Chapter 3
other temples
whalebone arch
willow bower
lover’s arms
mother
In the city on the shore, the crows return. She waits for them, watches their wings beat over lamp-lit streets, between smoke-stained buildings.
People are avoiding the curfew, she notices, in small defiant clumps. Tiny rebellions. Irritating.
The crows descend, in ones and twos, pressing themselves against her body, clustering on the pale branches of her arms. Their small insistent hearts hammering with secrets.
She opens her mouth and they crawl inside, sharp claws on her lips and tongue, small bones crunching under her teeth.
She swallows feathers and blood, feels them wriggle down her throat and settle in her stomach. Their quiet cawing threads through her muscles. Their knowledge fills her brain.
She swallows the flock piece by piece, as the lamps wink out and the streets are filled by loyal men with sharp blades.
The ship is long gone, sped across the sea, its body mended and its sails filled with a new god.
She’d almost had them, Shipwright and Shroudweaver both.
That would have been a thing, an end to at least one annoyance.
She couldn’t move anything up the coast because of Hesper and the remnants of her bastard fleet; couldn’t move anything overland while the republic in Thell was marking its borders in bronze and blood.
So she stayed here – her people stayed here – slowly starving.
She steps to the side of the room, pours a pitcher of water and begins to wash herself. The water darkens with swirls of blood and feather.
It takes some time for her hands to scrub clean. The blood has worked in deep, under the nails, dark against her skin. She works studiously, precisely, like a surgeon, feeling her throat contract as the last scraps of bone and flesh wriggle downwards.
The Crowkisser seems small in this room, as if it were designed for someone larger, bolder. She could get lost in the shadows of the great pillars. Her thin hair could be pulled by the wind that howls through the shattered panes and be lost.
When she straightens and stands her spine is picked out in the moonlight like a half-finished carving. The harshness of her breathing is the only sign that she might be anything less than utterly calm.
Inside her skull, her mind runs like a rat.
Testing out theories. Scurrying to conclusions.
None of it made sense. She’d won; had won for three years now.
Three years where her enemies had refused to die, and where she’d been kept penned in the south by a mountain of fundamentalists, and a handful of ships’ captains.
She swirls water, spits redly. One ship the worst of them, ruddy as the dawn, and pushed along by some foreign magic she barely understood.
Sails always bright against the dark rocks of the coast. Every one of its damned voyages heralded by the lighting of the signal beacons.
Great piles of bleached wood, coughing flame up into the sky.
The Teeth, the people of this city called them. The people of Astic. Her people, looking up at her over cups or across scattered maps and shaking their heads ruefully.
‘When the Teeth spit fire, the sea burns.’
And wasn’t that the truth? She sits, straightens the coarse line of her skirts, half spattered with blood, feather, other darknesses.
As long as the ship remained on the sea, she would never truly have won. Faster than the rest. Stronger. Worse than that, a symbol.
As long as that pair remained aboard the ship, that symbol actually held meaning. The last Shroudweaver. Perhaps the last Shipwright.
Her fingers run over the map before her, digging in.
Patience. She needs patience. Patience and a drink of water. And him, much though she hates to admit it.
As if the shadows hear her, he approaches from behind. Soft-booted in the half-light, announced only by the faint clink of harness and clasp, he steps lightly over tilted flagstones, strewn with the bones of small creatures and wet with the insistent, driving rain.
She steps quietly backwards into his opening arms and he pulls her towards him until she rests on her heels and can flick her eyes up precariously to meet his.
‘Long night, Crowkisser?’ he says, his lips grazing her neck as his fingers tighten against her ribs.
She opens her mouth to reply but her first words are feather and gristle. She coughs and wriggles free self-consciously.
‘Yeah, too long,’ she says, and her fingers flick anxiously at the corners of her lips, brushing away the ghosts of birds.
He steps towards her again, and staggers. Beneath his jacket, under the armour, there’s blood, ragged and spreading.
‘You’re hurt,’ she says, and it’s an accusation.
He shrugs apologetically, lopsidedly. ‘They got lucky.’
Crowkisser shakes her head tersely and walks towards him.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I got lucky. Which means you, you get to stay alive. And be safe.’ Each point punctuated by a prodding finger in the middle of his chest.
He winces and nods, slower than she is, less confident.
‘Fine, fine. I hear, I obey. Help me off with this, will you?’
The rifle over his shoulder is almost as tall as he is.
She slips behind him and unclasps buckles that retract back into the weapon with a satisfied hiss.
He stands clear, and Crowkisser does something quick and clever with her fingers.
The rifle clicks, folds, collapses, until it’s no more than a sullen, wrought, jagged spike in her hands, a foot long, if that.
It smells acrid and she sucks at her gums subconsciously.
‘Who was aboard?’
Another shrug. The Slickwalker is full of them tonight.
‘More of Fallon’s diehards,’ he mutters. ‘Change is hard for some people.’
Crowkisser purses her lips. ‘They shouldn’t take it out on you.’
For a second, his face flickers into something sharper, more remorseful.
‘They’re paid to. Besides, who else are they going to take it out on?’ He raises his arms in exasperation, ‘We pulled the trigger. We … we set all this in motion.’
His shoulders slump, the anger flows out of him like water. He holds her at arm’s length, runs a finger along the proud, sharp jaw he’s known since they were kids, remembering her jutting defiance at children twice her size, at anyone who said no.
‘We did this, Crowkisser. We can’t step back from that.’
Her eyes flick up to meet his and he flinches back in shock at their flat hardness.
‘We set them free.’ Crowkisser’s voice is the first stones of the landslide. ‘We set them all free.’ She pitches and cracks, boulders crashing in the mountain heights. ‘Every. Single. One. Of. Them.’ Her eyes are black fire and her voice is the roll of distant thunder.
He barely sees the slap coming, but feels the whip-crack sting on his cheek, spits blood into the dust and bones.
‘Every. Single. One.’ She repeats and her voice is hollow as the high valleys.
‘Every one,’ she says, in the husk of a whisper. He pulls her close with aching arms and feels her heart hammer against his chest.
‘Every one,’ and her breath lurches ragged and wet.
‘Oh gods,’ she breathes.
Slickwalker rocks her like a baby.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not anymore.’