Full Fathom Five

by Max Gladstone

  “Nothing,” Izza said. “Yet. And I hope it stays that way.”

  She left him lying there, chin resting on folded fingers. Thin puckered lines showed pale against sun-browned skin through the ripped cloth of his shirt. She’d never asked about those scars.

  Izza climbed down the dizzying height, from fire escape to drainpipe to garbage bin, to crouch in the alley and watch the sanctioned world walk past. Somber suits, linen dresses, suitcases, and bags: soulstuff condensed into physical form, life made concrete. She thought of the crabs she hunted in the surf, seaborne insects who built heavy shells around themselves. You could grab them by those shells, lift and throw, and watch the splash.

  She slipped back east to the poet’s house. The afternoon streets in East Claw belonged to working men and women. Construction workers, shirtless, climbed bamboo frames, tool harnesses slung over broad shoulders. Teamsters drove wagons piled with grain sacks and bales of cloth and packaged goods across town to West Claw shops. Wood strained and leather creaked. A drover wiped her forehead on her sleeve, then swatted an errant cow with a goad. A road crew hauled up broken cobblestones, cemented new ones into place. Laundries flew a war’s worth of surrender flags from clotheslines. Shining Empire sailors toasted one another with sorghum liquor at a sidewalk table outside an Imperial restaurant. An old Kavekana drunk crouched alone on a corner, and watched her with milky eyes. She walked faster.

  Margot’s street was deserted. She knocked on his door, but no one answered. She walked around the balcony and peered in the window. Room a mess, bed made, poet absent. Off for an afternoon stroll. If the watch had seized him already, they would have left signs. The door wouldn’t be locked, for one thing, or on its hinges. Watchmen didn’t like obstacles, and Penitents were a universal key.

  She’d trailed the poet often in the three weeks since her rescue, and knew his daily routine and where he went on walks. After an hour’s hunt she found him southbound on Dockside—easy to spot, clad as usual in green velvet. Cargo cranes far off by the Claw’s tip flashed mirror codes of reflected sunlight as they swung containers ashore. Margot paused to watch two wagoners argue over a wreck, then walked on. Knees and elbows showed through his threadbare suit.

  She scrambled across traffic to the dock and approached him from the south. He’d tipped his hat down to shield his eyes from the sun, and so didn’t see her until she drew even with him, saluted, and said, in mock-posh accent, “Good day.”

  He muttered “Good afternoon,” then stopped. His hands slipped out of his pockets, and he swiveled around to Izza; she’d already taken a few skipping steps back, to keep out of arm’s reach.

  “You came back,” he said.

  “To warn you.”

  “I’ve had one warning already today.”

  “I heard.”

  “You’re watching me.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t know what to make of you. But I think we’re on the same side. Or, similar sides.”

  “Ms. Pohala said the same on her visit this morning. Do you also want me to forswear my work? Return defeated to my homeland?” He pointed vaguely out into the ocean, even though his homeland was more north and east than south.

  “I think you should keep from getting stuffed in a Penitent, if you can.”

  “She went to the Watch.”

  “Yes.”

  “She calls me a thief, and says the Blue Lady is a lie born of fear and wishful thinking.”

  She ignored the second part. “Theft is a Penitent offense,” she said. “You need to hide.”

  He turned, and walked away.

  “Hey!” She ran to catch up with him. “This is real. When the Watch comes for you, they’ll slam you in a statue until you break.”

  “If they prove my guilt, which is unlikely. At best, they’ll hold me until my government protests. Greater men than I have written from a cell. Gertwulf composed his Virtuous Voyage while a debt-zombie, scribbling in the few minutes each morning before his contract took hold. Once the Iskari priesthood secures my release, I will leave the island. Meanwhile, I wait.”

  “You think your priests will help you?”

  “Troubadours have been convicted of worse than theft, without grand consequence. The Prelates of Iskar fight a long war. Indulgences are permitted for their soldiers.”

  “You’re no soldier.”

  “All poets are soldiers. We fight our wars across centuries.”

  She didn’t understand, but didn’t ask. She felt other eyes on them, passing cabbies and dockworkers intrigued by the odd pair arguing on the street. No watchmen, yet. She grabbed Margot’s hand and pulled him along the docks. Walking, at least they presented a moving target. “You think,” she said, with a smile to a dirty man selling flowers from a basket, “that they’ll take you in a legal way, and hold you so people will know. That they won’t just stuff you in a Penitent and forget.”

  “They wouldn’t.”

  “They do. It happens all the time.”

  “Ms. Pohala has no right—”

  “She doesn’t need right if she has powerful friends,” she said. “Come on, smile a little. There’s people watching.”

  He tried. Even without looking, she could feel the falseness of his grin, like rubber dragged over skin. “I will not leave. I must seek my Lady.”

  “She’s dead,” Izza said.

  “There is no death where love lives.”

  “You don’t know death well,” she said, “if you think that.”

  “I will not leave.”

  “Then hide.” She heard Cat again in the back of her mind. Small choices. But she owed this man. “Let me help.”

  “Can you hide me from Penitents?”

  “Maybe. Better than you can hide yourself. Long enough for you to book passage off the island.”

  He adjusted the angle of his hat. “You seem awfully concerned with my welfare for a girl who ran from me when I asked a simple question.”

  “It wasn’t a simple question,” she said.

  Out near the tip of East Claw, a tugboat dragged a containership into dock: an expanse of metal, sail-less seagoing abomination of Craft. Its sides were cliffs, more an extension of the peninsula than a ship, a mountain inverted and afloat. “I suppose not,” Margot said. “But I refuse to run. I found something true here, and terrible. Gods spoke through me. Iskar with her daily prayers and unrequited loves, her flag-jousts between sky knights, her high cardinals professing faith and her human beings wandering alone—she has no claim to match that. This is my place now.”

  “You’re dumber than I thought,” she said.

  His laughter, too, was sharp. “I never claimed brilliance.” He removed his hat. His bald patch was pale, though peeling and red with sunburn. “This is not your fight. If they take me, let them take me. If they kill me, let them.” He stopped, and swallowed. “Kill me.”

  “No.”

  “I offer you a gift,” he said. “I offer you your own life, which I think you value. Your freedom, from the Penitents and from the law you would otherwise feel compelled to confront to keep me safe. I ask you to promise by all you hold sacred—and I think I know what you do hold sacred—promise to let me go. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Aloud, if you please.”

  “I promise.”

  “And let me ask a gift of you, in return.”

  She understood, now, but it was too late to take back her word.

  “Tell me. The Blue Lady. The Green Man. I have seen them. They worked through me. They played my nerves like a violin. You know them.”

  Those were her names. This was her faith. He was a usurper to speak them. “I do.”

  “Ms. Pohala calls me a thief. She claims I stole power from the mute idols her priests build. She claims I used this power to charge my words with fire. But I have not stolen. I heard gods sing to me, and scream, and whisper. I am not mad.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “The gods. Are th
ey real? Do they live? Do they speak? Do they feel? Do they love?”

  She remembered a soft touch on a feverish cheek. She put her hand there, but the skin was cool, and smooth. “Once I fell from a dockside crane. The Blue Lady caught me.” She lifted her shirt, and showed him the rippled scar on her side, the imprint of four fingers and a thumb. “There.” She lowered her shirt again. From his expression, and his caught breath, she knew he had seen. “She wasn’t used to people yet. She caught me, and it burned.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you,” as if she hadn’t heard the first time. “Go.”

  She ran inland, away from the sea, away from the false metal cliffs and the neon lights and the man in the green and threadbare suit.

  When she knew he couldn’t see her anymore, she retraced her steps and trailed him through the streets toward home.

  36

  Kai worked hard, or seemed to, for the rest of the day. She turned many pages of binders, moved her eyes over a hundred intake forms, and all the while planned her confrontation with Mara. Evasions. Pursuit. Mara’s collapse, and the slow determination Kai would help her build to tell Jace the truth, or some of it at least.

  Unless Mara really meant to frame Kai for everything. In which case their conversation might take a very different path.

  Near sunset she clocked out and headed uphill toward Mara’s house, a few blocks from her own. Kai and Mara rarely met outside work, but Mara’d helped out when the pipes in Kai’s basement burst, and Kai’d leant Mara a hand moving in. She remembered the way, and soon stood on the sidewalk before Mara’s pale purple two-story. Porch ghostlights clicked on as night deepened, timer-driven. The lights cast dancing shadows on the lawn.

  No signs of life. Kai checked her watch. A little after seven. Mara wouldn’t be home for an hour yet, at best. She removed a pad from her purse, scrawled a brief note—“Mara, need to see you, urgent, family business, Kai”—ambiguous enough she hoped its meaning would be safe. She opened Mara’s mailbox to slip the note in, but the box was crammed with newsprint, letters, and ads. She folded her message double, sealed it with a drop of wax, and was searching for a cranny into which the paper might fit when her mind caught up with her eyes.

  The mailbox held two days’ mail at least. Mara must have forgot to pick up her mail—or else she never came home after her meeting with the Craftswoman. With Ms. Kevarian. The meeting Kai thought had finished too fast.

  The empty house watched Kai from behind the fence.

  Hells, Mara’s wards probably wouldn’t let her pass. She touched the fence latch, felt no electric tingle, heard no warning bell. Maybe the wards only went off if you opened the gate.

  She pressed down on the latch, and stepped into Mara’s yard.

  No lightning. No thunder. Not even a dog’s bark. Silence and wind. She walked up the yard. Front door locked. Stepping-stones circled around to the back, and she followed them. One stone shifted beneath her feet.

  Orange trees grew in the backyard. Kai’d always been jealous of Mara’s trees; her own house’s last owners had no interest in horticulture, save for the psychotropic variety. She picked a low-hanging orange, thought about peeling it, decided not to, and continued to the rear porch. Through glass sliding doors Kai saw the kitchen, marble countertops and cabinets of pale imported wood. A percolator on the stove. Clean counters, dishes racked. She tried the door, out of curiosity.

  It opened.

  A chill ran up her spine and down her arms. Mara wouldn’t leave her door unlocked. Then again, anyone might leave her door unlocked. People ran out of the house, forgetful, stuffing a boxed lunch into a shoulder bag, spilling coffee on their hands.

  Mara didn’t forget things, she rarely ran, and she was never late.

  Kai stepped into the empty kitchen.

  She didn’t see anything wrong or out of place. One dish in the sink. Crumbs. Dried purple smear of jam on a dull knife. Three tiny black flies stuck in the jam.

  Kai didn’t care for Claude’s God Wars historicals, all bluff and thunder and improbable heroics, but she did attend the occasional mystery play, and she’d read a detective novel Gavin lent her once. The murder she liked, but the clues bothered her. A detective in a kitchen could tell how long the occupant was gone from the relative staleness of bread crumbs. Kai couldn’t. But Mara kept a neat house, and hired maids to keep it neater. Burned her garbage, even, ever since a bad breakup in which her ex had stalked her through her trash. Dirty dishes in the sink could be another sign she hadn’t come home the night before. Or that she came home so late she lacked the energy to wash her breakfast dishes before bed.

  Through the kitchen door Kai saw, on the couchside table, a small spiral-bound calendar, the kind with a new cartoon for each month. Days X-ed off. She’d come this far already. Might as well check the calendar, then get out. Stuff the letter in the mailbox and leave.

  She slipped off her shoes, set them on the tile floor, and padded across the carpet into the living room. Here too she saw no signs of life. The strange order of a maid-cleaned house, that was all. Pillows propped in plush chairs. Wood surfaces dusted, polished. Thick carpet.

  A closed house. A dead house.

  She approached the couch, the end table, the calendar.

  She heard a crack upstairs. Wood contracting, or expanding. Wind through an open window. But she hadn’t seen any open windows. “Mara?” As the echoes died she cursed herself for a fool. If someone else, something else, was here, now they knew her voice.

  She picked up the calendar. Two neat lines crossed each day save for the last—yesterday’s X was half-complete, one diagonal slash. Mara marked the first half of the day in the morning, the second half returning, a weird habit, morbid, something she’d picked up from her mother. So she hadn’t come home last night. After meeting Ms. Kevarian. After framing Kai.

  A carriage passed down the street outside. Wheels growled over gravel, and the horse’s tack jangled and rang.

  Kai set the calendar down, and turned to leave.

  The harness chimes receded, but the growl stayed. And the growl was nearer than the carriage wheels.

  Kai looked up.

  Two red eyes glimmered on the second floor. A great gold shape hunched on the banister, bared yellow teeth, and leapt.

  Kai stumbled back, ran for the kitchen. The creature landed behind her, heavy and precise, four sharp taps on the carpet. Claws ripped over shag.

  She skidded onto kitchen tile, grabbing for her shoes. The creature leapt. Kai swung her cane in a desperate arc, and struck something that yowled in pain. She scrambled for the door, halfrunning, half-falling. She’d left it open, thank whatever gods watched out for dumb burglars—she ran onto the empty porch, and spun to see red eyes and bared teeth and muscle under gold fur gathering again to leap. The growl rose to a cry like an angry child’s. She flailed for the door handle, found it, slammed the glass shut so hard she feared at first she might have broken the pane. But the glass did not break. The door closed, the child’s cry cut off, and the eyes’ red glow died.

  The yard around Kai was carved gray, highlighted purple and orange by sunset through the trees. She did not move. She watched her own reflection in the glass, surrounded by porch furniture. The world throbbed. No. That was her.

  A statue crouched on the kitchen floor: a cat the size of a foal, broad shouldered and detail perfect, fur distended by rippling muscles, dagger teeth bared. Stone claws pressed against the ceramic tile.

  “Shit,” she said, and swore again, because she felt better swearing. “Ebenezer.” My security, Mara had joked. The perfect pet. There when I’m home, stone when I’m out. More loyal than most people I know, of any species.

  Which solved the mystery of the open back door. If Kai had a pet lion, she might stop triple-checking her locks before she left, too.

  Or not. Even Ebenezer could only do so much.

  She’d dropped her cane, and bent to retrieve it. The cane’s head hung at a sharp angle from the shaft
: it must have broken when she hit the cat. Inside, she saw a glint of metal.

  Strange.

  She twisted the cane further, and through the widening crack saw its core was webbed with silver wire. She couldn’t read the patterns, but she recognized Craftwork when she saw it.

  Something hid inside her walking stick. A monitor, maybe. Simple medical Craft to keep her safe, help her heal.

  Or not.

  Night wind blew cold around her.

  Mara might have stayed at work. Taken an unannounced vacation. Sickness. Death in the family.

  She went up the mountain yesterday. She did not come down.

  Kai took her orange from the table. The cat statue’s eyes seemed to follow her as she followed the stone path back to the front yard. She looked back, into the hole between its teeth.

  Two blocks from Mara’s house, Kai took a last glance into her cane’s broken heart, and tossed it into a compost bin.

  37

  Edmond Margot returned to his flat and cleaned. There was not much to clean: he owned little, most of that spread out on his floor due not to laziness but to an inveterate affection for chaos. This, at least, was what he told guests he wanted to impress. Few in number, these. More lately, but Margot doubted he had many latelies left before he became late altogether. As in, the late Edmond Margot.

  So, his possessions: Seven socks without mates, holes in three. Two shirts, first ink stained on right wrist and left breast and ripped in the back, second paint smeared across the left shoulder, missing three buttons and left cuff. One pair trousers, mangled. One intact sandal, and its mate with strap broken. Three of the insufferable, and insufferably cheap, bright patterned short-sleeved shirts the local beach bums loved, which Margot wore around the house when awake during the day (seldom) and writing (often). Two notebooks, pages torn out, empty. A box of stationery, likewise empty, consumed in correspondence during one of the dark periods early in his Kavekana stay when he wrote only weepy ten-page letters home to friends laboring through university adjunctship and drowning their sorrows in overpriced absinthe bars. One book of stamps, half consumed. Stubs of three pencils. Empty ink bottle. Before he’d come to Kavekana he hadn’t even known those could empty; he drained one in a week, after his beating, when the words first came. Broken pen nibs, five. Broken quills, two. He had experimented with quills out of a hope they’d feel more authentic than writing with a fountain pen, but after two weeks of hives he deduced he was allergic to down.