“Ah, there’s your error. You assume we were running from the trouble, not toward it.”
She paused to breathe, and rest her aching arms. “Why not refuse the passenger? Seems dangerous to sail while damaged.”
“Does the Kell’s Bounty look like one of those fat-heeled merchantmen yonder, rich enough to accept and refuse commissions on a whim?” He slumped against the railing. “My arms are open to all who pay, though I do wish I were more my own master and less the client’s slave.”
“I know that feeling.”
“What form of clients would a lady like yourself have?” he said with a leer.
She almost laughed, almost lost her grip on the rope, almost tumbled back into the water. She would not allow such a lapse before this man. “No clients, but my new boss is a bit of a witch.”
He didn’t respond. Pull, step. Two feet. One.
Raz reached down to take her outstretched hand. Her eyes adjusted. His skin was brown as old, worked mahogany, and he gripped her forearm with fingers just as smooth. He pulled her up one-handed with no more trouble than he might have taken to raise a bottle of beer. The railing brushed her shins. When he set her down on the gently pitching deck, she saw his body. Muscular, yes, but too thin to hold such preternatural strength.
He smiled, and she saw the tips of fangs peek beneath his upper lip. His eyes were the color of a dried scab, and deep as an ocean trench.
She exhaled. “Thank you for the hand, sailor.”
Raz laughed. “Well done! Not many meet my gaze and stand on the first try. Especially after almost drowning.” He clasped her shoulder and squeezed. “Good to see you’re not all tongue.”
She measured her breath. Her arms shook. “Thank you. You’re a vampire.”
“While you’re on my vessel,” he said, “you might as well call me Captain. For the crew’s sake.”
Still wobbling on her feet, Tara looked about the broad deck. It was busy with sailors: the three who had held the rope steady for her to climb, and twelve more tying off lines and raising sheets and swabbing decks, preparing the Kell’s Bounty for arrival in port.
She would have seen more, but her attention was occupied by a single figure, pale, slender, female, holding a steaming mug of coffee. The fall had not wrinkled Ms. Kevarian’s suit. Behind her, stacked on the deck neatly as if carried aboard by a conscientious porter, rested Tara’s books and their luggage.
“Thank you for rescuing Ms. Abernathy, Captain,” Ms. Kevarian said with a quick nod to Raz.
“Always a pleasure to be of service, Lady K. If you don’t mind me saying, this one has a nice mouth on her.” He winked at Tara, who ignored him. “I have to run below before I get any more of a tan. Captain Davis’ll be up in a flash if you need anything.”
“Won’t you stay and catch some sun?” Ms. Kevarian asked pleasantly.
“Oh, no,” Raz replied, already halfway down the ladder into his cabin. “You know me, crazy lady. I don’t brown. I burn.”
“Perhaps tonight, then.”
“I’m for the Pleasure Quarters soon as the sun sets. It’s been awhile since my last visit to Alt Coulumb, and I fancy a drink. Come find me if you’re interested in sharing one.”
When he had slammed and latched the trapdoor behind him, a cool silence settled between Tara and Ms. Kevarian. The older woman sipped her coffee. The younger stood there, dripping.
“A witch?” Ms. Kevarian said, bemused. “I’d think you’d give me more credit than that, Ms. Abernathy. Riding broomsticks, consorting with unholy powers. Who has the time for such pleasantries anymore? Why, I haven’t been on a date since the late eighties.”
“Do I pass the test?” Tara tried to keep her voice level, but adrenaline stuck its cat claws into her heart, and her voice tightened at the wrong moment.
“I beg your pardon,” Ms. Kevarian said.
“You knew we were going to fall, Boss. You had this boat set up to catch us. The whole thing was a test.”
“Hardly.”
“So it’s a coincidence that we crash-land onto a boat captained by your vampire friend?”
A small audience of sailors had gathered. They looked to Ms. Kevarian for her reply, but soon shuddered and looked away. Something about her made the eyes cringe. Maybe it was the way her dark gray suit soaked in the light, maybe it was the way steam from her coffee cup swirled about her like a demon’s wreath of flames. Maybe it was the neon yellow smiley face on the cup’s side.
“Flight near Alt Coulumb is interdicted by divine wards,” Ms. Kevarian said, “but we are more than a thousand feet beyond their edge. I intended for us to land on this ship, and for Raz to bear us into port. I was every bit as surprised as you by our fall.”
Confusion blunted Tara’s anger. “People do business in Alt Coulumb all the time. There must be a shuttle to get them through the wards. Why bother with Captain Pelham?”
“Water taxis receive most incoming flights. We didn’t take one because professionals use them. Mages, vampires, businessmen and businesswomen of all sorts. Someone would recognize me, and guess what I’ve come to do.”
“Why be so secretive about Craftwork? Unless our client is so big that…” She recalled the great dim embers of Alt Coulumb’s wards, and remembered, too, the tingle against her soul as she fell, before she lost consciousness: the love like fire, or the fire like love. That had been the touch of Kos’s power, beautiful but faint—fainter even than the captive Gods she’d studied at school, and those were more ghosts than divine spirits, eviscerated and lonely.
The immensity of what she was about to say choked her off.
Ms. Kevarian drew close. Tara smelled her: coffee, lavender, magic, and something else, strange and unnamable. She whispered into Tara’s ear.
“Kos the Everburning is dead. We’re here to bring him back to life.”
3
The towers of Alt Coulumb dwarfed the gargantuan supply ships moored at the docks below, even as the ships themselves dwarfed the ferries that plied the Edgemont River back home.
Tara stared at those buildings, stunned. They were monuments to power. Every arch, every spire, every massy pillar proclaimed the city’s might. Even the Hidden Schools in their airy and metallic splendor hadn’t seemed so aware of their own grandiosity, or so proud of it.
It had taken armies to tear rock and metal from the earth to build Alt Coulumb, hosts of priests to beg fire from their god and twist that ore into skeleton frames. Legions broke their backs and arms and fingers piling stone on stone, melted skin and burned hair fusing steel with steel. These buildings remembered the taste of blood sacrifice, and hungered for more.
“Ah,” Ms. Kevarian said, joining Tara at the guardrail. “I missed this place. It has such … attitude.”
“You’ve worked here before, Boss?”
“Soon after the God Wars. It was less welcoming then. The Church hired us to fix a problem beyond the range of the priests’ Applied Theology.” She said that term with controlled scorn. “The whole affair was quite secret at the time, as I’m sure you can imagine. Alt Coulumb never entered the war, and Kos remained neutral, but there would have been public outcry had our involvement become known. It was hard to get office attendants, because everyone we interviewed was afraid we’d steal their souls.” One corner of her mouth crept up.
“What was the job? If it’s not a secret.”
“Oh, no. That’s been public for a while.” People swarmed the docks, dockhands loading and unloading, locals greeting passengers and haggling for the small luxuries that sailors smuggled to pad their meager wages: charms of pear wood, dyed silks, intricately woven rugs, pirate editions of the latest Iskari serial novels. Ms. Kevarian pointed to the crowd’s edge, where stood a line of figures dressed in black. No. Not dressed. Enclosed in black. Annihilated by it. Featured like unfinished statues: suggestions of eyes, a swell of nose, a hint of mouth. Hands clasped behind their backs. Mostly men, but a few women, too, each one pierced through head and heart
and groin with a strand of lightning Tara doubted anyone here but Ms. Kevarian and herself could see.
“What are those?”
“Justice. They used to be the City Guard, anointed of Seril Green-Eyed, Seril Undying, the goddess upon whom Kos’s priesthood relied to keep order in the city.”
“But Seril was killed in the fifties, in the God Wars.”
“I’m glad to see you know your history. Yes. Seril and her warrior-priests rode off to battle, not caring whether Alt Coulumb followed them. She died at the hands of the King in Red, and left the city without protectors.” Ms. Kevarian took another sip of coffee. “Kos’s Church hired me, and a senior partner from the firm, to do what we could. The Blacksuits were part of the result. I met Captain Pelham on that first trip. He was still human then. As, I suppose, was I.”
They started down the ramp, followed by a pair of deckhands who carried their belongings. Tara looked about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Raz, but he had ensconced himself belowdecks. The sun was far above the horizon, and he needed his rest. Two captains, two crews, one for the night watch, one for the day—no wonder the Kell’s Bounty flourished in such a cutthroat business, despite being one of the smaller ships currently moored at Alt Coulumb’s docks.
How cutthroat was their business, after all? Tara had asked some of the sailors about Captain Pelham’s “spot of trouble,” but they evaded her questions, and when pressed they paled and drew away. Captain Davis had been no more communicative.
A driverless carriage waited at the bottom of the ramp, drawn by a black monster of a horse so huge that Tara could not imagine anyone daring to fit it to harness. It pawed the ground and fixed her with an intelligent and malicious eye.
She quickened her step and followed Ms. Kevarian into the darkness of the carriage, where they sat amid black leather and velvet curtains as their few pieces of luggage were loaded after them. When Tara closed the door, the coach rolled forward as though the crowd were vapor.
Ms. Kevarian set her mug down, steepled her fingers, and said nothing for some time.
“I’m sorry I called you a witch,” Tara said.
It took a moment for Ms. Kevarian to notice she had spoken. Even then, she did not respond.
“Boss?”
“Ms. Abernathy. I’ve wrestled with gods and demons. My ego is hardly so fragile as to be bruised by an associate’s poor choice of words. I’m thinking.”
Associate. Pride bloomed inside Tara. “Just thinking?”
“There’s never any ‘just’ about thinking, Ms. Abernathy.”
The bloom shriveled. No matter. Pride was dangerous, anyway. “What are you thinking about?”
“Strategy. We have a daunting case before us, and it has grown more complex in the last two hours.”
“You’re talking about our crash.”
“My Craft does not fail without reason. Something struck us in the air, overpowering as a god’s flight interdict, and swift enough to shred my Craft without warning. Had either of us been slow to respond, we might never have made it to shore. We were meant to die, I think, and our deaths to look like an accident. Pilot error.”
“What do we do?” Tara summoned a fragment of lightning and set it dancing between her fingertips. “Find the person who’s gunning for us?”
“Unfortunately, no. Pleasant as it would be to hunt our assailant down, I have business to attend to. And,” she said as their carriage took a sharp turn onto a side thoroughfare, “so do you.”
*
Thirty minutes later Tara stood on a cobblestone sidewalk before the double doors of a huge building. She didn’t have much experience with skyscrapers, but this one was rich by any standard, decorated with marble and gold leaf. Gargoyles glowered from its ornately adorned façade.
Deep, old grooves marred the stonework in angular patterns, like rune writing but unfamiliar to Tara. They didn’t fit the skyscraper’s stark, elegant decor, and she wondered why they had not been patched or repaired.
The brass-flashed double doors swung open when she approached, as Ms. Kevarian had told her they would. The doors were simple constructs. They checked for power, and yielded to it. Before the end of the God Wars, it was rare for a citizen of Alt Coulumb to possess much Craft. This building hadn’t changed its locks since. Quaint.
Tara advanced over the floor’s marble tiles, her gaze fixed upon the lifts at the far end of the hallway. The walls were lined with mirrors, the building’s second line of defense. If she caught her own eye in the glass, she would stand entranced by her reflection until security arrived. If she looked into the mirrors but not at herself, she might simply wander through their surface and never be seen again in the real world, unless the building sent someone to fetch her back.
She reached the lift without incident, stepped inside, turned the dial to the forty-seventh floor, and pressed the GO button. The doors rolled closed, leaving her trapped in a shining brass box. With a lurch, the entire assembly began to rise.
She schooled herself for her encounter with Judge Cabot. This would be her first professional meeting as a full-fledged Craftswoman, and her chance to make a good impression in Alt Coulumb. She ignored the nervous tremor in her chest. “Your Honor,” she said to the walls of the empty lift. Good. Lead off strong and with respect. “Elayne Kevarian of the firm Kelethras, Albrecht, and—” No. Not quite. Don’t be too arrogant, Ms. Kevarian had said. Step in, pay your respects. Be direct and businesslike. “Elayne Kevarian sent me to tell you she has agreed to represent the Clergy of Kos Everburning, and wishes to speak with you at your convenience.”
She wondered who this Judge was, and how well Ms. Kevarian knew him. A city the size of Alt Coulumb had many lesser Judges, the better to help Craftsmen coordinate the reanimation of people, animals, and great Concerns, but this case … This case was beyond any Craft Tara had ever expected to touch.
The thought made her heart race with excitement.
The engine driving this lift ran on steam pressure, steam produced from water by heat. Alt Coulumb’s generators derived that heat not from felled trees or the black magic oils of the ancient dead, but from the grace of a god who, ages ago, took the people of this twist of coastline as his own.
If Ms. Kevarian was to be believed, that god was dead. His gifts of fire and heat would persist until the dark of the moon, when debts resolve and prices fall due. Then, they would fade. Tara stood in a metal box dangling by a thin cord over a thirty-story drop, and the other end of that cord was held by the promise of a ghost.
Had Tara not known better, she would have been unnerved.
The lift rocked to a halt, and its doors rolled open.
Three Blacksuits stood in the ornate lobby on the gold-thread Skeldic rug: two male, one female. Light shone through the crystal ceiling off their molten obsidian skin. Tara checked an indrawn breath when she saw them. Justice’s minions. That was what Ms. Kevarian had called them, back at the dock.
She told herself to relax. She had done nothing wrong.
Of course, in her experience, this rarely meant one had nothing to fear from the authorities. Forcing a fog of bad memories aside, she stepped into the lobby, chin high and hands clasped primly before her. She had changed on the Kell’s Bounty from her bedraggled sea-soaked clothes into her second, and far more formal suit, an executioner’s black against her nut-brown skin. She was glad of the suit’s severity as three blank reflective faces confronted her. She returned their stare.
“I want to speak with Judge Cabot.”
Judge Cabot is not available. The figures’ lips did not move, but Tara heard three voices nevertheless, or the nightmare echoes of three voices, not-quite-sounds on the edge of hearing. What business did you have with him?
“I…” Dammit, she would not be quelled by a trio of professional security nightmares. Steel yourself, woman, and get on with it. You’re not a farm girl come to beg for favors. You have a purpose here. “I’m a Craftswoman from the firm Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, here to speak
with Judge Cabot. Do you know when he will return?”
Yes. They raised their faces toward the skylight with a unity even more unsettling than their voices. He will return when the moon is broken and the land fades, when the waters rise and burn to steam, when the stars fall and the Everburning Lord rises.
“Ah.” She paused, thinking. “He’s dead.”
As of this morning.
She heard a high-pitched and prolonged scream behind the double doors that led into Cabot’s apartment. “Who’s that?”
The butler.
She waited.
He discovered the body, and thus is likely to be involved. We are ascertaining the details of the event.
Discovered the body? Involved? “You think Cabot was murdered.”
It is likely. Considering the condition of the body.
Another scream. This one broke into deep, powerful sobs.
“Sounds like it hurts, this ‘ascertaining.’”
Most do not find it pleasant, but Justice must be served. After we are done, we will ease his memory of the pain.
“Tidy.”
Economical. Pain is a valuable resource, and should be used sparingly.
Tara crossed her arms and looked from one to the next to the last. Murder. Because Judge Cabot was involved in a perfectly routine, if large-scale, Craft proceeding?
If she returned to Ms. Kevarian with this scrap of information, she’d be sent right back to learn more. Besides, she was on the scent.
“Listen. My boss wants me to see Judge Cabot. How do I know he’s not still alive and telling you to lie to keep me out?”
What purpose would that serve?
“How should I know? I can’t go back to my boss empty-handed. She’d use my skin for shadow puppets, and if I was lucky she’d let me die first, and then she’d come looking for whoever stood in my way.”
That is unfortunate for you.
“My point is, it will take a lot more than some screams to convince me you’ve really got a murder scene here.”
You believe we would lie?
“I’m new in town. I see a trio of moving statues and I don’t know what to expect.”
Three Parts Dead Page 4