Chapter 64
Little larks. Tongues of the same. A scattering of hillsheaf. A quart of clear water. The darker berries from beneath the hill. Two hours over a low flame.
—Good Food for Bad Work, Coglifter
A day later. Dregs of soup in the pot. Not her finest batch, but it’s calmed her down enough to talk about this shit with a full stomach. Hollow blood made her panicky. More panicky. And it was already a panicky topic.
Shipwright clears her throat. ‘So, even if we do break Kisser at Thell, what then?’
Shroudweaver laughs. His hands are busy, working small rounds of dough on a flat stone, scattering the tops with seeds, ready to bed down over the embers of the fire.
‘Good evening to you too. Small talk out the window then?’
She glares at him, sluicing the pot and tipping it into the grass.
‘I’ve been wrestling a seaspit stomach since you brought this up. Humour me.’
He levers himself up slowly, painfully, feeling the old tightness in his legs again. She can see the stoop in his tendons pulling down his whole body. The road’s hard on him.
‘Ideally, we capture her. The composite should just hammer her to knees. Along with whatever and whoever she’s brought with her.’
Shipwright breathes in slowly. ‘So this depends on you raising something more powerful than Crowkisser. Oh. Good. From what I’ve heard about her since the south fell, that’ll be impressive.’
He smiles narrowly. ‘I suspect at least some of that is rumour feeding on rumour. She’s smart, but young. Power takes time. Always.’ He pauses. ‘Do you want to get your boots?’
She shoots him a look. ‘What?’
‘Do you want to get your boots?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Because this scares you. And you’re happier when you’re working on them.’
Shipwright’s silent for a minute, jaw muscles working. ‘You … ugh.’
She turns, reaches to unhook them from her kitbag. ‘Not a word.’ She gets her kit, sets it out neat – boots, rag, polish to keep the rain off – dips the cloth in and sets to.
‘Socks could use work too, judging by the state of those toes.’
‘Shut it.’
He shuffles next to her, stretches out a hand. ‘Give one over then.’
He shoves his wrist inside, coats the cloth and gets to work. ‘I can control it. I know I can.’ His voice is low, tentative.
She buffs, turns the boot. The moon’s an odd one tonight, buttered by rising clouds of summer pollen.
‘I’m not saying you can’t, but it seems very final.’
His nod is curt. ‘It has to be, I think. If we don’t knock her down hard, she’s going to bring to bear whatever tricks she has to hand.’
Shipwright stops, digs in her pack, pops a twist of something fibrous in her mouth. ‘And we don’t know what those tricks might be?’
Shroudweaver keeps working, the boot buckles chiming softly. ‘Not really. I could hazard a guess.’
She chews, shuffles the clump around her mouth with a thumb. ‘Go on then. Not like I’m scared witless already.’
He smiles softly. ‘Course not.’
He sets the boot down, counts the options off on his fingers.
‘Easier to say what they aren’t, maybe. Not shroudweaving. She never had the patience for it.’ He laughs. ‘Never had patience at all.’
Shipwright spits. ‘That’s not as charming as you think, Shroud. We don’t all have the luxury of being her father to keep us safe.’
He holds up a finger. ‘Still. Not shroudweaving.’
‘Not spinner magic either,’ she interjects.
He looks at her. ‘No?’
‘Definitely not. Not personal enough, not local enough. Whatever magic Kisser’s using, she’s doing it over miles and to herself.
Spinners don’t work like that. You stick ’em, one or two at a time on people or things.
To make a network, or to make one big enough to push the kind of magic she’s using?
’ Shipwright shakes her head. ‘Not going to happen. If we ever knew how to do that, we don’t now. ’
‘Plus,’ she says, wriggling a sock off, ‘Running them for too long on living stuff? There’s consequences. Frays things down. You can gallop a horse, but you can’t gallop it a thousand miles without its heart going off. Same thing.’
Shroudweaver watches the sock, the sudden appearance of needle and thread. ‘I didn’t mean you had to do those now.’
She ties off with her teeth, looks at him over the knot. ‘No time like the present.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘but …’
‘But what?’ she glowers, her face stark in the firelight.
‘You should really just let that pair die.’
She growls. ‘They’re not the only old, frayed things I could just let die. You watch it.’
Shroudweaver picks the boot back up. ‘Ouch. We could get you new ones.’
‘Oh, they do good ship socks in Thell, do they?’ she asks, a spark in her eyes.
‘They might do.’
She jabs the needle at him. ‘You only counted off one murderous magical option. Stop stalling me. We need to list all the horrifying possibilities. There’s still a risk I’ll sleep tonight.’
He sets the boot down again, uselessly. ‘OK, not shroudweaving, not spinner magic. I don’t think it’s host magic either, never had a whiff of the gold around her. And she wouldn’t touch it after her mother.’
No quips this time. Shipwright nods, moves a little closer. ‘So what then?’
He shoots a glance at her. ‘I can hear you chewing that rubbish.’
She spits into the fire, grins with teeth beetle-red.
‘Keep me awake for nights on end in ways that don’t involve kissing and I’ll cope however I want.’
He sighs. ‘It’s just a bit …’
She leans in, pulls a sticky strand out of her front teeth.
‘Distracting? So’s wondering if you’re going to die in front of that fucking bone mountain. Stop stalling.’
‘I hate you.’
‘No you don’t. Thoughts.’
He waves his hand. ‘Fine. So if it’s none of that, then it has to be something either very new or very old. I’d put my guess on some kind of body magic. Or possession. Those crows either come from somewhere, or she’s making them.’
Shipwright frowns. ‘Making them? From what?’
He looks at her flatly. ‘Meat.’
‘Oh.’ She stops chewing. ‘Gross.’
He nods. ‘Probably. But that’s just her personal magic. She must have some other stuff going on, to get as far as she’s done. To do what she’s done.’
Shipwright darns and loops. ‘Like what?’
He shrugs. ‘Some kind of prophetic skill. She could have picked something up at the temple in Astic, or before. The hosts used to be able to dream the future. Maybe she found something of theirs. Even that’s got its problems though.’
Shipwright turns the second sock inside out. ‘Course it does. I don’t know why anyone bothers with magic.’
Shroudweaver’s eyes go wide. ‘Says the queen of spinners.’
‘S’different,’ she says. ‘That’s just practical. It’s a tool. You can put it down once you’re done.’
He rubs his eyes, ‘You might actually have a point. But anyway, prophecy’s not something that comes easy. You have to have it in your bones. Whispers under the skin.’
She shivers. ‘You creep.’
‘It’s true. Unless you’re born to it, trained in it, you might not even know you can do it. The hosts used to be the best at it. Something about having a god inside you. Thins you out, gives you a stronger connection between your blood and your soul. Lets your mind slip in and out easier.’
Shipwright shifts uncomfortably. ‘Thanks for that news.’
He purses his lips. ‘You’re fine. The weaving barely touched you. It takes … months, years for a god to change a person.’
He finally sets the boot down.
She looks at it with a raised eyebrow. ‘That it?’
‘What do you mean? It’s done.’
She clicks her tongue, picks it up and sets to work. ‘So if we’re saying Crowkisser would never have anything like a host’s power, where’s she pulling the juice for this prophecy from? How’s she not suffering for it?’
Shroudweaver looks pained. ‘I’m not sure she isn’t.
Suffering, I mean. At the Aestering we were always taught prophecy dislocates you.
Pulls you out of your own skin and shoves the future in.
Your body sort of soaks up … potentialities.
Your mind slips free to look at whatever you want.
Then when your ritual, whatever it is, ends, your mind and your body slam back into each other.
Your mind remembers what it can, and your body absorbs the dregs of the future that are clinging to your bones. ’
Shipwright puts the boot down. ‘That’s messed up.’
He nods. ‘Magic usually is. But if you’re good at it? Or you don’t care about going a little mad? Or you think it’s worth it …’ He shrugs. ‘The advantages are pretty huge.’
Shipwright begins unrolling bedrolls, staking their tents in the lee of the wind.
‘Could she be watching us right now?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not directly. The prophet sees as well as whatever they’re using to see. Crows aren’t great in the dark.’
‘That’s a relief,’ she says, paying out line.
‘Of course, if my darling daughter’s actually sifting the future, she might have heard this conversation already.’
‘That’s not. Can we do anything about it?’
Shroudweaver takes a spike, twists the guy rope around. ‘If we were talking about something essential, sure. A little pushing out on silver threads can create … static. But … it’s tiring. She can hear us wonder if she wants. I doubt she will though.’
Shipwright smooths cloth. ‘Why not?’
He looks up from fumbling with a knot. ‘Because prophecy takes you out of yourself. It’s a complete loss of control. She couldn’t stand it for long. My guess is she only uses it when she absolutely has to. If at all.’
Shipwright nods. ‘That’s some consolation, I suppose.’ She crawls inside the canvas, tests it. Her voice muffled. ‘Could someone …?’
Shroudweaver steps closer to her shadow. ‘Kill her?’
‘I didn’t want to say it.’
He comes inside, sits down. ‘We might need to, at some point.’ He shifts until his legs are crossed. ‘As to whether we could. Possibly. If it weren’t for Slickwalker.’
She grimaces. ‘Shit. Of course.’ She looks down at him on the bedroll. ‘Don’t get comfortable, your lordship. The horse.’
She offers a hand, and he takes it grudgingly.