42. Godfuckery and a Spark

Alone in a drifting cloud-ship with Galva’s and Dalgatha’s bodies, Kinch grapples with guilt for Erydon’s slaughter and the king’s death. He argues with an imagined Galva about freeing slaves and the city’s devastation, curses Thumos for destroying victors and victims alike, and resigns himself to the wind’s northward pull.

Discovering three barrels of thunderdust, Kinch debates delivering them to Ispanthia but foresees an arms race that would obliterate beauty and escalate war. He chooses to prevent its spread, hurling the barrels overboard, then resolves to live and find Norrigal. As he experiments with the rudders, Norrigal’s half-stone tugs north, so he turns to ride the current and falls asleep.

In a dream of the Snowless Wood, Kinch sees the squashman and Norrigal hanging inverted, releasing dust and a chain like his stone. She warns she is “taking some of the wind,” then her laughter becomes thunder. Kinch wakes in a storm as lightning batters the cloud-ship. A wolf pelt appears, marked I AM, and lightning breaks his sleeper tattoo, freeing his blind cat, Bully Boy, whom he shelters beneath the pelt through the night.

With dawn, the winds ease and the Thralls loom nearer. Kinch arranges Galva more regally and resists dumping her and the bird to gain height, trusting the stone now pointing down and forward. Concluding he is where he must be, he continues north toward whatever the stone—and Norrigal—promise.