Last First Snow

by Max Gladstone

  “Still,” Cozim said. “You got your hands on her throat. Counts for something.”

  She’d thought so too, at first. But Elayne had healed that girl, and Temoc greeted her as a friend. “It’s not like that,” she said, and again, louder, for the others to hear over their own laughter: “It’s not.”

  “You taking the witch’s side?”

  “No.” Chel stood. The others stopped talking. Forty pairs of eyes rested on her. She felt suddenly exposed. She’d spoken to rooms before—given orders, addressed crowds in the strike. This felt different. “The King in Red sent her to talk. They want to make a deal.”

  “We’ve heard that before. Deals don’t end well for us.”

  “This one might. And we almost stopped her at the border because we were afraid. I jumped her because she didn’t understand what she saw. Let’s say they really do want to deal—and I mean like people deal with people, not like the bosses dealt with us back at the docks. Any of you want to count how many times we screwed up today? How many times we almost wrecked our chances?”

  Cozim stirred the charcoal stew. “What are you saying, Chel?”

  “Back on the docks, we knew our job. We’ve been standing guard here as if that makes us guards, but we don’t know what we’re doing any more than fresh muscle knows how to load a cargo ship. We almost turned back a Craftswoman who wanted to help us, and we let a poisoner in. If we screw up and a fight breaks out, who you think the papers will blame?” She let the question hang. A few tents over, someone played a slow air on a three-string fiddle.

  “What should we do, then?”

  “We need rules,” she said. “Just like at work. So we’re ready for whatever.” She sat back down, and picked up her bowl. “What those should be, I don’t know.”

  “We could make a uniform,” Cozim suggested. “So they know we’re all together, not just some gang. Doesn’t need to be anything fussy, just a sign.”

  “I got a rule I need to know,” Zip said. “When do we get to hit ’em?” Some of the boys laughed.

  “When they hit us first.”

  Suggestions came fast after that. Even Ellen joined in after a while. Chel listened more than she spoke, glad to have the focus off her—though once every while folks looked back to her for approval, as if she knew what from what. She added a few questions to the mix, answered others.

  Tay turned from the fire and walked away. He hadn’t spoken since she sat down. As Zip and Cozim argued over what color armband the guards should wear, Chel left her burnt stew to follow him.

  * * *

  She caught Tay outside the tent circle. He’d lit a cigarette, and offered her one.

  “No thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” He took a long drag, and stuffed the crumpled pack into the pocket of his thick canvas pants. He wasn’t a talker, never had been. He smoked a cheap Shining Empire brand he’d started with in Kho Khatang before he got kicked out of the merchant marine, more spun glass and pixie dust than tobacco inside the rolling paper. Got the packs off a sailor he still sort of knew, who’d been jumped by some homophobic son of a bitch during a night of drunken shore leave and was getting the shit kicked out of him when Tay stepped in. Son of a bitch and friends broke Tay’s nose; Tay and the sailor did them worse, and Tay got canned for it. He came back to DL to work on the docks with his dad, and these days his sailor friend brought him foul cigarettes by the carton and didn’t take payment in return. Chel had called bullshit on the story when Tay told her, two weeks after they first slept together, but she’d met the sailor and he still had the scars.

  The faraway fiddle took up a faster tune, and drums joined in. The smell of spiced pork mixed with sweat and weed and tent canvas and rubber from the soles of many shoes. She missed the dock stink. Not enough oil and sea, here. “So you’re a hero now,” he said.

  “As if I know what that’s supposed to mean.”

  “You didn’t argue when everyone clapped.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “I’m not,” he said. She laughed. “I’m not. But if that witch really had come to kill Temoc—”

  “She was here to talk, Tay.”

  “If she wasn’t,” he pressed. “If she wasn’t, you’d still have jumped her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how do you think that would have ended?”

  “They can die,” she said, though she’d maintained the opposite to Cozim.

  “If she wanted to kill you, she could have.”

  She’d spent most of the afternoon trying not to think these thoughts. She knew the Craft was dangerous. God Wars vets, those still living, told stories: war machines, crawling undead and demon hordes, sigils that turned your mind inside out when you read them. And every day she saw Craftwork miracles—ships with masts tall enough to scrape the sky, metal sailless hulks larger inside than out. What could the people who made such things do when they went to war? Best not to think, because thinking terrified. “She didn’t.”

  He breathed smoke, tapped ash, examined the ember of his cigarette. “I don’t want you to die.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Not for Temoc or for anyone.”

  “You are jealous.”

  Tay laughed hard, and put the cigarette back in his mouth.

  “If the Craftswoman really wanted to deal,” she said, “it was worth the risk. And if she didn’t, I had to stop her.”

  “Nine hells of a risk.”

  “But think of the reward.” She turned them both to face the camp beneath the golden sky. As the sun set, signs and slogans came down. Fireside circles bloomed with life. The camp by night became a village, messy and wild and new, in the middle of Dresediel Lex. “If there’s a chance at a deal, we have to try. We lost the strike; we can’t lose this, too. They want a Skittersill too rich for Zip to raise his kids. A Skittersill where we don’t fit. I can’t let that happen.”

  “Me neither.” He touched her on the waist.

  She took the cigarette from his mouth and kissed him, and tasted salt and tobacco and pixie dust and glass. “Come on. Let’s go back. Maybe Zip’s stew is an acquired taste.”

  “You get my share.”

  “No fair.” She jabbed her knuckles into his side. “You have to eat that shit if I do. We’re in this together.”

  “Yeah,” he said, that one word drawn out with a touch of pleasant surprise at the end, as if he’d found a gift inside. Together they returned to the fire.

  8

  The King in Red’s secretary rose from her desk to bar Elayne’s way. “If you don’t have an appointment, you’ll have to wait.”

  “He’ll make time,” Elayne said. She’d taken an hour-long carriage ride through traffic and three elevators to reach the King in Red’s foyer, on the top floor of the pyramid he’d remodeled into an office building. The trip had not calmed her. The secretary was no fit target for her anger, but Elayne would not let herself be detained in Kopil’s lobby, no matter how elegantly appointed it might be.

  “He’s secluded.” The woman pointed to the obsidian doors behind her, carved with serpents and dead gods. Closed, the doors’ engravings formed an enormous skull, eye sockets aflame. “No one enters after he’s lit the fires. His schedule clears tomorrow at two. I’ll pencil you in, or if it’s urgent we can squeeze you between his security briefing and the evening market rundowns.”

  Elayne closed her eyes.

  Neon spiderwebs and interlocking ghostlit gears filled the foyer around her. The door was well Crafted, but not well enough to stop Elayne. She found the timekeeping mechanism in an instant, and its bond to the schedule on the secretary’s desk. Trivial to twist the schedule’s sense of local time; it was always two tomorrow afternoon somewhere.

  The door ground open. Grave-blackness gaped beyond.

  The secretary gaped, too. “See?” Elayne said. “I told you he’d make time.”

  She strode past secretary and doors into a shadow that closed about her like a mouth. Stone steps
rose through the night. She could have summoned fire, but she needed none.

  After a long climb she emerged into a deeper darkness in which the King in Red sat, wreathed by lightning.

  He hovered cross-legged in midair, finger bones resting on the sharp protrusions of his knees. Blue-white sparks leapt from his skull to the crystal dome above. Their brief flashes illuminated the outlines of his office: altar-desk, stuffed bookcases, umbrella stand. Somewhere, a Zurish contrabass choir chanted songs of praise and terror.

  “What exactly,” she said, “were you trying to pull?”

  The choir faltered and failed. Crimson stars caught fire in the King in Red’s eye sockets. “I see you visited our friends in Chakal Square.”

  “I did. Especially our mutual friends.”

  The skeleton sighed, and stood. Robes fell heavy around him. Toe bones tapped the floor. The lightning faded, and normal ghostlight returned to the room: a sparsely furnished crystal dome atop the eighty-story pyramid of 667 Sansilva, from which Red King Consolidated distributed water to the fourteen million people of Dresediel Lex. A long time ago, priest-kings had sacrificed people on the red-tinged altar that now served Kopil for a desk. “I didn’t think Temoc’s involvement was worth mentioning.”

  “Wrong. You thought it was worth not mentioning.” A carafe of coffee rested on a side table near the desk. Elayne poured herself a cup with the Craft, and floated it through the air to her waiting hand. “You knew about the Alt Selene ruling. You’re not that far out of touch. You thought Chakal Square might be a problem. You investigated, and learned Temoc was involved.” She drank the coffee. “This is good.”

  “I add more black to it,” he said. “Temoc is the last priest of the old gods. His fathers killed thousands. His hands are not clean.”

  “You kept news of Chakal Square under wraps, put our work and your city at risk, because you didn’t want to deal with him. And then you tried to start a riot, so your Wardens could arrest him for disturbing the peace.”

  “Really, Elayne. You can’t believe a radical’s accusations.”

  “This morning they caught a man trying to poison the camp. You mean to tell me Tan Batac came up with that idea all on his own?”

  “He did,” Kopil said at last. “But I didn’t stop him.”

  “He almost poisoned hundreds of people.”

  “Food poisoning,” he said. “Unpleasant, but hardly dangerous.”

  “If you’re in good health, which I can’t say for everyone in Chakal Square. That was low.”

  “Temoc and I have unfinished business.”

  “I’ve made deals with actual demons, with a lot less at stake. So have you.”

  “This feels different,” Kopil said. He leaned against the black-red glass of his desk. Bony fingers settled on a silver picture frame. She did not need to look to know what image it contained. Kopil, younger, with his arms around a man she’d never seen alive.

  “I know it’s hard,” she said. “They cut Timas open on that altar. But you’ve had your revenge. You broke their world and built a better one in its place.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  She couldn’t argue the point. She’d loved, and lost, but her loves and losses had never been so deep, so sudden, or so bloody. “Would he want you to set all you’ve built at risk for the sake of a grudge?”

  Skyspires turned slowly above them. The falling sun lit the smog a million shades of green and yellow and red. “This was easier before,” he said.

  “In the Wars, you mean.”

  “Gods try to smite you, and you smite them first. Armies of light against armies of darkness. Craftsmen advancing the cause of knowledge and freedom and humanity against ignorance and oppression.”

  “Humanity?”

  “Or whatever you want to call us,” he allowed. “But times have changed. My people turn back to old and bloody gods.”

  “That’s freedom for you.”

  He bowed his head. Shadows lingered in the folds of his robes and the depressions of his skull. “Everything was clear in the old days. You walked the lines like the queen of Death.”

  “I was seventeen,” she said. “More seems clear at seventeen than is. You were forty, still fleshy, still human, which imparts a likewise palsied perspective.”

  “What do you want from me, Elayne?”

  Once those pits in his skull held eyes, and skin covered his high cheekbones. A long time had passed since then. “An apology. For keeping secrets when you said you wouldn’t, for treating me like just another minion. We’ve known each other too long for that.”

  “I am sorry,” he said, and she thought he meant it.

  “Call back your agents. Quit the skullduggery. Work with the Chakal Square crowd. Temoc will gather leaders from the camp. We’ll meet, and compromise, and deal. Be wise for once, as well as strong.”

  She wondered how many people in Kopil’s life could bear his gaze without flinching.

  “Very well,” he said. “But Tan Batac won’t understand.”

  9

  Temoc celebrated the sunset sacrifice in Chakal Square. As he chanted he saw Chel near the mats with another man beside her, a broken-nosed dockhand who tensed when Temoc raised his blade.

  Hungry gods pleaded, promised: give us blood this time, and joy, and new power. A heart might even wake the old ones, and woken they will dance with you the great gavotte of war.

  No, he told them, and himself.

  Not all the frustration he felt belonged to the gods.

  The knife fell, pommel first, and the echo of sacrifice yielded an echo of bliss. For the gathered faithful on the mats, even an echo was more than they had known. It was enough. New light kindled in the broken-nosed guard’s eyes.

  After the ceremony, Temoc walked among milling parishioners. Chel seemed ready to lead her companion off, but she stopped when Temoc raised his hand.

  “Sir,” she said as he approached. And then, an awkward afterthought: “This is my partner, Tay.”

  Temoc bowed his head to each of them in turn. “Welcome.”

  “Thanks,” Tay said. “I’ve never been to one of these before. It’s one hell of a thing. Excuse me. I don’t know what to say.”

  “The sacrament is strange. It occasions prayer and reflection, and sometimes sacrilege.” Temoc wished he felt as sure as he made himself sound. “Are you busy tonight? I would appreciate your company at a meeting.”

  “Of course,” Chel said.

  “I—” Tay buried his hand in his pocket, and gripped something there. Not a weapon, Temoc’s old training reported. Cigarettes. “It’s my shift. I should go.”

  Chel touched the man’s arm. “I’ll catch you back at the tents.”

  “Sure,” Tay said, then stuck out a hand. Temoc clasped with him, and felt his calluses, patterned wrong for a warrior. Tay broke the handshake and walked away. After five steps he lit a cigarette. Smoke trailed him through the camp.

  “How can I help, sir?”

  “There is no need for ‘sir,’” he said. “My name is enough.”

  She waited.

  “The King in Red and Tan Batac want to negotiate. I must convince the leaders of our group to speak with them.”

  “You don’t need an escort to talk with the Kemals over at Food Com,” she said. “Or with Red Bel or Xotoc. Might even hurt with Bel, if she thinks you’re trying to intimidate her.”

  “All those you mention will listen to reason,” he replied. “We will start with the man who won’t.”

  * * *

  The Major’s troops drilled by firelight to the beat of deep drums.

  Temoc counted one hundred men and women dressed in street clothes and patchwork armor, fighting mock wars two by two. When the drums beat four-four time, those to the north attacked with fists and knives. When the beat shifted to five-six, the south mounted their assault in turn. Flesh and metal struck metal and flesh. Groans and meat percussion mixed with drummers’ blows on taut hide.

  The Maj
or’s jagged metal edges reflected his army and the flame. He kept time with one hand. No—Temoc saw the beat he kept shift before the drummers’ did. He did not keep time. He called it.

  “Hello,” Temoc said. Chel stood by his arm, playing silent attaché. He was grateful for her presence: the Major came from the docks. Perhaps he would listen more to voices from his homestead.

  “Come to join us, Temoc?” The Major’s mask warped his voice into a chorus of wheels and gears and twanging banjo strings. “To teach us ancient arts of war?”

  “The King in Red has sued for peace,” Temoc said.

  The Major’s hand faltered. The beat tripped, and the ordered clash dissolved to a chaos more reminiscent of the battles Temoc knew. The Major passed the conductor’s role to an aide, and turned to Temoc. “A trap.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You know Craftsmen better than anyone. Their ‘due process’ is all deadfalls. During the dockworkers’ strike they called us to parlay, and those who went emerged from that meeting room speaking competition and market forces like fresh graduates from the Hidden Schools. These people turned the Siege of Alt Selene into a massacre, and torched the jungles of Southern Kath. The only way to break their smug self-sufficiency is to refuse to deal with them.”

  “Which,” Temoc replied, “only makes them angry.”

  “Good. Then they will show their true faces.”

  “Most of these people do not want war.” He kept his voice low and level.

  “War comes whether or not it’s wanted,” the Major said. “The Craftsmen are too sure of their own righteousness to compromise. There can be no change without revolution.”

  This was why Temoc rarely visited the Major, though many of the man’s soldiers came to service. Rhetoric ran circles in the Major’s mind. War was its own end. Temoc, gods help him, understood the appeal. “But are you ready? Are they?”

  “History decides the moment for transition.”

  “I have fought Craftsmen. Your troops are impressive.” A sop to the Major’s pride: their ferocity had merit, even if their technique fell short. “But they can’t beat sorcery. The Craft will scour us from the soil and let our ashes testify that none can beat the Deathless Kings. If you refuse to deal, the others will, and their deal will be more a surrender for your absence. Chakal Square will be the dockworkers’ strike repeated. Bide your time. Build your strength. But for now, join us at the table.”