Four Roads Cross (45 page)

Tara set down her backpack, smoothed the lapels of her jacket, and stepped toward the lightning.

Uniformed figures splayed prone on the diamond floor, breathing deep. A cane lay at Altemoc's feet. She was close enough to see the man himself, thirty-two or -three, nice cheekbones, jawline a bit too narrow. The glyphs that shone through his suit were not glyphs at all, but scars.

She cleared her throat. Behind her, Shale roared and punched through an elemental's face. “Good morning,” she said. It was morning somewhere. “I'm Tara Abernathy. The Two Serpents Group sent me to negotiate for your prisoners' release. To whom am I speaking?”

Altemoc's head jerked down to face her, a poorly managed marionette's movement. His eyes opened, and the space between his lids was flat and blinding red. Not a good sign. He opened his mouth. Blood-light lit his teeth from within.

She was almost ready for the voice when it came: a man's wrapped around and through a woman's, if that woman were a thousand meters tall and made of fire.

What/have/you/done/

“Let's start with a name. You have me at a disadvantage.”

Two elementals seized Shale's arms and tried to pull him apart. Moonlight from his wounds spilled on the diamond floor. His wings beat, the elementals lost their footing, and he pulled free—to rip one's leg from its body and swing it clublike into the other's face.

Firekeeper/call/me/or/Deathwarden/Thunderspeaker/Shewhoburns/

“Ms. Keeper,” she said. “I think I understand most of your situation, but let's see if I have it right.”

Speak/

“Down there, under our feet, you've trapped a raw demon, one that entered this world through a crack, unsummoned, without limits on its power. I didn't know that was possible in the pre-Craft era, but if you made me guess I'd say it came through during a war between gods, a few thousand years ago. About right?”

Gods/serpents/thosebeyond/outspiders/skazzerai/

“I don't need particulars. Most of the time, unbound demons pop into singularity and take a few cubic miles of planet along, but this one's big. It might have chewed up the whole world before it burst. So you caged it.” Keep her talking. Don't think about what the thing beneath your feet might do if you screw up. “You tricked it into a part of your mind you clocked slow—a subjective second every million years, say. Must have used half the necromantic earths in Northern Kath to build this place. Impressive systems redundancy: any elements taken from the mountain will return in time. So millennia passed, until Kovak Central Mining started drilling.”

An elemental tore Oss's wing free, only for the wing to transform to a bony claw that strangled the fire.

Ignore the battle. Focus on the—what was she at this point? Deponent? Witness? If so, Tara should be asking more questions.

Torment/tear/efficiency/reduced/lose/seconds-on-century/

“The mine damaged containment. You patched the wound by draining a convenient power source, which turned out to belong to the miners' filtration system. Necromantic slurry seeped into the water table, and zombies rose throughout Centervale. You didn't know what was happening—without human worshippers, your mind operates on a geologic time scale. So when Mr. Altemoc came to rescue his people, and used his scars to engage with you, well, you found a well-prepared mind to work through. He's fighting back, though. You can't think fast without him, but you can't digest him any more than you can digest a knife.”

He/feels/no/pain/visions-dreams-past-paradise/offer/

“Let me be straight with you. You face a damages claim from Centervale Conglomerated Agriculture, another from KCMC, reckless endangerment and grievous harm from my employer, maybe tortious interference, a violation of the rule against perpetuities depending on whether you're technically alive, and that's before we address any personal claims brought by Mr. Altemoc, or by these folks on the ground.” The Keeper was older than the Craft. How to translate? “The kind of power about to descend on you, it eats gods for breakfast. Neither of us wants to go down that road.” Especially since your hole card's terrifying. “But we can make a deal.”

Explain/

“Your containment system is, let's say.” She licked her lips. Oss tried to bite through an elemental's face but only blackened its own jaw. “Inefficient. We've developed better. We know more about demons now than they did in your day—we might be able to put the devourer-of-worlds down there back where she came from. Even if that's impossible, the redundant ore you can spare by improving your efficiency will fetch a lot of soulstuff on the right market, and we could use that power to automate containment. You could walk the world again. Find believers. Or at least live without a demon gnawing your entrails.”

No answer. Battle raged behind Tara, and below, demon coils grated against the diamond floor. Elementals piled on Shale, dragging him down. He ripped at their arms with his fangs and claws, but they were too many. He knelt. They pressed his face into the flame.

How/

“Let Mr. Altemoc and his people go. Then we broker a settlement with the mining Concern and CenConAg. If you play your cards right, there's freedom at the end of the tunnel. You've missed a lot in the last few thousand years.”

Without/mouth/how/speak/

“There are ways. We could make you a golem. Mr. Altemoc might even volunteer for the task. But I need him now.”

He/leaves/we/feel/no/time/why/trust/you/

Because I need you to. “Because we're going to make a deal,” she said.

Performance/clear/what/consideration/you/offer/

She licked her lips.

What would the Keeper accept? Tara didn't have the time or resources to build a vessel for the mountain-mind. No promises of future payment would satisfy, since without Altemoc's mind the Keeper had no sense of time.

She needed a body.

Terror welled from a pit within Tara, filling her stomach, heart, lungs. Blood rushed in her ears. Doors long locked inside her mind swung open, memories of shadowed days, the feeling of herself bent by another's hands. But she could do this. Her glyphs would offer the goddess purchase on her mind, and keep her intact—for a while, at least.

Shale could make their case for Altemoc. If he faltered, the goddess could speak through him. It was a long shot, but what other chance did they have, outfought in the mountain's depths, surrounded by flame? Without Altemoc, they had nothing. Without Tara, they had a chance.

Nothing was worth losing herself again, feeling another wear her.

Nothing?

Moonrise over Alt Coulumb seen from the ruined orrery. From the air, gargoyle-borne, the city's rampant streets made sense the way some abstract paintings did, the ones mad drunks made by throwing cans of paint onto canvas. Dancers twirled at the Club Xiltanda. These were beautiful and broad, too large to hold in the mind. But she remembered Cat, and Abelard that night in the tower:
I don't trust God anymore.
And, later, in the airport, an awkward embrace.

Nothing, no thing, was worth what she was about to do.

Maybe some people were.

She opened her mouth. “I—”

“I'll do it.”

She turned, too shocked to speak.

Shale stood beside her, bleeding silver through his cracks. Carbon scores crisscrossed his chest. One arm had burned black to the elbow. Fire dripped from him. The elementals were gone. He must have beaten them back while she wasn't looking.

Acceptable/vessel/

“No,” she said. “No, dammit.”

“It's the right choice,” he said.

“It's not any kind of choice. We are not doing this. I won't let you.”

“We need you to finish the negotiation. To get back to the city.”

“If Seril loses you, She'll—”

His laugh was shallow and sad. “Without me,” he said, “She may weaken. Without you, She will fall.”

“There has to be another way.”

“You were about to give yourself up. If there was another option, you would have taken it.”

She said nothing.

“I will stand in his place,” Shale said. “You will return, and save me.”

“If we win.”

“If we lose, I would have been dead anyway. And you will not lose.”

“It could take years to get you out. You'll be in pain the whole time. You'll barely even be you.”

He shrugged. His right arm hung at a wrong angle. “I have endured worse. My wounds will help: if the Keeper forces too much of herself through me, I will shatter and she will return to timelessness.”

“That is a stupid definition of ‘help.' You'll be in pain down here until—”

“Until you rescue me,” he said, and to the goddess: “What do you say, Lady?”

Yes/

“It's the right choice, Tara.”

It was. That was the worst part.

You can't outsmart everything.

There was a heat in her eyes she did not want to name. She looked from the goddess to the gargoyle, and back. “Shale,” she said, “is my,” and there was only the slightest pause before she said “friend. If you hurt him in any way, I will carve your bones into his monument. You have slept too long to know that you should fear me, but I am a Craftswoman of the Hidden Schools, and my people have slain the hosts of heaven and bound continents in iron chains. I will snap your spine and drink ichor from your skull, I will break you and the demon downstairs alike and send you wailing together to the stars as a feast for the beings that lurk there, if you give me cause. Do not fuck with me.”

Lightning quivered. Tara did not breathe. Neither did Shale, which was to be expected. He took her hand.

Understood/

Shale touched her shoulder. “Finish this,” he said.

“I will.”

He approached the lightning, and with a wingbeat rose level with Altemoc in the air. He leaned into the red and brought his muzzle to the other man's lips.

He screamed. A tower fell.

The lightning took him by pieces, darting forks tonguing stone skin before they approved the taste and pierced. His head rocked, his wings draped, his teeth flashed. A hundred ropes or spears of light bound him to the chamber walls. The brilliant central column vibrated like a plucked string, a thunderous cascade that went on and on.

When the world stilled, Shale hung in the light, and Altemoc lay crumpled on the ground.

Tara ran to the man; he groaned. She slapped him on the cheek. No response. Twice, three times, leaving sharp white finger tracks on ocher skin. His eyes opened, neither fixed nor focused. She heard a deep groaning, cracking sound. The ground beneath them shook. So did the walls.

“Who—”

She slapped him again for good measure.

“Hey! Who the hells—where—”

“Introductions later. We need to get out of here.”

He groped for the fallen cane and struggled with its aid to his feet. His shoulders bent into a U. “My people.”

They were waking up, slowly. She scanned the chamber for a tool, and saw, shattered to pieces but still clattering for someone to fight, Oss. Still hers.

Assembling him would take too long—gaps opened in the floor, and the walls were closer together than they had been. The cave system was reconfiguring to fit Shale. But Oss's bones still moved, and they would serve.

Oss's pieces scuttled to lift the fallen crew. A wing separated into centipede spines, wrapped limbs and lifted; a claw propped up another. Arm bones prepared themselves to roll. Multiplicitous phalanges supported a fallen woman. They skittered toward the door as the cave collapsed. “Come on,” she said. “My friend back there made a bad deal with a mad goddess to save you. And I may have threatened her, just a bit.”

He blinked. “You're crazy.”

“You always question the sanity of women who've just saved your ass?”

He smiled, too broad, and almost fainted. She grabbed him by the lapels. “No time for that. We need to move.”

Shale stared down on them through the lightning. Hells burned to ash in his eyes.

Run/
she said through him.

They did.

 

58

Abelard kept dawn vigil on the morning of the war. Bede and Nestor and Aldis and the rest of the Council of Cardinals gathered in the sanctum to kneel, knees permitting, before the flame. Their chant swelled. Stars pinpricked the gray-blue sky. Eastward past the docks, a pale pink glow heralded the sun.

Crystal palaces flew south through the Business District, wreathed in sparks and rainbows. Their edges bled starlight. They should not be here, not in Alt Coulumb, free city of gods and men. Even the Hidden Schools had breached the city's airspace only once, while his Lord was dead.

These skyspires were not scavengers or opportunists. They came to kill.

No. That wasn't quite true.

The spires were weapons built to break cities, but even the fiercest weapons were only tools. About the spires, before them—so small they should have been invisible at this distance but were not, were instead singular points radiating darkness—hovered Craftsmen. Their fingers rested on rune-marked triggers.

Abelard blinked. He lacked training in the Craft, but God let him see its traces. He was glad he lacked training. Were his sorcerous vision more acute, he would have been blinded by the burn.

Hellfire webbed the black. Bonds of power tied the invaders—the opposing counsel—together. And two shapes hovered at the center of that infernal rose: a spider of crystal and thorn, and something else, a roil of worms and teeth.

Daphne Mains and Madeline Ramp, vanguard of the opposition.

“Impressive, aren't they?” Cardinal Evangelist Bede stood by his side. He squeezed his hands as if working dough. “Each member of Ramp's commission has sent observers to watch us fall. All this because I did not sign their deal.”