Chapter 68
Split the night down to blue.
—Northern slang for striking an impossible deal
Once they’re in, the days drip by like water down a well.
Thell holds itself tense, like a cornered beast.
Its people watch Shipwright and Shroudweaver as they move through the corridors, lean and wary. They eat well, but their food is served by hands that linger too long, or that flee like birds before storm. Their blankets are warm, but they wake to watching eyes in the night, flat and serious.
Curious children come up to them, chewing sweet roots, jaws working furiously, tugging stickily at their clothes and fingers. Their parents sweep them away, apologetically, efficiently. They’re not quite taboo, but close enough.
It’s no surprise to Shipwright. Thell is as she remembers.
Angular, fierce, only partially softened by the steady glow of strange lights.
The people are boisterous until she passes, falling silent as she approaches, unwinding into laughter in her wake.
She sees no one she recognises, except for Skinpainter, and once, from a high gallery, a tall figure, capped with grey like a spear-point, her hard face lined with sadness.
Could Belltoller have aged so heavily? She doesn’t get a chance to find out.
The mountain swallows familiarity into its depths, keeping her at arm’s length.
She’s the foreigner again. The stranger. The reminder that all is not well.
It’s no surprise that she sleeps fitfully, her hand on Shroudweaver’s ribs, the other clenching and unclenching next to her, hanking the sheets into fierce lumps.
Something in the night won’t leave her alone.
Her dreams are flecked with gold. She pitches restless.
When she wakes, she coughs the taste of spice and honey from her lungs and rinses it from her mouth with cold mountain water.
Skinpainter meets them most mornings. They are quiet, pensive, their barks of laughter slipping out from under long pauses. Kinghammer, they are told, will see them when he is ready. The mountain still keeping them at a distance. The old bear not yet ready to confront his past.
While they wait, Shroudweaver frets, his fingers lingering on rock, on plate edges, tracing the rims of cups.
He sleeps with his palms wrapped in red thread, hair smelling like the smoke of a battle.
He takes hands when they are offered, turns his head in sadness when they are snatched away.
He says soft, kind things to try and make himself sound safer.
Shipwright doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he is as foreign as she is now.
Shroudweaver belongs in the past for the rulers of Thell, and they want to keep him there.
Despite this, the days are bearable, just. They have rhythm, but she wilts from a lack of sky. She presses herself up against the sockets of the Stump and stalks its high ledges, hating it for being solid. Through it all, no one speaks to her, nothing beyond working words.
She tries to get a sense of the place, its sweet spices, the low belly warmth of the deep passages, and the ice of the high reaches. There’s more of it than she could learn in a lifetime, twelve storeys, maybe more, and each as high as the tallest halls of Hesper.
Efficient to the core. In the training grounds, she watches warriors move with precision and grace, spears flickering like tongues, shields stark against bare, bright bodies.
She hears tongues flicker in other corners.
Licking skin, licking rumours. Whispering about her, about Shroudweaver, about the reports of the grey army that marches north under crow-feather wings.
The folk of Thell conspire with heads bowed against necks, their fingers tapping out hidden rhythms she doesn’t understand.
She grows lonelier with every passing day.
She misses sex, and closeness, and being held.
She wants to relax, for fuck’s sake. But for now, that’s not happening.
In the evenings, she talks with Skinpainter as they block out the past in easy, economical gestures. The future is painted in starker tones.
‘Thell,’ they assure her, ‘is ready for war.’ They play their part.
Not a friend, not here. Not the Skinpainter of two decades gone, with their easy confidences, their sly secrets shared with Shroudweaver.
Here, they are the mouthpiece of the mountain.
They are a decipherer of strange things, and Shipwright has always, always been strange to them.
Still, they run their mouth, and she watches what they don’t say.
Not a whisper about Hesper, or Crowkisser, or especially the unbinding.
Their lips leave more gaps than their words fill.
If Quickfish is here, if those wild horse lords spoke true, Skinpainter says nothing.
For his part, Shroudweaver doesn’t pick it at.
Makes excuses. It’s a difficult time, a complex situation.
Thell’s being pulled into something they never saw coming.
Shipwright knows better. She’s hired on enough crews and brokered enough deals to know the game Skinpainter’s playing.
They are being vetted. Calmly. Affably. Ruthlessly.
She says nothing though. Not yet. You don’t tip your hand in a negotiation. You wait for them to come to you.
This morning, Skinpainter is more polite, more formal than ever. Holding them at bay as Shroudweaver picks listlessly at a breakfast of cold, pickled fish.
Their face calm, amber eyes relentless.
‘Days at worst,’ they say. ‘Kinghammer is consulting with his closest advisers. To ensure he has all the facts to hand before he meets you both.’
As they say this, as Shipwright feels herself die a little more inside, a small, dark-headed girl runs up, tugging at Skinpainter’s robes. She glances at them all, wide-eyes in a raw-boned little face. Shipwright smiles at her, could hug her when she beams back.
‘Who’s this?’ she says, grateful for the respite.
Skinpainter grins, the first real smile that’s graced their lips for days. ‘This, honoured guests, is Nigh.’
Nigh nods at the mention of her name and holds her hands out to Shipwright. She picks the little girl up reflexively, sets her on a thigh. ‘Oof, hello, little brick.’
Shroudweaver laughs as Shipwright runs her fingers through the shock of tangles on Nigh’s head. ‘Don’t you mind him.’ She bends her neck, whispers into a small ear. ‘I like strong little girls. They grow up into strong big women. Plus,’ she murmurs. ‘They’re delicious.’
She fakes a bite at Nigh’s neck. The sprat squeals in mock horror.
‘Careful, Ship,’ Skinpainter rumbles.
Shipwright grins. ‘Please, I’m just happy to find someone here that can stand to be near me.’ She goes in for another bite attack, is met with a swivel, a small foot planted squarely in her solar plexus. The air slides out of her.
Shroudweaver and Skinpainter collapse laughing. Nigh looks from face to startled face, joins in, burbling like a brook.
Shipwright turns to Shroudweaver. ‘Take this tyrant! She’s killing me.’
Shroudweaver reaches for Nigh. As the kid passes between them, for a second Shipwright feels a sharp stab of something. A different moment. A could-have-been, held like a splinter of glass.
Shroudweaver pats the bench next to him, and it’s gone. ‘I like you already, Nigh. Do you know how many warriors have beaten Ship?’
Nigh shakes her head.
‘Three, and one of them’s dead.’
Nigh looks worried.
Shipwright leans across. ‘Don’t panic, little one. I’m not going to fight you.’ She lets her lips linger by Nigh’s head. ‘Just eat you.’
Another spin and a punch.
Shipwright catches it. ‘Word of advice, nugget – don’t try the same thing twice. Even old salts like me will catch on.’
Skinpainter leans across, laughter lingering on their lips. ‘You’re holding the fist of the Kinghammer’s daughter there, Ship.’
Shipwright unclasps her fingers slowly, plants a kiss on the escaped fist. ‘Good. Maybe she can get him to come and bloody talk to us.’
Skinpainter sighs. ‘He’s afraid, Ship.’
She raises an eyebrow at him. ‘So are we. That’s why we need to talk to him. To all of them.’
Skinpainter nods. ‘I get it, I do, but give him time. Last time you were here …’
‘Last time we were here, we put him on the throne,’ Shroudweaver says. There’s steel in his voice.
Skinpainter tenses. ‘We don’t have thrones, Shroud, you know that.’
Shroudweaver waves dismissively. ‘The difference doesn’t matter.’
Skinpainter grips his wrist. ‘The difference is all we have.’
It takes a moment for their hand to leave, a moment more for blood to flow back into whitened spaces.
Thick fingers tug their hood down further. ‘Look, Shroud. I’m not trying to be awkward. I’ve kept an eye on the south. I know what’s happening.’ They pause. ‘And I’m sorry, I really am. But I’m not the final word.’
Shipwright sips her drink thoughtfully. It buzzes on her tongue. ‘You’re the final line though.’ She waves the mug. ‘Every skin in this place has your mark on it.’
Skinpainter shakes their head. ‘Not all of them. Some notable exceptions.’ Shipwright catches the hint.
Skinpainter holds her gaze. After a moment, they shove a bowl of snacks across to Nigh, roasted nuts and spiced grains.
She grabs a fistful and chews precisely.
Skinpainter looks back to the pair, thinking how little they’ve changed.
‘And even if they were, it wouldn’t matter. That’s not politics. It’s survival.’
Shipwright’s hands tighten on the mug, ‘So’s this, Skin, so’s this. Crowkisser’s on the march. She wants the mountain. She wants your people.’