He knelt on the floor of the chamber between the seat and the wall.
Not in front of the seat. Not touching the Lock. He knelt where the bone of the floor gave way to the softer stuff — the grey, warm, faintly ridged tissue of the god’s mind, rising into the walls — and put his left hand flat on it.
The black hand. The written one.
“Creed,” said Wick. Behind him. Very small. “What are you —”
“Asking,” said Creed.
He didn’t look back. He looked up. Up the shaft through the roots. To the face at the top of it. Strong-boned. Patient. Looking down.
He reached.
Not with his voice. She couldn’t hear his voice, up there, through a hundred meters of roots and tissue and gold. With the thing he’d been doing since the reliquary. Since he first felt Gilt hearts in the vault. His blood, going out. Feeling. Reaching. Through his black palm into the god’s mind, into the soft grey warm tissue under his hand — and up.
It was like reaching into the sea.
He’d never seen the sea. He’d read about it. In a book in Teo’s flat on Rib Seven, an old book of colored plates of the dead world before the god, with one plate of blue water going on forever. He thought of it now. That was what it was. The god’s mind under his palm. Not a wall. Not a fold. A sea. Vast. Warm. Moving. Going down forever under the surface, and the pulse moving through it like a long slow wave.
And under the wave — the dream.
He felt it. For the first time. Not the pulse. Not the pressure. The dream. What the god was dreaming.
It was enormous. It was so big he couldn’t see its edges, the way he hadn’t been able to feel the edges of the reservoir behind the Sluice. It went on and on, under everything, slow and deep and dark. And it was —
Hungry.
Corvane Ash hadn’t lied. It was hungry. He felt it. A vast slow aching want, under everything, like the ache of an empty stomach at hour nineteen with the meal-bar still four hours away. Hunger. The god was dreaming of hunger. Of wanting. Of reaching for something and not quite —
— and under the hunger —
Something else.
He couldn’t make it out. It was too deep. Too far down. Under the hunger the way the gold was under the grey in the folds. Faint. Warm. Not wanting. Something else. Something that —
“Creed.”
Not Lamp. Not Snake. Not the Archon.
A woman’s voice. Old. Deep. Rough at the edges, the way a voice is rough when it hasn’t been used in a very long time. Coming down to him. Through the sea. Through the gold. From the top of the shaft.
“Creed,” said the voice. As if trying out the shape of the name. “She said that was what she’d call you. If you lived. Creed. A thing you hold to.”
He knelt very still with his hand on the god’s mind.
“Who,” he said. Not out loud. Into the sea.
“Ione,” said Aurel the first. “Your mother. She was here. Thirty-one hours. Close. Closer than anyone’s been. She sang to me.” A pause. The voice was very tired. “She told me about you. The whole time. Between the verses. She told me she’d written the door into you. And that you’d come. Someday. And that I should be ready.”
The black arm was burning. He didn’t notice.
“I’m here,” he said. “I came.”
“I know,” said Aurel. “I can feel you. Your hands. Both of them. The Still and the Burn.” Something in the voice. Not a smile. Something older than a smile. “Cor’s told you what it dreams. Hasn’t he.”
“Hunger.”
“Hunger,” said Aurel. “Yes. He’s not wrong. He’s never been wrong. He’s only ever been half-right.” The voice came closer. Clearer. “Feel under it. Under the hunger. Do you feel it? Deeper down. He never went that deep. He was afraid to. He found the hunger and he stopped.”
He felt for it. Under the hunger. The faint warm thing. The else.
“What is it.”
“Come and sit,” said Aurel. “And find out. That’s all I ever wanted. To find out.” A pause. “He wouldn’t let me. And your Still won’t let you. It’s the same. It’s always the same.”
“The Still —”
“Is rising,” said Aurel the first. Very quietly. “Right now. In you. I can feel it. Like I felt mine.” The voice went hard. Fast. “Creed. Listen to me. Whatever it does next — it isn’t you. It isn’t even it. It’s the shape of what it’s always done. It doesn’t remember why. It only remembers the shape. Don’t — ”
The cold came up out of his blood like a wave coming up a beach.
It came up from everywhere at once.
From his feet. From his legs. From his chest. From the deepest wells of him, where it had gone when the Archon spoke. The Lamp. Rising. Not a thread. Not a voice. A flood. Every silver thread in every vessel in his body, thickened and fattened by everything it had eaten — Sefa’s frost, the stair-dogs, the Forge, the folds, the parasites, the wanting — all of it, all at once, rushing up through him toward his left arm. Toward his black palm. Toward the place where his hand touched the god’s mind.
“No,” said Lamp.
Not to him. Not to anyone. A sound like glass breaking.
“No. No. No. No. NO —”
He felt it take his arm.
He felt it the way he’d felt Snake take his legs on the terminus. The way he’d been in the back. Except it wasn’t his legs. It was his arm. His left arm. The black one. The written one. Where Snake lived.
The cold went into it.
Into the bone of the forearm. Into the script. Into the place where Snake was coiled. And Snake — he felt it — Snake roared, startled, furious, and the heat in the bone flared to meet the cold, and the two of them met in his left forearm like two trains on one track —
— and the cold won.
Not because it was stronger. Because it was bigger. Because it had eaten so much. Because it had been growing since the Sixth, since the Forge, since the folds, and Snake had been banked since the Collar, spending itself on vats and parasites and Marchetti’s ash. The cold went through the heat like a flood through a fire and the black arm went cold, cold as the white bags on the slab, cold as the frost-ferns on the dock, and Snake was pushed back — back up the arm — back into the shoulder — back —
And his arm moved.
Not his. It moved it. The Lamp. His left arm came up off the floor. Off the god’s mind. Away from the sea. Away from Aurel. Jerked back. Like a hand off a stove.
He felt the contact break. Felt the sea go away. Felt Aurel’s voice cut off in the middle of a word.
“— don’t —”
Gone.
And his body moved.
Not just the arm. All of it. His legs. His back. The Lamp had his arm and it was pulling, and his whole body was going with the arm, away from the wall, away from the floor, backward. Away from the seat. Away from the Lock. Scrambling. On his heels. On his back. Away. As far from the seat as the round chamber allowed.
He was in the back.
He could see everything. He could feel everything. His body scrambling across the floor of the chamber. His arm, cold, rigid, held out in front of him like a man holding off a blow. He couldn’t stop it. He threw himself at it from the back, the way he’d thrown himself at Snake on the terminus, and it was like throwing himself at a wall of ice.
“LAMP —”
“I’m sorry,” said Lamp. Fast. Wild. Not sounding like itself. Not glass. Something worse. Something cracking. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I swore, I know I swore, I can’t, I can’t let you, you were going to sit, she was going to make you sit, I can’t let you wake it, I can’t, I can’t —“
“YOU SWORE.”
“I KNOW —”
And the Archon moved.
He saw it from the back.
He saw the roots on the ceiling drop.
Not all of them. A cluster. A dozen. Thick, pale, chrome-banded. Coming down off the dome of the chamber like the tentacles of something reaching down from a ceiling, fast, faster than the half-Wardens, faster than the stair-dogs. Straight at him. At his body, scrambling backward on the floor with its arm held out rigid and cold.
At the back of his neck.
He felt it. Not with his skin. With the place the Lamp had come from. The place in his blood where the Lamp had always been — the wells, the threads, the silver — and which was empty now, because the Lamp had rushed out of all of it to seize his arm.
Open.
It always lets me in. Through the Still. Every time.
He felt the gap. Like a door left open. Like a hole in a wall. Where the cold had been, there was nothing. And the roots were coming for it.
It remembers the shape of letting me in.
He couldn’t move. The Lamp had his body. The Lamp was dragging him backward with his arm out and the roots were coming down at the back of his neck and the gap in him was open and the Lamp didn’t see it, it didn’t see anything, it was screaming I can’t I can’t I can’t and holding his arm out at the seat like a man holding a torch at a wolf —
“SNAKE —”
Snake was in his shoulder. Pushed back. Pinned. Roaring. Trying to get back down the arm and the cold had the arm locked.
The roots were a meter from his neck.
Half a meter.
Somebody hit him.
From the side. Hard. A thin body, all elbows and knees, slamming into his shoulder and knocking him sideways on the floor of the chamber — out of the path of the roots —
— and into the path, instead —
Wick.
He saw it.
He was on his side on the floor where Wick had knocked him. In the back. Watching. He saw Wick Moraine — thin, white, shaking — land on his knees on the bone where Creed had been, with his arms still out from the shove.
He saw the roots reach him.
They didn’t stop. They didn’t care. They’d been reaching for the gap in Creed and the gap in Creed was gone, knocked sideways, and there was something else there now — something with a heart going like a bird’s, something with thin frosted Line C blood, something that had only been off the tab for a year —
They went around him.
Around his chest. His arms. His waist. The way the parasites in the folds had gone around Creed. Wrapping. Gripping. And the thickest of them — the lead root, chrome-banded, thick as a man’s wrist — went up the back of Wick’s neck —
— and in.
Through the bandage. Through the eight old burns on his throat, the ones the spurs had made on the Eighth. Into him.
Wick didn’t scream.
His mouth opened. His eyes went wide. His whole body went rigid in the grip of the roots, arched, his back bowing, his hands clawing at the air. And no sound came out of him at all.
His eyes found Creed’s.
Across the floor of the chamber. Wide. White. Terrified. Looking for him. The way he’d looked for him on the terminus, with the spurs at his throat. There you are.
And then they started to go blank.
Smooth. Calm. Kept.
“NO —”
He didn’t know what he did.
He didn’t remember, after. Ollo told him. Ollo said he went through it. Through the Lamp. Through the cold. From the back to the front in one movement, the way you come up out of a sump when your lungs are bursting. Ollo said it looked like something tearing. Ollo said his whole body jerked, on the floor, like a man who’s grabbed a live cable, and then he was up.
He was up.
His arm was his. His left arm. Cold still — so cold the black skin was rimed white with frost — but his. He felt the Lamp go back. Not because he pushed it. Because it let go. All at once. The way a hand lets go of something that’s burning. He felt it rush back down out of his arm into his blood, into the empty wells, filling the gap — too late, the gap had already been filled, by Wick —
And he felt Snake come down the arm like a fire down a fuse.
He was across the chamber. He didn’t remember crossing it. He had his hand on the lead root, where it went into the back of Wick’s neck. His right hand. The spurred one. And his left on Wick’s chest. Over his heart. The black palm, rimed with frost, going hot.
“Snake,” he said. “Burn it. Not him. The root. Only the root.”
“I know —”
“Lamp.”
The cold in his blood. Shaking. Shaking so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
“Lamp. Eat it. The wanting. Like the folds. Get it out of him.”
“I —”
“NOW.”
It went.
Through his left palm. Into Wick’s chest. Into his blood. Thin, frosted Line C blood, with the root’s cold already spreading through it — reaching — rooting — the way the roots had gone into Marchetti, the way the parasites had gone into the Kept on the bridges. The Lamp went into it like it had gone into Sefa. Ahead of the wave. Eating. And it ate the root’s cold the way it had eaten the parasites in the folds — not the frost, the wanting — the cold reaching thread of the Archon’s will, going into Wick, looking for the part of him that could be worn —
— and Snake, in his right hand, burned the root.
From the outside. Where it went into the back of Wick’s neck. The spurs going white. The root blackening. Shriveling. Up its length. Toward the ceiling. Toward the dome. And the roots wrapped around Wick’s chest and arms and waist going slack. Letting go. Withdrawing. Pulling back up toward the ceiling like a hand pulled back from a stove.
The lead root came out of Wick’s neck.
Black. Burnt. Its end — the part that had gone in — curled and dead.
Wick fell forward into his arms.
He was breathing.
That was the first thing. Wick was breathing. Fast. Shallow. Like a bird’s. His heart — Creed felt it — going like it always went. Too fast. Too high. Scared.
His.
Not blank. Not smooth. Not Kept.
Wick’s eyes opened. Found Creed’s. Wide. Wet. Wick’s.
“Hey,” said Wick.
It came out as nothing. A rasp. His throat. The root had gone in through his throat. Through the old burns. There was blood on the bandage. Fresh. Red.
“Hey,” said Creed.
“Did I —” Wick swallowed. Winced. “Did I get in the way?”
“Yeah.”
“Behind,” whispered Wick. “I was supposed to be behind. The snake said. Behind, where it could see me. Not in front.” His face crumpled. Uncrumpled. “I forgot.”
“You didn’t forget.”
“No,” said Wick. “I didn’t.”
Creed held him.
He sat on the floor of the root chamber with Wick Moraine across his knees, the way Ollo had sat with him on the dock, and held him, and didn’t let go. And around them the chamber was very quiet. The roots on the ceiling had gone back up. All of them. Withdrawn. Drawn up tight against the dome. Still. The lead root hung burnt and black among them. The braided body of the Archon stood beside the Lock where it had stood the whole time, its preserved face turned toward them, its brown eyes on Wick.
Mirelle was on her knees beside them. Her bound hands on Wick’s throat. Pressing a pad of torn robe-hem against the bleeding under the bandage.
Ollo was standing over them. One arm. The ledger against his chest. Looking at the Archon. His flat sorter’s face was not flat at all.
“You,” said Ollo.
Corvane Ash looked at him.
“You went for him,” said Ollo. “When he couldn’t move. When his own — when the white thing had him.” Ollo’s one hand was white on the ledger. “You went for the back of his neck.”
“Yes,” said the Archon.
“And you got Wick instead.”
“I got the one who was there,” said Corvane Ash. Quietly. Not apologizing. Not anything. “The way the light takes what’s nearest.” The brown eyes moved to Creed. “It always lets me in. I told you. Through the Still. I told you, and you didn’t believe me, and now you’ve seen it.” A pause. “It didn’t even know it was doing it. It never does.”
Creed looked at him over Wick’s head.
He didn’t say anything.
“I’ll go,” said the Archon. “You need to talk to it. Your Still. You need to hear it say why.” The braided body turned. Began to climb the left pillar. Slowly. The way an old man climbs a stair. “When you’ve heard it — all of it — come and find me. I’ll be here.” It stopped. Halfway up the pillar. Looked back down. “I’m always here. That’s the whole point.”
It went up into the roots, and the roots closed over it, and it was gone.
Mirelle dressed Wick’s throat. Brann helped. Dorne lay against the cage bars with her own wound and watched them do it, grey-faced, and didn’t say anything.
Creed sat against the far wall of the chamber.
As far from the seat as the round room allowed. As far from the Lock. His back to the bone where it turned into tissue. His left arm across his knees. The frost was melting off the black skin. Running down in thin streams. The script under it glowed red. Only red. Snake, back in its room. Coiled. Hot. Very quiet.
“Lamp,” he said.
Nothing.
He felt it. In his blood. Back in the wells. Back in every thread. Shaking. So hard that his hands shook with it. So hard that his teeth wanted to chatter. But silent.
“Lamp.”
“…Yes.”
“You swore.”
The shaking got worse.
“On the lower Eighth,” said Creed. Very quietly. Not out loud. Inside. “In the dark. In the room in Hedda Dorne’s building. You said, I swear it. No more overrides. I will not touch the sword. I will not touch your hands. I will not choose for you.”
“Yes.”
“You took my hand.”
“Yes.”
“You took my arm. You took my body. You dragged me across the floor like a sack.”
“Yes.”
“And while you were doing it, you left a hole in me. Where you’d been. And he came for it. Through the hole. Like he said he would. Like he said you always let him.”
The Lamp didn’t answer.
“And Wick got in the way,” said Creed. “Because he saw it. Because he was watching. Because he said he’d watch, on the Seventh Stair, because he knows what’s in me now, and somebody should.” His voice — his inside voice — didn’t rise. He didn’t let it. “He watched. And he saw the roots coming for the hole you’d left. And he got in the way.”
“Yes,” said Lamp. Barely there.
“There’s a root-scar in his neck. On top of the burns. On top of the burns my hand put there on the Eighth, when the Snake had me.” He looked across the chamber at Wick. Lying with his head in Mirelle’s lap. Breathing fast. Awake. Watching him. “That’s two. Two times I’ve been somewhere else and somebody’s had my body and Wick’s paid for it.”
The Lamp made a sound. In his blood. A sound like something very small, very far down, breaking.
“I’m not going to ask why,” said Creed.
Silence.
“Not yet. I don’t want to hear it yet. I don’t trust myself to hear it yet.” He looked at his left arm. At the red script. At the place where the frost had been. “I want you to know that I know you broke it. The Pact. I want you to sit with that. The way I sat with Garrow Fisk.”
“Yes,” whispered Lamp.
“And then you’re going to tell me. All of it. Every word. The door. The thing behind the door. Everything you’ve been standing in front of since the reliquary.”
“Yes.”
“Not later. Not when you’ve got the words. Not when you’re ready.” He closed his eyes. “Soon.”
“Soon,” said Lamp. “I — yes. Soon.” A long, shaking pause. “Creed.”
“What.”
“She spoke to you,” said Lamp. “Aurel. In the sea. Before I —” It stopped. “What did she say.”
He opened his eyes.
He looked up. Up the shaft. Through the roots. To the face at the top. Strong-boned. Patient. Looking down.
“She said Cor’s only half-right,” said Creed. “She said there’s something under the hunger. Deeper down. She said he never went that deep. He was afraid to.” He paused. “And she said whatever you did next wouldn’t be you. It’d be the shape of what you’ve always done.”
The Lamp was very still.
“Was she right?” said Creed.
For a long time, nothing.
Then, so faint he almost didn’t hear it, from the bottom of the deepest well in him:
“…I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what I am.”
In the black arm, Snake didn’t say anything at all. But Creed felt it shift. Turn. Like something coiled in a grate, lifting its head. Looking at the cold in his blood.
Not angry. Not hungry.
Interested.
“Huh,” said Snake. Very softly. “Huh. So that’s what’s behind the door.”
ROOT CHAMBER
PACT: BROKEN
VESSEL: INTACT
CASUALTY: MORAINE, W. (ROOT TRAUMA, SURVIVED)
NOTED