“Tara!” Denovo’s voice was no longer smooth or collected. She heard fear at its edges. “We can throw him back if we work together.” His mind skittered against the doors of her perception, cool, a refuge from the heat—an invitation to rejoin the link he shared with his lab, to give herself once more to him. “Please. Let me in.”
Without his help, she was going to die. With his help, she would probably die anyway.
But why did Denovo need her? He fought in the God Wars. He knew better than to match deities stroke for stroke. You dodged their power, twisted it against itself, stretched your divine Opponents thin. Cardinal Gustave should have been vulnerable to such tactics, but Denovo seemed desperate for her help, and her surrender.
Was that truly fear she heard in his voice, or the excitement of a con man who feels he has caught his mark?
Tara stood firm against the Cardinal’s assault. As dead Kos’s power pressed against her, she shifted.
Mind, soul, spirit, twisted out of reach. The fire sought her, found her not, and thrashed about, desperate for something to destroy.
As if releasing a bird from her hand, she offered it the seductive tendrils of Denovo’s mind.
Blind, hungry, and mad, the fire accepted.
*
Elayne Kevarian followed the beacon of Alexander Denovo’s pain through thick fog back into her body. Opening her eyes, she found herself prone on the unfinished marble floor of the Great Hall of Justice, beneath the gaze of a blind statue and surrounded by a thousand Blacksuits. She was wounded—deep gashes from fallen glass, myriad scrapes and bruises. And she was on fire.
Perfect.
She breathed in, and became cold. The flames caught on her suit flickered, flared, died. Ms. Kevarian felt their death, and their power flowed into her skin like warm sunlight on a summer morning.
A sword-slash smile played on her lips.
*
The Cardinal’s features twisted in confusion as the fire he threw against Tara struck Denovo instead. The Craftsman’s defenses did not break under this doubled assault. If anything, Denovo seemed less pressed than before. His shoulders squared, his arms steadied, and the stress cracks in his shield disappeared. Though Gustave was nearly blinded by God’s brilliant flame, he saw Denovo shake his head.
“Tara,” Denovo said, “you should have joined with me. It would have been more pleasant for us both.”
Denovo shifted his defenses to his left arm, and reached out with his right, fingers clawed as if to grasp Gustave’s throat. The claw tightened, and though Gustave was ignorant of all but the most fundamental tricks of Denovo’s heathen Craft, he recognized breaking power in that gesture. He twitched in an involuntary spasm of fear.
But he felt nothing.
*
Tara saw victory on Denovo’s face as he closed his hand. That gesture was a trigger, invoking a contract with a shred of nightmare, a rat in the walls of reality—the shadow creature in Gustave’s Craft circle. Denovo must have planted the shadow when he made the circle, as insurance against the Cardinal’s betrayal. He commanded it now to destroy the dagger through which Gustave drew his power. But Abelard had released the shadow creature hours ago, and Cat held the dagger.
When Denovo closed his hand, he expected the flame to die, and the old man to fall. Instead, Gustave redoubled his assault, and Denovo fell to his knees, betrayed by his own frustrated anticipation of success. Veins in his forehead bulged as he fought to regain control. Tara would have crowed in triumph, but a dozen new lances of flame descended on her from all directions as the Cardinal screamed, “Heretics! Blasphemers!”
*
“Help us.”
It was the plea of a drowning man.
Cat knew what those sounded like. She had spent her entire life drowning.
Abelard needed her.
The world was a weight on her shoulders, so she let it bow her to the ground. Kneeling, she turned her wrist, as if it were the wrist of a marionette. Her arm was heavy. She aimed the point of the crystal dagger at the stone floor.
Her arm fell, and she leaned into it, exercising every scrap of her control over the Blacksuit. The dagger’s point struck stone.
The crystal blade held. She sagged in despair.
It snapped.
*
There are as many different kinds of silence as of darkness. Some are so fragile a single breath will shatter them, but others are not so weak. The strongest silences deafen.
The flames of Kos died, and Cardinal Gustave fell screaming. He landed with a sound like a bundle of snapped twigs and lay gasping on the floor, red robes billowed out around him.
A small noise escaped Abelard, as though a mouse was being strangled in his throat. It was not a lament or a protest. It was too confused to be any of these things.
The nerves of limbs and stomach and heart moved him forward, though his brain remained transfixed by the sight of the Cardinal’s twisted body. The ground shook as he approached the pool of red cloth and blood in which the old man lay.
Behind him, the world moved on. He heard raised voices—Tara’s, the Professor’s, sounds with no more meaning than the glass that broke like new spring ice beneath his boots. Even the heavy acid taste of smoke in his mouth felt distant. The gold-thread hem of the Cardinal’s robe surrounded him like a mystic circle. Abelard crossed it, and fell to his knees.
The Cardinal still breathed. It was worse, almost, this way. Thin parched lips peeled back to reveal rows of bright teeth set in gums more scarlet than his robe. Air rattled in the cave of the old man’s mouth, fast and shallow. His eyes were open. They sought Abelard’s automatically, and the mouse in Abelard’s throat cried out again.
Fifteen years ago, Abelard arrived at the Temple of Kos, eager to learn. Of all the priests and priestesses who taught him to glorify the Lord, this man had been, not the kindest, but the most worthy of admiration.
Fire, the Church taught, was life, energy’s ever-changing dance upon a stage of decaying matter. Every priest and priestess, every citizen, had one duty before all else to their Lord: to recognize the glory of that transformation.
Abelard looked into the Cardinal’s dying eyes, and saw within them no fire but that which consumes.
He inhaled. The tip of his cigarette flared orange.
Dying, Cardinal Gustave smiled.
*
Tara’s senses were numb with exaltation at her survival, but there was no time to rejoice. Alexander Denovo staggered toward her, toward the bound gargoyles, toward the orange sphere that hovered above Shale’s slumped form.
“I know what you’re doing,” she said, and blocked his path. Her legs threatened to collapse beneath her, but she steadied herself by main force of will.
“Do you indeed.” Wisps of smoke rose from the brown curls of his hair, and scorch marks covered his clothes.
“You made that Craft circle. You gave Gustave power.”
“He asked me for a weapon against heretics.”
“And you gave him one.”
“I sold him one, at a hefty price.” Denovo shrugged. “You would have done the same. If you wouldn’t, perhaps you should re-evaluate your line of work. The Craft isn’t a charitable pursuit.”
“If all you did was give him a weapon, then why did he try to kill you?”
“Because I was about to expose him. Honestly, Tara, what is the point of this?”
“Cardinal Gustave didn’t attack because he was afraid for himself. He attacked because you were about to acquire something you should not have.”
Denovo chuckled. “Gustave was mad. A murderer. He confessed as much.”
“He confessed to killing Judge Cabot. He thought you were guilty of a greater crime.”
He tried to skirt around her, but she stepped in front of him again.
“Four months ago, Gustave asked you to help him learn why Justice was losing power. You traced the dreams Kos sent into the forest, to Seril’s children. You discovered that Kos was working wit
h Cabot, and to what end.”
Denovo shrugged, every bit the tired scholar.
“Was it you or the Cardinal, I wonder, who proposed killing the Judge?”
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“For someone with your skills, persuading the Cardinal was easy. Cabot was a heretic, consorting with rebels and traitors. He deserved to die. You gave Gustave the means. You taught him how to bind Cabot’s soul. You even told him which contracts to deface in the Third Court of Craft, and how to do it without being detected.”
“Conjecture and foolishness.”
“Cabot suspected you were onto him. That’s why he installed security wards that could detect Craft. This isn’t the West. The community of Craftsmen here is small and insular. The Judge had no enemies there. Hell, the locks on his apartment building wouldn’t keep out a novice.”
Denovo drew a step closer. Tara took a step back.
“You left Alt Coulumb several months ago, secretly as you had come, but you intended to return. You knew from court records when Cabot would pass the Concern to Seril. You had months to plan your attack.”
“Here we go,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “Accuse me.”
“You organized the assault on the Iskari treasure fleet. You were the Craftsman who negotiated the Iskari defense contract, and you knew that it was the best weapon for your purposes. Your mercenaries attacked, and the Iskari drew on Kos’s power to defend themselves, not knowing that Kos was already drained by his secret dealings. Kos couldn’t stand the strain, and died. At your hand.”
No flush of outrage came to Alexander Denovo’s face. “Why, in this fantasy of yours, did I need Gustave to kill Cabot?”
“You wanted that Concern,” she replied, cocking her head back in the direction of the rotating sphere. “Kos had more power than all your minions put together. You could feast for years on his corpse. But you couldn’t get the Concern from Cabot by force, and if he died without passing it on, it would dissipate, no use to you or anyone.
“You could, however, force Cabot to give the Concern to someone weaker. You taught Gustave a way to kill the Judge without being detected, which also left his victim alive long enough to pass the Concern to someone else. You expected Cabot would give it to his butler, but the butler didn’t find him first. Shale did, and he escaped. You must have been furious when you learned that bad timing had wrecked your plan. But the situation could still be salvaged. Shale, you reasoned, did not know what he carried. Cabot, by the time Shale found him, had no tongue, no throat, and was barely sane; he could not have explained the situation to a Guardian ignorant of Craft. Nor would Shale’s people flee Alt Coulumb after Cabot’s murder: they had staked too much on their deal with Kos to be so easily stymied. The Blacksuits would find Shale and his Flight eventually, and you would trick Justice into letting you claim the Concern, as you almost did a few minutes ago.”
“What proof do you have?” Denovo said archly. “If you lack documentary evidence, at least call witnesses like a civilized person. Say, those mercenaries you claim I hired.”
“You took their memories after the job was complete.”
“Impossible.”
“Not for the greatest Craftsman mentalist in the history of the Hidden Schools. You tried to wipe Captain Pelham’s mind last night. You were hasty, obvious; you must have been terrified when you realized Ms. Kevarian had hired him to escort us to Alt Coulumb. You had to destroy him before he let something slip that would implicate you.”
“I’ve been in the Skeld Archipelago all week. I only arrived this morning, on the ferry. Unless you think I could accomplish such delicate work from halfway around the world.”
“You were in Alt Coulumb last night, not Skeld.”
“A ferrymaster, and a hundred twenty passengers, will corroborate my story. Every one saw me arrive this morning.”
“Where were you before the ferry?”
“My hotel in Skeld. Really, Tara, I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make.”
“You weren’t in Skeld yesterday evening. You were in Alt Coulumb. This morning you flew out and circled back around.”
“The city is a no-fly zone.”
“You could get around that.”
“Circumvent a divine interdict? Perhaps you can tell me how to manage such a miracle.”
“Simple. All you need is something built to be stronger than gods.” Tara took another step back. She was not afraid, but if she was right—and she was right—she wanted space between herself and the Professor.
She was new to Alt Coulumb, but in the last two days she had stood upon its rooftops and crouched in its basements, visited its sick and swam in its oceans. She had walked the mind of its god and traced the paths of his wounds. In two days, she had not once seen the city’s sky bare of clouds, yet never had its air seemed humid, nor had the clouds threatened to break into storm. Alt Coulumb was usually clear in the autumn, Cat had said, because of the trade winds.
Weather was difficult to control, subject to the earth’s shifting in its orbit and to the whims of the moon. Craftsmen and Craftswomen tampered with rain and cloud only in extremity. But more than a hundred years ago, the builders of the first sky-cities had learned that floating buildings were difficult to defend, and easy to conceal.
The skin beneath the cleft of Tara’s collarbone bore a tiny blue circle, the first glyph she had ever received: the Glyph of Acceptance that marked her as a student of the Hidden Schools, entitled to take refuge there in times of need. That privilege had not been revoked at her graduation. Even a prodigal daughter might one day return home.
Tara pressed the tattoo, and it glowed. A tiny gap appeared in the cloud cover beyond the broken skylight, dilating rapidly as a cat’s pupil in darkness. An electric chill passed through her.
Starlight shone through the gap in the clouds. Far above, trapped between earth and heaven, hung the crystal towers and gothic arches and double-helix staircases of the Hidden Schools. Walkways of silver ribbon stretched from building to building, and scholars paced on the balconies. Atop one crenellated dormitory, a corpse-fire glowed, students no doubt clustered about it, drinking and telling stories and maybe making love.
No shimmering staircase of starlight descended from Elder Hall, no rainbow bridge to bear her home. The schools’ Craft of Ingress fought Kos’s interdict as machines fight, deadlocked in absolute certainty. The schools themselves were mightier than the interdict, but the Craft of Ingress had been designed to admit eager young scholars, not extract Craftswomen from the heart of a god’s own territory.
Fortunately, Tara did not want to leave Alt Coulumb. The parting of the clouds was enough for her purposes. She inhaled shadow and starfire. Night adhered to her skin and flowed into her mind.
“You brought the schools here,” she said, “and used their camouflage to obscure the stars and moon, weakening the Guardians and Craftswomen set against you. It was the schools’ broader no-fly zone, not Alt Coulumb’s, which interrupted Ms. Kevarian’s flight yesterday and almost killed us both.
“The schools gave you an excellent alibi. It may be impossible to wipe a man’s mind from a hundred miles away, but a thousand feet of altitude is no obstacle for a master like you. The Hidden Schools are broader than that from end to end, and you wove your commands through my classmates’ minds and mine with no trouble.”
Denovo’s stern expression yielded to a childlike smile. “Tara.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “You amaze me.”
“You killed Kos Everburning, Professor.”
“What do you expect to accomplish with this posturing? If you want a fight, strike me and get it over with.”
“Justice is watching,” she said.
“Justice is blind. I blinded her myself, twenty years before you were born.” He removed one hand from his pocket and examined the blunt tips of his fingers. “If you hope these automata will descend on me like a parliament of rooks on a bad storyteller”—he gestured to th
e motionless Blacksuits—“you’ve forgotten the first law of design. Never make anything that can be used to hurt you. They’ll remain where they stand until I finish my business.”
For the first time since Cardinal Gustave burst in the skylight, Tara truly looked at the Blacksuits. They did not twitch from their immobile rows. “You’ve done horrible things.”
“Not as horrible as you, or your boss.” He shook his head, tone still conversational. “You deserted our side long ago, as did a great many Craftsmen. You settled for a pleasant illusion, the facile lie that we could have peace with gods. You gave up on the dream.”
“You’re one of the most powerful Craftsmen in the world. What more do you want?”
“Well, for starters, I’m not a god yet.”
Tara blinked. “What?”
“You said I wanted Kos’s power. Clever but wrong. Power I have. It’s godhood I want. Immortality and might, free of sickness and decay.”
“Impossible.”
“Hardly. It’s a logical extension of the first principles of Craft. I struck on the idea while at school. Gods draw strength from faithful masses. Couldn’t a Craftsman do the same? It took years to work out the ramifications of that insight. I took my first tender steps with Elayne four decades ago, winning her trust to tap her power for myself. She noticed, and defeated me, but I elaborated on my theory by creating the Blacksuits, believers tied to their god by sick need rather than mutual love.”
He smiled nostalgically. “I built my lab and consumed the strength of my dear students and colleagues. I became the most powerful Craftsman on this continent. What then? Rot into a skeleton? Flee death from one decaying body to the next? Or take arms against a god, slay him, and become him? I can climb through that Concern into Kos’s body and take his place at the center of Alt Coulumb’s unassailable faith. I will make this such a city as has never been seen, a fiery flood sweeping across the globe. I could hardly believe when the opportunity fell within my grasp.”
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