She almost thumps the covers, but stops herself short of Fallon’s chest.
‘No need? Sure. Then why no messages from ouralliesafter the south melted to howling glass? I mean, Kinghammer always feared you. You were a shade too close to his enemies for anything else. But Skinpainter too? Quiet as a mouse for three whole years?’
She takes his shoulders, makes him look at her.
‘They never asked because they never wanted to see us again. And we never went, because we were scared of what we might find.’ She catches her breath, blowing a strand of hair clear of her face. ‘Admit it.’
Shroudweaver’s voice is quiet, clipped. ‘You’re right. I don’t find it particularly charming, but you’re right.’
Shipwright snorts. ‘Well, you’ve had years of charm. A little truth won’t kill you. But now’ – she gestures vaguely northwards – ‘now you want to go back. For the dead. For Fallon’s bloody composite.’
‘There’s no place like it,’ he says. ‘What happened there, what we did there? There’s more bodies in the fields of Thell than anywhere else.’ He rubs at tired eyes. ‘And the world’s thinnerthere. I can reach through easier, bind them tighter. And …’
‘And we’re desperate enough now,’ she finishes.
He pulls her a little closer. ‘Yes, we are. But not done, right?’
She tries to hold herself stiff, tries to keep some of that anger against her lips. Because he lied and he might well lie again. Yet, there’s his face, held in the light from the window, those same clean lines, and bright bones, those hollow cheeks. Those pale eyes watching her, waiting for the answer that will keep him going; that will keep them both going. One last light against the dark. Her anger drains like spring rain.
‘Not done, love. Not yet.’ And it’s still true, it still feels good to say. She steels herself, then pulls him close, lays her lips on the top of his head, breathes him in. ‘OK. This is going to happen, isn’t it? Again.’
He nods against her, his cheekbone pushing her shirt against her skin. ‘It has to. I’m out of ideas. Out of time.’
She holds him at arm’s length. ‘Thell, then.’
Shroudweaver’s smile could bury bodies. ‘Thell.’
28
the morrow
the barrow
the sorrow
the harrow
Thell. Shipwright had never even heard the name when she arrived in Hesper near enough two decades ago. Some godforsaken mountain city. The people here talked about it like something out of a folktale, or a nightmare.
‘Heart of the Empire,’ one old man had said, waggling a finger at her, his beard and tongue wet with drink. ‘Barely human, most of them. Never mind that cabal of wights at the top.’
She’d nodded politely, moved her seat further along the bar.
‘And him!’ His hand insistent on her shoulder. She’d shrugged it off but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Him. He’s the worst of the lot. Foul southern magics. He raises the dead.’
She’d smiled, and turned her back. At least, until he had moved his hand to her wrist and pulled her round.
‘He gave me this,’ the man said, pulling his shirt at the neck.
A scar on his jugular, two livid purple crescents, touching at the tips.
‘Leave the lady alone,’ the barkeep had said, but nothing she’d done could put the old sot off. He’d spun his tale from spit-flecked lips, and more than that. He’d called the man, the Emperor, by his name. By his real name. He’d probably called Shipwright by hers too, not that she’d ever be able to remember.
Whatever name-stealing magic Crowkisser had used in the south had somehow reached back into her memories, ripping names loose like stitches along a wrenched thread. Shipwrightcould recall most things, not with utter clarity, but with enough to get by. Yet every scrap of memory she had was scoured of names.
She could still feel them in her mind, the space they should take up oily, and slick.
