The world broke open around her with a sound like cracking tinder.
*
The laws of physics reasserted themselves in a jumble. She had weight again, and physical extension in three dimensions. Time moved swiftly, then slowed as her mind adjusted to the confines of her body. It was a comfortable feeling, like slipping her feet into a pair of old, well-worn boots that had lain years forgotten in the back of her closet.
In the expanse of prehistory, mind and flesh evolved to complement each other. Craft could transport the soul to wage war on strange planes above the corpses of dead gods, but ultimately there were few places more pleasant than the bag of dancing meat and bones that was a living body. It was warmer here.
Tottering in her flats, eyes stung by the dim court lights, Tara wanted nothing more than an iced tea and maybe an afternoon to sit on a front porch somewhere and watch the sun decline.
The Judge was watching, and she couldn’t let herself fall. Professor Denovo stood next to her, and of course he did not have the decency to look more than discombobulated. His hair was mussed, at least, and there was a hint of tension in his face.
Tara felt stiff, too, in her back and in the backs of her legs. How long had their battle lasted, in real time?
“Sir,” Denovo said with a bow to the Judge. “I ask for a rest to consider the new information Ms. Abernathy has provided. Will you permit us to meet again tomorrow?”
“Indeed.”
When she heard Denovo’s proposal, she felt a weight settle on her stomach. It was reasonable. She had indeed given him the information, after a fashion, and he was obliged to review it.
“We meet again tomorrow,” the Judge said. “Come fire and rain, come ice and the world’s end. The court adjourns.”
As he said the final word, the hooks of Craft decoupled from his flesh, and the flame in the circle died. The Judge crumpled, hands groping for support. Attendants approached to steady the man (and he was a man once more, not the mouthpiece of the machine, as Tara was once more a woman and Denovo was once more … whatever he was), and conduct him gently from the dais. As he walked, he twitched and groaned.
Was that what Judge Cabot had been at the end of his career, a broken thing, too tainted with darkness to live well? Was that what Tara herself would be in twenty years, or forty?
Denovo extended his hand for the customary handshake, but she turned her back on him and staggered away.
“Well done,” Ms. Kevarian said when she met Tara at the circle’s edge.
Tara crossed the line, sinking into the familiar unsteadiness of the normal as if into a hot bath. The feeling, however wonderful, did not improve her mood. “I gave him,” she replied with an angry toss of her head, “exactly what he wanted. I surrendered the Church Archives to win a minor point. I am such an idiot.” She glanced around the courtroom for Abelard and Cat, and saw them shouldering through the milling audience toward her.
Denovo had left the circle, too, and was gathering his papers. Ms. Kevarian leaned in, her voice low. “We would have given him that information sooner or later. Now he has it—unexpectedly, he thinks. He’ll hope you gave him more than you intended, and will analyze it himself rather than request our help, to keep us from knowing how much he has. You won, for now. Feel the victory.”
Tara tried, but the flush of triumph would not come. The floor rested uneasily beneath her feet. “This won’t set him back for long. He’s rebuilt his lab. They’ll reconstruct the visualization Craft from scratch.”
“The lab.” Her expression darkened. “You didn’t expect you had destroyed it for good, did you?”
“Hope springs eternal.” Tara grimaced. “I thought I was thorough enough that it would take him longer to recover.”
Ms. Kevarian looked as though she were about to respond, but Abelard was there, hands outstretched, complimenting Tara and full of questions, and they had no more privacy.
Across the circle, Denovo looked up from his briefcase to Tara. His eyes in the real world were pits of tar. She had drowned in them once.
He wanted her to drown in them again.
She turned to answer Abelard’s questions.
12
After Tara, Abelard, and Cat left the courtroom, the audience lingered to discuss the proceedings in hushed, frenetic tones. They had not understood much of the battle, due to their unfamiliarity with Craft of such magnitude, but this they knew: Kos was dead.
The student watched the silver circle and said nothing. Her bleary eyes had flown open at the first lightning flash, and down the hours as Tara fought Denovo, she had crept forward until she sat perched on her chair’s edge, vibrating with the energy of a person who had seen something beautiful but lacked the words to describe it.
That one, Ms. Kevarian thought, will make a good Craftswoman some day, if the madmen who run this city don’t warp her into a priest of something or other. Perhaps the girl was safe, though. It was difficult to be a priest in a city whose gods are dead. Cardinal Gustave, silent beside her, his face a stone mask carved with stone wrinkles, would attest to that.
She was about to say something to the Cardinal when Alexander Denovo’s smooth, familiar voice interrupted her. “Fifty years ago, we never expected that someday we would take Alt Coulumb.”
She had seen Denovo approach, skirting the edge of the circle; had felt him on the perimeter of her mind. Until he spoke, she did not acknowledge his presence.
“No one had ever managed it. This city’s gods were tied to every major civilization in the world. Nothing could touch them. Half a century later,” he mused, “they’re both dead.”
“History is full of reversals.” She rolled up one scroll, stacked it atop two others, and placed all three in her bag. “Alexander, I think you’ve met Cardinal Gustave?”
“Last time you and I were in Alt Coulumb. Forty years back, maybe?”
“Yes,” the Cardinal replied, his words heavy with rage. “I was Technician Gustave when you first came to this city. Wiser and more innocent than the years have left me.” He stood and extended his hand, rigid as a mannequin.
Alexander was much better than the old priest at faking politeness. He gave Gustave a polo player’s handshake, and when their palms touched, his smile widened. “I remember! You helped us in the Seril case. It’s been far too long. How have you been?”
A flicker of pain crossed the Cardinal’s features when Alexander mentioned Seril. His fingers tightened on his staff, as if its haft were Denovo’s throat. “I am as you see me.”
“Well.” Alexander slapped the Cardinal’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Elayne and I are the best there is at this kind of thing. We’ll have Kos up and smiting the unbelievers in a flash. Just like last time.”
“No,” the Cardinal said. “Not like last time.”
Ms. Kevarian hoisted her bag to her shoulder. “Might you excuse us, Cardinal?” The old man nodded. She shot Alexander a significant look. “Professor, accompany me to the street?”
He fell into step with her automatically. Her legs were long, but he had a broad stride. She reached the door out of the courtroom first, held it open for him, and closed it behind them. They walked alone down the long hall to the exit.
“What is it, Elayne?”
“What did you plan to accomplish back there?”
“I think the Church knowingly pledged too much to the Iskari, and as such does not deserve the first and third degrees of protection. I’m acting in my clients’ best interest.”
“I wasn’t talking about that.”
“What, then?”
“You think Gustave doesn’t see right through you? The man spends his days in a confessional. He knows you don’t want to bring back the Kos he knew. You’re rubbing salt in his wound.”
“The Kos he knew, the Kos I knew, what does it matter?” He was keeping his contempt in check at least. “We’re going to make something that works. It’ll do everything old Kos did, but better. This is an opportunity.”
&nbs
p; “Let him grieve for his god. He has little enough trust in this process without your snide comments setting him off.”
“A man can’t say what he feels anymore?”
“You never say what you feel,” she observed. “You say what you calculate will have the desired effect.”
“As if you cared about all these gods and their worshipers. Hell, I remember when we were starting out, you were more bloodthirsty than I’d ever been.”
“Forty years ago. I’ve seen a lot in that time, and become much better at serving my clients.”
“As have I,” Alexander said with a grin. “Though I always have been more certain of who my ultimate client was.”
“Yourself?”
“None other.” He bowed, sweeping one arm out behind him. “Come with me to dinner tonight.”
“So forward.”
“That’s not a no.”
“You’re here to no good purpose. You took this case because you thought you could turn it to your advantage, and if you can betray a few people at the same time, so much the better.”
“That,” he said, “is not a no either.”
She quickened her pace.
“I’ll be at the Xiltanda at seven,” he called after her. “Fifth floor, in the dark. You’ll come?”
The hallway ended in a blank wall of gray mist. She strode through it without farewell or backward glance.
“Great!” he called after her as she escaped into the day.
*
After the darkness of the Court of Craft and of astral space, Alt Coulumb’s panoply was overwhelming: towers of chrome and silver against the empty white sky, a street full of deadlocked carriages, a boy in an orange jacket singing the noon news on the corner. Tara found no joy in the light and noise. She felt Denovo’s smile like a splinter in her mind. Your family, he had said. What was the name of that little town?
Damn him.
“I don’t understand,” Abelard said. “Why did you give him the archives?”
She needed a drink and a square meal, not questions. Cat, small mercies, stood apart, scanning the street, the sky, the sidewalk for signs of danger. One conversationalist was bad enough.
She fought to produce an answer despite the throbbing pain in her skull. “I needed the archives to distract him long enough for me to win.” And soon he would use those archives against her. Tara’s victory had been well earned, even Ms. Kevarian said that, but it would not last.
“Why was he winning in the first place?”
“He’s the best Craftsman I’ve ever known. But that’s not why.” A man sold water in glass bottles from a stand near the court gates. She threw him a small coin. He tossed her back a bottle, which she caught with a tendril of Craft, opened, and drank. Cold clear water chilled her throat and calmed her heart, but the headache did not recede. “He cheats.” She took another swig. Had he done something to her, in the circle? No, not likely. The court wards would have kept her safe from his tricks.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she shot back. “Sorry. Shaken, that’s all.”
“I understand,” he said, and placed a hand on her arm. He didn’t understand. Denovo had every advantage. Tara would lose this case if she didn’t find a way to assure her victory. She would lose, and be lost to history, shut off from the world of Craft and consequence.
Breath came short to her lungs, and deep thoughts spiraled within her, but she was not afraid. When you were afraid, you ran from the object of your fear, and Tara did not intend to run.
Ms. Kevarian emerged from the court, saving Tara from further introspection. Her heels sounded staccato on the stone sidewalk. “Tara. Thank you for waiting. I needed to attend to affairs inside.”
Cat, sensing business, drew back farther to preserve their privacy.
“No problem.” Was it Tara’s imagination, or did Ms. Kevarian look flustered? “Boss, if you don’t need me for something else, I’d like to spend the rest of the day in the court library.” She pointed to the pinnacle of the black pyramid behind them. “Denovo has the Church archive data. He’ll decode it soon, and learn that Kos was low on power. I want to find out where that power went before he starts asking. Abelard and I should be able to make a good start before sundown.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You will scour the library next—that’s the correct move. However, I need Abelard for my own work.”
“I’m right here,” Abelard observed.
Ms. Kevarian turned to him. “You will accompany me this afternoon to visit the local representatives of several Deathless Kings. They have a stake in Kos’s resurrection, and we need to be on good terms with them if your Church is to survive unchanged.”
“How can I help?”
“For the most part, by standing in their offices looking like a good young cleric.”
He frowned, but did not reply.
“We need to stay ahead of Denovo,” Tara said. “Abelard knows the Church inside and out. He’s invaluable to my work.”
“Your little bodyguard,” Ms. Kevarian said, pointing at Cat, “should be able to navigate the bureaucracy at least as well. She’s an officer of Justice, after all.”
“Abelard would be better, and you know it.”
“Yesterday you chafed when I asked him to assist you, and today you don’t want to be separated from him. I need his—and your—help. Though our task may sound frivolous, trust me, it is every bit as important as your research.”
Abelard lit a fresh cigarette with the tip of the previous one. “Do I get a choice?”
“No,” Ms. Kevarian said before Tara could respond.
He gave Tara a reluctant look. She tried to return it. For a god-worshipper, he was a decent human being. More decent than most.
“Will the Deathless Kings mind if I smoke?” Abelard asked.
“Not in this instance.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
A group of suited men strode out of the court, lesser toadies and plump advisors huddled around an elder Craftsman: a robed skeleton with diamond eyes who sipped coffee from an oversized black mug. Ms. Kevarian drew close to Tara, and her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “Beware of Alexander Denovo. I’ve known the man for half a century. I haven’t trusted him so far, and I don’t know any reason to start now.”
As Tara listened, her tumbling emotions fell into place. She recognized the rapid rhythm of her heart, and the rhythm’s name was wrath: wrath at Denovo’s smile, at his bumpkin’s charade, at his cheerful threats and the lives he chose to break. Her fear of the firm, of failure, crumbled before the sweet, consuming flame of rage. “I will do more than beware him,” she said. “I’m going to beat him.”
“Good.” Ms. Kevarian’s words were sharp and quiet, like footsteps in a distant passage. “But remember, your first duty is to our client, not revenge.”
“If I have to raise a god from the dead to defeat Alexander Denovo,” she replied, “I will raise a hundred. I’ll bring Kos back ten times greater than he was.”
“Well said.” Ms. Kevarian withdrew, and raised her voice. “You can return, Catherine. We’re done talking shop.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Good luck to both of you. Be careful.”
*
“Be careful, she says.” Cat sounded as if she wanted to spit.
Tara’s legs ached. Upon re-entering the Court of Craft, they had found the hallway replaced by a long, narrow flight of stairs. Tara welcomed the first hundred steps as a meditative exercise, a chance to master her emotions and prepare for the long afternoon ahead. Anger was a useful tool, but it would not help her track down inconsistencies in cryptic scrolls. The next few hundred steps served no purpose but to embarrass her. After half an hour’s ceaseless climb, she was slick with sweat, while Cat’s breath remained even and assured. Tara’s ordeal in the circle, and the previous night’s adventure, weighed on her bones like meat on a hanger. She hadn’t expected
a career in the Craft to involve being beaten up so much.
Tara did not answer Cat, but the other woman continued regardless. “Be careful. As if something’s going to jump us in a library.”
“You might be surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how people say a book is really gripping?”
“Don’t tell me…” Cat trailed off.
“Libraries can be dangerous.” They reached one of the brief landings that interrupted the stairs every thirty steps or so, a few square feet of flat floor hosting a teak table and a fern—either a flimsy attempt to relieve their tedium or a cunning mockery of the same. Flipping over a frond, Tara found its underside purple. “You’d still probably rather be on the prowl. Hunting down miscreants.”
Cat laughed bitterly. “Not until you’re gone. I have my orders.”
“From whom?”
“Justice.”
That word, that name, made Tara shiver despite the heat of her exertion. “Directly? You don’t have a superior officer?”
“Justice is always in charge. It’s easier that way.”
“Easier how?”
“Power corrupts people. Justice isn’t people.”
Tara let that sentence pass without comment, and cataloged in her mind the retorts she wanted to give.
Of the pair of them, Cat was the least comfortable with silence, and soon she spoke again: “I want to be where the action is, but I’m more likely to run into Stone Men with you than on the street. They came hunting for you last night, and you survived. Stands to reason they’ll try again. Maybe they’ll send the one that killed Cabot next time.”
“You still think a gargoyle was responsible for that?” Tara asked, feeling as though she were carrying an entire gargoyle in her handbag, rather than only his face.
“Justice does.”
“And you don’t ask questions once Justice has done the thinking?”
“Questions are way above my pay grade.”
“What if I asked for your personal opinion?”
“When Cabot died, his security wards took an engram of the scene.” She saw Tara’s confusion, and made a vague gesture in the air. “Mental picture thing. Like a painting in your head. If you need to know something, Justice flashes an engram into your mind when you put on the Blacksuit. Better than getting news from a Crier. The engram’s never off pitch.”
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