The Ruin of Angels--A Novel of the Craft Sequence
Page 46
“The fire is normal. Happens on reentry.”
“I’ve lost track of which of us owes the other,” Kai said, after a while.
“Or who was playing whom.”
“Does that hurt?”
Tara stroked the smooth mercury skin on the side of her neck. “It—somethings.”
“Thank you,” Kai said. And: “I listened, while I was up there. I almost died, but I did listen.” She produced a crystal from her purse: a recording of heaven.
“That was the deal.” Tara accepted the crystal. She did not look embarrassed, but something close. They had both gone too far for deals. “What did you hear?”
“Stars.”
“Yes.”
“They . . . sing.” She licked her lips.
But Abernathy was too much a Craftswoman to be put off by that. “And.”
“I heard—legs. Skittering closer. Whispers older than time. They speak in the pulses of distant suns. They’re so, so hungry. And they smell us.”
“It’s okay,” Tara said, and took her hand. “We’ll think of something.”
Kai squeezed Tara’s hand back. She wasn’t reassured. But she smiled anyway.
* * *
Raymet heard the metronome tick of a heart monitor, and opened her eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling. She found Gal waiting. She had taken enough drugs to recognize their effects: opiates, laced with dreamdust, some analgesic Craft, with something she didn’t know to round out the soporific edge. She didn’t feel nearly paranoid enough. Maybe almost dying had something to do with that.
She tried to push herself upright, and fell when her left hand passed through the railing around the bed, because the hand, of course, wasn’t there. A smooth steel socket capped the limb where the wrist should have been.
There were things she was supposed to feel now, she knew, from watching plays, and reading books, but none of those felt right. She cast about the room and settled again on Gal, who knelt beside the bed, calm.
“I guess I fucked things up for you,” Raymet said.
She wanted an anchor for the grief beneath her surface, she wanted an excuse to pour it out onto someone else, spewing rage like pus from a sore, only to make the infection worse. But Gal said, “You made it.” And she sounded glad.
“You wanted to die. Wasn’t that the point? You’ll never get a better chance.”
“There are many kinds of battle. This is one.”
She did not say anything. Gal hugged her, and kissed her on the ear.
That, of all the damn things, made her lose it.
When she could gather words again, she said, “I guess I’ll get a hook.”
“They have hands.”
“Do they?”
“I thought I’d wait, and let you choose. I don’t have an eye for this sort of thing.”
“Maybe I can get one with flames. To make it go faster.”
Whatever Gal thought about that, she kept to herself. But she rang the bell, and before long the doctor came with the case of hands.
* * *
Zeddig almost missed them in the throng before the wall. She had to climb a statue and scan drifting heads, waving banners, sprinting children, cameldancers, street carts selling fried dough and coffee, mothers with picnic baskets, for the two Kavekanese women hand in hand, looking lost: Ley in a white linen suit and straw hat, Kai in a sundress and big red sunglasses, carrying her picnic basket.
Zeddig somersaulted down, danced through the crowd, and rescued them from a barker marketing some newfangled variety of meat on a stick.
“Busy,” Ley said, after they kissed.
“First time we’ve done one of these in a while. I didn’t expect this many people.”
“No way it’s safe out there,” Kai said, grim, as the gate opened and the desert light rolled in.
“Of course not. But we’ll be careful.”
Beyond the wall, the plains spread: scrubland and brown grass, hard earth erupting sometimes in thorn. Silicate crystal god-bones formed cathedral arches through which children ran, screaming laughter. A human flood, they moved uphill, touching and seeing, shying from places where geometry grew too strange. The Fragrant Plain smelled of carbon, dust, and glass. But it was a start.
They climbed. Someone chanted in a Talbeg dialect Zeddig could barely place—a home-song from a long time gone.
They each moved at their own pace, and Ley’s pace, for all her arm in a sling, was fast; it was not hard for Zeddig to find a moment with Kai alone. “I’m sorry.”
Kai glanced sideways, past her glasses. “I’m listening.”
“I didn’t mean—” But she had. “I didn’t trust you, when we first met. I had my reasons. But I was an asshole.”
“I didn’t give you much cause to like me, either.”
“So.” She found her lower lip between her teeth, and worked it out. “Why?”
“Why did I help? Why did I introduce your mother to Abernathy?”
“Why any of it? This isn’t your city. It wasn’t your fight.”
Kai closed her eyes, but she kept walking, and did not trip, as if she knew the path unseen. “Why do you think Ley did all this? Why stab Vane and run? Why almost kill herself trying to stop everything she’d put into motion?”
“Because she was responsible,” Zeddig said. “Because she wanted to save the city.”
“I don’t know,” Kai said. “Maybe you’re right. You know her better than I do, these days. But cities are big, messy things. I think she did it all to save a person.”
Ley crested the hill and waved back to them, in silhouette against the sky.
“Go on,” Kai said. “I’ll catch up.”
She did, eventually, and spread the tablecloth from her basket over the cracked ground while Ley poured the wine. They touched glasses. Zeddig tasted red, and felt Ley’s heat beside her. Below, far away, they saw Alikand and the dead city rolled to one, the towers topless, streets littered with a century and a half of wreckage, pitted and webbed with empty space where Iskari boulevards once ran. Cranes rose and fell; the city lived, and built. Above it, and around, Iskari ghosts remained.
“It won’t last,” Zeddig said.
“Not on its own.” Ley nestled beside her, and watched the world through the ruby prism of her wine. “We have to help it grow.”
Wind whispered toward them, bearing promises of rain.
“Hey,” Kai said, pointing: “have you ever seen a poppy like that before?”
Acknowledgments
Sixth time’s the charm, they say. Some of them, at any rate. Probably.
Thanks as always to the fantastic team at Tor and my new gracious and excellent hosts at Tor.com: my editor Marco Palmieri, Irene Gallo art director (and now publisher!) most fantastic, to Mordicai Knode and Katharine Duckett for intrepid marketing and publicity support, and of course to Goñi Montes for this brilliant, fiery cover.
Family and friends and fellow travelers have been, as ever, steadfast and insightful in their criticism, analysis, response, inspiration, and raw emotional support: John Chu, Anne Cross, Gillian Daniels, Seth Dickinson, Amy Sarah Eastment, Amal El-Mohtar, Matt Michaelson, Stephanie Neely, and Marshall Weir most especially this time around, but really if we’ve talked about cities, startup culture, space, surveillance, histories, philosophy, academia, or anything at all in the last six years or so, you’re probably in this book in some way, and thank you.
Also, thank you. If you’re new here, fantastic, and welcome. If you’re an old hand, thank you so much for supporting these books. They’re strange, fun, and they give me room to talk about things that are important, and hard, to discuss head-on. These books travel from hand to hand; what they’ve done, they’ve done through your offering them to friends, to family, giving them and talking about them and drawing art. I’m so grateful.
The world, right now, needs delvers, and angels, thieves and heroes, and Craftswomen. It needs us. It needs stories, but it needs praxis, too: the acts that make ideas real. Kee
p fighting, loving, speaking, standing up for one another and for a liberated world of guests and friends. Work. So will I.
About the Author
Photograph by Nina Subin
MAX GLADSTONE has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia, wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat, and sung in Carnegie Hall. In addition to the Craft Sequence, Max is lead writer for the eBook serial Bookburners. He has also written several short stories for Tor.com, as well as the interactive story games Choice of the Deathless and The City’s Thirst, both set in the world of the Craft Sequence. Max was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and is two-time finalist for the John W. Campbell Award. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
www.maxgladstone.com
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Also by Max Gladstone
Three Parts Dead
Two Serpents Rise
Full Fathom Five
Last First Snow
Four Roads Cross
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Chapter Seventy-two
Chapter Seventy-three
Chapter Seventy-four
Chapter Seventy-five
Chapter Seventy-six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Max Gladstone
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE RUIN OF ANGELS
Copyright © 2017 by Max Gladstone
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Goñi Montes
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Marco Palmieri
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ISBN 978-0-7653-9588-7 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9589-4 (trade paperback)
First Edition: September 2017
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