“Agdel Lex,” Zeddig said, “has no history.”
“I know.” She sounded tired. “I was excited. I was angry at you. And we had funding. Vane had a gift for finding investors. Millions of thaums rolled in. I made art. I wanted to show everyone, you most of all. And one day, Vane and I got into a fight over, I don’t even remember, and I went, angry, into the files. And I learned where our funding came from.”
“The Wreckers.”
Ley’s smile ran crooked. “Iskari Defense Ministry, not the Rectifiers. But, it amounts to the same thing. They wanted the system built—with their people running it. They wanted the Lords at the center of the web. Agdel Lex would be the first test: rectifying the city once and for all. They would stop its alleys from shifting, wall off the dead city and Alikand, too. They would make Agdel Lex a perfect, known place.”
“No one would go along with that. The people would reject it.”
“Fewer than you think,” Ley said. “And those who didn’t, those who turned away—the Authority wouldn’t have to protect them anymore. The Wastes would roll in. They’d fall into the dead city.”
There should have been a sound outside, a scream or a laugh, anything to relieve the silence between them, but the night was deep and solemn, and no birds woke to sing.
“I was an idiot.”
Zeddig fought down anger, and fear. The walls of this room seemed so fragile now—they flexed with her breath. She did not scream. It hurt to look at Ley; she saw it hurt Ley to look at her. She gripped Ley’s hand, and they clutched each other with lifeline strength.
“I tried to stop the project. I fought with Vane. I scrounged for funding. A few of the middleman investors the IDM channeled funds through didn’t know who held their strings, so I found some willing to sell their stake. If I added theirs to mine, I’d have enough control to wrest the concern from Vane. I needed a loan to buy the shares, and I needed sixteen million thaums as security for the loan. I looked everywhere. Vane must have found out—so she got there first. I was turned down again, and again, and at last by my own sister, with just days left before deployment. So, when all else failed—I stabbed Vane, and took the project, and ran.”
* * *
The door opened on heavy hinges, and Vane marched into a shadowless room. The light here issued from no single source, and there were no hard corners where shade might gather. Smooth eggshell walls enclosed them, matte white and glowing. Silver wires anchored to the walls coiled and snaked on the floor. Kai glanced back, nervous, to check the world outside still existed. The windowless sterile hallway seemed real and grubby by contrast with this self-complete space. Vane’s feet left dirt prints on white as she padded to the center of the room.
“The knife,” Kai said.
“This stupid knife,” Vane acknowledged, raised the blade, and opened it, tine by tine, into a web. “It’s made me rich, and it will save this city, and save the world, but I’ve spent my share of time inside it already. Still, needs must.” The blade stuck in the air, and the walls rang.
* * *
“You know the rest,” Ley said. “Without Vane and me, they couldn’t build more knives. The initial design involved two blades: one on the ground, bonded to the Wrecker tower, and one in the Altus satellite payload, bonded to a human being. I had the Wrecker knife, but I couldn’t get to the satellite—and they could launch with only one knife and a Lord-ridden squid. It might work. If I could reach the Altus launch site, I could break that knife, too, and save the city—and if I got this”—she touched the metal disk on her breastbone—“I could get into Altus. But to get there, I needed help. Which is why I came to you.”
Zeddig could not trust herself to speak.
“I fucked everything up. Now they have the knife, and I’m useless, and your friends are stuck in the tower. So, there it is. I didn’t change. I didn’t try. I threw myself into more of the same godsdamn fix-everything nonsense that broke us up. I should have listened to you. But here I am. And I don’t have any right to say it any more but—I love you too.”
Those words passed between them, their own secret, carried by the air, by the lifeline tension in their hands, and Zeddig, who’d felt like a dry leaf in a hot wind, landed. The world was fucked, the city doomed. But there was this, at least and forever, in her hand. This, in her heart.
It was a small truth, against the travesty of the world. But it did not feel small. The fear did not leave, but she felt, at last and forever, anchored.
“You’re not useless,” Zeddig said. “What you did was wrong, and I don’t—” Her voice shook. She felt hot and tense and sharp, and she breathed herself cool, and calm, and soft. “I don’t know what to do.” And easier than breathing, because more true: “I love you.” There was so much else. She wanted to scream and weep and to march from that bare room into the street and never come back, and wanted to mash Ley’s mouth with a kiss and break her, and break herself, in an embrace, and stain that bare mattress with their sweat, and topple the walls with their screams. “Can we stop them?”
Ley met her gaze, and for the first time since that rooftop night, Zeddig saw her lover unsure. “We can try.”
* * *
Silver wires snaked from the eggshell floor, weaving through the web of the blade, unfolding it and unfolding again. Silver rubbed silver and drew it taut, guillotine strings vibrating with notes just below the edge of hearing. The system burned. Vane cocked her head back as the web grew, checking for damage, and knifelight made sharp edges on her teeth. “Your sister betrayed our work, and caught me in our trap. But now I’m back. So. Dear Ley has made herself an outlaw, turned down a fortune and a chance at something not unlike godhood, all to appease her memories of her ex-girlfriend. And even in that last-ditch effort, she’s failed. You have my thanks. But, if you don’t mind, I need you gone. We have two days to prepare for launch.”
Vane had ceased to care about Kai, or Tara. She watched her glowing web, lit by the fleshless purity of angles.
Kai turned away.
Beside her, she saw Tara, looking sick.
Chapter Fifty-nine
DAWN AT HIGH SISTERS came early. A siren woke the children in their bunks, and they staggered out in long lines to present themselves for morning exercises and inspection. After that, gruel. After that, work. After that, classes.
No one liked High Sisters—not the sisters themselves, not the blank-faced guards, not the kids in featureless gray jumpsuits worn through at the knees from kneeling, each suit boiled to kill lice before it was passed to the next kid in line. Everyone here would rather be somewhere else, and the people who sent them would rather have sent them somewhere else too.
The Sisters themselves no doubt joined the corps imagining some humane assignment, in a war zone possibly, or a recent war zone, or even better, the aftermath of some unnatural disaster, the kind of thing where no one (certainly not the Iskari Demesne) was at fault, some skyquake or reactor meltdown in the wake of which they could comfort orphans, mend the sick, preach the glories of their Squiddy Lords to seekers abandoned by gods and people, human flotsam tossed on the wake of great events. They imagined comforting children who wept into their pillows at night. Instead they, the Sisters in flowing black, had been appointed guardians of ingrate kids, no three of whom spoke the same language. It stung. Street scum, clannish and suspicious, sad and angry and confused and above all, that greatest sin, ungrateful—would it kill these children just to thank them, even once? As if no one ever taught them to speak. The clerks and clerics who sent the Sisters to Thornside apologized when the Sisters sent sad letters home, and dispensed comfort in officially sanctioned increments: someone has to tend these lost children, but it won’t be forever, we’ll soon find you some position where you can be kind.
Izza had met many dangerous people, but few so mean as bruised idealists.
In any other situation the children would have been more or less all right—scared, alone, traumatized, hungry, but fine. They had come from across
the Gleb, and spoke different languages, and cared about different things, and all were hurt and angry and sad and lost. Otha willowy and grim, Orolh with the mean twist to his lip and the scar above his eye, Egewe who gathered other girls to her like chicks to a mother hen and whose skin was a web of burns from before, and welts from now—they could have been friends, if they had time to hide and heal, to make peace with their dead gods and lost family. But they were fierce strangers here. They shared no language. They lacked any reason to live together save the Iskari desire to render them into citizens, like a cook rendering fat to oil. So, at High Sisters, they gathered into groups with those few others they could understand, and built petty empires when the Sisters weren’t looking, of kids they could beat or cow into line.
The cops and Wreckers who sent those kids here would have rather seen them off to reeducation camps like proper adults, where their bodies might at least be put to use, or have kicked them out into the war, or drowned them in the bay. It would have been merciful. You only had to visit High Sisters to see how poorly these broken not-quite-children lived, what monsters the war had made them. If only the bleeding hearts back home, who filled newspaper column inches with tired quotes about the quality of mercy, could understand the futility of this nonsense, and give us permission to treat these not-quite-children the way they really should be treated. My Lords, did you see Sister Blanche last feastday? Bent at confession, sobbing? Her hand bandaged from where she’d broken one of the small bones in her palm swinging her switch too hard?
Izza didn’t know much about the faceless guards, but she was pretty sure they’d rather be somewhere else too. Then again, you never knew. Some people liked not having faces.
Anyway, she herself would rather be gone. She had survived a brief stint in High Sisters before, played the good girl until they sent her and a few others to a factory by the shore, and, seeing her chance, she escaped. The Sisters would keep close watch on her, if they read her file. It might be fun to pit her will against theirs, to dismantle this gross institution from the inside—to shape the kids into a fighting force, strike back. But she needed out fast. Kai was out there, no doubt meshing herself deeper in this nonsense, rather than cutting and running like any decent person should. (Like Izza should herself.)
But she could not leave without Isaak.
At morning inspection, he hadn’t looked tired by the exercises, so Sister Marthe told him to do more. He did, and after that looked no more tired than before. “Defiant,” Sister Marthe said. “We can fix that.”
He had the smarts not to talk back, at least. Poor bastard. Learning to survive outside left you unprepared for this sort of thing. Looking tough, here, meant you stood out, and standing out got you hurt. In the long run.
He knew who he was. Because of that, they’d try to make him something else.
After classes, more work. Her job was to pass sheets of metal to Otha, who ran the press, and scowled whenever Izza spoke to her. Otha did not know what they were building, and did not care. They repeated dumb slogans back to the supervising Sister while they worked.
Then, more gruel.
A body could get used to this sort of treatment. That was the idea, that was the problem.
So, after the gruel, when they were escorted out for a half hour of rec time on burning pavement under the sun’s full heat, Izza started a fight.
She’d spent years avoiding this sort of shit, so it wasn’t hard. All she had to do was the opposite of what came naturally. But first she had to get rid of Isaak.
He lumbered over to her as soon as the faceless men left them at liberty. The others gave them a wide berth. Natural: no sense tearing newcomers down so long as they stuck together. Too risky. Get them alone. At night, maybe, or in the small corners of the complex where the eyes on the walls sometimes shut from boredom.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. “The Lady—”
“Don’t, please.” His eyes, shit, the pain in them—she wished she could get used to it, so it wouldn’t hurt so much. But then she imagined the kind of person who could see that pain and not hurt, and she did not want to be that person, either. The prisons into which you locked yourself, you could not escape.
“She touched you. Izza, pray to Her. Try. She can get us out of here.”
He sounded so excited: he could share this with her, if he could just make her understand. He deserved to know—when she could find a way to say it without changing a friend to a follower.
“We’re getting out.” She breathed deep, made her bones iron and her mind a blade. “But you have to give me space, okay? There’s something I need to try first. Alone.”
The armor on Isaak’s face didn’t convey subtle expressions well, but his confusion wasn’t subtle. “Okay.”
That would have to do.
She marched away from him, to Otha, who stood with a clutch of tall lanky dangerous kids, westerfolk, speaking a coast dialect that sounded to Izza like seashells scraped together—marched to Otha, who had power in this closed-in screwed-up world, who had put a kid in serious hospital one time, not even the infirmary.
Izza pushed Otha from behind, and said, “What the fuck is your problem?”
Otha fell. Her friends caught her, and she recovered, turned, hands raised, hair an angry halo. She made a fist. “We didn’t have one,” she said. “Until now.”
And she lunged for Izza.
The scrap lasted seconds at most. Otha came for her, Izza hit her upside the head, Otha grabbed Izza’s shirt and tossed her down. Izza got up, not quite fast enough to avoid the kick, and bowled into Otha, forcing the taller, leaner girl to the blacktop. Hands caught her, pulled her off—Otha’s friends. Fists came. She heard faceless men whistle from the corners of the yard.
Good. Yes.
Fighting gets you solitary—just you and the eye of judgment. Perfect for her purposes. Once she was free, she could sneak Isaak out, and they’d escape together. This bit hurt—she doubled over a fist, gasped air, tore one arm free to protect her face—but the faceless men wouldn’t let them fuck her up badly. The Sisters liked to pretend they cared.
Booted feet ran toward her.
And she heard a roar she’d hoped not to hear.
The hands that held her broke. Kids scattered. Izza fell without anything to fight against, hit pavement that seared her palms. She looked up, blinking. Isaak stood over her, hands clawed. He roared again, bared needle teeth, and the walls of High Sisters shook.
“No!” But she couldn’t help him now.
The manacles triggered. Isaak slammed to the pavement, pressed down by an enormous weight. He forced himself to his feet anyway, straining against the magic of his bonds. To protect her. Beautiful idiot.
He didn’t go down when the first faceless man hit him, or the fourth. He fell, finally, from their weight, and when he did, they kept hitting him.
“Stop!” She meant the cry for him, but he must have thought she was pleading with the faceless men, because he fought harder. This big dumb wonderful kid. Fighting for her.
Still the blows rained down.
She heard something break. She screamed. She didn’t expect that. She didn’t scream often. The cry slipped from her throat, drawn by its own weight, like a knife she hadn’t felt enter.
They carried him limp from the yard. She didn’t feel the faceless men’s hands on her as they dragged her into the office. She didn’t feel Sister Marthe’s scorn, didn’t hear her condescending speech, the blows that followed. She barely heard the cell door slam shut.
Chapter Sixty
KAI WANDERED ALIKAND BACK streets, and felt unreal. She bought coffees and asked directions, and though the answers she received bore little resemblance to the route Izza’d followed days before, her feet remembered the path. Blue sky peeked between the roofs of the too-close whitewashed houses, a deeper blue than the Iskari desert. Any moment Kai expected a great web to unfold in that sky, and draw them in.
Two days to launch, Vane said. Th
e grand project almost complete.
She found Tara in the Temple, stripped to shirtsleeves, watering the dry plot. Two men were repairing the balcony above, patching a hole with fresh boards. They looked up as Kai passed through the gate, then returned to their work. Tara did not stop watering. “I missed yesterday,” she said as Kai approached across the courtyard. The soil drank water. Leaves inhaled, flushed green. “The plants were thirsty.”
“The tower said you didn’t show up for work this morning.”
“I don’t work for them.” The rain from the can’s spout eased. Tara walked to the well and tossed the bucket down. It splashed far below. “Now Vane’s back in action, I’m an observer again.”
“They’re going to kill this city.”
“Not exactly,” Tara said. “Right now the city’s Alikand and Agdel Lex, woven through one another. Your sister’s work will force the cities together, seal off the dead city forever. No more people dying as they fall through the cracks. Agdel Lex loses the wreckage of the God Wars, and the city makes a fresh start.”
“And the Iskari control everything.”
“That is,” Tara said, “one issue. There are others.” She worked the well rope to fill the bucket, and then started cranking. “Some parts of Alikand will resist incorporation. Those will be cast into the dead city, and lost. Reality papers over the wound.” The rope creaked.
“You’re okay with that.”
“Of course not.” The creaking stopped. Tara held the crank still. Light slicked over the muscles of her back and arms. In daylight, her glyphs looked like scars. “Every part of this hurts.”
Kai joined Tara at the well. The crank was large, and her hands fit between the Craftswoman’s. She didn’t look at the other woman, just tried to help her. The rope creaked, the bucket rose. Water sloshed and fell. They worked, silent, together. On the balcony, the men hammered nails into board.
The Ruin of Angels--A Novel of the Craft Sequence Page 34