Zeddig counted turns. After three miles, one stare-down with a nest of wolf rats (green multifaceted eyes glittering), and a great deal of not talking, they reached a ladder. Zeddig climbed—“Stay here”—and knocked three times, then twice, then once again on a hatch set into the brick.
She waited, hanging in the dripping dark, as footsteps neared. Far down, Ley leaned against the pipes, and bled.
The hatch swung open. Zeddig’s pupils schooled themselves to the flood of light.
Raymet stood behind the hatch, wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt with some comic book logo, and fuzzy pink slippers. She held a bowl roughly the size of her head that contained a sickening quantity of ice cream, she smelled not-so-faintly of weed, and she sounded like someone who had not anticipated using her voice to communicate for the next few days. “Z? What—” And then, because Raymet stoned was sharper than most folks sober: “What the hells is she doing here?”
“Bleeding,” Ley said. “It’s a pleasure see you again as well, Raymet.”
“Z.”
Close friends, Zeddig had found, developed a sort of telepathy. Nothing mystical about it—though a musing Craftswoman might spin you a tale of spiritual entanglement and primitive localized divinity, then charge you a few hundred thaums for the musing. Graybeard coffee-fiend dockside chessmasters could glance at a position and say, mate in twelve, because they knew the game. Friends just learned the game of you.
So when Raymet said Zeddig’s name, Zeddig also heard, Zeddig, are you sure about this, and, Zeddig, you remember what she did last time, and, Zeddig, I trust you, but I don’t trust her, and I don’t trust you with her, and, Zeddig, I had blocked off a few days for ice cream and comic books and there better be a damn good reason you’re here other than a booty call from the Queen of the Evil Exes.
“We’re good,” Zeddig said. “But we need a place to spend the night.”
Raymet stepped aside. “Come on up.”
Chapter Thirteen
THEY BROUGHT KAI AND the cat to the Rectification Authority tower. In the carriage, Bescond sat across from Kai and watched her, or something beyond her, gaze flat and weighing. Abernathy crossed her arms and stared out the window. The Craftswoman reminded Kai of a clock wound until it would wind no more, terrible mainspring pressure straining against the tiny gears built to make that tension useful. Kai did not want to stand nearby when those gears gave and all that violence sprang forth at once, in shards.
The body lay in the carriage’s trunk, hovering above a slab, ringed by wards that cast silver light.
Up close, the tower seemed carved from pink marble: Kai’s subconscious insisted it was, since nothing so large could possibly live. (Strange, how the subconscious could insist on that point, and accept dragons. A survival tactic, perhaps?) But pink marble did not twitch, and the tower did. Pink marble did not wind and unwind with grotesque slow grace. Light did not shimmer inside pink marble, branching treelike beneath translucent skin, and those blue veins were not veins of ore.
The tower locked the world into place. As they neared it, side streets stopped shifting. The carriage turned onto a four-lane boulevard with a row of acacias in the median, each tree planted four meters from every other. The air dried, and grew hot. She remembered the deep bone-cello sound the faceless cloaked figures made, and wondered why, until she realized she heard that same sound everywhere, so subtle and pervasive she had not noticed. She stood on an immense bridge, strong as ages, and beneath that bridge lay a chasm, and at that chasm’s base, a maw.
Behemoth curled in Kai’s lap and purred like a jackhammer.
“What is that sound?” Kai said.
Abernathy drummed her fingertips on the windowsill.
Bescond did not answer.
Kai wondered whether asking again would help. Before she could decide, Abernathy spoke. “This used to be the university district, before the wars, when this city had another name.”
“I heard the story,” she said. “Gerhardt fought the local Gods. The battle left a breach. The tower seals it. But nobody’s told me how.”
Abernathy paused, searching for the right words, and Bescond took over with the ease of long practice. Kai recognized a sales pitch when she heard one. “The Rectification Authority keeps the city from falling into the wound Gerhardt left in the world when he refused to die. We impose order. We lock the chaos of Agdel Lex into form. This requires constant observation. So our Lords built us a constant observer. She lives, and watches.”
“You’re not a cop,” Kai said.
“No.”
“What are you, then?”
Bescond flipped her notebook closed, capped her pen, and slid both into her pocket. “Throughout the world, the Iskari Demesne preserves order, to help humans flourish. Without us, this city—and many others—would collapse. Theological surveys suggest the Wound, untended, would freeze the Shield Sea halfway to Iskar, leaving us with a new Crack in the World. That’s the best-case scenario. Police heal ruptures in society—so, no, we are not police. Our role is prior to theirs. We enable society’s existence.”
Behemoth curled his head under Kai’s palm. “So why did they call you in for a murder?”
The tower blocked out the sky. Behind it, somewhere, stretched the bay. Before the wars, the university must have had a beautiful view. Their carriage juddered toward a wall carved in a spiral pattern—or at least, Kai thought it was a carving at first. As they neared, the pattern opened. Tentacles uncurled and spread like arms to welcome them into darkness.
Abernathy stopped drumming on the windowsill. She looked impassive, unimpressed, but Kai had spent enough time selling to see through the poker face. The Craftswoman wanted to look relaxed, but her little finger pressed so hard against the wood that it trembled.
Tentacles wrapped the wall closed behind them, and the darkness turned into a garage.
“Society requires order,” Bescond said. “Some crimes strike against that order, as well as against the social fabric.”
Bescond led them to a lift like any lift Kai had ever seen, which moved almost the same, though with an unsettling peristaltic rhythm. They climbed. The cat hunkered down in Kai’s arms and flattened his ears, glaring at the wall. The lift stopped at the eighteenth floor to admit two robed, hooded figures who smelled of must and ink and fish and departed on floor twenty-two. At the thirtieth floor, Bescond led them down a hall, through a door in a row of doors, into a round room with pearlescent walls, a heavy table, three chairs, a water cooler with paper cups, a filing cabinet, and a painfully fake fern.
“I’d like my own advocate present,” Kai said.
The wall rippled as she spoke, and her words took shape near the ceiling, in trailing, organic Iskari script.
“Wow,” Kai said, and wow, the wall wrote. “That’s not even slightly creepy.”
Abernathy sat facing the door. “This isn’t an adversarial situation, technically. You’re not under suspicion of anything. Bescond and I”—with a slight pause that suggested strange bedfellows—“want to ask a few questions. We need to understand what’s happened to Ley, where she might have gone. It’s . . .” She leaned back. “Important.”
“We understand,” Bescond said, “that you spoke with her this evening.”
“How do you know that?”
“What did you talk about?” The wall recorded Bescond’s words too.
“The weather,” Kai said.
The filing cabinet behind Abernathy opened, and a file rose from it and flew to the Craftswoman’s hand. Kai recognized the black envelope Ley had tried to offer her. “What’s inside the envelope?”
“You haven’t opened it?”
“It’s sealed,” she said. “With impressive wards. If we opened it, it would destroy itself.”
Kai sat. Behemoth flowed from her arms to the floor. “Were you watching my sister, or watching me?”
“Your sister is in a dangerous position,” Abernathy said. “She may have committed murder. She may have des
troyed a soul. Or she may have just . . . borrowed one for a while. It can happen, with the right tools. If we can restore Vane’s soul to her body, your sister’s no longer a murderer. She’ll face a civil suit from Vane, but she’d be safe from the Iskari justice system.” Said with a slight hesitation before “justice,” unless Kai was very much mistaken; Bescond’s face was a study in stoicism. “If you help us, you’re helping her.”
Kai walked to the water cooler, poured herself a cup, and drank. She hadn’t realized how dry she was until she swallowed. She poured another cup. The room thrummed underfoot. She returned to the table, sat opposite Abernathy, and leaned back. “Lieutenant Bescond had that nice speech about the Authority being, what? Prior to police? You’re not interested in the murder.”
“You told the police—” Bescond started, but Abernathy held out her hand, and she stopped.
“The police arrived suspiciously fast, didn’t they?” Kai asked. “Given that those back streets are too narrow for carriages? Almost as if they were holding back, waiting to see if I’d try to leave without reporting the crime. If I had, we’d be having a different conversation, I imagine?”
Abernathy’s eyes flicked right, to Bescond, who didn’t seem concerned.
“What’s Alt Coulumb doing in bed with Iskar, Ms. Abernathy?”
“We are allies,” Abernathy said, with a wry smile. “Cooperating for mutual advantage.”
Kai pushed back her chair. “I’m leaving now.”
“Fine,” Abernathy said, just as Bescond said, “No.”
The building’s heart beat. Far away, lift doors dinged.
“Your sister’s accused of reality subversion,” Bescond said. “We can detain you for questioning.”
“First you want to help my sister, now you say she’s a suspect.”
“It’s a complicated situation,” Bescond said. “You’re not cleared for the details.”
“So clear me.” Neither woman spoke. Kai knelt, and gathered Behemoth, who only squirmed a little. “You know who I am. You know more about my sister’s business than I do. Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Did you ask me here because you want my help? Can I just”—shifting her attention to Abernathy now—“walk out this door?”
She reached for the doorknob, but it wasn’t there. The wall curved smooth as an eggshell. Abernathy turned to Bescond; Bescond turned to Kai. The room grew quiet. Shadows flickered beneath the pearl white walls and their trailing blackletter words.
Then the wall burst open, and Fontaine stumbled in. “Ms. Pohala, there you are! I got the room number from the front desk but sometimes these halls, you know, they have minds of their own, hah, not to mention obeying alien geometries no man could possibly, nor woman neither, and so on and so forth. Very fascinating, I’m sure.” She laughed, high-pitched and too quick. Her pupils were so dilated only the faintest ring of iris showed, and she actually bowed to Bescond and Abernathy, like they were all on stage, one arm out and the other to her chest. “Madame and Madame. Pardon my interruption. Ms. Pohala is a guest of First Imperial, the papers are all on file, but here’s—” She popped her briefcase open on the third try, and dumped a small pile of sealed scrolls onto the table. “You know. Copies and so on.”
“This isn’t a thaumaturgical matter,” Bescond said. The Lieutenant seemed to have swallowed a storm cloud, but when Kai glanced to Abernathy, she saw the Craftswoman’s lips twitch upward before her professional mask returned.
“Of course not, oh, of course.” Fontaine shook her head rapidly. “I’m sure Ms. Pohala will answer any questions concerning this unpleasantness, during business hours, on IFI premises, as per standard protocol for Official Friends of the Demesne as the Chartegnon Accords stipulate. I’ve contacted my manager, who’s of course happy to liaise with your Knight Cardinal, should you have any concerns.”
“Of course,” Bescond echoed. She snatched up a scroll, broke its seal, and glowered at the words, as if intimidation might inspire them to rearrange themselves to her liking. “Official Friends protocol.” She wrung the scroll shut. “Her visa form suggested this was an exploratory visit.”
“Market considerations, you know,” Fontaine said. She gathered the scrolls with one hand and made an expansive, cloudy gesture with the other. “Don’t inform on peanuts to the elephants. And so on.” She slammed her briefcase shut. “Ms. Pohala. We have a carriage waiting, and the meter’s running, I’m afraid.”
Kai smoothed her blouse, drew her shoulders back, and allowed herself a smile, slighter even than Abernathy’s. “Thank you very much, ladies. If you want to continue this at IFI tomorrow, my flight out’s scheduled for six.”
She saluted them both—two fingers to the temple, like an airman in a mystery play—as she withdrew. Abernathy saluted in answer; Bescond only glared as Fontaine led Kai out.
Chapter Fourteen
“OUT,” RAYMET TOLD THE three undergrads playing a dice-and-toy-soldiers game in her book-stuffed living room. “Out,” she told the bearded dude with the clockwork arm pruning a warped potted pine tree on her bottle-strewn kitchen table. “Out,” she told the person in her bed, whose name Zeddig didn’t know, but who complied with a speed of which she, Zeddig, approved. Soon Raymet’s three-level basement flat was as empty as you could ever call a space where every wall strained under the weight of shelving, where books, magazines, spare dishes and half-finished mugs of tea covered every horizontal surface, including the bed. Most people Zeddig knew didn’t like basement apartments, found them suffocating, but Raymet loved wriggling through tight spaces. Zeddig knocked over three piles of books and one precariously balanced water pipe while she followed Raymet around the house, which was a good average for her visits.
Once the front door was closed and locked, the last protesting gamer on the other side (the person in Raymet’s bed put up less of a fight than the ejected hobbyists, though the collar suggested that obedience was at least part of the point of that particular relationship), Raymet collapsed against it, exhaled with her whole body, and said, “This is the dumbest idea any of us have had in at least a year. Certifiably dumb. If the U finds out, I’ll need to turn in, like, at least a doctorate.”
Zeddig did not disagree.
Raymet finished the last of the ice cream, slammed a shot of bourbon, and offered Zeddig the bottle, which she refused. She needed sleep, not liquor. A pot of coffee stood half-empty on the burner. “How old is this?”
From the other room, Raymet answered: “Anything growing in it?”
She sloshed the liquid against the light. “Not that I can see.”
“It’s fine.”
Zeddig opened the cupboard, which contained no cups, but an impressive array of titration equipment. The next cupboard boasted some sort of blacklit permaculture aquarium situation, translucent fish nibbling the roots of luminescent purple plants. The next cupboard was empty. The mugs on the counter seemed too suspicious, so Zeddig drank from the pot. Sour, too much acid, just like her mood. She mercy-killed the pot down the sink, and threw out the filter. “Okay,” she said, realizing that she’d been hesitating, that the coffee and the exhaustion were just excuses for delay. “Let’s hear what she has to say.”
The under-under-basement held Raymet’s office, with its steam tunnel access, its desk (remarkably clean compared to the rest of the apartment), its shelves of rare or illegal books, and, currently, Ley, snoozing in Raymet’s desk chair, shoes off and feet up. She didn’t snore, but when she slept heavily, she hissed on the out breath. Gods, she looked good asleep, the blade of her gone loose, the teeth bare between the lips. What could have ever come between them?
“If you two have seen enough,” she said, without opening her eyes, and without a twitch to betray her shift from sleep to waking, “I’m ready to talk business.”
Oh, right.
Raymet perched on the desk, caught Ley’s legs by the ankle, lifted them off, and let them drop. Ley came upright. “Zeddig told me what you told her. Woolly and imprecise.
I have questions.”
Ley cracked her neck, then cracked it again in the opposite direction, then stretched her arms over her head until her elbows popped, which sinuous arching of back triggered (as she of course would know) a great many memories in Zeddig, who looked away. “Ask away.”
“How long can you last in the dead city?”
“Controlling for other factors, and given that the chill falls off on an inverse cube law away from the Wound—you could last for at least twenty-four hours outside the university district. Two days in the Wastes, maybe more.”
“Bullshit,” Raymet said.
“You haven’t heard the best part yet.” She laced her fingers behind her head, and leaned back. “The system fails faster close to the Wound. But not that fast. I can get you as far as the sixth floor of the Anaxmander Stacks.”
Feelings don’t strike turn by turn: they well up stepwise with slow reaction rates, as an alchemist would say, causes transforming into effects even as traces of cause remain. Human features, no matter how expressive, are too slow and simple to convey this welling conflict, and tend to freeze in some awkward intermediate position while the process works out. Zeddig knew Raymet felt skepticism and hope and terror and avarice, all shifting into one another, not because she could read her friend’s features, but because she knew her, and because she felt that same roil in herself.
Upon the roof of the Anaxmander Stacks, Maestre Gerhardt slew the gods and angels set against him, and upon that roof he remained, dying and refusing to die, unwilling to lose, within the Wound that killed the dead city. The Stacks: full of volumes lost to history, texts heretical and heterodox, untranslatable and plain weird, manuscripts, archives, histories dating back to the wars against Telomere Across the Waves. A public glory, a treasure trove forever out of reach. The most advanced wards lasted minutes in the university district, seconds near the Stacks. “What do you want?”
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