Chapter_30_Settling_the_Account

The gap had been plugged with men. By daylight it was plugged with everything else—door planks three deep, mud bags on top, rolling timbers wedged at both sides. The stand-in led the work down the seams: tap a stretch, solid, move on. The ones they could lift went to the stretcher line. The roster lay open on the pier. Below Lei Changgeng's name, eleven blank lines.

The third gun's hammer never stopped. Body done, three days on the bore. The stand-in came over to ask, and Chen Jin said three days. The stand-in said three days was long enough for the shoal to double its height.

Chen Jin sat on the stone block and worked the account. Roster on his knees, tag string on top of the roster. Twenty-seven tags, name by name. Lei Changgeng—the squad-leader line, blank. The tall one was in the book; his tag wasn't on the string. Zhao Tieshuan was in the book; his tag wasn't either.

Two more trips. One to the grate-root, one to the gap. The tall one's tag was on his body. Zhao Tieshuan's came from behind the pot. Chen Jin wiped both and strung them on. Twenty-nine.

Where the roster wouldn't match, he circled it in pencil, folded the book, and put it back under the bedroll.

Da Liu was stacking magazines behind the pier. One hand, slow, row after row, straight. Somebody moved to help; he waved it off. The hand that couldn't count casings would learn to stack boxes first.

At noon Zhou Zhengting's note came: rounds spent, charges spent, the copper account wants numbers. Chen Jin sent back three lines. On the back of the note, one line more: send up the casualty roster. I keep that account on my side.

Out past the shoal, the husks kept gathering, layer on layer, all drifting one way. Broken-Tooth had eaten all day. Fresh plate stacked over the old wounds had a green sheen to it. The seam on its left shoulder sat half-covered. The new plate could close over the wound. It couldn't close the seam.

"When it finishes eating, the East Sluice doesn't hold," Chen Jin said. "Third gun's three days out. The North Wall gun can't move—the trunnion's fixed, it guards where it stands, and it knows that. It listened to this gate all night and heard no gun. Now even the cracked one is gone."

Nobody answered. The wind pressed the torches down a hand's width. This wasn't a discussion. It was a report.

Wen Heng came by once. She didn't ask for the armor off. She looked at his hands—still white where the water had soaked them—looked two breaths, and left without taking out the little book.

Night came, and three short and one long rose again.

Three short. The long one started, cracked, and scattered into the air. A full day of eating, and the voice still hadn't grown back. The tide came up the ramp Broken-Tooth's own kind had laid. The first wave crested and the rifle line caught it. The second wave walked up on the first wave's shells. Reloads went up magazine by magazine, empties passing back down. The stretcher line's lamps burned behind the pier, one after another, all the way to the gate. The stand-in worked his stretch—punch, rifle butt, punch—the old squad leader's method, caught whole.

Broken-Tooth came up onto the shoal. Bigger again. New plate stacked over old wounds, flakes dropping at every step, the left shoulder seam opening and closing, weeping black. No more testing. It knew what the gap still held, and it knew what the gap had lost.

Chen Jin stood up.

"What's the plan for the wall?" the stand-in called.

He didn't answer. He cinched the armor's straps one by one, down to the last one, paused, and pressed a hand to his chest pocket. The tags were there. He walked to the edge of the gap.

"Hold this. On the books, the gap's worth more than I am."

Only after it was out did he hear what was wrong with it. Lei Changgeng had never once talked like that. On the old man's books, the men had always been worth more than the gap. The words were already loose, and they went down the gap with him.

Stolen novel; please report.

The thermal lance opened first. Blue flame swept flat across the new-stacked plate and melted a red line that didn't go through. The second pass he aimed elsewhere—Broken-Tooth had already turned its shoulder, offering the fresh plate to the fire. It was learning. Slower than a man learns. Still learning. Then the foreleg came, he was half a beat slow on the pullback, and the wind of it took the armor and threw him. He landed in the husk piles. Something cracked under the ribs. The chest plate caved inward, red warning light jumping in his eyes.

He lay in the husks with blood running off his lip onto the shells.

The heat started in his chest.

He couldn't say where it came from. Tonight, burning, he thought for the first time of the sea of fire that had burst open in his skull the night the sky fell. Same source. The heat walked the seams of his bones out toward his hands and feet, and where it passed, the bleeding stopped, and strength came back an inch at a time—until the hand around the knife was steady, steadier than his own hand had any right to be. The burn whitened his vision. He let it. Whatever interest this account carried, he'd settle it after.

The panel in his pocket lit up on its own. He hadn't opened it.

[Your Majesty.]

Two words. No numbers. No recommendation. For a month it had done nothing but count. Tonight, for the first time, it only called him.

Chen Jin got up out of the husks and drew the knife.

Broken-Tooth came at him, which saved him the walk. Four legs churning up the ramp's crest, mandibles working, a line of drool off the teeth. At two zhang it stopped pacing and gave everything it had—days of iron shot had taught it one thing: distance was life. Up close he could see the old seam on the left shoulder clearly. The new plate had grown over it and left a finger's width of dark where plate wouldn't stack onto plate.

The lance burned in his left hand. His right hand put the knife into that seam, whole arm, up to the guard.

The seam was soft going in. Packed with the soldiers it had eaten these past days. He drove forward and dragged the blade down—a slanted line, shoulder to hip—and its whole front half came down with the cut. Four legs clawed at the ramp, carving furrows, and then not carving. It fell, and the whole shoal sank under the weight.

It raised its head and called.

Three short.

The long one never came. It died without ever landing that note whole.

Every bug on the flats stopped for one breath, then poured back into the dark without a look behind them. The rifle line went quiet. Up the slope and down, nothing left but water moving. The husks that had gathered all day didn't leave. They didn't know the king was dead. They kept drifting toward it, layer by layer.

The panel was still lit.

[Kill confirmed: King-class, Broken-Tooth. +2000 Embers.]

[Achievement: Vengeance for the Guardian. Sovereign's Medal I — 1 of 3.]

[Embers: 3607]

He stood at the crest of the ramp and watched a while. The knife still dripped—one drop, two; he counted. A month ago this panel had announced the account settled, the day he took Grey Jaws: five hundred on the books, rifle short by nine hundred seventy. Tonight the books gained two thousand.

He turned to the rifle's page. It had sat there a month. 2100. The four hundred ninety-three it had been short—that bill came due tonight. He pressed the exchange.

[Redeemed: rifle −2100]

[Embers: 1507]

Nobody on the wall cheered.

The night the king died was as quiet as the night the gate broke. Plenty wanted to shout. Not one did. The signal mallet sat on the stone block, unsounded—the wall's voice had gone quiet, and the voices on the wall with it.

The stand-in leaned half his body out of the gap, looked at him, opened his mouth, swallowed whatever it was, and went back to the seams.

Wen Heng came in the last watch. Armor off, wounds checked. A bruise spreading under the ribs; she pressed it once and he frowned. She turned his hand over—the gash the shells had opened at dawn was scabbed, and under the scab the skin lay flat.

"Torn this morning," she said.

"Yeah."

"There's no such ledger on a human body." She held his eyes for two breaths, opened the little book, wrote one line, and didn't read it to him. "This strength is borrowed." She snapped the case shut. "Borrowed things get paid back. When it comes due, come find me."

He slept behind the pier. First time in days, he went under the moment he lay down.

The dream held the same things: a sea of stars burning, a throne on high, a fleet without end. But this time they moved slowly—the stars burned square by square, the fleet passed rank by rank. He stood beneath the throne and turned around.

The spear came in without a sound.

This time he saw one thing clearly: a strip of old cloth wound around the haft, a mark on the corner, worn faint. He tried to look closer and the mark came apart.

In the dark, a voice, low, right against his ear:

[Your Majesty. Wake.]

[Memory shock detected. Seal reinforced.]

He opened his eyes. Not dawn yet. A little red left in the fire pit behind the pier.

The heat in his chest had drained away, faster than it had risen. His hand trembled once. He pressed it flat against his knee and waited for it to stop.

The tag string pressed at him through the jacket pocket. He took it out and ran it down to the black-iron tag at the bottom. The mark on its back was worn almost flat. Against his palm, one edge of it still stood.

He put the string back in the pocket, over the note. Three lines of writing, pressed under twenty-nine pieces of iron.

Worn flat or not, it doesn't get worn away.