Four Roads Cross (36 page)

Tara needed stars. She gripped the observation deck's railing and vaulted over.

Glyph-lines woke on her skin and whispered moonlit arguments. Old deals the first Craftsmen struck with the sky arrested her fall. She stood on a platform of air and walked uphill beneath and around the wide neck.

The double drumbeat of the dragon's heart faded as Tara walked. Another sound replaced it as she climbed past the shoulders' shelf and along the four-story neck: a deep mellow drone on the low edge of hearing, accompanied by creeping dread in her gut. The sound she heard was only an overtone. The dread was the note the dragon hummed.

The dragon's head was twice the
Bounty
's size, its crest taller than the ship's mainmast.

She reached the slope of its brow, high and arched like an eagle's, and continued forward, contemplating the ground. Breath steamed the air. It smelled more of ozone than of the sulfur she expected.

The gut dread stopped.

She stood beside the dragon's eye. It was taller than she was, and not completely closed. A curve of hunter's moonlight showed beneath the lid.

The eye opened.

It glistened, wet, immense, slit-pupiled like a cat's. The dark beyond the pupil seemed sharp, as if there were facets inside.

“I didn't mean to interrupt,” she said. Dragons did not eat people often, certainly not ones they'd agreed to carry.

The dragon watched her as they flew west.

She looked up, because down was too far and so was out, and back and to either side only confronted her with more dragon. The space between the stars comforted her, thick and rich as good chocolate. She'd spent too long in cities. Even the stars above a Craft-ruled metropolis could not match a country midnight. Her eyes adjusted, and the universe emerged. Meeker stars assembled into constellations for which she knew a hundred names, and at last the galactic bow curved above, milky and mottled with indistinct millions. “Nice night.”

—Yes.

Sound below sound composed the voice. She did not fall, nor did she yelp, though she almost did both. Even a Craftswoman could fake only so much composure set beside, well.

“I'm sorry if I disturbed you.”

—There was song before, and there will be song after.

“I see.”

—I play no role in cabin service. If you have trouble, please direct your concerns to the crew.

“I don't,” she said. “Or at least I don't have any trouble they can fix. I needed a walk. Were you singing?”

—Meditating.

“Dragons meditate?”

—You do not carry all your soul within yourself.

“I'd go mad. The more you have, the faster your mind spins. It comes apart. That's what banks are for.”

—Imagine how it feels to have a hoard.

“Oh,” she said. “So you meditate to handle it?”

—Some lose themselves in riddle games or chess or weiqi. Some tell tales or explore. Some dream new worlds. I still the spinning.

“I could use some of that myself.”

—Yes.

“And you carry people from place to place.”

—Yes.

“Why?” After she spoke, she felt a stab of fear that drawing the dragon's attention to the ludicrous fact of its employment might cause the creature to shrug free of chains, cabins, and gondola alike.

—Are you interested in the particulars of my case, or in general philosophy?

She did not know how to answer, so she said nothing.

—You wonder at power yoked to service. You wonder because you have come into power young and are learning that power comes through the acceptance of a bond. But if to have power is to be bound, then what is power?

“I wouldn't have put it that way,” she said.

—I bear these people because Craftsmen, broadly speaking, do not love what they cannot use, and destroy what they do not love. So I make myself useful in some minimal way, as do others of my kind.

“Because you're afraid of us?”

—No. Because I enjoy flying far and fast, and I find this work more pleasant.

“Than what?”

—War.

“I'm glad to hear it,” she said. “But don't you find it sad that you have to live like this? That you can't just hum in a cave somewhere?”

—No.

She waited.

—I find it funny.

“What?”

—We are what we ever were: huge, strong, and ancient beyond your reckoning. We have crossed vast gulfs of time and space. And you think (the subsonic dread returned in sharp pulses rather than the earlier sustained note, and her mind named the dread pattern
laughter
) you think because looking at us you can say that one draws a salary, this one bears us from place to place, that your limited comprehension gives you any measure of safety or control.

Far ahead, lightning flashed green between towered clouds.

“I'd like to stay out here for a while,” Tara said. “If it's all right with you. I won't talk. I just want to watch.”

The great eye closed.

Soon the hum returned.

 

46

“I hate this place,” Shale said as they fought through the plaster labyrinth of Dresediel Lex Metropolitan Airport alongside three thousand other people and their luggage. Most of the crowd were business travelers, but a fraction trailed bellhops and brass luggage carts driven by rat brains—and, like pebbles in an hourglass, that fraction was more than enough to stem traffic's flow. “Why would anyone live here?”

“The weather's nice.”

“They have to import water”—with audible scorn—“from outside the city. How good can the weather be?”

“It doesn't rain, for one thing.” She danced sideways to avoid tripping over the rolling suitcase of a scale-skinned Craftsman who'd turned an unexpected left. “Except once or twice a year. Then it floods.”

“Every fall like clockwork the whole country catches fire. The earth shakes!”

Recovering her footing, Tara almost bowled over two women arguing in a language she didn't know. “What do you expect? They have enormous lava serpents underground.”

“Before the wars, the gods kept the rain coming here. But with the gods dead, what's left? The city survives only because it steals water from others. These people are an affront to the world.”

“Now you're being dramatic. The world doesn't mind.”

“Fires. Earthquakes.”

“Lava serpents, like I said.” Signboard arrows suggested that three different hallways all led to
GROUND TRANSPORT
. Tara chose right, saw a construction bottleneck, and reversed course. Shale, turning, upended a golem, who sprang to his feet, raised scissorfingers, gnashed fangs, and chattered a clockwork challenge. Shale didn't speak demonic, but he understood the body language and responded in kind: chin up, shoulders back, pecs tense under his shirt. Tara grabbed Shale's bones with a slip of Craft meant to animate skeletons and jerked him after her, ignoring his glare as he recovered his footing. “The city's bigger than what it costs.”

He frowned. “I don't understand.”

“Dresediel Lex is a symbol to the Craftwork world.” The long hall narrowed and grew brutalist, without windows or even ads to relieve the pale plaster. Glass doors opened at the hallway's end, and past those doors she saw another pair, and after those, sun. “The God Wars lasted a hundred years give or take. Imagine fighting your own people for a century.”

“I don't have to imagine,” Shale said.

“Fair enough.” Almost outside. Free air melted on the tongue like spun sugar. “Gods owned the earth and hated us, so we built our nations in the sky. By the time the wars crossed from the Old World to the New, both sides were exhausted, desperate, mean. Dresediel Lex was our great victory. Once these gods fell, Liberation cascaded through the continent. For the first time in history, there was a city where the dead walked, and we could fly.”

They swept through, past sign-bearing chauffeurs and waiting family. Two dark men embraced. The second layer of doors rolled back, and they emerged into Dresediel Lex.

Tara felt the city's hot breath on her skin and its sun on her face.

She was done walking for a while.

She'd visited Dresediel Lex in her caravan days to hock wares in dusty markets and fill warded wagons with goods for sale to the farm towns of the central plains—and she visited again on spring break with friends from the Hidden Schools. So it was not surprise that made her stop.

It may have been awe.

Overhead, the sky was dry and enormous, the color of paintings on Shining Empire pottery. It did not hang or arc or curve. It rose forever.

Crystal towers hung upside down in air above the free city, breaking sunlight to a billion-prismed rainbow. To the west, juniper and manzanita matted the Drakspine hills dusk green, but at street level palm trees and clawfoot azalea grew emerald leaves that boasted of piped water in defiance of all drought.

Pyramid peaks crested above the hills.

The heat was an oven's, and a magnifying-glass sun beat down. Her skin, long accustomed to weak Alt Coulumb light, felt its use again.

A buzzing came across the sky.

Shale, beside her, recoiled. Of course: he did not know this city, or its odd ways of moving people. Dark forms speared from the high blue to earth, and as they fell became four-foot-long dragonflies with broad wings. They landed upon the men and women outside the airport, gripped them with long legs, touched feathery proboscises to the backs of necks, and bore them skyward.

“What are those?” Shale asked.

Tara grinned. “Our ride.”

As families reunited and drivers swept businesswomen toward carriages, as food carts hawked bottled water and candied nuts, as an old man played a Quechal tune on a three-string fiddle, the newcomer to Dresediel Lex took flight. Their wings laid rainbows on the earth.

“Gods,” Tara said. “I missed this.”

*   *   *

Gods,
Abelard prayed as the meeting entered its fourth hour.
Deliver me.

“And if you require further information on our foreign bond positions, Brother Amortizer Stefan has prepared detailed archives of relevant scripture. Our record-keeping procedures are normalized according to the Interfaith Standards Council 19001, so they should be fully interoperable with your systems. Now, if you'll turn to page eighteen—”

Deliverance was not forthcoming. The team from Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao turned to page eighteen.

The five Craftsmen and Craftswomen sat interspersed with Cardinals and the clerical team. Abelard had assumed Tara and Ms. Kevarian were typical Craftswomen, but these didn't match his expectations. At least the partner, Wakefield, seemed right: distant and elegant in white suit and vest, thin lips carved to convey the air of a person who's just told a joke no one in attendance gets. Aside from Wakefield, the team consisted of one woman—Saqqaf, with a ruby fixed in place of her left eye—and three men whose names Abelard hadn't yet got straight. Skane was the tall one, no, Cao was the tall one and Skane had the deep belly and the slumped shoulders and the diagonal scars on either cheek, no, that was Hedge, which made Skane the man with the thin mustache. But then Wakefield referred to
him
as “Mr. Cao,” interrupting Bede's review of page eighteen. “Mr. Cao is our team's document management expert. He'll bridge the field team with the courtroom, which I'll hold.”

But the tall one—Skane?—almost opened his mouth before the man Wakefield addressed—Cao, evidently—spoke. “I'll coordinate document intake and review. For this contest, we need deep knowledge, not just thematics. We need instant access to moment-by-moment data. Brother Amortizer Stefan—”

“Cannot help you there,” said Cardinal Librarian Aldis, stern faced beside Nestor, who looked amiable and lost as ever. “The archives are mine. Anything you need within them, I or my subordinates may grant. Use no open flames or corrosives. The sub-basement archives hold documents several centuries old. We're happy,” though neither her expression nor her tone of voice supported that claim, “to work with you to determine reasonable substitute processes.”

Wakefield nodded once. After four hours, that white suit still looked fresh from the cleaners.

There was a city beyond the conference room and far below.
What gods think near is distant for man.
Here they sat, air-conditioned, discussing the logistics of response, containment, and interdepartmental coordination. This was an important meeting, Abelard told himself. Poorly informed Craftsmen were worse than no Craftsmen at all, and without Craftsmen they would lose their case against Ramp, and the gods would die. This work was necessary.

But not for Abelard. He had little skill in thaumaturgy; he was here due to his relationship with Lord Kos. Out there on Alt Coulumb's streets, Prelate Evangelist Hildegard led teams of brothers and sisters through to preach the new moon gospel. Abelard should be with them. The Cardinals knew this. So did God Himself.

So why was he here?

“—Ms. Saqqaf will be responsible for shareholder outreach,” Wakefield was saying. No trace of—
what?—
touched that pale gray eye. “Interest” was the wrong word for what was missing, since there was interest there, the interest of snakes in mice. “Emotion” was no better fit, because scorn was an emotion. Maybe “humanity”—but that was a bit chauvinist.

“Thank you,” Saqqaf said. “After we were retained, I reached out to the core shareholders on Cardinal Bede's list, reaffirming our fundamental thaumaturgical stability. Large-scale clients, while understandably anxious, are for the most part willing to honor their agreements, though the cold-blooded squids at the Iskari Defense Ministry”—and Abelard had an intimation Saqqaf was being precise in her description—“request further guarantees to compensate for the risk they face in dealing with us.” Grumbles around the table. Bede champed his pipestem between his teeth. “It's a small stake, with an option for buyback in a year's time. I say we give it to them, since our negotiating position is, let's say, constrained.” Translated: We don't have time to fight this battle. Why not pay to make it disappear?