Full Fathom Five

by Max Gladstone

  “Let me see your evidence.”

  “I can’t. My having these papers is a breach of about five ethical guidelines.”

  “As bad as letting this guy get killed? Or his theft going public?”

  “A second mistake won’t fix the first.”

  “Kai,” he said, and repeated, “Kai,” as if saying her name twice might make her bend. “You understand, you’re asking me to grab someone off the street—”

  “Out of his home, probably. He doesn’t leave much.”

  “You want me to invade someone’s home, lock him up, for the good of an Order that wants nothing to do with you. All because of evidence you can’t show me, which you’re not even supposed to have.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said, and thought, Technically.

  “I can’t hold people for no reason. If my superiors asked why is this man in jail, and I said theft, and they said what of, and I said soulstuff from the priests, and they asked your bosses about it and they deny anything is missing, and then they ask who gave you this information, and I say that I promised my source anonymity, what do you think would happen?”

  “Nothing good,” she said.

  “Nothing good. They’d let him go, and it might be my head that I grabbed him. Or another few months in a Penitent, and”—he laughed, bitterly—“I can’t really afford to clear my schedule at this point. Aside from the excruciating pain, which is also a factor.”

  She sat watching him, watching her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a while.

  She opened her purse, and opened the red book, and passed the vellum sheets to him. “Read these. I’ll wait.”

  He accepted them, scanned. “Who are these other names? Some of them show up as much as your guy: Arthur Nicodemo Cuthbert. Jalai’iz. Whatever kind of name that is.”

  “It’s Talberg. And Margot’s the only one I recognize. The others probably work for the pilgrims.”

  “That’s a weak argument, Kai. They all could be in danger.”

  “Maybe. But I know Margot is. And his theft was a miracle; there can’t be others like him out there. If it was that easy to break into the pool we’d know by now.”

  “You won’t let me keep the list? Or copy it?”

  “The more you know, the more screwed we are if word gets out. A Craftswoman can flense the truth from your mind.”

  Claude folded the parchment again, and passed it back to her. He was not smiling now. She wanted to squirm, wanted to stand, and knew Penitent-trained officers, and Claude, well enough to stay still. Movement made you look weak, to them.

  “This is important,” she said. “Margot is a danger to the Order. Without the Order, the island folds. We’ll be one more tourist destination. And once that happens, wouldn’t Iskar love to snap us up? Nice excuse to expand their Archipelagic presence.” Unfair, she knew. The Penitents’ first rule: defend Kavekana. They broke that into their prisoners. But she needed Claude’s help, even if she had to call on his training to convince him. “Will you help us?”

  “I will,” he said at last.

  She didn’t let her expression change. “Good.”

  “I’ll arrest this man. No idea how long I can hold him once he calls for a Craftsman, or his embassy. But it’s a start.”

  “A start is all I need. Keep him safe while I go to Jace.”

  The desk separated them, and space, and time. They lay between themselves, turning on a sodden bed.

  “I need to finish my lunch,” he said.

  She stood. “You’ll take care of this today?”

  “As soon as I can. Whatever gods are watching, I hope they help us both.”

  “Let’s keep gods out of it.”

  She closed the door behind her, and retraced her steps through the silent halls. At the front desk she signed the logbook and left, out into the green and the sun and the screams.

  33

  Izza followed the priest to an office building by the bay. The woman didn’t notice. People who wore suits didn’t tend to notice Izza. To them, all street kids looked more or less alike.

  So she paced the woman down alleys, across rooftops, over fire escapes, and along the sidewalk, then waited outside her office, singing snatches of opera for passersby. Busking attracted attention, but this was a posh area, buildings all metal and glass, full of merchants and Craftsmen and clients of the Order, and she’d be hustled along in a hurry for loitering. After two hours her voice tired, her stomach growled, and she stole an orange from a fruit stand across the street.

  She was hiding behind a trash bin eating when the priest walked past the alley mouth. Izza abandoned the orange rind and trailed her through the drifting noonday crowd, under striped awnings, down into West Claw—familiar territory. Kavekana’s richer immigrants were generous if you caught them in the right mood. Hard to stay for long, though. Shopkeeps watched their storefronts here, and chased even buskers off. No singers on these streets, and their parks never heard a lick of opera.

  When the priest turned onto Stockton, Izza followed, grim, up Penitent Ridge. She climbed a decaying, abandoned house and lay on the broken tile roof, sun warmed as a lizard, while her quarry entered the watch station. Time passed. The sun peaked, descended.

  Perhaps the Watch had taken the woman prisoner. Stuck her in a Penitent.

  No such luck. The priest emerged after the better part of an hour, limping and leaning on her cane, and descended the ridge without a backward glance. Izza saw her face, briefly, when she passed below. Tired, drained, determined. She’d done what she came to do.

  The priest returned to her office, and Izza stopped in the alley opposite to think. This was bad. If the Watch came for Margot, it would hunt her next.

  She might be too late already. Watchmen moved fast. But she didn’t want to lose track of her quarry. If the priest hurt Margot, Izza would have to find her, and stop her.

  She needed help.

  34

  Kai returned a half hour late from her lunch break, and smiling. Officemates noticed the change, and smiled back; she stopped for the first time in weeks to chat about the weather, about Sherry’s granddaughters and the outcome of the ullamal championships in Dresediel Lex now that Zolin was benched. Whatever that meant.

  Claude would have Margot in custody by nightfall. Now, she had to figure out how to loop the Order in. How to approach Jace. Which meant deciding what to do about Mara.

  After she ran out of small talk, Kai poured herself a cup of rancid coffee from the office kitchen, and retreated to her cubicle. The coffee tasted about as good as the harbor smelled on a hot still day. She’d have stood at the window to watch the ocean while she thought, but some infuriatingly personable officemate might have tried to trap her in conversation. Kai’s burst of post-lunch cheer (not that she’d actually eaten lunch, her stomach growled to remind her) had used up her patience and charity. She needed to think.

  Kai walked to one of the cupboard-sized shared offices reserved for the writing of reports and the working of complex math. She closed the door, removed her shoes, sat cross-legged on the desk, shut her eyes, and descended into memory.

  Seven Alpha took form around her: lightning skeleton, suggestion of volume in nothingness. Her mind retained Mara’s archives as a waking dream. Easy. Memory was important in the Order’s business of secrets and sacrifices. As an apprentice she’d memorized lists of random numbers, built palaces and cities in her mind, invented whole pantheons, and subjected them to private ragnaroks. Her recollection of Seven Alpha was not perfect, but close enough to serve.

  Sliding through time, she searched her dream for the transfers to Margot. One should have been dispensed from the throat chakra, and another here, from the third eye, at six o’clock on a Thirdday morning. Nothing.

  This much she expected. Someone, probably Mara, had wiped away all trace of Margot’s theft. The papers Kai had found were the last remaining evidence. She would have called them forgeries but for the perfect watermark,
the glyphs, the texture of the ink, the slick fused sheen of records often read by Craft. And, of course, for Margot.

  Assume Mara cut the evidence from the original files, leaving a few slips of vellum. Why? To hide the transfers from Ms. Kevarian. But Kevarian found her out anyway—or got the scent. Discrepancies, the Craftswoman had said in last night’s nightmare. A kind version of: you’re lying.

  So Mara woke to find Kai in her crèche, and seized the chance to blame her friend for the whole thing.

  Possible. Kai couldn’t believe that was Mara’s plan all along. She might have given Kai the papers in desperation. Or as a plea for help.

  Too many questions. Too many secrets.

  Let’s assume for the sake of argument (Kai thought) that these records scare Mara as much as they scare me. Mara isn’t evil. If I find her, I can convince her to go to Jace, get this fixed before Kevarian finds out. I’ve done the heavy lifting, tracked down Margot, put him in custody. There’s no need for me to be part of the story, even. Mara can present the problem and the solution to Jace at once. Get another promotion.

  Which rankled, but this was bigger than Kai’s ambition, bigger than her need to be a hero.

  Settled.

  Kai opened her eyes. She was not alone.

  Twilling stood by the open office door, white robe and prayer beads bowed out by the swell of his stomach. Kai had met her boss a handful of times since she came to the front office: a former prodigy of the pool, long since descended to pilgrim relations, where he became manager of this distasteful cube farm and master of its training binders and role-playing exercises and arcane acronyms. “Thinking?” His pitch rose all through the word, rather than just at the end. “Or napping?”

  “Thinking,” she said. “I wanted to review this morning’s exercises.”

  “Kai, I thought I’d drop by to tell you how much we appreciate your work.” Twilling sounded genuine and superficial at once, as if he had read books about empathizing with employees and almost understood them. “Working with pilgrims is different, I know, than working in the pool. But it’s so rewarding. But once you’re up to speed, your expertise will help you identify pain points, and build solutions, better than any candidate we’ve had in years.”

  She repressed an urge to wince at the jargon. “I’ve learned a lot in the past few weeks. I’m growing every day.” Use their language. It’s easy if you just imagine you’re speaking Iskari. “Can I ask you a question, Twilling?”

  He beamed. “Of course.”

  “You remade yourself, like I did.” Not polite, but not a secret, either. “Why did you come down here afterward?”

  “Why settle for working with clients when I could have had such a bright career up the mountain, you mean?” He laughed, and let the laugh die, and when he spoke next his voice had lost the forced edge of managerial cheer. “Priests stand between worlds. When I was young I thought that meant building idols, praying to them; after a while, I realized that no matter how I prayed, the idols didn’t answer. I was worshipping my own reflection. Not healthy. In this role I stand between Kavekana and the mainland—and the mainland talks back. Every day I wrestle with gods, like the desert prophets of ancient Sind.”

  “But everything happens up the mountain.”

  “Everything,” Twilling said, “and nothing. The gods’ power used to flow down from Kavekana’ai, out over the waves. Now, power flows in the opposite direction. Speaking of which.” He spun the chair out from the desk and sat in a flaring of robes. “I hoped to talk to you about the Quechal pilgrim, Ms. Batan. How have you found working with her?”

  Kai stood and adjusted her clothes to cover the delay while she framed her response. “I think she needs a more experienced guide. We’re not compatible.”

  “Is that her fault, or yours?” He said it with a smile so she couldn’t snap back. “She’s ripe, Kai, ripe. I spoke with her during the intake process. She needs what we offer. You’ve rejected her twice now, and still she returns. The woman has a true need.”

  “You’ve been talking with her behind my back.”

  “We watch all new pilgrims, to ensure the quality of our service.”

  Damn. “She doesn’t like me.”

  “You don’t like her. I understand. This process would not be a trial of your faith and skill otherwise. And it is meant as a trial.”

  She needed out of this conversation, not to mention this department.

  “If you want to progress among us,” Twilling said, gentler, “you will need to work with pilgrims. Understand them. Develop them. Consider their needs, and how they may be guided. I know you’re reluctant, but she is a fine young woman. An ideal first project.”

  “She complained to you,” Kai said.

  “Not at all. She asked if I could assign her another guide. I said you were an excellent fit, and that I’d encourage you to speak with her again. She has nothing but praise for you.”

  This was a distraction. She had so much else to worry about. Dying idols. Secret notebooks. Mara. Claude. “Okay.”

  “Good, good, good. Thank you. Thank you.” Twilling bobbed his head twice more. If he heard her skepticism, he didn’t mention it. “Jace dropped by to ask me how you were doing, you know.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him you were wonderful. Performing far above expectation.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll leave it to you to arrange your next meeting with Ms. Batan. Go with the gods.” He smiled, and swept out of the room. His words hung on the air after he left, faint but sharp.

  “Go with the gods,” she said.

  35

  Izza found Nick curled up under a cleaning cart near a park two blocks away. Groundskeepers had piled the cart with fallen palm fronds, then retired to a nearby cafe for drinks. Nick slept in the shade between the wheels, hands behind his head, dirty shirt pulled up to reveal his thin stomach. Save for the scar his face was smooth and soft, the way mainlanders painted kings asleep or saints dead. She climbed under the truck and punched him in the ribs.

  He darted up, and she winced when his forehead struck the underside of the wagon. Nick awake resembled no king or saint Izza’d ever heard of. He cursed.

  “Language.”

  Confusion vanished when he heard her voice. “Izza.” He lay back on the cobblestones, and the top of his head grazed the cart’s undercarriage.

  “That all you have to say?”

  “I knew you made it out of the Plaza. I heard, from Ivy.”

  “Ivy has a big mouth,” Izza said. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “It was you who almost got me caught in the first place.”

  “You would have been caught sooner or later. I saved you.”

  “They fired me in the end anyway. Sleeping on the job.” He shrugged. “I thought you were leaving. For good, you said.”

  “I have to take care of a few things first.”

  “What kind of things?” That question had an intensity she didn’t like.

  “The Blue Lady,” she said.

  “She’s dead.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I need your help. I need you to follow a priest for me.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know where she sleeps.” She pressed her hands against the cart, hard, until her arms shook and her fingertips and knuckles turned white. “And what kind of wards she has. What protections.”

  “Some favor,” he said. “I didn’t mean why do you want her followed. I meant why should I help.”

  She rolled onto her side, and looked at him.

  “Because no matter how you try to talk it off, you know I saved your ass back in the Plaza. Because they almost stuck me in a Penitent that night, and now the guy who rescued me is in trouble. Because we’re the Lady’s children, and there’s nobody to help us but us.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

&n
bsp; They rolled out from under the wagon and dusted themselves off on the street. Angry drunken shouts from the cafe heralded the groundskeepers’ return, and they fled uphill into the Palm, lost their pursuers in an open-air market mess of food trucks and jewelry stalls.

  Together they climbed a shopping center across from the priest’s office. Izza searched the mirror-pool windows opposite for the woman’s face, while Nick stuck his head over the building’s edge and spit down into the clogged river of afternoon traffic. Whenever someone looked up, he ducked back onto the roof, chortling. She thumped him on the skull, and he stopped, for a while.

  Izza spotted the priest before Nick grew bored enough to move on to a newer and dumber game. A lucky glimpse: the woman leaning against a windowsill and watching the clouds as if they held a secret. “That’s her.”

  “The one with the lips?”

  “I guess she has lips. That one there.”

  “I see her.”

  “I want you to follow her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t steal her wallet or anything. Don’t get cute, or close enough she’ll see.”

  “I’ve done this before.”

  “Just follow her home. I’ll meet you in the Grieve at nine.”

  “Sometimes these folks don’t go home. They drink, or stay in the office all night.”

  “Keep after her, then—if I miss you at nine we’ll meet again at dawn. If that doesn’t work, leave a note in the warehouse.”

  “Your friend’ll chase me out.”

  “Cat? Tell her you’re looking for me.”

  “Why not follow this woman yourself?”

  “Have other things to do.”

  “Will this be dangerous?”

  “Is thieving dangerous?”

  “Not unless you’re caught.”

  “Right.”

  He watched the priest, silent, for a while. “I wish the Blue Lady was here, is all.”

  “I know.”

  “I miss her.”

  “Me too,” Izza said.

  “Okay.” Closed eyes, a breath, a whispered prayer. “Okay. What’d this woman do to you, anyway?”