Two Serpents Rise cs-2

by Max Gladstone

  His father would not approve.

  The night before, Mal had knelt beside him in her tent and painted figures on his skin with silver ink that burned when wet, but cooled as it dried. Even now he could trace the outline of her sigils on his chest and arms and shoulders and back, the ink cold as Craft, a pattern to complement his scars. His war paint, his mark as her protector.

  He laughed.

  “What?”

  “I’ve gone from manager to knight in two days. I think I deserve a bump in salary.”

  “I’ll recommend you if we pull this off.”

  “I don’t think you’re allowed to write your boyfriend a recommendation.”

  “You’re my boyfriend now?”

  “This is our second date.”

  “Some date. Fighting for our lives.”

  “We’ll be fine,” he said, without conviction.

  “Yes.” She sounded no more certain. “Next time, we’ll go someplace nice.”

  “Sure,” he said as they passed into darkness.

  The world changed, like walking on a tidal beach: one step dry and warm and yielding, the next wet, cold, firm. The pleasant sunlit world faded. Mountains surrounded them, crags old as the frame of the earth. Trees shivered in the wind of their passing, restless shades rising from hungry sleep. This was the world immortal. It would endure man’s scrabbling on its surface, and rejoice when the last city crumbled.

  Was this how Craftsmen saw the universe? So pitiless, and dark?

  Shadowy cords throttled the air overhead as the Couatl dove for the tree line. Where the cords passed, they left silence solemn as the halls of an ancient tomb.

  The Couatl threaded through magisterium trees toward the falls: water rushing in torrents down an indomitable cliff. Up the bare rock they flew, until with a final surge of tired wings they crested the ridge and reached the lake.

  Seven Leaf stretched before them, twenty miles at least from western to eastern shore and mountain-ringed.

  Caleb had never seen so much fresh water in one place. Dresediel Lex was a desert city, no matter how it pretended to temperate ease. In his childhood he had played among cactus spines, and the forest he knew the best was the Stonewood, eons dead. An embarrassment of wealth lay below him, fresh water from horizon to horizon, salvation to his thirsty city.

  The black lightning of Allie’s mind flickered and lanced above the waters. The sun was a pale ghost. Sickly blue-green luminescence shone from everywhere and nowhere at once, casting no shadows—undigested remnants of light, vomited up by their adversary.

  Shade-wrapped Seven Leaf Station shimmered atop the water: a silver dome in the lake’s center, surrounded by a metal superstructure in the shape of a six-pointed star. Three rings of Craft circled the entire station, crackling with flame. Domes and towers blurred and flexed, sprouting annexes, buttresses, and arches that crumbled in moments, shining upside-down through time.

  The Couatl sped toward the station. Their pinions carved vicious arcs in the gloom. When they crossed the outermost of the three Craft circles the world flashed white, and before the light faded they crossed the second and third in quick succession, a flare of black, a strain of music calling Caleb down a deep tunnel beyond which unfamiliar stars glared into a desolate abyss. Wards on the Couatl’s scales popped and hissed and sparked, and gouted smoke that stank of ozone and burning flesh.

  They landed on a flat stone platform at the station’s edge. Four was the first to hit the ground, followed by One, Three, and Seven; Mal followed, as did Caleb, and the remaining Wardens reared the Couatl back into the air.

  No sooner were the Couatl airborne than tentacle arms a hundred feet long burst from the lake. Most grabbed for the Couatl and missed, but two carved deep trenches in the stone platform where Caleb, Mal, and the Wardens stood.

  Caleb stumbled back, slipped on the slick stone and fell. A tentacle curved overhead, dark against the gray sky. It struck, and Caleb flinched, but when he opened his eyes he was still alive. The tentacle twitched on the landing platform, severed halfway down its length. Four stood above him, ichor dripping from a long black blade she sheathed again at her side.

  Three more tentacles rose to replace the fallen limb. Mal pulled Caleb to his feet, and they ran, following the Wardens down a long catwalk toward the central dome.

  Couatl wove and rolled through the sky, dancing amid a storm of tentacles. Caleb had seen his share of human brawls, brutish and brief: breaking, snapping, tearing, that was how man fought man. The Couatl and the shadow-arms were made things, perfect mechanisms. They dueled with an artist’s precision.

  Tzimet scuttled out of the water onto the catwalk, slick curved claws scratching metal. Four and her comrades struck them like a hammer, so fast their forms were lost in movement. Four’s hands burned with green flame as she punched through a Tzimet’s abdomen; Seven tossed a silver ball down the catwalk, and the ball shed thin rays of light that shredded shadow and black water.

  This is what we’re good for, Four had said across the campfire. Last-ditch action, and violence.

  They carved a hole in the horde, and running, Caleb and Mal followed.

  The world warped: a phantom of Sansilva Boulevard lay under Caleb’s feet, broad and pyramid-flanked, and he would have run down that road into the lake had he not fixed his eyes on Mal and followed her instead. He fell a thousand feet from a sky-castle onto a blasted desert, but he followed Mal and the desert melted.

  The dreams that nipped at Caleb’s mind turned ugly as he neared the dome. Demons gnawed his entrails, and peeled Mal’s skin in long strips that unraveled as she ran.

  Footsteps rang on steel.

  Light scattered Caleb’s illusions. Overhead, Wardens loosed lances of flame, spinning discuses of silver, and brilliant hooks against Allie’s tentacles. The dome’s surface twisted the firefight into a funhouse hell.

  Four reached the dome and rushed through without pause, leaving only a ripple in reflected flames—the walls were not made of glass or chrome, but water.

  Caleb grabbed Mal’s hand, and they stepped inside together.

  Water enclosed him, and let him pass. When he opened his eyes, he was dry, and alone.

  Darkness illuminated a wrecked room: broken tables, upturned chairs, scattered consoles and implements of Craft. A web of twisted wire and bent pipe filled the chamber, and a woman sat in the center of that web, cradled like an idol in an old priest’s hand. Caleb recognized her.

  At their last meeting Allesandre had been clipped and precise, level as a frozen river. Her ice had thawed into a flood. Glyphs burned from her skin, marred her face with talon patterns, ringed her brow like a crown of knives. Tatters of a dark wool suit hung from her body. Eternities wrapped around themselves in her eyes.

  Misshapen lumps of human flesh hung from her metal web, and corpses sprawled beneath her on the floor.

  His gut turned, and he almost turned with it, almost fled back through the water curtain. Fear, more than bravery, prevented him. She would not spare him just because he tried to run. His only chance at survival lay ahead.

  Her mocking smile cracked open. Blue light sparked between dagger teeth. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Allesandre,” Caleb said. “Stop this.”

  “Why?” the Craftswoman said pleasantly. “You put me here, asked me for this. You and your master.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t ask you for anything. I’ve only seen you once.” She did not answer. “Where are the others?”

  “Your companions are dead. I let you live.”

  Caleb heard flesh crisp to ash. Mal screamed. Craft-born hallucinations. Witchcraft. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m here to fix the water. Don’t try to stop me.”

  Fire burned in her eyes. “Come, if you dare. Wrap your hands around my neck and kill me.”

  A trick. Of course. Yet he felt her throat in his right hand, flesh and tendon and bone. Squeeze. Kill. No. He hadn�
�t moved. His hand was empty. He was alone in the dark.

  “Come,” she said. “I’m waiting.” A flash of lightning cast her and the web of wire and the corpses in chiaroscuro. Four silhouettes hovered in the air about her, shadow cutouts contorted in pain.

  Four shadows. Why four? Why did those silhouettes seem familiar?

  “Where’s Mal?” he asked. He tried to look away from Allesandre, but his eyes remained fixed on her.

  “You have no power here,” she said.

  He ignored her, and focused instead on the feeling in his right hand. Skin, yes, but too hard and calloused for a throat, bones too thin for a spine. He recognized the meat of a palm, and slender strong fingers wrapped around his own.

  “Mal,” he said, louder this time.

  “No one can help you. We two are alone, the only human beings for miles. Face me and fight, or I will destroy you as you look away.”

  Look away. His nerves locked against him. Air froze in his chest. Waves of blood beat on the shore of his body. His scars ran cold.

  The foundation of the world shook, or he did, or both. Cords bound his mind. He gripped them, and they fell loose.

  Mal stood beside him, holding his right hand, her gaze fixed on Allesandre. Glyphs burned from the open collar of her shirt. “You presume to dictate terms to me?” Her voice was sharp and fearsome. “He was no part of this. I will end you for killing him.”

  She thought he was dead. Overhead he heard a rustle of motion, smelled ozone as claws of Craft ripped through empty space. He recognized the Wardens by their speed. They darted between pipes and wires; one leapt at Allesandre only to be swept aside by an invisible force. Their attacks were out of joint, uncoordinated. A pair struck at once and a single wave of fire threw them back. A tangle of black arms snared Seven, who fought free, and the same trap caught Three seconds later.

  They fought with courage and desperation. They fought as if each one, alone, was the last bulwark between Dresediel Lex and doom.

  Caleb closed his eyes, and saw the barbs of Craft sunk into the Wardens’ minds, and Mal’s.

  Mal stepped forward and became inhuman, tall and lean and sharp, an eidolon of smooth spiked bone. Her fingers almost slipped from his grasp.

  Almost.

  He pulled against her with his scars. Allesandre’s illusion bent. Mal fought him, her hand a knife’s blade that cut his palm, a flame caged in his grip, but he pressed harder. The pain grew. He cried out, but before he could let go, the illusion broke.

  Mal froze. Blood dripped from the cuts in Caleb’s hand. A drop at the curve of his smallest finger welled, swelled, fell.

  She turned to him. Her eyes had been open, but now she saw.

  “Caleb,” she whispered, and the bone and crystal melted from her. Her look of surprise changed first to joy, then to predatory confidence. Her skin chilled to his touch. She closed her eyes, and turned on Allesandre.

  “Allie,” she said, “that was clever. But not clever enough.”

  She advanced, and Caleb followed her.

  A hissing serpent of frozen flames encircled them, but it shattered at a wave of Mal’s hand. Sweat and condensation gleamed on her forehead. Her slow and shallow breath turned the air to fog. They walked into the jaws of a shark with jagged crystal teeth the size of men. Mal frowned, and, closing, the teeth melted to raindrops and splashed cool on his face.

  Skewering thorns blossomed into roses, which fell upon them heavy and suffocating only to take wing and rise as butterflies, which became a swarm of bees swept away in a rush of wind.

  The world ran taut as a violin string.

  Lightning-haloed Allesandre blazed with hidden fire.

  * * *

  The night before, Caleb sat in Mal’s tent naked to the waist. Her brush tickled the back of his neck.

  “Duels of the Craft,” she said, “are fought on many levels. Mind and soul are two battlefields, the body another, time a fourth, and most of the others make little sense if you’re not a Craftsman. The world is an argument, and like any argument there are many ways to win or lose. You can force your opponent to contradict herself. You can point out her fallacies, her false dichotomies, her exaggerations and distortions of reality. Our authority from the King in Red threatens Allie’s control over the station. She’ll attack the bond between Seven Leaf and RKC, claiming independence. The contracts between the station and RKC are strong, though. I can turn them against her.”

  “And once you do that, you win.”

  “Ordinarily.” Her brush slid silver along his neck. “If this were a case before a judge, in a Court of Craft, supported by precedent and dread command. Out here…” She trailed off, and drew a spiral at the base of his spine. “There’s an easy way to win any argument, no matter the quality of your position—you kill the person with whom you disagree. When she sees I’m about to win, she’ll strike with every thaum of her power. I won’t be able to stop her. I’ll have fought my way to exhaustion already. A simple, blunt attack will go through me like an arrow through a paper wall.” Her brush spun in place to articulate a dot. The ink dried cool on his skin, and in his soul. Closing his eyes, he saw the night inside his skull painted with her diagrams. “That’s where you come in.”

  * * *

  Allesandre swelled with rage. Wires twisted like octopus arms around her, and her mouth shaped words in demonic tongues. She reared, serpentine.

  Lightning poured down upon them like water from a height.

  The lightning slammed into Mal’s protective wards, and would have burned through if its power had nowhere else to go.

  Lines of silver paint flared on Caleb’s skin, and the scars on his chest and back and arms flared too.

  Thunder riveted his mind. Power battered the cords of his being. His heart stopped.

  Caleb held Allesandre’s might as a rider holds reins.

  He knelt, and touched the lightning to the metal deck of Seven Leaf Station.

  The bottom dropped out of his soul, and he fell into the station, into the water, into and through Allesandre’s defenses. She threw her head back. Her skeleton sparked through her skin; she screamed, long and high-pitched, until her own throat strangled her and the world collapsed in rushing water.

  The dome, built to withstand storm and earthquake and divine wrath, gave way. Thousands of gallons of water fell on Caleb and Mal, on the Wardens, on Allesandre in her wire web.

  Caleb collapsed to the deck. Time disappeared in the roar and rush. Gravity failed, and he grabbed for anything firm. His hands closed around a hot water pipe, scalding but stationary, and he held his breath through coursing dark.

  The universe righted itself in noon brilliance. Caleb doubled over on the deck, coughing up sweet water. The sky spread blue above. He blinked at the fierce sun.

  For months he knelt, years, gathering the pieces of his mind into a working whole. When he looked up, he saw the knotted pipes and wires in tangled disarray, Allesandre limp at their heart. Wire circled her head like a crown, and her neck like a collar. It was difficult to tell where she ended and the machines began—metal slipped smoothly beneath her skin.

  Corpses lay on the floor, flood-tossed against consoles and raised altars. Two Wardens had fallen overboard, and Four and Eight were lowering ropes to rescue them.

  The torrent had not moved Mal, who crossed her arms and canted her head to one side like a governess regarding a troublesome child. She walked forward. Her legs trembled with each determined step.

  Allesandre looked up. Her face was Quechal dark, Caleb’s own color, and her hair streaked red. Ruined, she resembled the woman she had been months ago, the woman who ushered him into the burning foundations of the world. Her chest heaved. Her mouth was slack and her eyes set, exhausted and defiant.

  “Mal,” she said so soft that Caleb barely heard: desperate, despairing. “What now?”

  Mal did not answer. One hand rose to the hollow above her heart, and twisted. The sun dimmed, and above the wind and the waves’ soft
roll, Caleb heard a sound like cloth being torn. Mal drew her hand from her breast, and she held a sliver of nightmare in the shape of a knife. She raised the blade.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Mal,” Allesandre repeated. “How did we get here?”

  Mal moved her knife in a smooth arc that began on one side of Allesandre’s neck, and ended on the other. Allie’s eyes went soft, and she slumped forward with a wet gasp. The wires would not let her fall. Blood unfurled from her throat down her shredded blouse. She blinked once, and mouthed a word Caleb could not hear—it might have been Mal’s name, again. Pain twisted her, and she died.

  Mal stood like a lightning-struck magisterium tree: solid to the eye, but the leaves and furthest branches quivered as the trunk fought to stand. The tremors traveled inward from her fingertips, and when they reached her shoulders she collapsed, curled over her knees, head down. The nightmare-knife vanished. Blood fell to the deck and mixed with water.

  Caleb moved to her side and stopped, uncertain. Mal collapsed was more fearsome than Mal girded for war. He had staked his soul on games of chance, confronted the King in Red, jumped off buildings into empty space. Kneeling beside her and placing his hand on her shoulder was the hardest thing he had ever done.

  He wondered if she had killed before, and wondered, as he had last night, what he would have felt if their situations were reversed, leaving him with the knife and her to watch. Alessandre was dangerous. He tried to think of Dresediel Lex dying of thirst, tried to justify the blood at his feet, and could not.

  Sixty years ago, his father stood atop the pyramid at 667 Sansilva. As cantors sang, he raised his knife. It glinted black in the sun. The obsidian edge reflected the naked sacrifice. The blade fell, the murder was done, and that, too, had saved the city.

  Silent, he stared into the dead woman’s eyes. But for the blood, she might have been lost in thought, or prayer.

  His hand hurt. Mal had gripped it, hard. After a while, when she stopped trembling, she looked up.

  “That was worse than I thought,” she said.

  A distant lake bird called.

  She tried to speak but choked, and stopped, and tried again. “Come on. Let’s get this place running.”