Chapter 46
He would not talk of the South aflame
but instead told the story of a host
who on watching his temple burn
found himself alight with a wilder fire
—On Swallowing Gold, Heartshamer
Three years later, back on Hesper’s low docks, Fallon watches the ship cast off.
He lets his eyes follow the rise of its keel for a moment and watches Shipwright’s hands on the wheel, the sure dance of her fingers, the corded strength of her arms battling against the reluctant helm. It’s all a little too familiar.
Memory’s a vile dog.
The stone and scut of the docks lurches under him, and in a second, in the flick of a gull’s wing, he’s back in the south, on the deck of the ship, feeling the flame of a dying city at his back, steadying the tremors in Shipwright’s arms as she strains at the tiller above a seething sea.
Somewhere overhead the sky tears with a wet shriek. He’s got more sense than to look up.
He tries to still the flicker of fear that’s running through his bowels. It’s not totally unfamiliar; late night in the pastures as a kid, and the glint of wolf eyes on the hills, things that want to eat you hanging just over your neck.
There’s a way to deal with it. Get out of your own fucking head. So he does. ‘You’ve got this,’ he says to Shipwright, steady as he can manage. She glances over her shoulder. There’s something a little unhinged at the edges of her eyes as she mouths a single word. ‘Shroud.’
Fallon nods and turns to check on Shroudweaver.
He can’t see him at first, among the lashing rigging and the smoke, the magnesium punch of a dying sky.
Then there he is, outlined in the first scalpel cut of thunder, one hand on the prow.
No, hand not on the prow, but lashed to it.
Red threads, corded and twined thick, burnt into the flesh of his arm, stuttering with silver light.
Weaving. His other hand outstretched to the shore, trailing ribbons like a cat’s cradle.
And in their wake, a beat behind, the dead.
Hungry, and bright and torn. And his. With every movement, every twist of his wrist, the souls of the dead chase Shroudweaver in a slipstream of loss. Fallon can feel the push of them, the power of them, their hunger. It’s terrifying. He fights the urge to leap overboard.
He staggers as the ship bucks with another detonation to starboard, another fallen star. Something massive crests in response and swallows it down. There’s an explosion in the deep, the water rosy with fresh blood.
The world is eating itself.
Fallon feels laughter well up inside him again. Dangerous. Keep it together. It’s only a few swift steps to Shroudweaver’s side. He wraps his arms around the man’s sliver of a waist, and whispers in his ear. ‘Bring ’em in, Shroud. You can do it.’
Shroudweaver’s smile is a thin thing, his eyes closed tight, caught in the shadow and rhythm of his work. But fuck him if he doesn’t smile. With a lunge, he hauls backwards, his wrists pulling like a conductor, a fisher, a surgeon.
Fallon braces against his back, feels the immense weight of a hundred stolen lives on the other end of the line, sees the desperate light in their eyes.
And then, like a fire kindling in a dark room, he realises what Shroudweaver is doing.
The ship rides on the hopes of the dying, like the crest of a wave.
And here the dead come, like a flock of birds, bright and chattering.
In over the thundering waves, away from the burning beach and its ragged sky.
Fallon watches Shroudweaver sketch their path home, watches his broken, bloody lips murmur the words they want to hear.
itsokI’llbehereI’myourbrotherI’myourfather
I’myoursonnothingislostnothingnothing
The dead throng him like a flock of starlings, filling the sails, their song bright and beautiful and broken.
Fallon watches their silver lines thread the shining waves, ducking and weaving to avoid the falling stars, twisted and guided by Shroudweaver’s dancing wrists. Too fast to follow, too fast to stop.
The eye wants them. Wants to hold them and pin them like flies in amber.
Fallon can tell that much, can feel it lowering over the fleeing dead like a drunken lover.
But who would stand still with someone they love calling them?
And Shroudweaver, he loves all these broken souls, he loves them in red thread and silver.
In smoke and blood. In something like prayer.
The dead flee the burning shore, and their frail, desperate hope pushes the ship to speeds beyond anything Fallon’s ever felt. A surge under his feet. Lifting and filling the timbers. Flaring up through his legs. Filling his hips, his heart with something bright and savage.
Laughter tears loose from his chest and reels off into the sky.
Beside him, he sees Shroudweaver’s face warm with sudden relief.
So when the girl appears on the shore, she hardly seems to matter.
A slim, frayed thing. Almost another walking corpse, her grey shift pressed against her bare legs by the scorching wind.
She staggers her way to the sea’s edge and stops, swaying slightly.
Fallon often thought he should have noticed the way the bent and broken vestiges of his army avoided her, circling like hyenas.
Should have wondered about the shattered remnants of gods dragging themselves from her path.
Should have taken some warning from the great eye twisting to focus on her, from the way it widened in sudden shock.
But all Fallon remembered of that day was the swaying girl’s upraised hand, fingers spread wide. And then the crows.
Memory’s a vile dog.
When he comes to, three years and too many leagues later, the dockside cobbles are slick with vomit.
His physicker helps him up with a frown and a heave, his soft stubbled face twisting disapprovingly.
Eventually, Fallon’s feet reel their way back into the heart of the city, but for a time, his mind remains in the past, out on the ocean, on the sea, in the shards of the burning south.