Sam Marlowe's Arc

Chapter 10 of 14

Sam followed the Mayor to the harbor. Dolly came too, walking fast to keep up. Quillscale trailed behind them, silent, his scaled hands twitching. The fog thickened as they reached the water. Sam had chased the wooden model to this same shore. Now the man who built the city carried it toward the edge of everything. The harbor lay still and wrong. Boats rocked but never drifted. A gray U-boat sat grounded on the bank, out of place and rusting. Far off in the mist, long-necked shapes rose and dipped, calling to each other. Sam had felt this spot was thin before. Now he understood. The wall here had worn through, and something on the other side was pressing back. The Mayor stopped at the water's edge. He raised the wooden model in six-fingered hands. "The seam is here," he said. "I will close it and burn the carving." Sam saw a shape in the fog. Not a boat. A man in a captain's cap, waders, a hook where one hand should be. Captain Finn Blackwater. The shark-faced sailor who had first sent Sam after the relic, then cut a boat loose to save his life. Blackwater waved his hook and shouted across the water. "You can't open it!" Blackwater called. "That's how the thing gets through. The wall keeps it out, not in!" Sam's stomach dropped. The Mayor had it backward. Something wanted out of the other side, into the city. Quillscale had buried bodies here for years. The rot had thinned the wall from within, and now a door hung ready to swing wide. "Don't touch it," Sam said. "You open that seam, you let it in." The Mayor turned all three eyes on him. "I made this wall. Nothing comes through it." "You made it," Sam said. "Then he rotted it." He pointed at Quillscale. "Ask him what's under the dock." Quillscale said nothing. His yellow eyes fixed on the model. The Mayor looked at his administrator for a long moment. Then he set the wooden model on the ground, whole, and did not break it. "The wall stays shut," the Mayor said. He walked into the fog. The long-necked shapes sank below the water. The harbor went quiet. Sam let out a breath. He had stopped the breach. But the model still sat on the wet stones, uncracked, undestroyed. The Mayor had left without burning it. Dolly picked it up. She held it out to Sam. "He didn't take it," she said. Sam stared at the carved wood in her hands. The relic was still real. Still the key to the thinnest wall in the city. And every crime boss who wanted it was still alive, still hunting. Blackwater's boat had already slipped back into the mist. "We're not done," Sam said. He took the model. It felt heavier than before.