‘Yes’, says the rightmost.
‘Excellent,’ Skinpainter purrs. And their voice is softened butter, and the hearth of home. ‘I’ll go and tell Kinghammer that this misunderstanding has melted away like ice before spring. Take care, dearest ladies.’
They step into the shadows again, turning towards Kinghammer’s chambers.
Alone now, the Singers look at each other. They say nothing, but the song flows between them. Moving in breath, in the flicker of an eye, in the blush of skin. The dead and the living singing. The pulse of blood keeping time. The metre of the mountain, and the high notes. The flourish of hawks, and the thrum of change.
Two women, elderly, slight and frail. Staring into each other’s eyes, and seeing in that reflected light the split between the world that might have been, and the world that must now inevitably come.
33
Mark the stock precisely on the brow and tongue
if grazing the higher pastures, place a tar-salt brand
on the rightmost foot.
—Practicalities of the Longer Years, Softcatch, herder
‘… and let no man do you harm.’
Swift, precise strokes, brush and needle working over skin like a feeding bird.
The echo of the crowd like celebrants.
do you harm.
The broad honeycomb of the Stump above their heads, its paths worn smooth by the feet of generations, its caverns roiling with the echoes of the ritual.
Quickfish stands amid the gathered people of Thell and feels deeply alone. Distantly there is the sound of bells, doubled and discordant. The needle dips, spits, colours. Geometrics of stunning intricacy, black on red on white. The colours of the city; blood and bone and stone.
A half-stripped man sits on raised steps, the crowd clustered around him young and old alike, but almost all of them lean, hard as mountain rock. The tattooist works over his shoulders, weaving a right-angled web, her head dipped low in concentration. Her short brown hair is marked with ritual scars, laced with charms that rattle softly with each twist and turn. At her side stands a small cup of some clear spirit that she swirls around her mouth every time she licks the needle clean of ink. Her lips are tight against his cheek, whispering words to him that he needs to echo back. With every square completed, he repeats the refrain.
‘Know the dead. Honour the dead. Let them be still in you.And as they are you … let no man do you harm.’ A pause in the incantation as the tattooist’s head dips, as her teeth skirt shoulder blades and bite deep. Blood flows, pools in the corners and lines of the forming geometrics, fills them precisely. Not a drop escapes.
The lights above hiss and spit, fuelled by the same bright energy that pulses through the rest of the Stump, some kind of sorcery that Quickfish has never seen worked before. Under their glare, the blood stiffens and hardens. Over and over the process is repeated, the hall filled with soft, insistent call and response, the voices of the crowd as steady and regular as the patterns that gradually thread over the man’s shoulders and spine.
By the time they are finished, the man’s back is a sea of squares. He moves, stretches, and the geometrics shift softly, riding against muscle and tendon.
The tattooist staggers as she inks the final line, falls, is caught by willing, ready hands. She disappears into the shadows of the Stump. In the distance, a bell tolls.
Quickfish glances across at Roofkeeper. He looks vaguely sick, fingers tugging at his beard, like there’s a thought in his head that he doesn’t like.
Quickfish leans across, runs his chin against his cheek. ‘Go on then.’
Roofkeeper smiles. ‘That obvious? OK, fine. I miss Hesper. I’m not sure we should have come here. I don’t think these people can help us.’ He pauses, coughs out the incense-thick air. ‘Or want to help us. You’ve seen what Icecaller’s like. We’re a joke to her.’
Quickfish sucks at his teeth, slips his fingers into Roofkeeper’s hand. ‘Maybe. Maybe. I don’t see what other choice we have right now.’
Roofkeeper watches as the crowd disperses, flowing up and down into the other levels of the Stump. They hadn’t been allowed to explore much yet, but he’d quickly figured out that the portion of the city which jutted out from the mountain was just a sliver of something much larger. Multiple storeys, running up and down, maybe even into the bedrock, or the caverns beneath.He could feel them under his feet, a sense of something vast and echoing.
A little like those moments on the very edge of a roof. Hanging by nothing but a few feet of rope and harness. Your belly clutched by the wind, and acres of hurling air between you and the ground.
All these people had to go somewhere; there were a couple of hundred in this room at least. Factor that up by the size of the mountain, and Thell was holding two, three thousand. Somewhere. None of them particularly helpful.
He turns to Quickfish. ‘Just because this might be our only option doesn’t mean I have to like it. How long have we been here now? Two days? Three? What do we actually know about these people? What have they actually offered us, other than insults and’ – he waves his hand after the crowd – ‘whatever that was.’
He watches Quickfish’s mouth open to correct him. Holds up a finger.
