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Back The Scar Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Prologue
  2. Part One: Channels
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Interlude I: Elsewhere
  9. Interlude II: Bellis Coldwine
  10. Part Two: Salt
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Interlude III: Elsewhere
  21. Part Three: The Compass Factory
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Interlude IV: Elsewhere
  29. Part Four: Blood
  30. Chapter Twenty-One
  31. Chapter Twenty-Two
  32. Chapter Twenty-Three
  33. Chapter Twenty-Four
  34. Chapter Twenty-Five
  35. Chapter Twenty-Six
  36. Interlude V: Tanner Sack
  37. Interlude VI: Elsewhere
  38. Part Five: Storms
  39. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  40. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  41. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  42. Chapter Thirty
  43. Chapter Thirty-One
  44. Chapter Thirty-Two
  45. Interlude VII: Basilisk Channel
  46. Interlude VIII: Elsewhere
  47. Part Six: Morning Walker
  48. Chapter Thirty-Three
  49. Chapter Thirty-Four
  50. Chapter Thirty-Five
  51. Chapter Thirty-Six
  52. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  53. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  54. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  55. Chapter Forty
  56. Interlude IX: The Brucolac
  57. Part Seven: The Lookout
  58. Chapter Forty-One
  59. Chapter Forty-Two
  60. Chapter Forty-Three
  61. Chapter Forty-Four
  62. Chapter Forty-Five
  63. Chapter Forty-Six
  64. Chapter Forty-Seven
  65. Coda: Tanner Sack

Even I, perhaps, could not fight my way through the gangs and gangs of guards who patrol their engines, their rockmilk spurs. I do not know what must be done. But there is another way-something else, some force-to bring us to a slow, and stop. You can halt the beast.

If you could do that.

And in return? (See? you tell me, strange pride flashing like scales, you know all about this barter by which we live.)

In return? I will help you find that hidden one who has run from you.

Perhaps you do not know what it is to laugh. Certainly you do not know why I laugh so hard so long.

You cannot know.

Whom I have held and bloodied. What I have seen him wield. You cannot know that loyal to Armada and without alternative I have put aside my anger at the Lovers and let them take him, shamed as I was, implicated in the carnage he brought us. He is no ordinary thief, this war criminal, and they hold him in limbo till we can sentence him right. When our lunatic journey ceases.

You have come just a little late.

Not too late, however. What’s done is not too late to undo.

I know where they hold him.

You cannot know that what you offer me would any other time make me kill you. You cannot know that tonight is different, that I am tired of the dangerous idiocy into which my city is being led. That if mutiny is needed to turn us back, then I will do what I must to bring it about.

This is not an ordinary time, deepling. You come to me in a time of war.

You need a blind? A decoy while you search? Something to attract attention?

I have just the thing.

Hush. Let me tell you how it will be. What you will do, what I will do. I will help you find him, and this is what you will do for me. And I will tell you where your quarry is.

Now shall we plan?

Don’t stop.

We must finish this. See, there? We have the minutes we need to finish this.

The sky is not yet light.

Part Seven: The Lookout

Part Seven: The Lookout

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Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-One

While Armada moved north through dull air-temperate fronts so still that the weather seemed to be waiting for something-and while that expectancy communicated itself to the citizens, Bellis lay in sticky fever.

There were two days when she did not think at all. She burned up in temperatures severe enough to worry her nurses as she shied away from delirious visions, frightened into screaming fits she would never remember. The avanc pulled with its steady gait, not fast but faster by far than the city had ever traveled before. The shapes of waves changed with the currents.