“And so you walk on the water.”
“Not quite.” She pitched forward and he caught her outstretched hand. “If you’re not the right sort of person, you fall through into the ocean.”
“Disturbing.”
He didn’t disagree.
She turned west. An island lay two miles out, and from that island rose a matte black tower, like an arrow drawn to pierce the sky. A shadow crossed her face. “Bay Station,” she said, resigned. “I think I know what you plan to show me. I’d rather not see it.”
“I thought the same thing, the first time someone took me here.”
She drew back. A cool wind blew salt spray against his face.
“You need to see this,” he said.
“They’ll show me when it’s time.”
“I want to be the one who shares it with you.”
“Let’s go back to the shore. Watch fireworks. Have a nice evening.”
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s. But first I want to show you what I mean about sacrifice.”
Her eyes met his: black mirrors reflecting the passion of the sunset.
“Okay,” she said.
He bowed to her and walked toward the station. Out here, away from the shore, the sea no longer smelled of dead fish. “Have you spent much time on the water?” Caleb asked after a while.
“Some friends and I kayaked through the Fangs once, after graduation.”
“I didn’t know you could kayak in the Fangs.”
“Some of the bays are still tainted by the Cataclysm, so the kraken and sea serpents and the other big monsters stay away. Wards on the kayaks deal with little ones.” A tall wave rolled beneath their feet. “The ocean between the Fangs is warmer than the Pax, shallower. On calm days you can see all the way down to sunken Quechal cities overgrown with coral.” She sighed. “Why do you ask?”
“The path is sensitive to intent. The more I think about the station, the more it strays. If I don’t distract myself, we could walk all the way to Longsands, or into the center of the Pax.”
“Oh.”
“So,” he said. “Tell me about your trip to the Fangs.”
“We splashed around for two weeks; I was almost eaten. That was the end of the vacation, at least for me.”
“Eaten?”
“I was bored with the stars one night, and the ocean looked placid, inviting, rippled soft as molten glass. I took off my clothes, warded myself, and swam out.”
“Gods.”
“It wasn’t a good idea.”
“Wasn’t a good idea,” he said. “There are things in the Fangs that would eat you in one bite, wards or no wards.”
“Most of those don’t swim close to shore. I thought I was safe. The water was cool, the ocean dark. I’ve never felt such wonderful solitude.”
“What happened?”
“A riptide.”
“Oh.”
“I looked back and realized I was farther from our island than I thought, and no matter how I tried to swim back, the current bore me out. Panic took over. I forgot everything I knew and tried to swim against the tide, splashing and pulling and kicking, but it didn’t work. I tried to call for help, but I was too far away.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “It’s strange. You talk about something like that and the moment rushes back.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I was about to die. I remembered that riptides are strongest near the surface, and don’t extend far from side to side. I dove down and tried to swim parallel to the island’s shore, but I was tired. Then the gallowglass struck.”
“Qet and Isil,” he said, not realizing that he had sworn to gods.
“The water around me glowed green, and I was caught in a tangle of burning wires. Even with my wards, some of the poison made it through. For weeks afterward I looked like I had been flogged from head to foot with a barbed whip. I screamed, I’m not ashamed to admit, and the winding wires drew me up to the surface, toward the beast’s mouth. Which was lucky, in a way.”
“I think we have different definitions of lucky.”
“I was tired. If it hadn’t reeled me close to what passed for its brain, I couldn’t have struck it with the Craft. I drank the creature’s life, and used the strength I stole to guide me back to the island. My classmates found me the next morning, lying on the beach, passed out and wound with the stinging tendrils I hadn’t been strong enough to tear away. They launched a flare, and a nearby settlement soon sent help. I spent the rest of the vacation in bed. I don’t go to the ocean much anymore. I like the land. You can see what’s creeping up on you most of the time.”
Sand crunched beneath Caleb’s shoe, and he realized that they stood on the eastern beach of Bay Station, in the black tower’s shadow. As always on this journey, he had missed the moment of transition, when the island ceased to be a distant goal and appeared beneath and before him.
Watchmen waited atop a grassy bank overlooking the beach—burly, armed, the air around them thick with Craft and threat.
“Friends of yours?” Mal asked.
“No,” he said. “I’ll handle this.” Raising his hands, he strode forth to meet them.
35
Caleb and Mal descended into the island, paced by silent guards. The stair was long and winding, and pristine, like everything else in Bay Station. Every light was sun-bright, each corner swept.
“They keep house well,” Mal said.
“Dust can hide things,” Caleb whispered. The wide halls and open spaces made him nervous. “One of my father’s associates once tried to sneak a goddess in here, lodged in the dirt of his boot. She nearly took over the station before the King in Red stopped her.”
“I see.”
Their descent continued. Down side corridors, Caleb glimpsed the other station staff: academic Craftsmen in white laboratory robes, junior initiates arguing about thaumaturgical theory or professional sports, gray-shirted janitors living and undead, mopping floors and polishing windows.
On Caleb’s previous visits Bay Station had resembled the inside of an anthill, but tonight it was almost deserted. Everyone who could request time off for the eclipse had done so. The unlucky remainder would gather tonight in the observation tower to watch the fireworks and miss their families.
The staircase ended in a broad landing and a thick double door of cold iron, so wrought with wards and contracts that Caleb’s eyes refused to rest on its surface. The guards stood on opposite sides of the door, and placed their hands on the featureless white wall. Their wrists twisted at a particular angle, and silver-blue light shone around their fingers.
A glyph in the center of the doors blinked three times, and the world dissolved in darkness. Out of the darkness flashed a brilliant claw that pierced Caleb’s body and soul. The night broke, and the door ground open.
Beyond, white walls gave way to unfinished rock. Crude, primal symbols marked their path through the stone labyrinth.
“How old is this place?” Mal’s voice sounded small in the winding, echoing tunnels.
“There were Quechal colonists here before the city was founded. Since they lived so close to the Pax, they worshipped ocean-gods, predator-gods, rain-gods. Qet Sea-Lord was the center of the pantheon. After the Cataclysm, when so many Quechal moved up here, their heresy became dogma. We built new temples on land, Serpent-temples, sun-temples, but the old sacred caves remained out here.”
A rhythm resounded in his chest: a twinned concussion, two building-sized hammers beating against granite. Rocks shifted on the floor of their rough-hewn path.
“There’s still a god here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“We can go back. You don’t need to show me this.”
“I do. For my sake.”
The rhythm drew nearer. Caleb heard a rush of breaking surf.
The tunnel widened into a cavern. Stalactites hung like rotten teeth from the arching roof. Dark rock glittered wetly in the ghostlight.
The path split to circle an enormous
pit. The percussion and the rolling ocean swell emanated from within.
“Is that what I think it is?” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her.
“Yes.”
She stopped, mouth half open, tense as a scared cat. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, mastering herself. Chin high, she strode past him to the pit’s edge, and looked down.
Caleb waited. He examined the thick pipes that lined the cave walls, the glyphs ancient and modern carved into stone. Too soon, he ran out of objects for his attention, and approached Mal, walking heavily so as not to startle her.
She stood straight, and still. He touched her arm and felt tension beneath the envelope of her skin. Her nostrils flared.
A god lay in the pit. No statue, no graven idol could compare to this imperial thing. Spread-eagled, suspended in dark water, he was the size of a mountain. His massive lips, softly parted, bared teeth as large as carriages. His eyes were sails, his chest broad as a pyramid. Legs and arms thick and long as magisterium trees hung limp in the dark water that lapped at his sides.
Unconscious, his silence was the silence of the sea. His slow indrawn breaths were the rolling tide, the sleeping twitch of his hand a hurricane. Eons past, in deep time, the first Quechal had looked out over the ocean, seen chaos, and given it form, and name, and life.
Qet Sea-Lord was not dead, but not alive, either. His closed eyes did not move like the eyes of a dreaming man. Thick metal pipes protruded from his arms, his chest, his neck, his corded thighs, to join the hive of plumbing below the surface of the water. Silver bands circled his chest. Before each breath, the bands glowed with unearthly light, and after each breath the light faded.
Caleb said the god’s name gently, knowing Mal would hear.
She recoiled from the pit. Her eyes flashed white, and shadow cohered about her skin. Her teeth grew long, pointed like fangs and gleaming. She towered above him. Ghostlights flickered and shattered on the walls; Mal hissed, and lightning cracked between the fingers of her outstretched hand. She swelled like a cloud of smoke above an erupting volcano.
“This is what I wanted to show you, Mal,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
The magnesium flames of her eyes burned into him, but he stepped forward and extended his hand, palm up and open. She glanced from him, to the pit, and back.
In a black blur, she fled up the long hallway. A guard barred her way, but she struck him and he fell. Caleb ran to the guard and knelt beside him, felt his pulse. Still strong. Good. He rose to follow Mal, but another guard blocked his path.
“Get out of my way,” Caleb said.
“Who in all the hells was that?”
“My girlfriend,” he almost said, but stopped himself. “My boss.” That was also true, technically, and confused the guard long enough for Caleb to brush past.
“We’ll head her off at the beach,” the guard called after him.
“No,” he shouted back. She might hurt someone before the guards brought her down. “No. She’s just confused. This is her first time to Bay Station.”
“Oh,” the guard said. “That explains it.”
Caleb began to run.
* * *
He found her on the starlit beach. Silver waves lapped the sand, and the calm sea reflected the fat full moon. No halo of Craft clung to her, no ichorous claws tipped her fingers. Lit by the night, she resembled a cave drawing: a life defined in five lines of ink. He could almost ignore the guards surrounding her with weapons raised.
She turned to face him as he approached through the cordon.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he replied. “Shall we go?”
“Yes.” She held out her hand. Her skin was cool to the touch, colder than the night air. She stepped onto the water. The ocean buoyed her up, and he walked beside her away from shore.
“Don’t look back,” he whispered. “The guards are hair-trigger tense. They won’t relax until you’re gone.”
“I can’t believe I did that.”
“It happens. Everyone takes their first sight of Qet in a different way. I’ve seen grown men kneel; one Craftsman I know wept.”
“I can’t— I mean, I knew, or a thought I knew. I thought I could handle it. The expectation, and the shock, and everything at once—I can’t believe I let you take me. I’m an idiot.” She spat the last word.
“Don’t talk that way.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
“I should have listened when you asked me to stop, when you asked me not to show you. I’m sorry.” A rising swell shifted his weight sideways, into her. She kept him from toppling. “I’m a bit of a jerk, I guess.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It was a stupid thing to surprise you with.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Stupid.” The sound of surf faded into rolling ocean silence. Dresediel Lex burgeoned on the horizon, a tumor of light that dulled the stars and blunted the moon. No ships passed them in the dark. Barges stood at anchor beyond the harbor’s mouth. “Think it’s safe to look back yet?”
“Yes.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “The island looks bigger from this distance. Less human.”
“It camouflages itself with Craft. If you could see the real island, you would know where it was, which would make it easier to attack.”
“Elegant system.” She stopped walking. “Can we stop here?”
She sat cross-legged on the water, and he sat beside her. The ocean surrounded them like a meadow.
“I thought it would be like the Serpents,” she said. “But it’s worse.”
“Yes.”
“They’re beasts, however big they are. Terrors. But that’s a God. Not a half-conscious spirit like the ones we bound in Seven Leaf. Qet ruled us, once. Loved us. And we loved him.”
“Yes.”
He traced ripples in the water in front of them.
“He’s not … dead.”
“No. Not exactly.”
“I heard he lived somewhere, in chains.” She sounded strangled and slow, as if every word had to be won from her throat by single combat.
“Those are chains,” he said, “of a sort. Qet fought the King in Red during Liberation. The Sea-Lord was broken on his own altar. But he didn’t die.”
“He didn’t survive, either.”
“Yes. He’s not strong enough to have a mind anymore. Flashes of awareness at most, on high holy festivals. Once in a while, he cries out, or babbles nonsense. But his power remains.”
“And so you use him. In pain.”
“We use what’s left of him. He was the bringer of rains from the ocean, Father of the Green Beside the Desert. We pump saltwater into his heart, and as the water runs through him, he removes the salt. He didn’t have such a physical form, before—like most gods. What you saw was a salt statue grown in his image. Pipes and pumps draw purified water back into the reservoirs of Dresediel Lex. Whenever a tap is opened or a glass raised in this city, Qet is there. Or what’s left of him.”
“Why did you show me this?” Her hands rested in her lap, one inside the other. Her thumbs pressed together, their tips white.
“I wanted,” he began, but he could not complete his sentence. The false serenity of her face terrified him: still as the surface of Seven Leaf Lake before the gods began to scream. “You asked what we sacrifice, to live the way we live. This is our sacrifice.”
“This isn’t a sacrifice,” she snapped. “This is abuse. Exploitation.”
“We drained the water table around Dresediel Lex a hundred years ago, maybe more. We suck lakes, rivers, streams dry like a starving leech. Even Seven Leaf won’t last long. Ten years, twenty at the most, before we have to reach further afield. We’ve studied Qet day and night for five decades and no Craftsman has been able to duplicate his methods. We can take from him, though, and we do, and so we survive.”
“Why don’t you show the people what you’ve done?”
“Think how you reacted w
hen you saw the truth. Can you imagine that magnified through an entire city?”
She did not answer.
He leaned back, unfolded his legs in front of him, and thought for a long while.
“The sacrifice,” he said, slowly. “We come out here, learn the price of our world, and we go back convinced it’s worthwhile, because we don’t have any choice. Whenever I pass a beggar in Skittersill, when I hear about riots in the Deep Vale, when I run afoul of True Quechal punks or when some fool like my father tries to start a revolution, I know that they’re all of them party to Qet’s torture. Spend long enough with that in your mind and you can’t fight for anything anymore. You wander through this city, and wonder if anything you do will make up for the horror that keeps the world turning. To live, you rip your own heart from your chest and hide it in a box somewhere, along with everything you ever learned about justice, compassion, mercy. You throw yourself into games to mark the time. And if you yearn for something different: what would you change? Would you bring back the blood, the dying cries, the sucking chest wounds? The constant war? So we’re caught between two poles of hypocrisy. We sacrifice our right to think of ourselves as good people, our right to think our life is good, our city is just. And so we and our city both survive.”
She rocked beside him, or else the waves rocked her. Her gaze rested in the cup of her hands, like a statue of a monk from the Shining Empire. Their sages claimed that all was nothing, or nothing all. For a moment, he understood.
“It’s funny,” he said. “The first time I saw Qet, I couldn’t handle it either. I didn’t call upon dark magic or anything like that, but I tackled my boss, demanded an explanation. You did the same to me tonight.”
“What’s funny about that?”
“We have a lot in common. We both keep secrets, and maybe we don’t even know we keep them. When we try to share ourselves with other people, we don’t know how to begin.”
“Is that what drew you to me?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Everything I said just now—about Qet, and sacrifice, and what it does to us—it’s not an answer. It’s an escape. The question remains: how are we supposed to live? The world can’t be a war between the too-certain and the bankrupt, between my father and the King in Red. But what else is there?
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