The room that opens out in front of them must have been a bunkhouse. Its alcoves filled with colourful blankets, cushions, long, low tables and soft light.
The whole space is now crammed with wailing children and bleeding bodies. And between the children and the teeth of the mountain’s dead, a ragged group.
He spies Shipwright first. Of course he does, but even she looks different down here, bruised, pent up, her fingers working at something brief and brass that mutters and clucks. The gun struggles against its harnesses and he tenses reflexively. There’s a young woman sprawled at her feet, shorn blonde hair, savagely undercut, matted with gore. Her mouth is cannibal red, the tattoos on her body writhing like worms on a skillet, ink threaded thinly over sharp wounds. She’s obviously infected, ridden with the dead. Crouched over her is Skinpainter, their fingers moving lightly against her slumped body. The air is thick with saltpetre smoke-stink. Their red ribbons are scorched beyond reason, and a bruise purples their side beneath torn clothes. Blood under the skin, Slickwalker suspects. Good.
There’s so many dead here. A dark-haired young woman with her throat torn out. A tousle-headed young man sprawled immobile across her, his breath a thin rattling gasp. A bearded warrior with the look of the plains people feverishly trying to clear his airways, struggling with an arm broken so fiercely the bone swings from the skin. The dying boy might be Fallon’s son. Which would make this a whole new kind of nightmare.
Behind them, others, old and young – bloodstained warriors, children, one little girl who watches him with blackbird eyes, crying quietly with the silent shake of something small and alone.
He starts forwards, is stalled by Crowkisser’s hand on his wrist, her nails cutting into his skin. Her arm, her whole body is shaking.
It takes a second for Shroudweaver to see his daughter, and a second more for him to recognise her. A smile flits across his face like a bird across an empty sky. She doesn’t move at first, then edges a step or two closer, fingers clenching. Magic flickers along the line of her wrists, flares, and gutters out.
Her shoulders cut in a tense slash, ribs held tight. No one moves. Slickwalker wills her to do it, to put an end to him. Opposite, Shroudweaver does nothing. Leaves his hands slack, threads unwound. He watches his daughter carefully, his eyes tired, softened with sorrow.
Slickwalker can’t even imagine what she’s feeling. How many years since her mother died? Not long enough for the scars to heal.
Crowkisser steps a little closer in another flicker of feathers, like a torc up her neck, then slithering down her spine. The room flinches. Shipwright holds herself like a greyhound in traces.
Her father opens his arms, and lets the threads fall to the floor; raises his chin a little, eyes wet.
A shudder leaves his daughter, a long tight breath that hangs in her throat like cupped water. Her hands mirror her father’s.
She takes a step closer, then another, until something breaks, and she picks up speed in a silent flurry of feet and stifled tears.
Slickwalker watches her father draw her close, press her forehead against his chest, twine his fingers in her hair, and look at her with a face filled with light and longing.
Slickwalker watches her father, and unclasps the gun.
80
The song can be sung again \ and again
the voice changes
the song can still be sung
She’s so slight. So thin. Shroudweaver can feel her shake against him, the sharp angles of her shoulders, the line of each rib. She smells just like she should, like she always has, like the salt-sea and heather honey. He remembers the weight of her dreaming against his shoulder, the warmth of her breath rising and falling as he tucked curls behind small ears. The ears the same, the jaw below them grown sharp and strong. His hair. Her mother’s beautiful bones.
His little daughter grown to a real person over all these long years, an animate thing that holds him with long-fingered hands, chipped nails. The dark line of her brows presses down on her face, her lungs struggling, struggling with the word.
She turns her face up to him. ‘Dad.’
It shakes something loose inside him. He feels an old coiled spring unfurl, a bird fluttering under his bones. She’s smaller than he remembers. Slight against the shouting that’s filling the room. He tunes it out, focuses on her.
She wipes blood from her face with the back of a hand. ‘Hi, Dad.’
‘Hello, love,’ he says. The words flow out of him before he knows it’s happening, like water over rocks. He pulls her closer, kisses her forehead, smooths tangles from her hair, wipes a smudge of something dark from her cheek. ‘Hello, love.’ Again, more certainly.
She hangs in Shroudweaver’s arms for a moment. He rests his chin in the hollow of her neck, looks over her shoulder to seeSlickwalker watching him, eyes flat as a snake. They tilt their head, smiling thinly.
Shroudweaver lets go of her awkwardly. She steps back immediately, the connection broken.
Shipwright moves between them, breaks the last lingering link. ‘Shroud? This is not the time.’
A voice from his right. Roofkeeper.
‘Please, someone. He’s dying. He can’t breathe.I can’t make him breathe.’
