‘We fucked up.’ It’s not an accusation, just an observation. She licks her lips, sucks at her gums. The faint taste of something sweet and spicy lingers.
She feels Shroudweaver nod.
‘Will he make it?’ It comes out drier than she meant, rasping the words. Her throat feels like a shaved plank.
‘Perhaps. I’m better at corpses.’ Shroudweaver’s voice is soft, rational. He sounds tired. Heistired. Long hours spent with Fallon, mending the great rips in the man’s body, salving the burns that crawled over his skin.
Working where the old bull had fallen.
She can read the guilt in his bones, in his wide eyes, his shallow breaths, his bird-cage ribs. He knows what’s coming. Best to get it over with.
‘You put a god in me.’
He nods. ‘I did. More or less. Something small, something hasty.’
The guilt hangs in his eyes like mist. ‘Borrowing a bit of power from the dead.’
Her ribs hold more than a borrowing. She feels fractured inside, filled with brittle glass and wet light.
She smiles sadly, sucks her gums again. That sugary taste lingers. ‘I thought you said raising a god burnt out everything it touched.’
Shroudweaver winces. ‘A controlled burning. A few scraps of dead soul. We were desperate. I would never,’ his shoulders slump. ‘I would never.’
‘Seems like you already did.’ A little cruel, that, but she can’t help it. When she turns her head, someone else’s ghosts dance across her vision.
‘What was I like?’ she asks, curious, in spite of the fire on her tongue. Slipping the words through that golden hum in her ears and over the electric feeling skirting the edge of her teeth.
He runs shaking fingers through his hair. A few strands drift loose and waft slowly to the floor.
‘Terrifying. Beautiful. Perfect.’
She puts a hand on his shoulder, pulls him close. ‘I never want to be perfect.’ She’s impressed by how steady she sounds. Inside her chest, someone’s screaming. Not her own voice. Not even close.
His reply is quiet, muffled by the weight of her body. ‘Do you forgive me?’
Does she? What’s she forgiving, exactly? Nothing worse than the years before this. She knew what she signed up for. And despite what Fallon says, she has never flinched from a fight.
She holds him tighter, her fingers exploring his shoulder blades, his spine. ‘Always, dearest. Always and ever.’
And even if it’s not easy, it’s true, and it’s what he needs. She sees him come loose, and fall into her. There. Was that so hard?
She tightens the hug, ‘You can’t be perfect either. Deal?’
His voice is quiet, reflective. ‘Perhaps.’
He’s not really picked up on the imperative. She wonders whether to push it.
There’s a pause as she feels the guilt curl in his brain, stretching its little sharp teeth. ‘I’m a long way from perfect. Other end of the scale, I think,’ he says. ‘Do you know what they would have done to me, in the Aestering? For what I just suggested?’
She turns as Declan coughs raggedly and holds a cloth to his lips, catching the thick black clots, cleaning the corners of his mouth. She knows.
‘Do you think he understands the cost? The bodies? The risk?’
Shroudweaver’s voice seems far away. ‘We left a lot of dead up there. And they all need to burn.’
Shipwright bites her tongue and fights down a flare of annoyance. She doesn’t look at him as she brushes hair away from Declan’s sweat-slick head. ‘Of course he understands. He’s squared it already.’ She laughs dryly. ‘Anything that stops thatslitright?’ She turns to face him. ‘Except we both know she’s a lot more than that.’
Shroudweaver moves closer to her. He lifts Fallon’s lips and pushes his gums, watching the blood flush back. ‘We do. But I have to stop her. For her sake. Before she goes any further.’
