Chapter 31 #2
‘I can.’ She crosses her legs. ‘Look, I understand how it’s been.
We were fresh out of a war, last thing we needed was a whole new catastrophe crawling onto our doorstep to die.
We’d lost enough. You’d lost enough. Wee monkey-nuts there needed some peace to grow up in.
All the kids in this echoing madhouse needed a bit of breathing space. ’
‘No arguments here’. Kinghammer ties off Nigh’s hair with a few twists of ribbon, and sets her down. She squats and watches her sister, fiddling with the click and shift of tile.
Icecaller leans forwards. ‘Get ready to argue, father mine. I get it, but it was a mistake. We built all this because of them. Because they got off their arse and helped us when no one else would. Were they slow? Sure. Did it all go quite to plan? No. But they were there. They showed up. The Fallons showed up, and that spooky pair you barely even mention. Shipwright. Shroudweaver.’
He opens his mouth and she holds up a finger.
‘Ah! Be patient. Don’t think I haven’t seen how you, Skin, Bell, and the singing twins all carefully dance around the subject when we’re planning for the future.
And I get it. But we can’t sail a ship over a reef by pretending it’s not there.
We need to know the shape of it. Where it will cut.
Where we need to make ourselves strong.’
Kinghammer’s expression changes, and he keeps his mouth shut.
‘And Quickfish? This isn’t even official.
This is a boy who lost his mother, and aren’t we in some kind of position to feel a shaved hair of sympathy towards that?
Stone and spit, we might even be able to do something about it.
I’ve seen Skin work. I’ve seen what Steel can do with ink, and she’s still just learning. ’
‘It’s a …’
‘Risk,’ she finishes. ‘It is, but I’ll tell you what’s riskier. Sitting with our fingers up our holes until the rest of the world comes knocking.’
She slips an arm around his shoulders. ‘Think of it this way. Think how grateful they will all be if we help that boy. Quickfish is the only thing Fallon has left. A puff-headed, undergrown hope for the future. We don’t even need to succeed. We just have to try.’
She taps his temple. ‘We owe it to them. We owe it to ourselves. And it’s the smart thing to do.’
Kinghammer sighs. Nigh echoes him, for fun. ‘I raised you smart after all, eh? Too smart.’
Icecaller’s grin is wide and unrepentant. ‘Just smart enough to take over from you when your last marble finally rolls onwards.’
Kinghammer stands, stretches, goes back to the bowl and mirror to finish up. Nigh traipses after him. He pulls on a loose shirt, and then a heavy jacket to keep out the chill. He talks to Icecaller’s rippled reflection as he works.
‘I take your point, but we can’t have this out in open council. There’s too many unknown quantities. If this is what Quickfish wants, there has to be no surprises. No dissenters. We need them all on board.’
Icecaller stands, scoops Nigh up en route.
‘Oh, easy then. No strong personalities in this mountain at all. Not like you’re cheek by jowl with a couple of wild sorcerers and two auld biddies who see the future in each other’s farts.
’ She kisses him on the cheek. ‘We do have to help though. So we can sleep at night.’
He grunts noncommittally as she sits Nigh onto her shoulders and backs towards the door. ‘Good luck, mighty Kinghammer. Smack ’em into line. What’s one old bellringer and a couple of tooth-suckers anyway?’
She steps on the toe first, then stumbles into legs, a long torso, and robes clacking with cold, black wood. The skin underneath is barely different, lean and hard.
Belltoller puts a hand on her shoulder, and gently steadies her. ‘What indeed, young Icecaller?’
Ice looks up. Belltoller’s hair falls over her brow, and a thin, dark smile cuts the long bones of her face. ‘I rather suppose we will find out.’
‘I … yeah … because, I mean. Nigh and I …’
‘You can go,’ Belltoller says. Icecaller shoots a strangled look at her da, but he’s no use, already pivoting to face this new intrusion.
She shrugs helplessly, and Nigh waves cheerily as the pair retreat into the corridor that’ll pull them back into less judgemental areas of the Stump.
As Icecaller turns the corners of the dark rock, two slight shadows flick past her, heads bowed, beads rattling.
The Deadsingers are headed in exactly the same direction Belltoller just stalked, cutting through the half-light of the Stump’s passageways like slinky little minnows in the wake of a shark.
Ice winces and taps Nigh’s feet. ‘Shall we let the old folks tear each other to pieces, maggot?’
Nigh plants a damp kiss right on her sister’s scalp, and she retches.
‘Feels like a wet little agreement to me. Let’s get breakfast, and go see the new kids, while Da breaks some eggs.’
A little away, Belltoller watches the pair go with faint amusement.
She stands perfectly still, but her robes rise and fall, as if with some small unseen air.
Her hands are folded neatly in front of her, deep lines and strong wrists.
The heavy braids of her hair frame a face that is sharp, stark, amused.
‘How bad indeed?’
She watches Kinghammer as he composes himself, all the familiar lines hardening. This isn’t their first disagreement, and it won’t be their last.
He starts to speak, and she raises a finger. ‘Wait. The sisters are coming.’
The Deadsingers arrive shortly after, flanking Belltoller where she stands.
Kinghammer’s eyes narrow. ‘Ladies. Do you want to sit?’
‘No,’ Belltoller says. ‘This won’t take long.’
The Deadsingers nod in unison.
Kinghammer pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘I’ve just had Caller and the kid barracking me, so can this wait?’
‘No,’ Belltoller says. A flicker of a smile plays over her face.
Kinghammer sighs. ‘Right then. Let’s get it over with. Say your piece.’
Belltoller glances down at the other two women. ‘If you’ll allow, sisters?’
They nod.
‘Hammer, you’ll forgive me being direct. We are both too old to be anything but. The current course of action is unsound.’
He laughs at that, and she frowns.
‘Unsound? I thought it was a joke. You know? Bells?’
Belltoller’s eyes are like two slips of agate set in a damp log. ‘Hilarious. I mean the boys. The Southerners. Fallon’s son, and the other attachment.’
Kinghammer nods. ‘Popular topic this morning. Everyone wants to state their case before I have both legs in my breeches.’
The Deadsingers chuckle, a single, soft slither of mirth.
Belltoller doesn’t. She steps closer, almost silent, the soft boots of her trade barely scuffing the stone.
‘Every second we have them here is a risk. It draws eyes to us. First Hesper, then her.’
‘I know that, Bell. I was thinking that myself. Ice says the boy is here to try and save his mother.’
Belltoller hisses between her teeth. ‘Of course. That’s all little boys ever think about. Mum and Dad can’t die, because they are the world and the centre.’
She waves an arm, the wood charms at her wrist clashing. ‘We have a mountain of mothers and fathers, Hammer. A mountain that we need to keep safe. We don’t do that by pulling them into another war.’
‘Scared of a fight, Bell?’
Her face drops, the composure broken for a second, before that glacial calm reasserts itself. ‘Of course I am. You should be too. And don’t you dare imply I’m a coward. After what I did for you? For this city? For our people?’
Kinghammer raises his hands like he’s gentling a horse. ‘Easy, we’re still on the same side. We want the same things.’
‘Do we, Hammer? Or do you want to be something impossible? You cannot be a ruler and a father and a friend. No matter what we owe the Fallons or anyone else, that is done. That kind of sympathy is weakness. It’s water in the rock – the slightest shock and we’ll shatter.’
He grimaces. ‘Ice says we owe it to them. That we can’t not help, not if we want to keep our conscience clear.’
Belltoller’s eyes flash, the agate running with hill lightning. ‘My conscience is clear. I will see the rest of the world break before we put our people into danger.’
She runs her hands through her hair and sucks her teeth. ‘This is precisely the problem. Icecaller is too soft for the work and you are becoming too gentle for it. Peace has dulled your edge.’
‘Careful, Bell.’
‘Careful? The time for careful is long past. We need action. We need to put ourselves first. You need to remember where the centre lies.’
‘It’s a big world, Bell.’
‘Don’t fucking patronise me. Pay attention to what that world is doing to us. We are already tainted by what happened in the South. What’s your name, Kinghammer? What’s the name of your daughter? Either one?’
She raises an eyebrow, and waits. He does search for it, reflexively, but finds only the hole which swallowed the words, oily and slick in his mind.
She sees it on his face. ‘Exactly. The world has come for us already, and that was with our borders sealed.’
‘Shattering,’ the singers say. ‘The falling of one into another, and the making of a third. The breaking of the gold, and the singing of the dark. The mother, and the eye, and the sweet thread of sorrow.’
Kinghammer snarls. ‘Spare me.’
‘Sorry, my lord,’ the left Singer says. ‘It comes unbidden.’
‘Sorry my lord,’ the right Singer says, then softer. ‘Amethyst. Cat bone. Flint.’
‘What?’ Both Belltoller and Kinghammer, briefly united in confusion.
‘I said apologies, my lord,’ the right Singer smiles. The geometrics on her hands seem to twist in the morning light as it crawls down the wall.
Kinghammer snorts. ‘I suppose these two mystic coots agree with you?’
Belltoller nods. ‘The singers have listened. To the wind, the dead, the things that move between the dead. They can see the path we are being pulled down. They tell me it has death at the end of it.’
The twins chatter like mice in the walls. ‘Death coming to meet you, death coming to move you, to make you dance. To be a poor father, a headless mother.’
Kinghammer slams his hand down. The mirror rattles.
‘Enough. By the binding and the blood, enough. We are not so faint and cowardly as to shy from helping one boy and his mother. His mother, who fought for us. Who lifted the blades when no one else would.’
‘The past will not save you for honouring your debts, Hammer.’ Belltoller’s face is forlorn. ‘The present is here, and the future will eat us alive if we do not take care.’
She steps forwards again, puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘I say this because I am your friend, and I have been your friend longer than anyone in this cold rock. Do not welcome them in.’
Kinghammer looks at her hand. The neatly manicured nails. The deep seams of work.
‘We can argue like this in private, Bell, but we can’t do this in open Council.
’ He takes her hand and removes it, gently.
‘That goes for you two as well. If you’re worried about cracks, then the four of us butting heads in front of every pot-boy and rat-wrangler is going to send a clearer message than anything we do with Quickfish. ’
He looks Belltoller dead in the eye. Her breath runs fast beneath the robes, her heart hammering. There’s a tightness in his own chest. ‘I need you on my side, Bell. The Singers too. We need to help this kid. It’s a little thing. An easy kindness.’
Belltoller steps back. ‘There are no easy kindnesses, Kinghammer. Any ease we ever had drowned in the depths of this mountain. We do not get it back. We cannot earn it back. You’ll see. I can feel it. Like a black dog on my neck. This will doom us.’
He nods, resigned. ‘So it’s a no?’
‘It’s a no, Hammer. It has to be.’
Kinghammer sighs. ‘And from you too?’
The Singers look at each other, then nod. ‘No doors for the bloodwind, my lord. No bones for dog teeth.’
He looks at the three of them. ‘Clear as I’ll get, I suppose. Get out.’ It’s quiet, but he means it. Belltoller still stands uncertainly, and the last shred of his patience frays. ‘Get out. Give me some air. I need to think.’
The trio leave as softly as they came.
In his bedchamber, the Kinghammer sinks onto the edge of the bed, and tilts his gaze to the blue ice high above, to a glimmer of something there.
Maybe light. Maybe fire. Maybe the hunger of the glaciers creeping downwards once again.