Kopil cracked his knuckles. “We’ll be fine. The good Captain Chimalli here has ordered us an escort of Wardens.” No one was supposed to know Wardens’ given names, but of course he did, and of course he used them.
“I hope your people can control themselves,” Elayne said. “Yesterday they almost stormed the camp to break up a brawl.”
“I’m sending my best with you.” Captain Chimalli’s voice was higher than his bulk suggested, narrower, with an accent Elayne couldn’t place. Elayne always expected the masks to change Wardens’ voices somehow, but they did not. “Lieutenant Zoh’s in charge, seconded by Sergeant Chihuac.” He gestured to each in turn. More names: a privilege extended for convenience. Better than numbers, at least. Zoh was a wall of a man, who in prehistoric days would have claimed kingship of his tribe by throwing the previous monarch off a cliff. He clicked his heels when he saluted, and his shoes were mirror-polished. Chihuac seemed more promising: five-six in combat boots, strong, solid. Elayne didn’t trust either one, which said more about her than them. Even in the Wars, she’d seen violent meatheads inside every uniform.
“You understand your role?”
“To preserve respect,” Zoh said. “To protect. To pull you all to safety if this breaks down.”
“I can protect and pull myself,” Kopil said. “But power’s a funny thing—people tend to forget you have it if you don’t seem to. Do not use force unless we’re attacked first. I need perfect beings at my side today, not men.”
Zoh saluted again.
“And take care of Tan Batac. He is more accident-prone than Elayne or myself.”
Batac glowered at that, but he kept his voice civil. “Thank you.”
“Very good,” Kopil said. “Now, bring us to my people.”
The noise built as they approached. Waves of chanted protest rolled over them, bearing the stench of close-packed thousands, of stale sweat and hope and fresh anger. Even knowing what to expect, Elayne caught her breath when she saw the kaleidoscope crowd—their bright colors and their mass. They raised signs, unfurled banners, sang old songs.
She had told Temoc when to expect the King in Red, and the direction from which he’d come. Now, assembled and indomitable, the Skittersill’s people watched their nominal lord approach.
The Wardens formed a circle around Kopil, Batac, and Elayne, with Zoh in front. The King in Red stood taller than their escort, which would have worried Elayne if any weapon this crowd might wield could harm him. His skull held no brain, and the bones were just another anchor binding the long-dead man to the city he ruled. The crown at his brow gleamed crimson gold.
The red-arms who faced them stood aside to reveal a corridor into the camp, lined by more red-arms with elbows linked to resist the crowd’s weight. The path was broad enough for their group, and empty save for scraps of trash and one broken, facedown sign. The gathered thousands stared.
They walked into the mouth of the beast. Elayne reprimanded herself, quietly, for seeing the crowd as a single insensate animal, for letting Batac’s fear infect her. She’d come here before and emerged unscathed.
But never with the King in Red.
As they walked the noise faded, or a deeper silence blocked it out.
Kopil’s bony feet tapped the flagstones three times with each step.
They met Temoc at the path’s end, before a green tent. Chel waited by his side. He had not spent the morning’s power: scars shone green beneath his clothes. The last time he met the King in Red, they had wrestled in the air above the body of a dying god.
Elayne looked to Kopil, but a skull’s face met all changes with the same gallows humor.
Behind Temoc stood the leaders he had promised: the Kemals, Bill sporting an unkempt beard, Kapania’s hair bound beneath a patterned bandanna. The Major lurked near them, flanked by a round woman and a lean fellow with graying hair and a black cane. A third man stood by the tent, silver studs at his wrists and scars at his neck and forehead: a debt-zombie, freed.
Six, and Temoc made seven, an appropriate number for a working of Craft, yet so few to stand for such a crowd. Then again, the King in Red represented the fourteen million of Dresediel Lex, and the hundred million souls in the city’s banks, into which this camp could disappear like a drop of ink into the Pax. Even Tan Batac stood for the Skittersill, for the community of which these malcontents were technically a piece.
Yet those fourteen million were not here. The crowd was.
Temoc advanced on the King in Red. Chel followed, proud. Her arm sported a crimson band. She caught Elayne’s eye, but kept her expression guarded.
Lieutenant Zoh blocked Temoc’s way, taller by half a head than the priest though less massive, and, of course, not glowing. Temoc met the Warden’s silver gaze. “Did you come so far to hide behind your men, Kopil?”
“No,” the skeleton said. “Stand aside, Lieutenant.”
Zoh hesitated just long enough for Elayne—and, more to the point, for Temoc—to notice. He withdrew. The ring of Wardens split into two lines flanking Elayne, Tan Batac, and the King in Red, opening Temoc’s path to them. The priest strode into their gauntlet, radiating divine power and self-assurance.
He extended his hand to the King in Red, who clasped it in a bony grip.
“You look different,” Temoc said.
“The last time you saw me, I had skin. And eyes.”
“That must be it.”
“You look much the same.”
“Clean living,” Temoc said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for meeting us. Though your people seem unhappy.”
“They are not my people.”
“They certainly don’t seem to feel they’re mine.”
“They were never yours.”
“I will reassure them.” Kopil released Temoc’s hand, and the lights of his eyes flickered and went out.
Elayne saw the Craft he invoked too late to stop him without a struggle. So she watched, and hoped the King in Red didn’t wreck the conference before it began.
A brutal wind whipped the square, a wind like none these southern people had ever known, a thousand miles’ frozen prairie wind contemptuous of all the works of man. Chakal Square onlookers fell into one another’s arms. Wails of terror broke against the wind’s howl. A shadow closed out the sun, and the sky deepened to the color of a bruise.
The King in Red’s face emerged from that sky like a bather’s from a dark pool. Red gold burned upon his brow. He cleared his throat, a sound like a bomb blast or a mountain crumbling. The wind screamed so high and loud Elayne thought her ears might burst. Then Kopil spoke, his voice echoed by the demonic wind.
“People of Dresediel Lex,” he said, and what was left of her heart sank, because this was wrong, this was how you inspired an army about to invade some god-benighted state, how you whipped sorcerers and demons and soldiers to a frenzy, not how you addressed scared and angry civilians. “You have called me and I come. From Sansilva’s pyramids, I descend to Chakal Square. I have shaped our city for forty years. I pledged to make us strong, and I toiled beyond the borders of this world to that end. My work makes you afraid, and angry. Do not let fear poison you against progress. I come to reassure you.” “Reassure” rumbled, thunderous. Someone nearby fainted.
“I will hear your challenges, through your commission. We will find common cause. The future of Dresediel Lex will not be tarnished. We have slain the gods, so we must do Heaven’s work ourselves.”
At least he’d said “we,” not “I.” But all the rest was so adroitly wrong, words and delivery alike. To Elayne, the wind-speaking and the cloud-face were cheap tricks barely worth the effort. But as far as the crowd was concerned, the King in Red had seized the very power they wanted to deny him: the ability to awe them.
“Thank you,” Kopil said, and the wind ceased. The image in the sky did not so much fade as break. Black hollows of eye sockets became perturbations in the underbelly of a cloud, cheekbones a distortion of wind throug
h smog. Sunlight returned, meager and emaciated by Kopil’s Craft. The King in Red clacked his teeth together twice, and said, “That’s better.”
Elayne almost punched the skeleton in his absent nose. She clenched her jaw instead, and recalled advice Belladonna Albrecht had given her decades ago when she had been the fiercest fledgling at Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao: We cannot save our clients from themselves. Someday in your career, Elayne, you will represent a man—almost certainly a man—who wants you to help him barter his soul to a demon for three wishes. When that day comes you may refuse his business, you may try to change his mind, but in the end if hell he wants, hell he will achieve.
Chel marched toward the King in Red, furious, ready to run into a hell of her own. Zoh blocked her path. She tried to shove past him, and he grabbed her. Around them, the crowd stood from the flagstones to which they’d fallen. Fearful groans became cries of rage.
How could she stop this? She could take to the skies herself, but the crowd wouldn’t listen to her.
Chel tore free of Zoh. Temoc turned.
The cordon almost broke.
An accident might have started it, a stumble cascading through the crowd. Red-arms tripped and almost fell. Wardens raised their truncheons. Tan Batac glanced around, eyes wide as a starting horse’s; his face twisted into a weird smile.
Temoc reached for the King in Red, and closed his eyes.
So did Elayne: the remnants of Kopil’s speech-Craft hung about them like an untied knot. Temoc grabbed those loops and pulled.
The wind returned—but this was no cold northern gale. Temoc’s was a desert wind, the wind of the Badlands before the God Wars, the wind that spoke to vision-questing shamans. The crowd fell silent. Anger stilled to expectation. Eyes turned skyward.
This time there were no shadows, for Temoc was no Craftsman. His scars were divine gifts, and through them he held power gently. His face took shape over Chakal Square, constructed from sunlight and smog and faith.
“Thank you,” he said. “I thank the King in Red. We are happy—” Some shouts of protest there, but Temoc ignored them. A tense silence fell. “We are happy you have come. Many Craftsmen would trust magic and Wardens to guard them from dissent. But you come in person to hear our voice. You led a revolution, in your time. You know what it is to be cast out by those in power.” The first cries of assent rose. “You will listen to us. You will deal with us.” More shouts, these of support. Up Temoc! Preach! “We are not mad, or shortsighted, or desperate. We are not weak. We are the people, and we are wise. We are the people, and we know the future. We are the people, and we are patient. We are the people, and we are strong.” Cheers now. And stillness, too, rapture as the river of Temoc’s words flowed on. “Let us build a better future. Let us make peace.”
Peace echoed across Dresediel Lex. Temoc’s face merged with the sky, and the man below opened his eyes. All light had left his scars, spent in seizing Kopil’s Craft, but he stood strong and straight opposite his adversary.
The silence of crowds differs from that of an empty room. In Chakal Square after Temoc’s speech, thousands breathed. A child cried. Feet shuffled on stone. Banners flapped. Whispers were a breeze through willows. Did you hear?
Yet for all this sound there was still silence between Temoc and the King in Red.
“Good speech,” Kopil said.
Zoh released Chel; she brushed off the sleeves of her jacket as if filth, not silver, covered the Warden’s hands.
“We needed one.” Temoc gestured to the group. “Allow me to introduce the Chakal Square Select Committee. In the coming days you’ll grow to know them better.”
“Them?” Tan Batac’s first word to Temoc.
“I am not a member,” Temoc said. “I facilitate. I hope to be a calm counselor to these people, as Ms. Kevarian is to you.” Elayne listened for the contempt she’d heard in Temoc’s voice when he spoke of Batac before, but she heard none today.
She allowed herself a glimmer of hope. This might work.
“Very well.” Kopil hooked his thumb bones through the belt of his robe, and advanced on the Select Committee. “Shall we get to business?”
17
Business was boring. Which, of course, had been the plan and the hope. Scintillating and dramatic negotiations rarely produced good results. Within the green tent and Elayne’s ward, the crowd outside might as well have never existed. Here they could sit and talk. And talk.
They sat around a rickety table in camp chairs better suited to the hosts’ rumpled practical clothing than to Tan Batac’s silks. A water pitcher occupied the table’s center, flanked by glasses. No pastries this time. No food at all. Light through the tent’s oculus formed an eccentric ellipse on the table as the meeting opened, slowly compressing to a circle. Fitting symbol, she hoped, for their meeting—at least until noon. After that, the circle would distort once more.
The hosts introduced themselves. Kapania and Bill Kemal she had seen in the fight that first day, though she did not realize they were married then; they led Chakal Square’s Food Com, and in their private lives ran—had run—a small restaurant with a charity attached. The Major gave his war name, and crossed his arms. Hal Techita, of the cane and the grim countenance, was a community organizer. The large woman was Red Bel. And so on.
After introductions, Elayne poured herself a glass of water, and said, “Let’s each present our proposals in clean language. There’s no audience to win here; we want to forge a compromise.”
“We want to forge a compromise,” said Kapania Kemal, “if there is one to forge. From what I’ve heard of your plan, I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
“We’ll go first,” Elayne continued. “Then you can explain your goals. I think we have a good deal of common ground.”
Kapania frowned, but leaned back anyway into her chair.
Elayne summoned the Skittersill in ghostlit outline above the table. Not as convenient as pulling them all into a shared dream, but these people were uncomfortable with Craft. Also she hoped that with the Skittersill in miniature, their problems would seem small, too.
“When the first settlers reached Dresediel Lex from Quechal-Under-Sea, they found a natural bay separated from the desert by mountains. Patterns emerged as the settlement grew: social categories and custom divided the land, and gods reinforced those patterns. The Skittersill was reserved for temple slaves. As far as the local wards are concerned, it still is. But Dresediel Lex has no gods anymore. Their death left holes in the protection they offered this community. If we don’t patch these holes, disaster isn’t just possible—it’s certain.”
Steel plates clacked against one another and steel wires twanged as the Major shook his head. “You preach disasters that have not occurred.”
“Imagine an enormous sand castle. On the first day the tide washes in, and the walls hold—but they’re weakened. The next day, they hold, too. And the third day, and the fourth. But over time the battlements grow so weak a breeze tumbles them into the sea.”
“Typical Craftsman response,” said Bel. “Don’t fix a broken system. Don’t understand it. Just replace it with something you think works better.”
“We understand this system,” Elayne replied. “The old wards need gods to work, and the gods are gone. The traditions have failed, too—no one from the Skittersill attends high temple sacrifices these days, for instance, since there are no sacrifices. No one works in the blood vats, because there are no blood vats. Families are no longer dedicated to holy slavery, because the Craft does not permit the purchase or sale of sentient beings.”
The Major shifted in his chair, but said nothing.
“The existing wards require such activity of Skittersill residents. The traditions’ failure leaves loopholes, ratholes. We need to start anew, and replace wards woven by gods with ones made by and for human beings. In a way, we face the critical question of our post-God Wars century. Can we build a world for ourselves?”
She paused for effect,
and to listen. No replies. No questions. They waited for her to continue. The hook was in.
In two states is the mind most vulnerable, she remembered Alexander Denovo saying, in the dark days when they worked together: in sleep, and in rapt attention to a story. She’d used no Craft to bind their will. Her own ward would block such tricks. But rhetoric was a Craft all its own. Elayne’s words invited the Chakal Square protesters to share her vision, to join a group of heroes struggling against all odds to save the world.
“So,” she continued. “This is what we propose.”
And their work began.
* * *
“We cannot agree, we will not agree,” Bel said two hours later, leaning over the table with her eyes fixed on Tan Batac as if a gaze could skewer him, “to any plan that lets you and your cronies sell our homes wholesale to Shining Empire brokers, or bulldoze them and build casinos.”
Batac inflated with outrage and offense. “Is it theft to enrich a poor community? To replace rotting tenements with palaces? Is it theft to improve the lot of my people? I was born here. I played in the same streets you did, Bel. I can talk any slang you talk. The difference between us is that I am trying to give something back.”
“Give back?” Bel’s voice sharpened. “You can only give back if you’ve taken first. You take our homes and give back a gutted community. You take our livelihoods and give back vague promises of jobs that never come. You take a place that doesn’t belong to you, and give back one that does.”
“Volumes of facts. Tables of figures. The opinions of a host of experts from the Hidden Schools and the Floating Collegium and even Seven Islands. Liberal and conservative prophet projections for five decades of development. They all support me. This proposal you rail against, these innovations you call desecrations, will be good for the Skittersill. Our plan brings jobs. Construction. Tourism. Soulstuff will flow to local pockets. The docks won’t be the only paying work anymore. What else do you need to see?”
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