“It’s appropriate,” Dorian assures her.
Together they lift the door and lower it over the rail and down to the surface of the Starless Sea. The edges dip into the honey but the door stays afloat.
Once the door has moved a distance from the ship Eleanor stands up on the rail and tosses one of the paper lanterns onto the door. It lands over Allegra’s feet and tips, the candle inside catching first on its paper shell and then on the silk, working its way over the ropes.
The door and its occupant, both aflame, drift farther from the ship.
Dorian and Eleanor stand side by side at the rail, watching.
“Do you want to say something nice?” Eleanor asks.
Dorian stares at the burning corpse of the woman who took his name and his life and made him a thousand promises that were never kept. The woman who found him when he was young and lost and alone and gave him a purpose and set him on a path that has proved to be more surprising and strange than he was led to believe. A woman he had trusted beyond all others until a year ago and a woman who would have shot him in the heart very recently had time and fate not intervened.
“No, I don’t want to say anything,” he tells Eleanor and she turns and looks at him thoughtfully, but then she nods and returns her attention starboard, considering the now distant flames for a long time before she speaks.
“Thank you for seeing me when other people looked through me like I was a ghost,” Eleanor says and an unexpected sob catches in Dorian’s throat.
Eleanor puts a hand over Dorian’s on the rail and they stay like that in silence, watching long after the flame fades out of sight and the ship continues to steer itself to its destination.
The burning door illuminates the faces of the ancient statues as it passes.
They are only stone likenesses of those who dwelt in this space long before but they recognize one of their own and pay their silent respects as Allegra Cavallo is returned to the Starless Sea.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS stares upward toward a dim light that shines (not brightly) at a distance he had already thought of as deep from a spot very, very far below it.
What’s the opposite of a fear of heights? Fear of depths?
There is a cliff, a shadow that stretches up to the dim light from the city. He can sort of see the bridge. There’s only the barest amount of light where he’s landed, like warm-toned moonlight.
He does not remember landing, only slipping and continuing to slip and then having already landed.
He has landed on a pile of rocks. His leg hurts but nothing seems broken, not even his indestructible glasses.
Zachary reaches out to pull himself up and his fingers close over a hand.
He yanks his arm back.
He reaches out again, tentatively and the hand is still there, frozen, extending out from the pile of rocks that is not a pile of rocks at all. Next to the hand is a leg and a round shape like half a head. As Zachary pulls himself up he rests his hand on a disembodied hip.
He stands in a sea of broken statues.
An arm nearby is holding an unlit torch, a real one from the looks of it, not one carved from stone. Zachary moves slowly toward it and takes it from the statue’s hand.
He puts the sword down by his feet and fumbles around in his bag for the cigarette lighter, grateful to past Zachary for including it in the inventory.
It takes a few tries but he manages to light the torch. It gives him light enough to navigate, though he doesn’t know which way to go. He lets gravity dictate his way forward, following the sloping surface in whichever direction is easiest to step. The statues shift beneath his feet. He uses the sword to balance himself.
It is difficult to manage both sword and torch over the uneven surface but he dares not leave either behind. He needs the torch for light and the sword feels…important. The broken statues shift, creating miniature avalanches of body parts. He drops the sword and puts his hand out to steady himself and he hits something softer than stone.
The skull beneath his fingers is not carved from ivory or marble. It is bone, clinging to the last of the flesh that once surrounded it. Zachary’s fingers tangle in what is left of its hair. He pulls his hand back quickly, stray hairs chasing after his fingers.
Zachary rests the torch in the awaiting hand of a nearby statue so he can get a closer look that he’s not certain he wants.
The corpse that is almost a skeleton is concealed amongst the broken statues. Had Zachary been walking a few paces to either side he never would have noticed it, though now he can smell the decay.
This body is not wrapped in memories. It wears scraps of disintegrating clothing. Whoever it once contained is gone, and they have taken their stories with them, leaving their bones and their boots and a leather scabbard wrapped around their torso, fit for a sword it does not contain.
Zachary pauses, torn between the obvious usefulness of the scabbard and the amount of corpse contact it will take to obtain it, and after an internal debate he holds h