“I wouldn’t have put it that way,” she said.
—I bear these people because Craftsmen, broadly speaking, do not love what they cannot use, and destroy what they do not love. So I make myself useful in some minimal way, as do others of my kind.
“Because you’re afraid of us?”
—No. Because I enjoy flying far and fast, and I find this work more pleasant.
“Than what?”
—War.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “But don’t you find it sad that you have to live like this? That you can’t just hum in a cave somewhere?”
—No.
She waited.
—I find it funny.
“What?”
—We are what we ever were: huge, strong, and ancient beyond your reckoning. We have crossed vast gulfs of time and space. And you think (the subsonic dread returned in sharp pulses rather than the earlier sustained note, and her mind named the dread pattern laughter) you think because looking at us you can say that one draws a salary, this one bears us from place to place, that your limited comprehension gives you any measure of safety or control.
Far ahead, lightning flashed green between towered clouds.
“I’d like to stay out here for a while,” Tara said. “If it’s all right with you. I won’t talk. I just want to watch.”
The great eye closed.
Soon the hum returned.
46
“I hate this place,” Shale said as they fought through the plaster labyrinth of Dresediel Lex Metropolitan Airport alongside three thousand other people and their luggage. Most of the crowd were business travelers, but a fraction trailed bellhops and brass luggage carts driven by rat brains—and, like pebbles in an hourglass, that fraction was more than enough to stem traffic’s flow. “Why would anyone live here?”
“The weather’s nice.”
“They have to import water”—with audible scorn—“from outside the city. How good can the weather be?”
“It doesn’t rain, for one thing.” She danced sideways to avoid tripping over the rolling suitcase of a scale-skinned Craftsman who’d turned an unexpected left. “Except once or twice a year. Then it floods.”
“Every fall like clockwork the whole country catches fire. The earth shakes!”
Recovering her footing, Tara almost bowled over two women arguing in a language she didn’t know. “What do you expect? They have enormous lava serpents underground.”
“Before the wars, the gods kept the rain coming here. But with the gods dead, what’s left? The city survives only because it steals water from others. These people are an affront to the world.”
“Now you’re being dramatic. The world doesn’t mind.”
“Fires. Earthquakes.”
“Lava serpents, like I said.” Signboard arrows suggested that three different hallways all led to GROUND TRANSPORT. Tara chose right, saw a construction bottleneck, and reversed course. Shale, turning, upended a golem, who sprang to his feet, raised scissorfingers, gnashed fangs, and chattered a clockwork challenge. Shale didn’t speak demonic, but he understood the body language and responded in kind: chin up, shoulders back, pecs tense under his shirt. Tara grabbed Shale’s bones with a slip of Craft meant to animate skeletons and jerked him after her, ignoring his glare as he recovered his footing. “The city’s bigger than what it costs.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Dresediel Lex is a symbol to the Craftwork world.” The long hall narrowed and grew brutalist, without windows or even ads to relieve the pale plaster. Glass doors opened at the hallway’s end, and past those doors she saw another pair, and after those, sun. “The God Wars lasted a hundred years give or take. Imagine fighting your own people for a century.”
“I don’t have to imagine,” Shale said.
“Fair enough.” Almost outside. Free air melted on the tongue like spun sugar. “Gods owned the earth and hated us, so we built our nations in the sky. By the time the wars crossed from the Old World to the New, both sides were exhausted, desperate, mean. Dresediel Lex was our great victory. Once these gods fell, Liberation cascaded through the continent. For the first time in history, there was a city where the dead walked, and we could fly.”
They swept through, past sign-bearing chauffeurs and waiting family. Two dark men embraced. The second layer of doors rolled back, and they emerged into Dresediel Lex.
Tara felt the city’s hot breath on her skin and its sun on her face.
She was done walking for a while.
She’d visited Dresediel Lex in her caravan days to hock wares in dusty markets and fill warded wagons with goods for sale to the farm towns of the central plains—and she visited again on spring break with friends from the Hidden Schools. So it was not surprise that made her stop.
It may have been awe.
Overhead, the sky was dry and enormous, the color of paintings on Shining Empire pottery. It did not hang or arc or curve. It rose forever.
Crystal towers hung upside down in air above the free city, breaking sunlight to a billion-prismed rainbow. To the west, juniper and manzanita matted the Drakspine hills dusk green, but at street level palm trees and clawfoot azalea grew emerald leaves that boasted of piped water in defiance of all drought.
Pyramid peaks crested above the hills.
The heat was an oven’s, and a magnifying-glass sun beat down. Her skin, long accustomed to weak Alt Coulumb light, felt its use again.
A buzzing came across the sky.
Shale, beside her, recoiled. Of course: he did not know this city, or its odd ways of moving people. Dark forms speared from the high blue to earth, and as they fell became four-foot-long dragonflies with broad wings. They landed upon the men and women outside the airport, gripped them with long legs, touched feathery proboscises to the backs of necks, and bore them skyward.
“What are those?” Shale asked.
Tara grinned. “Our ride.”
As families reunited and drivers swept businesswomen toward carriages, as food carts hawked bottled water and candied nuts, as an old man played a Quechal tune on a three-string fiddle, the newcomer to Dresediel Lex took flight. Their wings laid rainbows on the earth.
“Gods,” Tara said. “I missed this.”
* * *
Gods, Abelard prayed as the meeting entered its fourth hour. Deliver me.
“And if you require further information on our foreign bond positions, Brother Amortizer Stefan has prepared detailed archives of relevant scripture. Our record-keeping procedures are normalized according to the Interfaith Standards Council 19001, so they should be fully interoperable with your systems. Now, if you’ll turn to page eighteen—”
Deliverance was not forthcoming. The team from Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao turned to page eighteen.
The five Craftsmen and Craftswomen sat interspersed with Cardinals and the clerical team. Abelard had assumed Tara and Ms. Kevarian were typical Craftswomen, but these didn’t match his expectations. At least the partner, Wakefield, seemed right: distant and elegant in white suit and vest, thin lips carved to convey the air of a person who’s just told a joke no one in attendance gets. Aside from Wakefield, the team consisted of one woman—Saqqaf, with a ruby fixed in place of her left eye—and three men whose names Abelard hadn’t yet got straight. Skane was the tall one, no, Cao was the tall one and Skane had the deep belly and the slumped shoulders and the diagonal scars on either cheek, no, that was Hedge, which made Skane the man with the thin mustache. But then Wakefield referred to him as “Mr. Cao,” interrupting Bede’s review of page eighteen. “Mr. Cao is our team’s document management expert. He’ll bridge the field team with the courtroom, which I’ll hold.”
But the tall one—Skane?—almost opened his mouth before the man Wakefield addressed—Cao, evidently—spoke. “I’ll coordinate document intake and review. For this contest, we need deep knowledge, not just thematics. We need instant access to moment-by-moment data. Brother Amortizer Stefan—�
�
“Cannot help you there,” said Cardinal Librarian Aldis, stern faced beside Nestor, who looked amiable and lost as ever. “The archives are mine. Anything you need within them, I or my subordinates may grant. Use no open flames or corrosives. The sub-basement archives hold documents several centuries old. We’re happy,” though neither her expression nor her tone of voice supported that claim, “to work with you to determine reasonable substitute processes.”
Wakefield nodded once. After four hours, that white suit still looked fresh from the cleaners.
There was a city beyond the conference room and far below. What gods think near is distant for man. Here they sat, air-conditioned, discussing the logistics of response, containment, and interdepartmental coordination. This was an important meeting, Abelard told himself. Poorly informed Craftsmen were worse than no Craftsmen at all, and without Craftsmen they would lose their case against Ramp, and the gods would die. This work was necessary.
But not for Abelard. He had little skill in thaumaturgy; he was here due to his relationship with Lord Kos. Out there on Alt Coulumb’s streets, Prelate Evangelist Hildegard led teams of brothers and sisters through to preach the new moon gospel. Abelard should be with them. The Cardinals knew this. So did God Himself.
So why was he here?
“—Ms. Saqqaf will be responsible for shareholder outreach,” Wakefield was saying. No trace of—what?—touched that pale gray eye. “Interest” was the wrong word for what was missing, since there was interest there, the interest of snakes in mice. “Emotion” was no better fit, because scorn was an emotion. Maybe “humanity”—but that was a bit chauvinist.
“Thank you,” Saqqaf said. “After we were retained, I reached out to the core shareholders on Cardinal Bede’s list, reaffirming our fundamental thaumaturgical stability. Large-scale clients, while understandably anxious, are for the most part willing to honor their agreements, though the cold-blooded squids at the Iskari Defense Ministry”—and Abelard had an intimation Saqqaf was being precise in her description—“request further guarantees to compensate for the risk they face in dealing with us.” Grumbles around the table. Bede champed his pipestem between his teeth. “It’s a small stake, with an option for buyback in a year’s time. I say we give it to them, since our negotiating position is, let’s say, constrained.” Translated: We don’t have time to fight this battle. Why not pay to make it disappear?
Bede took hold of his pipe and leaned against the table. Abelard did not listen to his response. Maybe God had brought him here to correct the Cardinals if they went astray? But he barely understood the issues under discussion. He could hold his own against anyone in matters of engineering, but when the conversation veered to evangelism and archive work, he was lost.
But God wasn’t.
Oh.
Snarled gears unmeshed in his mind to mate again.
Abelard prayed, for real this time, and conference voices blurred into a polyphonous drone.
He greeted the Lord of Flame with a still heart. He surrendered his worldly mind to the spark. Fire curled an autumn leaf into a fist of ash.
He listened—not for words, splinters of the Lord’s thought, but for the rhythm beyond words.
Kos had been betrayed by Cardinals before, and if traitors were to strike again, now was the time. But gods made poor detectives, their perspectives unmoored from time. Who better to be Kos’s spy than Abelard? So He whispered to the Cardinals and folded the young Technician in their confidence.
Because He was afraid.
But He was wrong.
Bede was more loyal to Kos than to Seril. Nestor was a busybody. Aldis had her territorial insecurities. No person, no church, was perfect. But the Cardinals were faithful. Bede could have taken Ramp’s deal and left Seril to die.
Kos did not trust His Cardinals, so He inspired them to include Abelard in their work. And the Cardinals were smart. They knew the score.
You’re micromanaging, Abelard prayed, because you’re scared.
Only crackling fire answered.
These people love You. They joined the church to serve You, and they do so now, though service scares them. Let them serve.
The fire in Abelard popped and pitted, and sparks burned his skin.
We’re wasted in here, You and I. We could be out in the city, spreading miracles. The work your Cardinals do is important, which is why You called priests to do it for You. Trust them.
Presumption? Temerity? Pride?
Of course.
But what was a saint for, if not to talk with God?
Sun warmth spread through his limbs. That was Abelard’s answer.
When they broke for coffee and tobacco—sorcerers’ hunger for caffeine surpassed only by priests’ need for a smoke—he sought Cardinal Nestor and Cardinal Bede. “Your Excellencies. Thank you for including me in this meeting, but I’m no use here. I can best serve Our Lord by working with Prelate Evangelist Hildegard.”
“Thank you, my son,” Nestor said, and Abelard felt embarrassed by the relief he read in the old man at the news God trusted him. Even Bede’s shoulders rose.
“Do what you can,” the Cardinal said. “Go with God.”
“And you as well,” Abelard replied.
47
“Whatever happens,” Tara cautioned Shale as they flew west between skyspires and over the mansions of the Drakspine ridge, “do not try to kill the King in Red.”
“Okay.” Shale sounded unconvinced.
“This is important.” She fed their optera from her expense account—far from bottomless, but she could afford the ride. Travel by dragonfly felt strange at first. She’d been surprised when Shale accepted one rather than flying under his own power.
“He’s a monster.”
Tara shook her head. “He’s a respectable citizen. This city wouldn’t exist without him.”
“A man can be both citizen and monster. Especially here.”
“In which case he’s a monster and a respectable citizen, whom we’re about to ask for a big favor. Besides, if you try to kill him, you’ll probably just piss him off.”
“We almost broke him in the Wars.”
“Almost only counts with horseshoes and elder gods. He’s grown since you fought. And, honestly, I know you’ve had a rough few decades, but I wish things like don’t attack the immensely powerful necromancer we’ve come to ask for help could go unsaid.”
Streets crazed the irrigated ground like cracks on the scab of an infected wound. Elevated carriageways laced between pyramids—the largest, at 667 Sansilva, eighty stories tall and obsidian sheathed. Black glass grooves cast an illusion of writhing serpents on the pyramid’s steps.
As far as Tara could see, the city bore little damage from the eclipse fiasco a few years back; she’d been at Contracts with her friend Kayla when the news came through, and waited with her in the long line of weeping students at the nightmare telegraph to call her dads. The dreams around Dresediel Lex were so tangled Kayla couldn’t get through for two days, which Tara spent on the couch in Kayla’s dorm, sleeping poorly; she’d told Kayla to wake her if she needed anything, and the girl took her at her word. Kayla’s dads both lived—one broke his leg in the riots and the other spent three days stuck in a collapsed mall—but the waiting, not knowing, hurt.
Rebuilding, the city had turned a quarter mile of Sansilva Boulevard into a memorial walk. Tara decided she would visit if there was time.
For now, they had business at the Grisenbrandt Club.
North of Monicola Pier the beachside shops grew more expensive and elegant until they reached an expense and elegance singularity: the Grisenbrandt, a red-roofed, white-walled palace on the continent’s edge. A ward misted the air above its courtyards and rooftop baths, to keep even the most inquisitive journalist from observing the club’s clientele. The ward might have been opaque, but that wouldn’t have allowed spies and onlookers to envy the rainforest green inside.
Tara and Shale landed on a riverrock path betw
een two lawns that beggared any adjective but “verdant.” The doorman (a Quechal fellow in sunglasses and a funereal suit, whose posture suggested experience as valet, bouncer, and special forces commando) frowned as their optera flew away. People who belonged in the club arrived under their own power. Rentals were for those not rich enough to own.
“Hi,” Tara said with the cheer she always felt when about to ruin a snob’s day, and produced the invitation the porter had delivered to her cabin this morning. “We have an appointment.”
The doorman took the invitation, skepticism evident even through his dark glasses. Tara savored his surprise as he read the document twice, turned it over to check for a watermark, then read it again.
“Of course,” the doorman said joylessly. The doors opened at his gesture. A young woman in a white blouse, an uncomfortable black skirt, and heels that forced her en pointe emerged. “Antonia will guide you.” Antonia’s smile slipped when she read the invitation. “Enjoy your visit.”
And to the nine hells with you too, Tara thought as she led Shale into the club.
They followed Antonia down a pillared arcade between two courtyards shaded with plant life stolen from around the world. Antonia’s absurd heels left bloodred footprints on the white marble tiles. Ripples of color spread from those footprints as they faded, interlacing with the ripples Tara’s and Shale’s footsteps cast.
In a courtyard, a jazz quartet played soft music while clubgoers, skeletal or amorphous or many-limbed, broke their fast at an enormous buffet: glistening piles of fresh-cut exotic fruits and bewitching pastries, an omelet station, an elegant silver bowl of wriggling insects that laughed when eaten. In a salon to the left, a Shining Empire magistrate sipped tea with a Zurish mask-lord in the shade of a broad-leaved Dhisthran tree, all equally far from home.
The part of Tara that would always hail from a farming village on the edge of a desert pondered the expense of the shifting marble, the plants, the wards, the water, the band, the silver, the price of Antonia and the front-door jerkface and their comrades, carried the three to the ten million’s place—then abandoned the exercise. In a way, this kind of wealth was easier to accept than the ease with which Daphne picked up their check at lunch. Even if Tara made partner at Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, she wouldn’t have lived in this world. You earned this power by stealing continents and breaking nations; this was wealth you tore from dying gods.
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