And none of that will solve the problem growing all around them. The dead are loose, and soon, the Emperor. Their old enemy riding the currents of death, stringing together his consciousness, pearl by shattered pearl, from among his former subjects. There might just be time to stop him. For that, Skinpainter needs Shroudweaver. And somehow, they need to reach the Emperor’s prison; the black rock, and the lake miles below.
The dead race ahead of them, fast as breath. They feel the Emperor’s call too. Skinpainter follows, swirling in the eddies of battle. There’s no point in engaging the chaos that wracks the mountain, where there are only their friends to fight now, this far down. Pockets of uninfected soldiers are pressed back into archways, against tables and walls, battling tooth and nail against the dead riding their injured friends, switching sides at the barest cut. Skinpainter keeps their head low, lets the pattern pull them deeper. The only way to salvage this is to get to the Emperor, and somehow bind him again. There’s no time to take stock, to gather anything more than an impression of broken chairs and upturned tables, hints of desperate, failed stands.
All of it is just strands in the weave, the whole pattern is so much bigger. This battle just one more in an endless succession. How many loved ones have they lost now? How much time have they spent shaping the larger tapestries, snipping small bright threads with a weary sigh? Skinpainter presses their lips together and rolls their hood tighter across their skull. A whisper of frustration scratches at their spine. This time needs to be different.
Their scalp itches, their short coarse hair prickling with sweat. Close now, they can taste Shroudweaver in the air, breathing in that gunpowder stink that only a southern corpse caller could have.
He’s closer than they’d thought possible. Just around the corner, and about to die.
Skinpainter sees red threads flicker in the darkness, and sprints for them, heart surging.
They are not alone.
Blades spring from the shadows. They see a broken thing that was once a stall-keeper, his hands ragged from a thousand small cuts, his face still studded with the smashed bottle that killed him. Shroudweaver has him sighted too. Moving his feet incrementally, he lifts his hands a fraction and red thread licks the poor man’s brow, which blossoms with gold fire. The weaver catches his falling body in tight-strung hands and opens his mouth for a benediction, a few words of Aestering grace.
As those half-remembered words fill the air, Skinpainter feels the pattern in their mind blossom with danger and lights their old muscles with fire. From the shadows ahead of them, quiet as a cat, comes one of Crowkisser’s long grey men. He’s spattered and weary, one cheek torn with a boathook scar that catches wetly in the light. But he’s light on his feet and so fast. A damn sight faster than Skinpainter’s tired bones, his toes used to climbing rigging and undeterred by mountain rock. A slim, flat blade twirls between his fingers as he dives for the weaver. Skinpainter’s not going to be fast enough. They scream a desperate warning and fling a hand forwards. Startled, Shroudweaver turns, his face alert, neck exposed. The long man’s blade falls.
Skinpainter winces, arcs their fingers out, and lets the ink leave their skin. Strands of black punch through the air and into the long man’s eye. The scream that leaves him is a stretched, thin thing. He drops his blade and falls to the floor, fingers scrabbling against the stone. As he squirms, Skinpainter draws level with Shroudweaver, panic draining from them like water as they feel the pattern knit again.
