Kai’s blood pooled in the bowl. She looked into her reflection, but they hit another bump, and the reflection shattered. As good as she could expect, under the circumstances.
She breathed out above the water.
Lady. I’m listening.
There, in the sky, approaching a foreign city beneath the belly of an ancient beast, tossed by winds, stuck in coach because the priesthood didn’t think this side trip rated business class, she felt the touch of a cool blue hand upon her brow.
The touch melted against her forehead and rolled down her skin like honey tears, hot and sweet and deep, to bead and tremble on her lips, then slip within. She tasted salt and sand and volcanic rock. Root musk rolled down her tongue into her throat. She burned all over at once, and exhaled the beauty worming through her veins.
Across an ocean, on an island far away, a girl—a young woman now, gods, Izza was sixteen—looked up from her work, and let her gaze unfix, and said, silently, through the goddess that bound them both—Aren’t you landing in an hour?
There’s been a change of plans, Kai prayed. I have to stay abroad a few more days. Everything will keep at home.
For better or worse.
Trouble?
No more than usual. Fixing Penitents is slow, tricky work. If we just change the settings, we don’t help their victims. They forced people to be good by one metric—if we force them to be good by another, we’re no better. The problem’s the force, not the good.
Changing a culture takes time.
You’ve only had the Penitents for sixty years. You lived without them for three thousand.
Time’s like an ocean, she prayed back. People only swim in the top bit.
You said there was a change of plans. What changed?
Kai wished she’d pressed the matter at once. Now she felt like she had been hiding something. Management approved the venture offering, she prayed. We arranged meetings while I finished up in Telomere. I have an overnight in Agdel Lex.
No answer returned through the ecstasy channel.
It’s just a quick stopover, she explained. The city has a good startup community—nightmare telegraphics mostly, dreamshaping and fearcraft, high-energy Craftwork. Nightmare Quarterly called it “thriving.” That kind of investment is risky, but that means more upside—one or two big bets will give us breathing room to divest from Grimwald holdings in the Southern Gleb, and get out of necromantic earths entirely.
Still, silence.
She continued: I fought for budget, I pulled every favor I could, and I got permission to extend a feeler a few months back—but no dice. Total silence. But, while I was in Telomere for the Martello thing, I got a letter from Twilling, you remember, in sales? Turns out Iskari First Imperial has two modes: slow and fast. They want to make a deal, they’ve put together meetings, and they need me there today. I don’t have permission from the board, but I’ve given myself a speculative budget of a couple million thaums; I’ll make the deals we need, go home, present the contracts with signatures already dry. They’ll go along. Everything will be fine.
More silence, warier.
She knew she was praying too fast, but she couldn’t help herself: it’s a peaceful city these days. The fighting’s further south, past the Wastes. I’m just going to meet with a bunch of artists, who will probably be glad—the airship shook. No, not the airship. Her shoulder. Her eyes snapped open. Her veins throbbed with the attenuation of pleasure, and she struggled to focus on soft weak reality. The Camlaander sitting beside her was studiously reading his magazine. Who—
A flight attendant stood in the aisle, frowning. “We’re landing soon. Please raise your tray and refrain from excessive prayer.”
Fine, Kai said, then remembered she had to use her mouth. “Fine.” And she closed her eyes again.
Look, I have to go. Trust me. If we want to change Kavekana, to fix the Penitents and everything else without armed revolt, the priesthood needs a surplus—something to wean us off investments in bone oil and necromantic earths. This will help the Blue Lady, and Kavekana, and it will net me a nice bonus check, so we can buy more kids out of debt. Again, her shoulder shook. She ignored the flight attendant, and prayed faster: It’s fine. My sister’s been sending me postcards from here for the last, like, five years. She’s having a disgustingly bohemian time.
You didn’t think to ask me.
Because I knew what you’d say.
And your sister? Did you ask her?
Ley? No.
She felt the shame of that answer like an underground tremor, unseen, easily denied to everyone but herself. Venture thaumaturgics weren’t Ley’s area, and anyway if Kai reached out, she’d have to visit Ley while she was in town, and there wasn’t enough time on a short business trip to dig through everything that had piled up between them. All of which stood to reason, but Izza’s question still reminded Kai of that accumulated mess and time, and of the postcards she rarely answered, featureless and glib, each containing some charming anecdote about poetry readings or fruit-related confusion in street markets, best wishes to Mom, bloodless. Strange how much you could write without communicating. And that distance was Kai’s fault, somehow—at least, Ley probably thought it was.
“Ma’am,” the flight attendant repeated, harsher this time. “We’re starting our final descent. Please.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Kai said, “how overblown that sounds? Final descent. Poets take a final descent into the hells. Emperors have a final descent from the throne before someone chops off their heads. We’re about to land, which we will presumably survive, to descend again.”
“Prayers interfere with navigation.”
“Exactly how many navigational instruments does your enormous, basically immortal lizard need to tell which way is down?”
“Agdel Lex airspace presents navigational challenges—”
“For the love of all your blasted gods,” the Camlaander said, and Kai noticed for the first time the white-knuckled grip with which he held his magazine, the sweat beaded on his forehead, the sour smell of his fear, “won’t you please wait to make your call until we’re safely on the ground?”
She prayed again. Have to go. I don’t know why you’re so hung up on this.
Five years ago, Izza replied, in Agdel Lex, I saw the Rectification Authority burn out the Gavreaux Junction hunger strikers. Six hundred people. The leaders went into lock-up, and if they ever came out, I didn’t hear about it.
That’s horrible. But I’m not coming to reinforce the colonial authority, just—
The connection failed. The Blue Lady’s honeyed finger slid out from between her lips, and vines of joy unwound from her thorn by thorn. Kai opened her eyes, red, furious. The flight attendant had closed her bowl; the last remnants of blood smoked within, dried to flakes, and Kai smelled acid and copper and burnt iron. She shoved the flight attendant’s hand away, and folded the rest of the bowl herself. “You didn’t have to do that. I was almost through.”
“We’re past the cutoff, ma’am.”
Gods save us from petty tyrants. “Down is down. Does your dragon have eyes, or not?”
“We’re landing in Agdel Lex, ma’am. Down isn’t always where you left it, and you can’t ever trust your eyes.”
Chapter Three
AFTER ALL THAT OMINOUS nonsense, the airport looked like any other airport, with the same landing strip, the same predatorily priced food stalls and coffee shops, even the same people: Craftsfolk in suits and ties, golems bearing vision gems, demonic construct carts toting luggage. An older woman rolled past in a wheelchair while a bag man struggled to keep up under the weight of his suitcases. Ethnically the mix skewed Gleblander, skin darker than Kai’s but lighter than Izza’s, curly hair, but beyond that she could have been anywhere in the Old World—though she saw fewer locals than she expected. She hadn’t thought about that on the flight, since on some level all airships felt the same, but her gondola was filled mostly with Telomeri and Iskari; there were mayb
e ten Gleblanders, including the young woman across the aisle, a tall slender girl in a bright yellow sweater, reading a textbook, whom Kai had taken for a student.
Time for speculation later. Kai rolled her shoulders, ignored their cracks and pops, took up her suitcase, and beelined for ground transport.
She brushed past the usual tearful hellos at the rope line. The student ran into the open arms of an equally tall thin woman, who was, Gods, weeping; a shorter girl, who looked to be the student’s sister, joined their embrace, and they laughed through the tears. Kai turned away.
She scanned the crowd until she saw a round young woman, broad shouldered and broad hipped in a cream-colored suit, holding a sign that bore Kai’s name. “Ms. Pohala! Gavvi Fontaine, from IFI. I’m your account manager”—read: saleswoman—“and I’m here to orient you for the day, make certain you have everything you need.” Good smile, firm handshake, faint Iskari accent. Fontaine held the handshake a touch long; a small flat tentacle slithered out from under her cuff, then retreated. No surprise that an IFI banker would belong to the Iskari faith, but the symbiont always left Kai unnerved. Fontaine’s smile was very wide. “Such a pleasure to meet you. I’m so glad you could make it.” With stress on each modifier.
“Thank you for coming in person,” Kai said. “I’m sure you understand my need for discretion.” The kind of people who prayed to Kavekana’s idols liked secrecy. Scanning the crowd, Kai saw no one who looked like a spy, or worse, a journalist, but you never could tell.
“It’s an honor to be working with—” Fontaine caught herself just before Kai had to decide whether it would attract more attention to tackle the woman than to let her say “Kavekanese priesthood” out loud. “Well. We’re excited. I’ve lined up a few meetings to offer a sense of the breadth of opportunity the local community offers. I can answer any questions, but we really should dive right in.” She reached for Kai’s suitcase; Kai clenched it tighter. “Is that your only luggage?”
“I just brought enough for two days. I sent the rest of my stuff on the slow boat home.”
“Fantastic.” She grinned. “Follow me.”
Fontaine had an even, elegant pace—Kai could have balanced half the scripture she owned on the woman’s skull. Nice tailored suit, shiny shoes, dressed to impress, and she’d nailed Kai’s name, which most mainlanders didn’t on the first try. Young, ambitious, and a quick study. Fontaine turned to face Kai as they neared the doors; the hypothetical scripture stack on her head wouldn’t have so much as wobbled. Backward and in heels. Kai was impressed, and tried not to show it. “Welcome,” Fontaine said, as the glass doors rolled open behind her, and Kai emerged into Agdel Lex.
And stopped.
The city twisted before her.
At first glance Agdel Lex looked somewhat normal. Boxy plaster houses lined the mountain ridges that cradled the city to east and west. Glancing south she saw the black mound of the wall against the Godwastes, while to the north, spires of crystal, steel, and glass burst skyward, as if some Craftswoman had frozen the spume that climbed sheer cliffs in a storm. At that eruption’s heart stood a tower of—no, it couldn’t be flesh, it had to be stone or concrete smoothed to seem organic, an enormous squid mantle sinking tentacles the size of city blocks into the soil. Past that, slopes tumbled toward the Shield Sea.
This was what Kai saw at first.
And yet.
The narrow alleys between those plaster houses writhed. At first she took their movement for mirage, like on the north shore rocklands back home on a hot summer day—but, no, the movement was real. Straight lines went jagged. Boulevards shrank, twisted, disappeared. Gaps opened in the city, streets bubbling into markets. Crystal and concrete towers became translucent, shrinking, uncertain, shadows of another time. Even the wind changed. First she’d felt a hot, punishing desert blast pregnant with motor oil and spent lightning, so dry it robbed breath from her lungs, but now it dampened, soothed, gained fragrances of rosewater and anise.
Two cities, then? Stacked, somehow? Fine. Kai was a priestess of many gods; she was used to overlapping realities. Back in training, the older priests had given her a glass of water and asked her to believe it was half-full and half-empty at once. That was a fun week.
But even when she tried to see both cities at once, they still refused to settle. There were further truths hidden behind that pair. She tried to hold everything at once, to see, to know.
The skyline shifted again. The squid tower disappeared altogether, and the sky where it once stood now bled sick light from a fractal wound. Wreckage spread, deep shattered chasms, broken palaces, topless towers, blasted city blocks peopled with statues of ash.
The city became a tomb. Cold wind caught Kai’s throat in a fist of knives, and squeezed. Frost spread on her skin, crackled in her mouth, and she could not breathe. The ground wheeled. The sky was sky, and overhead, and she was—
Not falling anymore. Arms held her. Big dark eyes. Pretty. Warmth returned, life, the bustle of airport commerce. “There.” Fontaine. Kai followed her voice. Something moved near Kai’s chest—a hand feeling in her jacket. She tried to brush the hand away, but her muscles were too busy freezing. Kai felt herself lowered to pavement. People stared. The sky was full of blades. She couldn’t stop shaking. Ghosts whispered in her ear. Fontaine stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth when she was in a hurry. Stupid habit. Bite it off that way. Gods. Breathe. Don’t drown in this. Don’t let them see you weak. She tried to sit up. Those blades in the sky twisted, curled back on one another, changed shape. Blood dripped and froze.
What was this place?
Fontaine shoved Kai’s passport in front of her eyes. The entry stamp’s red ink seemed sharper now, the squid-in-a-circle design perfect. Squid arms formed the circle’s edge, and embraced Kai’s name.
Deeper, deeper still, it drew her.
She gasped, and this time her lungs filled with scorching desert air. She blinked, and ice crystals sublimed off her eyelashes. Fontaine’s arm held her close, strong, steady. Shivering, Kai felt the tentacle beneath the woman’s jacket sleeve.
But why was Kai shivering, after all? The day was hot and bright, the blue sky free of clouds. The pavement on which she sprawled radiated heat. A few concerned onlookers lingered (a woman with a bird’s head, the four-armed statue from her flight), but most drifted on. A young Gleblander in a three-piece suit passed, shooting Kai a look she recognized—the same glare she gave mainlanders recovering from their first palm liquor hangover in a hotel gutter back home on Kavekana.
Tourist.
Her “I’m fine” ended up crushed and mumbled. Fontaine offered a hand, which Kai, politely, refused, standing on her own with difficulty. On review she found no permanent damage: shoes okay, stockings, more or less.
“Lords, I’m so sorry.” Fontaine slapped dust off Kai’s jacket and skirt without a moment’s concern for personal space. “I’ve never seen someone fall through that quickly. Twilling told me it was a risk, but I had no idea. You must be very good at your job.”
“What was that?”
“The God Wars,” she said. “Come on. Let’s find a cab.”
“I heard there was damage, but—” Heat wormed back into her body. She took a breath, and shivered—even her lungs were cold.
Fontaine explained as she shouldered through the crowd; Kai checked her hair, grabbed her suitcase, and followed. “The old city, the one that stood here before Agdel Lex, fell early in the wars. Gerhardt and his students made their first stand against the Gods here, and almost tore the world apart. Broke time itself. They say he’s still alive in that wound in the sky, still fighting. The Iskari saved what they could, sealed off the war zone, and built the city where we live. Sometimes, though, people fall through. The Rectification Authority keeps things stable, but there are holes.”
“What happens if I . . . fall through . . . again?”
“Get your passport, look at it, and remind yourself: you’re in Agdel Lex. The Iskari city.”
She spread her hands, taking in the skyline, the sun, the decidedly living metropolis and the line of cabs, a driver seated on each one’s bench. “You shouldn’t have to worry about it much. The world’s very thick, downtown. Now, let’s move. We’re already late.”
Kai glared at the cabs, suspicious. “No driverless carriages?”
“Too risky. Without someone to navigate, you might fall through. Hey!” Fontaine’s voice deepened when she called to the driver, and she shifted into a Talbeg dialect Kai couldn’t follow, sharp, demonstrative, likely invective laden. Fontaine’s body language when she spoke Iskari enveloped, all roundness and fullness; speaking Talbeg, she became a fist. The driver put down his novel and reached for the reins. His metal horse pawed the cobblestones, drawing sparks. Fontaine offered Kai a hand into the carriage, and this time Kai let her help. She still felt unsteady, and the jostling as the carriage veered into traffic made the sickness worse. “My apologies,” Fontaine said. “I’ll have IFI’s private service drive you back to the airport tomorrow.”
Right. She’d come here for a reason. Fontaine seemed eager to move on to another subject—any other subject save, perhaps, the one Kai had in mind. “But you didn’t want to use the service today. Because you don’t want to attract attention.”
“I, ah.” Fontaine touched her temple, and frowned. “I’m not certain I understand.”
“Your letter set a rapid timeline, suggesting urgency, but you came to meet me yourself rather than sending an admin, and we’re using a public cab. Ms. Fontaine, do your bosses know about our meeting?”
To Fontaine’s credit, she kept it honest. “Management,” she admitted, “has low visibility into this deal. You haven’t had much success approaching IFI until now, because in your case we find ourselves in an ouroboral situation: without a commitment of funds, IFI can only share so much. But you can’t invest without information. Where others see an obstacle, I see opportunity.”
The Ruin of Angels--A Novel of the Craft Sequence Page 2