The moment each of them passed through the doors, something "looked" at them.
It was no gaze, but something more thorough—as though the whole person had been opened and examined page by page. When Sharlo crossed the threshold, that "look" settled upon him and paused for half a beat; then came an almost familiar permission to pass, like an old porter recognising a regular caller. The other five passed in turn: Viola's name and notebook were inspected, Cole's lamp was inspected, and upon reaching Pip the examination plainly hesitated—the thief's old accounts—but the heart newly redeemed within his breast stood surety for him.
The Old Boatman boarded last. As the spirit-ferryman crossed the threshold, he offered half a salute to his colleague in the depths of the carriage.
The doors closed. The chime sounded; the carriage swayed gently and began to move.
The three-thousand-year-old train had taken six living people aboard.
The "goods" in the carriage made room for them—the orderly stacks of luminous mist rippled faintly as they boarded, like a carriage full of passengers turning sideways to clear the aisle. The six sat together upon a row of empty seats. The cushions had long since hardened, but the capped corners of the armrests and the curve of each seat back spoke everywhere of the care taken by those who made them.
Then the station announcement sounded.
A woman's voice descended from the carriage roof, gentle, every syllable distinct, in the cadence Sharlo knew best from both his lives—in his former life, he had heard it upon a thousand morning and evening commutes until it meant nothing. Now, meeting it again in the darkness three thousand years later, tears rose without warning to his eyes.
"This train is bound for—Starport."
"The next station is—Lighthouse Front."
"Lighthouse Front," Cole echoed under his breath. The boy who kept the lamp gazed at the carriage roof as though at a god which had spoken the name of his own home. "Brother, it said Lighthouse Front."
"Three thousand years ago, there truly was a lighthouse along this line." Sharlo looked into the darkness streaming backwards beyond the window. "The tower remains. And now the fire of your lineage burns at its summit."
The tunnel wall flew past beyond the window at the edge of the train's light. At first, there was only monotonous grey stone, pipes, and inspection doors which flashed past. But after they had travelled more than ten miles, Pip suddenly pressed himself to the glass.
"There's something on the wall," he said. "Words. The walls are covered in words."
They all crowded to the windows. Upon the tunnel wall swept by the train's lamps—one or two lines at first, then whole fields of them—words had been carved. Cut by hand, deep and shallow, crooked, line crowded against line, they went on without end and streamed backwards as the train ran, a river made of writing beyond the glass. Words in Sharlo's native script. In the passing light, he snatched one sentence after another:
"My name is Qinghe. I went north."
"Shuanzi. Shuanzi of the Li family. Alive."
"Ma, don't look for me. I'm going with the others."
"All who reached here were alive. Going north."
"...They're all names." Sharlo's voice was hoarse. "Carved by people fleeing the city."
"On the night the city collapsed, those who missed the train walked north through the tunnel. As they went, they carved their names upon the wall—" He watched the river of words flowing backwards and spoke one word at a time. "Telling those behind: I passed this way. I am alive. I went north."
In the darkness three thousand years ago, a company of people who had lost their city felt their way north along the wall. They did not know what lay in the north, or whether they would reach it, but they carved their names all along the road—for no reason but that those who came later along this dark road might see: someone had walked ahead. The people ahead were alive.
There were pictures in the river of words as well.
Those who could not write carved pictures. A fish—the mark of a fishing household, its head pointing north. A bowl with three trails of steam rising from it—a cook, or merely someone hungry and longing for one hot meal. A pair of straw sandals, the toes pointing north. A sun—a circle surrounded by rays long and short, carved exceedingly deep; the person who made it must have spent all his strength—the old sun in the sky had only just gone dark, and beneath the earth, in darkness, someone drew a sun from memory for the people who came after.
Along one stretch, the writing abruptly thickened until line overlapped line—it had been a resting place where weary travellers sat against the wall and, while they rested, carved down everything they wished to say. One sentence had been cut in large letters: "Carried my ma this far. Ma is sleeping. I go on." A smaller line crowded into the corner of the great letters: "Parting here. Taking the western branch to find water. Will return when I do. —Zhuzi." No answer appeared beneath it—the wall did not record whether Zhuzi returned.
"Viola." Watching the river of words flow backwards beyond the window, Sharlo spoke abruptly. "When we return, tell Archive Rat—the archives need a new volume."
"For what file?"
"The North Tunnel Roll," he said. "In three hundred years of the capital, four thousand one hundred people have been entered as 'whereabouts unknown.' Upon this tunnel's walls are tens of thousands from three thousand years ago whose 'whereabouts were unknown'—but every one of them left their whereabouts: gone north. Alive when they went."
"What people fear most in this life is not death," he said softly. "It is whereabouts unknown. Not one person upon this wall has unknown whereabouts. Someone must return and copy them into the archive, entry by entry."
Viola wrote it in her notebook. When she had finished, she inclined herself slightly towards the river of words outside.
Near the end of that river, Pip's eyes proved their worth again.
"Stop—not stop, look!" He pointed to a patch of wall flying past the window. "There's fresh ink there!"
The train was swift, and the glimpse lasted only half a beat. But all six pairs of eyes caught it: among the dense carvings of three thousand years, a small line in fresh ink had been written neatly beneath one inscription—
"Recorded to this point. Continuation pending. V."
"Uncle." Heat rose in Sharlo's throat.
The Veilseeker had copied the names as far as this point. He could not copy them all—scores of miles of wall, tens of thousands of names, one man with one pen, working until he must write "continuation pending." Yet even his inability to finish had to be entered in the record: how far he had reached, who had recorded it, what remained outstanding—as though he had established a formal file for this three-thousand-year-old wall.
"We will complete it when we return." Sharlo spoke softly to the ink which had already flashed from sight. "You began the North Tunnel Roll. We will continue the entries."
"This is what my uncle walked to see." Sharlo leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. "He was copying names. A man who fought 'whereabouts unknown' all his life came upon scores of miles of wall covered in the words 'I am alive'—he could not bear to travel past a single step by train."
The train passed Lighthouse Front Station. The platform was empty; its lamps burned, the doors opened, waited for some scores of breaths, then closed. The train passed Shipyard, then North Embankment—every station empty, every station served. The timetable of three thousand years omitted not one stop.
During the journey, the Old Boatman practised his own profession.
The old spirit-ferryman sat cross-legged in the middle of the carriage, the blue-green glass lamp upon his knees, and quietly recited the Ferry-Ticket Litany to the carriage full of neatly stacked "goods"—not the ferrying-the-dead verse, but the traveller-calming verse, the passage the Stillwater Society recited for passengers who were seasick, frightened, or far from home. Its low melody rose and fell with the rhythm of the wheels.
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As he recited, the luminous mist throughout the carriage grew still. Those things of the heart which had been stolen, pawned, and harvested had each lain curled in upon itself; now, as though something had soothed them, they gently unfurled, cluster by cluster.
"They too are travellers far from home," the Old Boatman said when he finished one passage. "Whether person or thing, a traveller far from home cannot bear rough handling and longs for someone to take notice."
"What happens to them when we reach Starport?" Cole asked the question in every heart. "We cannot simply stand by and watch them enter that 'door.'"
Sharlo did not answer. He looked at the luminous mist throughout the carriage—the portions released by the thirty-seven ports had not yet crossed the scales; those here were old goods already "entered in the accounts" over the past three hundred years, carried station by station to Starport. Release them? Where? Some of their owners remained alive; others had been dead for centuries.
"Write down the question," he said at last. "When we arrive, we look first and answer afterwards. The Curtainbreaker's rule: do not hurry to balance an account you do not understand."
It was upon the long straight stretch beyond North Embankment Station that the train's lamps caught the figure beside the tracks.
At first, it was only a shifting patch of darkness. Then the edge of the light resolved it—a great, heavy figure stumbling along the maintenance path beside the rails. Half his satin jacket had torn away and trailed behind him; he clasped an ebony casket desperately to his breast; the head once groomed to perfection had gone mostly white—not the white of age, but a drained, faded white, as though something had been drawn out of it.
In the blink of an eye, the train would pass him.
Sharlo moved.
Viola later wrote in the file: The person concerned consulted no one. He sprang from his seat, reached the doors in three strides, and seized the red lever beside them. The sign from three thousand years ago remained fixed above it: EMERGENCY BRAKE. DO NOT OPERATE EXCEPT IN EMERGENCY—
He pulled it down.
A shriek of metal upon metal tore through the darkness. The luminous mist throughout the carriage surged violently forwards. For the first time, the three-thousand-year-old train was commanded to stop by human hands. Carriage by carriage, roaring and sliding, it came to rest in the middle of the tunnel.
The doors slid open.
In the tunnel, the great, heavy figure froze, pinned in place by light pouring from the carriage. Mr. Bassoon raised his face—it had grown thinner, every vestige of dignity collapsed, and only his eyes still recognised people. He stared a long while at Sharlo standing against the light in the doorway, then abruptly pulled one corner of his mouth aside and laughed. The sound rang in hollow echoes through the tunnel.
"Mr. Curtainbreaker," he said, his voice worn away by half, "a train three thousand years old, and you tell it to stop as you please."
"Get aboard," Sharlo said.
"The likes of this old man—" Bassoon looked down at himself: the torn jacket, the faded hair, the ebony casket in his arms. "This train will not carry."
"The door decides whom it carries, not you." Sharlo stepped aside within the carriage to clear the entrance. "Eight-tenths of the road to Starport remain if you walk. Those bones of yours will not last. Get aboard and try—"
"You will know only after trying."
Bassoon stood beside the tracks and looked up. Those eyes, which had watched the market in human hearts for thirty years, went over Sharlo from head to foot, then once again.
"More than two years," he said at last. "This old man has fought you for more than two years, and today at last I see what lies at the bottom of you."
"It is not goodness. This old man has seen many good men; none were good to such an extent." Step by step, the fat shopkeeper approached the carriage doors. "You simply—refuse to concede. Fate says a man's story is over; you say no, one more performance. Heaven's law says this account must rot; you say no, I have it recorded. A train three thousand years old says it does not stop; you say—"
"Stop for a moment," he said. "Take one more passenger."
He raised one foot and crossed towards the threshold.
That "look" fell upon him. Sharlo saw it clearly: halfway across, Bassoon's whole body froze upon the threshold—the doors examined him, exceedingly slowly and with terrible weight. An existence shorn of one word, bad debts covering his body, a fragment of godhead held within his breast—the doors' "hesitation" almost took material form.
"He travels my road." Sharlo spoke to the door just as he had before the white pillar, one word at a time. "His account is entered with me. I stand surety for it."
The door "looked" once more at Sharlo.
It permitted passage.
Mr. Bassoon stumbled into the carriage and fell heavily onto his backside amid seats surrounded by luminous mist, still clasping the ebony casket to his breast. The doors closed; the train began to move again, and the woman's announcement remained gentle as ever:
"This train is bound for—Starport."
The ration bags Half-Ladle had prepared proved their worth. Sharlo untied his own portion and passed it over with his waterskin.
Mr. Bassoon stared at the food for three breaths, then accepted it. He wolfed down two bites—truly wolfed them, thirty years of dignity shattered utterly before hunger—then stopped abruptly at the third. The fat shopkeeper carefully wrapped the remaining biscuit in its oiled paper, folded the corners, and tucked it close against his body.
"Keep what's left," he said, meeting Sharlo's eyes and twitching one corner of his mouth. "There may be none later. A tradesman's habit. It cannot be cured."
Pip had been watching him from the far end of the carriage. Bassoon swallowed his last mouthful, raised his eyes, and recognised that face.
"Young Magpie," he said. "You reclaimed your heart?"
"I reclaimed it." Pip's voice was taut.
"Good." Bassoon nodded, his tone as matter-of-fact as when checking an old account. "This old man stored those goods for you for eleven years. A glass box lined in velvet, opened once each season to air it. I never let damp reach it."
Pip opened his mouth. Words of hatred and words of thanks collided in his throat, and neither emerged. At last he turned his face away towards the darkness outside and muttered, "...Lining the box in velvet shows you know the trade."
"Those in this old man's trade," Bassoon said softly, gazing at the carriage full of luminous mist, "possess no other skill. But when it comes to storing things, we know the trade."
The fat shopkeeper slumped in his seat and panted for a very long while. Once his breath returned, he looked around the carriage—the carload of "goods" his trade had collected over three hundred years, the six faces he had fought for more than two—and at last his gaze returned to Sharlo. Abruptly he spoke, his voice low as though to himself:
"Mr. Curtainbreaker. Do you know why this old man must reach Starport?"
"Why?"
"Because the finale of the Final Curtain Season," Mr. Bassoon said, hugging the ebony casket closer and pronouncing each word distinctly, "will be performed upon no stage in the human world."
"What does that mean?" Viola pressed, her pen poised.
The fat shopkeeper shook his head.
"See for yourself when we arrive." He leaned back, closed his eyes, and said, "Whatever this old man says now sounds like a lie—the words of a man who has been stripped are worth nothing. Seeing is proof."
"Only this," he said at last, his eyes still closed. "This old man walked through the tunnel for three days. I counted the names upon the wall and passed eight thousand before I could count no more. Mr. Curtainbreaker—this old man practised his trade for thirty years. The goods upon the counters rose into mountains. Three days ago, I finally understood that a whole mountain is worth less than one name upon that wall."
"Names are left by one person for another. Goods are scraped from one person by another," he said. "If this old man had seen that wall first, thirty years ago..."
He did not finish. The wheels crossed a set of points with a clatter that crushed the rest of the sentence away.
No one answered. Within the carriage were only the faint gleam of a carload of luminous mist and the Old Boatman's low traveller-calming litany.
During the latter part of the journey, Viola moved to the seat opposite Bassoon.
"Before your words lose all their value." She opened her notebook. "One final entry. My playbill. Dreamless Sleep. My name printed indelibly as the leading player. The Central Counter's comment: Approved for performance. Awaiting entrance."
"What entrance is it awaiting?"
Bassoon opened his eyes. For a long while, he looked at the woman opposite who was taking the name from her own playbill and transferring it stroke by stroke into an archive. Then he sighed.
"Miss Investigator, the truth—that is not a play this old man means to stage. I only delivered the script," he said. "The one who approved it is below. Why is your name printed indelibly? Because below recognises you. No one has kindled the Wakebound's name in three hundred years. You are the only player of your kind. The Final Curtain Season has seventeen productions and lacks one 'sleep'—"
"A play missing a star may make a substitution. A play missing its 'only one' cannot."
"What does awaiting entrance mean?" Viola's pen did not stop.
"It is a rule of their trade, and the most chilling rule of all," Bassoon said slowly. "They never bind a star and drag them onstage. In three hundred years, not once. They merely build the stage, light the lamps, print the playbill—and then wait."
"Wait for the star to walk to the stage entrance." He looked at her. "Juliet went up of her own accord. Director-General Grey—forgive this old man's bluntness—also went up of his own accord. That is 'awaiting entrance.' They wager that when a debt comes due, the debtor will come to settle it himself."
For one beat, the carriage was silent. Viola finished the final entry and closed her notebook, her face revealing nothing.
"Recorded," she said. "Let them wait."
"My entrance—" She placed the notebook inside her coat and spoke in that regulation calm of hers, each word final. "I choose for myself."
Bassoon looked at her, then suddenly laughed under his breath. It was very soft and held no mockery; it was the laugh of an old connoisseur who had watched plays for thirty years and recognised a true performer.
"Good," he said. "Those words make this old man's thirty wasted years worthwhile."
After a time no one could measure, the train began to slow. The woman's voice descended, gentle and patient:
"Terminus—Starport. We have arrived."
"Please take all your belongings with you," she said, unchanged after three thousand years. "Thank you for travelling with us."
The six stood and checked their equipment. Mr. Bassoon rose last with the ebony casket in his arms. Before the doors, he straightened the satin jacket whose lower half was torn away—no dignity could be straightened back into it, yet still he tried.
Beyond the doors lay the darkness of the terminus, and deep within that darkness, one thread of pale, bitter-cold light.