Three Parts Dead

by Max Gladstone

  “They’re innocent!” She pulled ineffectually against Cat’s grip. “They haven’t committed any crime but hiding from you.”

  The Stone Men are accused of conspiracy to commit murder. They will be tried. Cat leaned close to Tara’s face. As will you.

  Tara called upon the Craft and prepared to fight, to free herself whatever the consequences, but the opportunity never came.

  Abelard crashed into Cat from behind in a flare of orange and brown robes, ripping her hand from Tara’s arm. Tara saw him frozen in time, eyes wide, cigarette clenched between his bared teeth. A tracking rosary dangled from his fist.

  A Blacksuit tackled him. Tara leapt to his defense, blind with fury and adrenaline, her knife out and her power drawn about her.

  Cat’s fist struck her in the cheek.

  The force of impact lifted Tara off the floor. A host of fireflies obscured her vision, and scattered when she hit the ground shoulders first.

  Breath left her in a rush. Cat settled like a sack of wet sand on her chest, threading an iron band around Tara’s arms and beneath her back as she thrashed, a netted wild thing. She heard a click and the metal tightened, pressing against her skin until her bones creaked.

  Tara saw the last of the gargoyles fall. Blacksuits wrestled Aev and David to the floor bare feet from one another, and bound them. Groans of pain and the muffled expletive aftermath of combat mingled with the Blacksuits’ calm, scraping voices as they recounted to each captive the crimes of which they were accused.

  Cat gathered Tara in her arms and stood. Other Blacksuits lifted Abelard, squirming and likewise restrained, and Captain Pelham, who hung limp though his neck was mostly healed.

  “Where are you taking us?” Tara asked.

  To judgment.

  *

  “My Lord.” Cardinal Gustave’s assistant hesitated, uncertain whether to continue. “We have news from Justice.”

  The Cardinal sat regarding a page of scripture, his flame-red hood drawn back. “Indeed.”

  “The Blacksuits have apprehended a small coven of Stone Men within the city, and believe them guilty of Alphonse Cabot’s murder. You asked to be informed if progress was made on the case.”

  “Yes.” Cardinal Gustave closed his book. “Thank you, Theofric.”

  “Sir.”

  The Cardinal raised one eyebrow at his assistant’s hesitation. “There’s more?”

  “Sir, Justice has also arrested Novice Technician Abelard, and Ms. Abernathy, Lady Kevarian’s assistant. I understand Lady Kevarian and her opposing counsel, Professor Denovo, are aware of this development, and are on their way to Justice’s Temple. Justice believes they will object to the arrest.” Theofric waited for a reaction, but saw none. The Cardinal hefted the scripture, weighing the prayers and admonitions within. At last he set the book atop a short stack of papers.

  “My Lord?”

  Gustave stood, leaning too much on his desk. Moving with heavy steps, he retrieved his staff of office from where it rested against the wall. “Inform Justice that I may attend the hearing, though I am feeling unwell.”

  “The faithful are still outside our front door, sir. They are no longer chanting, but their numbers have grown, and they could become dangerous. Should I summon an escort for your carriage?”

  “No, Theofric.” He strode to the door. “I must contemplate the throne of our Lord. Find me there if you have need.”

  *

  Alexander Denovo led Ms. Kevarian through the dancing mass; she followed as if through a fog. It was hard to concentrate. Tara had found the gargoyles. Good. But Justice had found Tara, too. Less good.

  They reached the street and raised their arms to call for a cab at the same time. He opened the door, and she stepped in. The carriage shuddered them on their way, the clatter of wheels and hooves over cobblestones rhythmic, hypnotizing.

  She folded her hands on the lap of her skirt.

  “This is fun, isn’t it,” Alexander said with a manic grin. “You and me? Off once more, on a mad mission to save everything we hold dear? We make a good team, don’t we?”

  “We’re not teammates. I told you forty years ago.” She wanted to put more rancor into her words, but she felt so tired. “I want nothing more to do with you. You manipulate. You abuse. You’re not trustworthy.”

  There should have been more punch in that last sentence. Instead, it hung lame on the air between them, too insubstantial to resist when Alexander leaned forward and kissed her.

  At first, she thought she pulled away, slapped him, called upon her Craft and burned him to ash. Then she realized she had done none of these things.

  Her stomach turned. His beard prickled and scratched at the flesh of her cheeks and chin. His lips were cold, passionless. Mocking.

  She could not bite him, could not strike him, could not stab him or burn him or crucify him with lightning. Only one option was left: she exhaled Craft and shadow into his open mouth along with air. He fell back, stunned, wearing an impish smile.

  “What was that?” he said, rubbing his lips. “You shouldn’t be able to do anything at all. You’re incredibly resourceful.”

  “What have you done to me?” She tried to scream but it came out as a dull question.

  “Elayne,” he said with gentle reproof, “if you know you’re dealing with a man who can twist your own will against you, perhaps you should be careful how much you let him talk?”

  *

  The Blacksuits carried Tara, Abelard, and the other captives to black wagons waiting on the street outside. Tara and Abelard were only bound about their arms, while the gargoyles were swaddled in iron. Some tried to shift into human form and escape, but the bonds adjusted to fit the prisoner, immobilizing no matter what perversion of human or animal shape Seril’s children assumed.

  Tara and Abelard were placed alone in the second wagon with David, who had been knocked unconscious during the fight. Blacksuits latched the three captives’ bonds into bolts in the wagon walls. Cat frisked them herself. She left Abelard’s priestly work belt untouched, but she wrested a crystal dagger from his pocket despite his protests.

  After the wagon doors were closed, Abelard examined their restraints, but had no leverage to free himself or the others.

  “Abelard,” Tara said. She still couldn’t believe his presence here, much less his attack on Cat. Was he some kind of hallucination?

  “Hi.” His sheepish smile dispelled her doubts. No figment of her imagination could have seemed so earnest. “How have you been keeping yourself?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw Cat kill Captain Pelham,” he said. “She’d never do something like that. Nor would Justice. There has to be something wrong with them.”

  “I don’t mean why did you try to save me. Why were you at the warehouse at all? Aren’t you supposed to be with Ms. Kevarian?”

  “Ms. Kevarian went to dinner with Professor Denovo. She sent me to find you. She wants you to know what we’ve learned.”

  A chill ran up Tara’s arms and the backs of her legs. “Tell me everything.”

  David groaned, head lolling from side to side as the wagon jerked along. A purpling bruise discolored his mouth and jaw, and a strand of blood stained his pale cheek beneath the new-growth forest of stubble.

  Abelard started to talk.

  *

  Cardinal Gustave stood before the pale metal Altar of the Defiant, upon which bloomed the gold wire cage where his God once sat, judge and friend to the people of Alt Coulumb. Wooden bas relief carvings lined the Sanctum walls around him, readouts disguised as decorations. The position of the sun over that ancient battlefield indicated steam pressure levels in the primary valves, while the racing elephants on the opposite wall displayed the power output of various turbines. Though Kos was gone, all readouts remained nominal. God’s covenant with his people would last until the death of the moon.

  Provided nothing untoward happened.

  Provided.

  “I won’
t let what happened to Seril happen to Kos,” Elayne Kevarian had said. Cardinal Gustave would not let such a disaster come to pass either.

  “Lord,” he said, praying to a God no longer there to hear, “my life’s work has been to glorify You.” Lantern light cast his face in shadow and flickering flame. “I will set matters right.”

  He walked from the altar to the floor-to-ceiling window. As he passed the bas-relief carvings, he tapped a carved monkey’s head on the ear, twisted a soaring falcon twenty degrees counterclockwise, raised a trio of frolicking fish a few inches within their wooden pond, and pulled a lever disguised as a lamp stand. Gears clanked behind metal walls and the window rose, jerkily at first, from its moorings. A rush of wind caught the Cardinal’s thin hair in a silver tangle.

  The air rising off the Holy Precinct smelled of fresh-cut grass and urban excess. Far below, the gathered crowd with their lit candles watched the Sanctum and waited for their God to present Himself. They sang old hymns half-remembered from childhood, but even in youth their faith had been weak, and they only remembered traces of the holy words. When the songs could not sustain them they turned to chanting, and occasionally to curses shouted at the black tower. They wanted guidance, and He would guide them, later. At the moment, more important matters commanded His attention.

  Northward, an elevated train wound serpentine through the crystal towers of the Deathless Kings. Amid those pinnacles, the Cardinal saw the black pyramid of the Third Court of Craft, and beside it, an edifice of white marble. The Temple of Justice.

  Kos might be dead, but His power lived on.

  Cardinal Gustave breathed in deep and stepped out of the open window.

  Wind buoyed him up, whipping the red robes of his office about his frail form. Divine power sang in his aged veins. A wish could whirl him to far continents, a whim could raise him to the stars and a fancy sink him to the depths of the earth. He laughed, and Kos’s majesty bore him north, away from the Holy Precinct and the desperate crowd.

  The window closed behind him. A half hour later, when Theofric sought his Cardinal in the Sanctum Sanctorum, he found only an empty room.

  18

  As night deepened, the Business District died. Its workers bled out in a dual current, west to the residential neighborhoods and east to the Pleasure Quarters. Their beds received them, or else the welcoming embrace of pub doors and back-alley dancers; they rested their heads on pillows or the flesh of lovers or the slick countertops of mostly clean, almost well-lighted diners that never closed, even when the night-shift waitress drowsed off at two in the morning and left the patrons to serve themselves from the pot of bitter, bad coffee warming on the slow burner.

  Those who sought solace in the city that night found it wanting. Uncertainty took root and flourished even in minds and hearts ignorant of Kos’s death. When tired people sought their lovers or clients, their usual hungry and desperate companions, they found them unable to reassure, cherish, or comfort. They whispered broken sentences to one another, or fought and slept angrily apart, or drank and laughed in the dark, or wandered to the Holy Precinct and joined the candlelit crowd.

  A few stragglers remained in their skyscraper offices near the Temple of Justice, sludging toward an illusory finish line. Work weighed them down and tied them to their desks. None rose to look out their windows, so none saw the line of black wagons pull up to the curb beneath the blind, accusatory gaze of the statue of Justice with her sword and scales.

  They labored on in ignorance, while around them the world began to change.

  Some Blacksuits jogged beside the wagons as they rolled through the vacant streets, while others rode atop them, guarding against escape or rescue. Arriving at their destination, Justice’s servants cordoned off the street, creating a gauntlet that led up the broad white steps and into the Temple’s inner chambers.

  A Blacksuit detachment escorted the prisoners from the wagons. Most of the gargoyles went limp from protest, forcing Justice’s servants to carry their thousand pounds of weight. Tara and Abelard gave their captors no trouble, and were allowed to walk under their own power.

  Tara looked at the imposing white marble Temple, fronted with columns and statuary, but did not see it. Her mind raced, reviewing all Abelard had told her on the ride over, about Denovo’s desire to work on this case and his consultation with Cardinal Gustave; about the shadow creature, about the circle of Craft inside the Sanctum, about a crystal dagger with a drop of blood at its heart—the same dagger Cat had taken from him. As Tara weighed these facts against the gargoyles’ story, she felt like a mosaic artist with a box of colored tiles and no plan.

  “You can get us out of this, right?” Abelard said around his cigarette.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  She shook her head. “I can show the gargoyles are innocent, but that tips my hand to Professor Denovo. He’ll have time to prepare a response, and that will hurt the Church’s case.”

  “Will a strong case do us any good if we’re in prison?”

  “Ms. Kevarian can bail us out.”

  “If Justice lets her.”

  “I know.” She forced the words out through her clenched teeth. “I’m trying to think.”

  They crested the stairs and passed around Justice’s statue, Abelard to the right and Tara to the left. Together, they continued down the gauntlet of Blacksuits through the open Temple doors into shadow.

  The main corridor was long and straight. Lanterns hung unlit from iron mounts on polished marble walls. Every few feet stood iron tripods upon which iron braziers rested, their incense fires ebbed to embers. Thin strings of fragrant smoke rose from the piles of ash. The hall ended in a large wooden door, open to reveal a broad chamber and a gigantic statue within. Tara did not deviate from her path or slow, and soon she and Abelard entered the Inner Sanctum of Justice.

  She closed her eyes and saw.

  Justice was a goddess remade in the image of man. Craft wound through her Sanctum, a great silver web of mind connecting thousands of Blacksuits across Alt Coulumb, but the web was not Justice. She swelled within it unseen, a colossal distortion at the heart of coarse human Craft. Tara saw her in outline, a face pressed against, or trapped beneath, a shroud of silk. She was immense, she was beautiful, and she had no eyes.

  Tara opened her own eyes and looked upon the chamber as Abelard did. A glass dome arched forty feet above the unfinished marble floor. At the hall’s far end stood a polished obsidian statue whose head nearly touched that glass; Justice, robed as outside the Temple gates, with her blindfold removed. Her empty eye sockets were pits of broken, glittering stone.

  Tiered steps were carved into the chamber’s sloping walls, and on each tier a row of Blacksuits stood single file, heads thrown back to contemplate the statue of their maimed Lady. The enormity of the scene pressed against Tara’s skin, against her soul. Great and terrible work had been accomplished here. She imagined Professor Denovo climbing that statue, chisel in hand, to pry the goddess’s eyes from her face. Her stomach turned, and she tried not to vomit.

  When the Guardians saw the statue, they surged against their bonds, raging. Blacksuits struck them and forced them to their knees. Aev fell last.

  The doors swung shut behind Tara.

  The statue spoke.

  *

  “I will destroy you,” Elayne Kevarian said.

  “Not in the near future, obviously,” Alexander replied, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “You know they don’t let you smoke indoors at the schools these days? I had to quit. Wish I had a cigarette now.”

  “You’ve been trying to kill us all along.”

  “Have not.”

  “Liar.” His grip on her mind blocked the course of her fiercest emotions, and denied her the mental clarity required to work Craft, but she could speak, if she remained civil. He had not made a move against her body after that first kiss, intended as a mere demonstration of his control. This did not make her comfortable
with the situation. “You wanted me out of the way.”

  “Hardly.”

  He peeked out of the coach’s curtains, and Elayne seized on his momentary distraction to test the limits of his control. What she found did not please her. Denovo’s technique had grown subtle down the decades. She could adjust her posture, even gesture in conversation, but dramatic movements were denied her. Standing up, striking him, throwing herself from the carriage, all felt pointless, tiring. Why fight? Her heartbeat quickened.

  “Elayne, if I wanted to kill you, you would be dead already.”

  She inclined her head, neither agreeing with nor denying his assertion.

  “I have not moved against you or your assistant. You simply had the misfortune to wander into my experiment.”

  “Your experiment.” She found she could still express scorn. “What is its object, pray tell?”

  “What else?” Denovo asked rhetorically. “Immortality, and the benefits customarily thought to accrue to it. Feel this.” Leaning forward, he cupped her cheek in his hand. His fingers were deathly cold, as was proper for a Craftsman of his age. She knew her face felt the same, two statues of ice touching. With a shake of his head he released her and drew back. “Was this what Gerhardt wanted, do you think, when he published Das Thaumas? To stretch into eternity, until life becomes nothing but the search for more life? Or did he dream of something greater?”

  Elayne, who had never found such questions worthy of meditation, did not reply.

  Their carriage drew to a halt amid a jangle of tack and bit and a creaking of wheels. Denovo opened the carriage door, and Elayne saw the marble columns and blind statuary of the Temple of Justice. Leaping to the pavement, he offered her a hand, which she accepted.

  “Shall we?”

  *

  The accused stand before us, said a voice several octaves too deep and too high at once to be human. Reverberating from the skin of the eyeless statue and the flesh of the rapt Blacksuits alike, it nearly bore Tara to the ground. The gargoyles, whose hearing was more acute than her own, quaked where they knelt.