Clouds End

  But only now, only tonight, drenched and shivering in the darkness off Thumbtip, had he seen that his self-disgust was a deadly wound, one that had maimed him for all his adult life.

  By the time Shale and Seven returned, he was thoughtful and unusually quiet.

  “You all right?” Shale asked, hurrying to pull on her tunic as Seven clambered into the boat.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Got it done,” she said brightly.

  Foam said, “Good.” He peeled slowly away from Thumbtip.

  He knew she was worried by his silence, but he was too full inside to speak. Or too empty. The way his pain had stayed hidden while in full sight for so many years—that was a deep and subtle truth. The wonder of it rose in him. To think he could see no farther into himself than he saw into the dark, rain-filled night beyond their gunwales. “We are like little boats,” he said at last.

  Shale tried to find his eyes, but the night was dark. “What?”

  “Little boats, bobbing along,” Foam said. “Waving at one another and telling lies about all the marvelous places we have been. But the thing, the one thing we never do, is step out of our little boats, and dive down into the big black sea.”

  “To do that is to drown,” Seven said softly.

  Foam shrugged, and though he could not see the sails, he felt them fill as the sheet tugged against his fingertips. “Maybe. But at least you would have seen a little below the surface.”

  * * *

  The next night the rain still fell, making a damp and miserable watch for the two woodlanders manning the fire-sling that guarded Thumbtip’s southern shore. “I’m hungrier than Sere,” Branch said moodily. “I should have had some of that soup, I suppose, but I’m so stinking tired of fish. If it was ever wet in its life, I don’t want to eat it.”

  “I agree,” Nut whispered.

  Branch peered at his friend. “You’re not yourself. You look white as a cloud, even by torchlight.”

  “That stew did not agree with me.”

  “Queasy?”

  Nut nodded, wincing. “Cramps—in my gut. The rain. Cold. And the shot stinks.”

  “You could at least go upwind. Here, crawl around the other side of the sling.”

  Nut nodded again. “All right,” he muttered. “Anything to keep—” A rush of bile soured his mouth. “Too late. I’m going down.”

  “I told you I thought I heard something down there. Might be a bear.”

  “On an island? Anyway,” Nut said grimly, “if it’s a bear, I’ll throw up on it just the same.”

  “Better it than me, I guess. Sorry.”

  Nut swallowed hard and picked his way down the path, disappearing as soon as he stepped out of the torchlight.

  The night was dark. Clouds throttled the moon. Branch could hear the murmur of the brooding sea below. Nut retched somewhere down the path. Branch started, suddenly glad he had skipped the stew. They were sending some rafts back to Delta tomorrow, Ash Spear had said. To report, get new supplies, and bring an extra sling, so they could leave these two permanently in place and have two more for the jump to Mona. He decided to volunteer for the trip back and rejoin the garrison on Delta.

  Rain hissed and pattered against the tarp. Fear crackled across his chest as he heard Nut moan. Branch felt for his sword and checked his shot, each ball of pitch still wrapped in its covering of leaves, stinking of resin and gums, all kept dry under the tarp.

  Wet leaves rustled in the darkness. “Nut? You there?” There was no answer.

  “Damn fish,” he muttered. He drew his sprayer; it trembled in time with his pulse as he crept down the muddy path. He stopped as he left the torchlight, waiting for his eyes to adjust, listening into the darkness.

  Nut lay face-first on the path. “Are you all right?” Tension cramped Branch’s chest. There was something wrong in the woods. Something else was out here with him. The cold rain was falling on something alien and full of hate for woodlanders. Was that the smell of blood, mixed with the rising stink of vomit? He laughed shakily. “Ah, stop faking you old fraud.” He tried to grin and took a step backwards. He slipped and tried again. “You’ll come up when you’re good and ready,” he called. Another step closer to the torches. And another.

  A shadow leapt from a tremble of leaves and Branch threw himself up the hill. He yelled as a chunk of pain buried itself high in the back of his right thigh. The leg gave way and he slid back down the muddy slope. He could hear them breaking cover now. He clawed desperately, trying to drag himself up the path. “Murder!” he screamed.

  An iron hand caught the point of his chin. Another gripped the back of his head. “Mur—”

  Shale crept out of her hiding place to join Seven, standing above the limp corpse. She shivered violently, trying to forget the horrible crunching sound of the guard’s neck snapping. “Come on,” Seven said. “We have to get to the sling before they come to investigate.”

  She followed him up the hill. “This must be it.” The stench of pitch and resin made her sick.

  “Mm. A sliding cup. That must hold the shot,” Seven muttered. “This winch here tightens it . . .”

  “Come on, come on! Break it and go!”

  “I want to turn it on the fort.”

  Stupidly Shale stared at the complicated machinery of grooved wood and wires, pulleys and escapements. Faint shouts echoed from farther in.

  Seven’s years in his father’s workshop seemed to make the sling’s operation less of a mystery to him. “Simple enough. Grab that end. No, not by the barrel. Get it at the base. Help me turn it around. Move!”

  Grunting, they swung the heavy machine about. It was almost as high as Shale, fashioned from waxed ironwood that shook off the rain.

  Seven scooped up a ball of shot and put it into the metal cup. “Stay back.” He grabbed a torch and held it to the tarry ball. Dull flame gleamed over the surface, and vile purple smoke oozed from between glossy leaves. “Spit. Should have taken the leaves off.” Seven twitched them away with his knife, and the flame blazed up. He pulled back on the latch. The cup rocketed forward, sending a gout of fire through the woods to land far short of the fort.

  “Got the inclination wrong,” Seven muttered. “Of course! They’d be shooting down. There must be a . . .”

  The voices were suddenly clearer as a detachment of men came through the barracks’ gates. Bits of burning tar ate into damp trees.

  “No time for it,” Seven muttered. He winched the cup furiously back into place. “Do what I did!”

  Shale grabbed another ball of tar, stripped off its leaves, and dropped it in the cup. Seven handed her the torch and squatted at the front of the sling. Muscles bulging, he lifted the front end so that the barrel pointed over the tree line. Shale touched torch to pitch and then released the latch. The cup shot forward with a ringing twang, sending a bolt of fire arching high into the air.

  They got off three more shots before the first line of soldiers came down the path toward them. Seven shoved the sling so its barrel pointed directly at them, and a bolt of streaming fire splashed over the front rank. Men threw themselves to the ground, screaming and beating at their flaming limbs.

  “No fighting!” Shale yelled. She ran her torch over the rest of the shot. The balls of pitch roared up in a billow of foul smoke, lurid in the hissing rain.

  Shale ran for the path to the beach. She tripped over the first dead guard and fell heavily. She scrambled to her feet, jumping the second corpse. Then down, racing over the stones, hopping as a sharp shell cut her foot, on to the sand with Seven’s feet drumming behind her. Into the water, stroking out from land. She couldn’t see their boat, but Foam would hear her splashing. There was no point in concealment now. Once they were fairly in the water, the forest people could never catch them.

  She gasped in triumph, buoyed up by the cradling sea. She was its child; it would keep her safe.

  The woodlanders had reached the shore. She turned and paddled lazily, hearing Seven stroke up to her
. Gasping voices called weakly to one another on the beach. “Hit and run,” she said. “And there’s nothing they can do about it.”

  Foam sailed up and pulled them from the water. From the boat they could see fire-weirds dancing up from the barracks. “You got something!” Foam crowed. “When I saw the first stream of fire, I thought we were doomed. Then I realized it was going inland.”

  Seven nodded. “Light the lamps. Let the rest of the boats come up. We land at dawn.”

  * * *

  “Two thirds of the men are sick. Seven are already dead.”

  Elm Plank nodded carefully, trying to ignore the first twinges of nausea. He hadn’t eaten much soup. He might be lucky. “And Ash Spear?”

  Plum Shoot shook his head. “He ate nothing but soup, and a lot of it. Trying to lead by example . . .”

  “I see.” Plank sighed. The barracks reeked of vomit and smoke. The air was thick with the groans of the sick and the burned. “Fire?”

  “Controlled, sir. Mostly out. We lost two men when a roof collapsed. Three more incapacitated, chasing the assassins. And of course the guards on number two sling.”

  “And of course the guards.” A spasm of agony twisted in Plank’s gut. He badly wanted to lie down. “With Ash Spear dead, I am in charge. Obviously there is an attack planned. I judge us to be too weak to defend. I intend to take the rafts down and sail for Delta. Any objections?”

  Someone heaved wretchedly and continuously behind them, coughing up food, bile, blood. “No, sir,” Shoot said gravely.

  * * *

  Through the rest of the night the islanders watched the forest people take down their wall and cart their rafts to the long, sandy beach where they had mined for clams. The work was slow, for few soldiers were well enough to carry the heavy rafts. Last of all they moved the fire-sling from the beach down to their flotilla, and sailed away from Thumbtip.

  Bleak grey light broke over the world.

  It was a curious stand-off, as the rafts floated clumsily toward home. Seven held his people well out of fire-sling range. The islanders jeered their enemies for all the long time that dawn gave way to sunrise, and to morning.

  Sitting in their boats, the victors had laughed and joked about Thumbtip’s glorious recapture. Up close, the reality was far grimmer. A quarter of the barracks had burned down. The burned bodies of several forest soldiers lay trapped under smoldering beams.

  “Just be glad we have a roof over our heads,” Foam said, squinting to the east. “There’s a squall coming.”

  Shale nodded. “It will catch those poor bastards before they get to Delta.”

  Seven looked over. “Fathom and the Warrior look after their own.”

  “Not so much work,” Pond sighed, studying the sagging roof. “Brace can fix it.”

  “First we take care of these,” Shale said, white-faced. She knelt by one of the corpses. Vomit had pooled beside his head.

  “Don’t look at it!” Foam said, laying a hand on Shale’s shoulder. “Spit. It’s bad enough without . . . dwelling.”

  “Don’t touch me!” Shale jumped up and slapped his hand away. “Do you think you can just ignore this? Look! Look at it!” She jerked him toward the dead soldier on the floor. “See the blood in his vomit, Foam? See the place where the skin on his arm burned away and the meat’s gone black? We owe it to them to look. That was us, Foam. We did that. You and I and Seven the Mighty Hero of Legend.”

  Seven stirred, and his face was hard. “Never fight if you don’t fight to win.”

  Shale took a deep breath, feeling sick with anger. “Then I choose not to fight.”

  “Too late,” Pond said, looking at the ground before Shale’s feet. “What is done is done. Now we take responsibility for it, and go on.”

  Shale shook her head. “My mother is a Witness like you will never be. All you want is fine Deltan words to feel good by.” She slammed out of the room, heading outside, into the gathering wind. “I’ll take care of the bodies,” she yelled.

  Wind and rain moaned into the silence she left behind. At last Seven looked over at Foam. “I am sorry that you learned to kill.”

  Foam looked around the stinking barracks. “So am I,” he said.

  It didn’t take him long to find Shale. She had a damaged raft the woodlanders had left behind and was trying to unhook it from the wall. They worked it free and dragged it down to the beach. They used a sail to carry out the dead soldiers, then piled them on the raft and set the sail for open water. The funeral barge lurched away in the freshening wind, listing heavily. It would be lucky to leave eyesight without foundering.

  Shale stood watching it with tears in her eyes.

  “You did the best you could,” Foam said.

  She swallowed and nodded. After a while she said, “The sea will decide.”

  And later, “Sorry.”

  Foam nodded. They stood together as billows of rain swept over the grey ocean.

  * * *

  There was good fresh fish for dinner in a part of the barracks the fire had not touched. The islanders told more jokes and stories than they had for many nights, for they still lived, and the invaders had been driven back without the loss of a single man. In one corner a group of four friends played Islands with a ship’s set. Other troops asked repeatedly for the tale of Shale’s visit (dwelling on her nudity) and Seven’s feats with the fire-sling (dwelling on his).

  A slender woman with a braid wound through with wire of gold stood up after dinner and said, “Who would like to hear the story of Seven and his Band of Merry Islanders!” The crowd roared. Seven frowned. “Be a leader,” Pond whispered, and he swallowed his embarrassment.

  “Let’s hear all about it,” Catch yelled. “Do the rest of us get to go naked in the next part?”

  “Listen and find out,” the singer said.

  Shale couldn’t quite identify the storyteller. She reminded her a little bit of Brook, and a little bit of Jo, and a little bit of someone else she couldn’t remember. “I can’t think of her name,” she admitted under her breath.

  “Me neither,” Foam whispered. “We’ll ask after the story.”

  “Very well, then!” the singer cried. “Hear my words, for this is a story of the Mist-time (more or less), where everything is true, and nothing is what it seems.

  “Now this is a One-Twist Ring story.” From around her waist the singer took a belt of midnight silk, studded with clear stones. Twisting it once, she placed the ends together so they made a loop. “The thing about a one twist ring is that it seems to have two sides, but really it has only one. We are just at the twist, where the great stories turn to reveal the small ones beneath. As this story is yet only half over, I can only tell you the first part, one full circuit of the loop. Great stories give way to small ones; what happens here will end at home. This is the Tale of Seven. Listen well.”

  Outside-Inside

  And then, to their surprise, the singer began to speak of Hazel Twist. His youth, his wit, his strategy, his courage. She spoke of his rise in the Empire, and his fair wife, Willow Blue. She spoke of the Fire that had come sweeping in from the edge of the forest, laying waste to the fair lands of Palm and Date.

  Startled, the audience fell silent, glancing uncomfortably at one another. They strained to get a better look at the storyteller, but she was far from the torches. Outside, the storm screamed and spat. Water dripped steadily through the leaking roof into the fire, and clouds of steam, smelling of smoke and blood, eddied through the kitchen and dining hall. Shale opened her mouth to whisper to Foam, to ask if he understood why the tale that was supposed to be of Seven was all of Hazel Twist. But however hard she tried to speak, Shale’s words miscarried, dying stillborn on her tongue. She gazed at the singer—the Singer!— and her eyes widened in shock.

  The Singer’s eyes gleamed like embers and her voice was thin and desolate as the winter wind. “For the war-torches burn on both sides of the one-sided world. And every story has two sides, that are one. In every pai
r of twins, one must go into the Mist.”

  The Singer was wreathed in coils of mist, silver-sheened, electric. Her form began to ripple and flow. This story too will end at home. But the loop that ends by the hearthside will be deeper and more strange than the loop that brought you here.” And it seemed to everyone in the hall as if she were somehow vanishing into her own words, into her own voice, until it was only the keening wind outside that whispered,

  Great stories turn to small ones;

  Bright fires fall to ash . . .

  JO’S LINE

  CHAPTER 15

  THE ARBOR

  THE MORNING after Ash had burned to death Brook and Rope lit their morning fire in a different place. Ivy wisely stayed away, foraging.

  Brook was trying not to see Ash burning in her mind’s eye, wondering if Shale were still alive. Jo was finishing off the remains of a rabbit.

  “What now?” Rope said, jabbing the fire with a blackened branch.

  “The same as always,” Brook said. “We have a chore to do.”

  “We? We have a chore to do? What can we do, Brook? It’s up to our haunt, isn’t it?”

  Jo licked her fingers and pointed daintily at Rope with the rabbit’s thigh bone. “You do your part, Rope. I will do mine.”

  “You despise us, don’t you? Well, I would like to hear what you have planned, Jo. I did my part dealing with the herbalist. I took him to his people. I made sure his wife was healed. But I never saw you cast your line. I never saw anything in your hold. You stood by and watched Ash burn while I tried to save him.”

  Jo’s fingers tightened around the dead rabbit’s thigh. “I don’t like it when people are rude to me,” she said softly. Her skin broke out in a sizzling blue sweat. The bone in her hand blackened. Melting marrow ran from its end. She flexed her fingers, and claws exploded from their soft flesh.