Starport Station was smaller than Seaside Park, but far better preserved.
The platform was clean, half its lamps still shone, and not one sign was missing from the walls. In the passage leading out stood another row of those familiar white pillars. The "goods" unloaded from the train were travelling in quiet clusters into the depths of the passage along a slowly moving freight conveyor from the age of the old sun, three thousand years ago. It gave off a low, even hum. Like every machine on this line, something had kept it maintained and running for three millennia.
"Goods don't take the passenger way." Pip studied the long conveyor for some time. "Goods have a door of their own. We take the passenger way—up there."
The station stairs led upwards. One step, then another. Halfway up, Sharlo sensed that something was wrong—the light filtering down from above was not daylight.
It was a light he had never seen before. Cold. Still. Blue almost to black, yet strewn with points of brightness he could not name. The farther they climbed, the heavier that light became, pressing upon the steps, pressing upon the shoulders of the six, until even the guiding lamp's gold-red radiance drew in upon itself and dwindled to a single spark.
The instant they emerged from the station, all six stopped as one.
No one spoke. No one could.
They stood upon the ground of Starport—a new harbour district from three thousand years ago, its low ranks of buildings and broad embankment road spread quietly at their feet, the silhouettes of harbour cranes frozen in the distance: a little seaside city that had lain dead for three millennia.
And above it all was the sky.
No. That was not the sky.
The sky ought to be high, distant, without end. But the thing above their heads was low. Absurdly low, so low that instinct made them want to stoop. Like a boundless dark-blue vault, it bore down from beyond the northern sea horizon, curving over the whole world with an arc the naked eye could discern. It was not emptiness, but substance—the dark-blue surface possessed grain and texture, like a taut curtain ancient beyond imagining.
And the curtain was studded with stars.
They were close. The stars were close. They were no longer the distant, gentle points of light Sharlo had gazed up at across two lives—here, at the edge of the world, every star had a shape: round, bright apertures with sharp-cut rims.
Holes. Light shone through from behind them.
White and steady, rank upon rank, the light leaked through myriad holes in the curtain—like eyes bored into the wall of a dark room, with some unseen, illuminated place outside.
"The stars..." Cole stared upwards, his voice trembling beyond control, both hands clamped around the bail of the guiding lamp. "Master said the stars were keyholes. I always thought it was a storyteller's turn of phrase—"
"It was no metaphor." Casimir's voice was the hoarsest among the six. The Worldstrider gazed at a sky filled with keyholes, myriad points of seeping light reflected in eyes that had seen every manner of door under heaven. "These eyes recognise them. On the far side of those holes—there are roads. Ten thousand roads. Behind every hole, a road runs on."
"That is not the sky-curtain," he said, one word at a time. "It is a door. The greatest door under heaven. Locked."
"Locked for no one knows how many years."
The Old Boatman did not look at the sky. The old spirit-ferryman's gaze crossed the embankment and settled upon the sea to the north—then he reached out and braced one hand against the station wall.
"Young sir," he called hoarsely. "Look at the sea."
Sharlo followed his gaze, and his stomach lurched.
The sea at Starport was tilted.
Beyond the embankment, the surface of the sea sloped gradually upwards towards the north—as though someone had lifted a sheet of paper by its far corner. The water lay against that impossible incline and climbed towards the place where the sky-curtain pressed down. Far in the north, sea and curtain met, and a dim thread of dark-gold light ran the full breadth of the seam across the northern horizon.
Here, the world truly had an edge. The sea was water spread over the inside of a lid. The "earth" beneath both his lives was the bottom of a colossal bowl.
And Sharlo knew the dark gold in that seam.
"Sunken Chain Valley," he heard himself say. "The light at the far end of the chain, dark gold, brightening and dimming like a heartbeat—the Mist Gorge survey reports described this very colour."
The colour of the false sun. Stagnant amber, the colour that had covered the whole city on the day of "One Night of Dusk." The Realmweight beneath Palace Hill had three chains: one held the royal city fast, one sank into the southern valley—and the last had run only as far as the Eye of the Sea upon the chart before it broke off.
Now, standing at the world's edge and watching that same dark gold shine through the seam between sea and sky-curtain, he suddenly understood why that third chain could be drawn no farther.
It did not end at the Eye of the Sea. It descended through the Eye, ran north all the way, and was fastened here—fastened where the sky-curtain joined the world.
The Realmweight can uphold the Sable Sovereign—and overturn him. And one chain of the Realmweight held the sky itself.
"The Relighting Proclamation said the people's dreams were returned to the people." Viola had opened her notebook without anyone noticing. Her pen hung over the paper, but she had not written a word—the first Vesper Bureau investigator in three thousand years to reach the edge of the world could find no corresponding form in the regulations. "The Duskwarden Oath sworn at Dawn Tower says, 'Third, keep the world in dreaming sleep.' Yet no one ever wrote... that the world was shut beneath a lid."
"They did write it," Sharlo said softly. "The twelfth of the Seventeen Dirges: The Keeper of the Star Gate is locked beyond the firmament."
"And the sixth." He stared at the dark-gold seam in the north, his throat dry. "The Dusk Colossus falls one breath before dawn. The Colossus's corpse supports the western rim of the sky-curtain."
Slowly, he turned west.
Beneath the western sky-curtain, impossibly far away, a long grey-black mountain shadow rose above the sea horizon. Its outline was wrong—mountains did not undulate like that: one long, gentle rise, followed by five parallel peaks like ranks of knuckles—
That was no mountain.
It was a hand. The silhouette of a hand resting upon the edge of the world, so vast that comprehension failed before it. Beyond the hand, the shadow continued into the fog in the faint line of an arm; what lay farther back could no longer be seen—but every one of them could supply the missing shape: a colossal body that had lain for tens of thousands of years with its head pillowed upon the world's edge.
The Dusk Colossus. He truly lay there. Fallen. Holding up the western rim of the sky-curtain—or rather, the western rim of the curtain pressed down upon his corpse.
The six stood at the entrance to Starport Station for a very long time. No one urged another on. Beneath such a thing and before such a sea, a person needed time to learn how to stand again.
The guiding lamp in Cole's arms was the first to recover.
Its tiny gold-red flame shrank beneath the sky-curtain's cold light. Then, slowly and stubbornly, it straightened once more—a little flame born of the First-Kindling fire on Relighting Day, standing at the world's end beneath the gaze of myriad keyholes, neither hiding nor trembling.
The boy looked down at it as though he had borrowed something from its flame. He steadied the lamp and raised his head.
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"Master said," he rasped, "lamps are lit for dark places."
"It's dark enough here," he said. "Just right."
Bassoon was the first to move.
The fat shopkeeper slowly came out from behind the six, the ebony casket in his arms. He did not look at the sky—Sharlo noticed that he had not raised his head once since leaving the station, as though he had seen it before, or dared not see it again. He looked instead down the embankment road, towards the mouth of the freight conveyor.
Following his gaze, Sharlo saw where the goods were going.
The freight conveyor emerged through a cargo outlet beside the station, rose above the ground, and ran north all the way to the harbour. Three hundred years of goods—no, the luminous mist now streaming along it without end was three thousand years of goods—flowed steadily towards a building at the harbour's farthest point.
The building stood upon the northernmost embankment, directly facing the seam between sea and sky-curtain. It was no structure of the old world—Sharlo knew its style: upturned eaves and bracket sets, tier upon tier of roof corners reaching towards the low-hanging curtain. The whole building was painted black. Only two strings of lanterns under its eaves shone with a dim grey light.
A playhouse.
A Dirge Society playhouse facing the sky-curtain at the end of an inverted world. All the goods, three thousand years of human hearts, poured through its open backstage entrance like a hundred rivers returning to the sea.
"We have arrived," Mr. Bassoon said softly.
"The finale of the Final Curtain Season will be performed upon no stage in the human world—" He tightened his arms around the ebony casket and looked at the playhouse, at the low sky-curtain studded with keyholes above it, and finished what he had begun:
"Because the stage for that production is the sky."
"The stars across the heavens are the footlights. The sky-curtain is the grand drape." The fat shopkeeper's voice was dry as sand. "And the human hearts they have amassed for three hundred years are being carried backstage as—"
"Scenery."
"Explain it clearly." Sharlo's voice hardened. "You promised—once we arrived, seeing would be proof. We have arrived. Lay out everything you know at your level."
Bassoon was silent for a long time. Then the producer of thirty years laid open the accounts from his level.
"This old man knows little. The counter's rule is that each level knows only its own," he said. "At this old man's level, it works like this: for three hundred years, the Dirge Society has collected goods from the human world—debts of affection, forgetfulness, homesickness, waiting, dreams. Once collected, they are brought here and handed to the playhouse. The playhouse sends them 'backstage.' What they are used for is not a question my level is permitted to ask."
"But after thirty years in the trade, even the things one must not ask begin to form a picture." He looked towards the black playhouse. "Have you ever considered what scenery does? It makes what stands upon the stage seem real. A false mountain must look like a mountain. A painted sea must look like the sea. And what are they carrying backstage? The truest things in the human world. A mother's waiting. A sailor's homesickness. A native accent no one else can understand."
"They are using the truest things under heaven as scenery for one production—" The fat shopkeeper spoke one word at a time. "How real do they mean that production to become?"
"How real must it be, to require three hundred years of living people and true hearts beneath it?"
No one answered. Light leaked coldly through myriad keyholes in the sky-curtain.
"This old man came here for three things," Bassoon said at last. "The settlement failed; I plead guilty. That is the first. To deliver the Final Curtain Season scripts—including Dreamless Sleep—to the Main Stage. That is the second. And the third..." He tightened his arms around the ebony casket. "Pledge this and redeem myself. Once all three are done, the account at this old man's level will be clear."
"As for the account higher up—" He glanced at Sharlo. "Mr. Curtainbreaker, that lies beyond this old man's level. It is yours."
On the road to the embankment, the streets of Starport cut every one of them to the heart.
It was a small city, lower than the one at Seaside Park, old and homely. Shopfront crowded shopfront along the street, their signs still hanging. As Sharlo walked, he read them—he could not stop himself from reading. One faded wooden board said OLD CHEN'S FOOD STALL—SEAFOOD, with a smiling crab painted beneath the words FOOD STALL. Next door stood a fishing-tackle shop; the banner beyond that bore two words: SHOE REPAIR.
At the world's end, directly beneath the sky-curtain, hung a smiling crab. Three thousand years ago, people had sat here shelling prawns, drinking, playing drinking games, and complaining of the heat—and three hundred feet above their heads was the lid of the world, studded with keyholes. They had grown accustomed to it. Human beings could grow accustomed to anything.
A row of locks hung from the embankment rail.
Iron and brass, great and small, scores of locks had rusted together into a dark-brown mass, each secured to the iron chain of the railing. Marks could still be made out upon a few: two names with a crooked heart between them.
"What kind of array is this?" Cole asked softly.
"It isn't an array." Sharlo stood for a long time before the rusted locks. "It was a custom in the age of the old sun. When two people loved one another, they bought a lock, carved both their names upon it, and fastened it to whatever they thought most enduring—a bridge, a tower, a railing. Then they locked it and threw the key into the sea."
"It meant their love was locked fast. It would remain unopened till heaven and earth grew old."
Mick was not there, so no one asked, "What happened to them afterwards?" Scores of couples three thousand years ago, at the farthest edge of the world with a sky full of keyholes directly overhead, had insisted upon adding locks of their own to this railing. As Sharlo gazed at their rusted locks, he suddenly thought it the most righteous retort humanity had ever given fate in either of his lives.
You have your locks. I have mine.
Old Vane's writing appeared upon the wall by the station entrance.
It was not hidden in a crevice or wrapped in oiled cloth. A conspicuous passage in ink covered the most prominent part of the wall beside the exit, like a signpost raised for those who came later:
"To those who come after:
Look sparingly at the holes in the sky. Look too long, and you will feel that something is watching you. It is not an illusion.
The business that matters is in the playhouse. There is a small door behind it, with its hinges on the inside, left unbarred at night—they guard against no one, because no one has reached this place in three thousand years.
I stayed in the building for six days and finished copying their goods ledgers. Everything important is transcribed in the notebook I carry, and the notebook goes with me. I am bound for the embankment behind the building—at its end is something the goods ledger calls the 'Key.' I am going to see it.
Those who come later, do not hurry after me. First examine the copied inventory from the goods ledger—I have pinned one page beneath the threshold of the rear door.
—V"
Sharlo read the passage three times.
Six days. His uncle had lived for six days inside the Dirge Society's Final Curtain Season Main Stage and copied the goods ledgers to the end. Then he had gone to see the "Key"—
The Keeper of the Star Gate.
"The small door behind the building. Beneath its threshold." He turned and surveyed the company, gathering his thoughts back by slow degrees after the sky-curtain had crushed them apart. "Assignments. Pip, the door and the threshold are your work. Viola, once we have the copied inventory, you verify it. Cole, turn the lamp down as far as it will go—beneath that playhouse, our fire must not draw attention. Old Boatman, keep the green lamp as usual—the goods of three thousand years inside are all travellers far from home. Your litany may prove useful. Casimir—"
"I will examine the roads." The navigator nodded. "I'll feel out the ways inside and around the building first."
"Mr. Bassoon." Sharlo looked last at the fat shopkeeper. "I won't obstruct your three pieces of business. But you take the front door, and we take the rear—your road and ours remain separate. Agreed?"
"Agreed." Mr. Bassoon straightened what remained of his torn satin jacket and, clutching the ebony casket, took two steps towards the front entrance. Then he stopped and looked back.
"Mr. Curtainbreaker," he said, "after more than two years, this is the first time this old man has hoped you would win."
The party advanced along the embankment road towards the playhouse. Halfway there, the two strings of grey lanterns under the black eaves suddenly lit one after another—from the roof corners all the way to the front entrance, like a pair of eyes slowly opening.
Then a voice came from the direction of the playhouse. Neither loud nor soft. Dry. Courteous. Across half the length of the embankment road, it fell into every ear with perfect clarity:
"Passengers of the last train."
"You have had an arduous journey. Welcome—to the Final Curtain Season Main Stage."
All six stopped together. Pip's hand went to his waist, Cole drew the guiding lamp closer to his breast, and Viola's notebook opened without a sound. The Old Boatman raised his blue-green glass lamp half a foot—the spirit-ferryman's light shone towards the playhouse, and its wick sank heavily once, then again, dragging the old man's wrist down with it.
"The weight inside that building..." The old spirit-ferryman kept his voice exceedingly low. "There is no end to it. Three thousand years of travellers far from home are all within."
Scores of paces ahead, Mr. Bassoon, who had taken the front way, also paused. The fat shopkeeper looked back at Sharlo. Everything lay in that glance: warning, trust, and something almost absurdly like the look of a comrade-in-arms. Then he turned away, clasped the ebony casket, and walked step by step towards the front doors as their lamps slowly came alight.
Sharlo stood in the middle of the embankment road and looked up at the black playhouse whose eaves reached towards the sky-curtain, at its pair of "opening eyes." He raised his voice in answer to the announcing voice:
"Does the Main Stage's counter accept the Curtainbreaker's account?"
Beneath the playhouse eaves, the grey lantern light trembled ever so slightly.
Three breaths passed before the dry, courteous voice descended again. This time, something entered its tone that had not been heard in three hundred years—something like laughter.
"It does," it said. "The Main Stage has long awaited its honoured guest's account."
"Please—use the rear entrance," it said. "Your uncle used the rear entrance as well."
"Was his stay comfortable?" Sharlo's heart rose into his throat, but his face did not stir. He merely followed the thread the other had offered.
"He stayed six days and spent all six copying ledgers." The announcing voice remained as dry as ever. "When he checked out, his room was paid in full—with a little tune no one could understand. In three thousand years, this was the first time the Main Stage received such payment."
"It is a fine tune," it said. "The Main Stage kept it. We play it every night after closing."
A little tune no one could understand. Sharlo's nails bit into his palm—his uncle had pawned his native accent, but he still had music in his hands. The violin with its broken fourth string remained at the agency, but hands that had played all their lives carried music wherever they went.
The price of his room had been a melody from home.