Last First Snow (11 page)

“I will,” she said. “Zack.”

“Yes.”

“What do you do, when you find an out-of-context problem?”

He tilted his head to one side. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On the threat's form,” he said. “Threat is another word for change. Status quo ante is not preferable to all change. Consider the Iskari boy stopping the leaking dam with his finger—romantic image, but futile. If one is to play any other role, one must be open to drastic change. The world some large-scale changes would bring about may be preferable to the one we currently inhabit.”

“Have you ever found such a preferable threat?”

He gestured to the walls, to the net of possibilities. “If I had, would I be working here?”

“Thank you,” she said, and left, though he hadn't answered her question.

Behind, the golem bent once more to his work. The metal river ran through the metal forest, and a smoke dragon coiled against the ceiling.

 

15

Temoc worked out in the courtyard before dawn: weighted one-legged squats, handclap pull-ups and pushups, a back bridge held for a slow count of one hundred. When he was done he knelt facing east and drew his knife. He checked the black glass blade as he did every morning and found it sharp. The cutting edge was thin enough for light to shine through.

“You're up early.”

Mina wore a white terrycloth robe, and her feet were bare.

“I couldn't sleep,” he replied. “How long have you been watching?”

“Long enough to get a good view,” she said with a smile he remembered from nights beneath a desert sky. “Meeting's today?”

He nodded. “The King in Red. Tan Batac. Both in our camp, to talk. It might even work.”

“You're wearing your deep-thoughts face.”

“You always think that.”

She walked to him, took his arm in her hand, and squeezed. “Tell me.”

“Caleb.” He had not known what he would say until he spoke his son's name. “When I was his age.”

Mina smelled of sleep, and her robe smelled of laundry. “When you were his age, the world was a different place.”

“When I was his age, I earned my scars. They've kept me safe.”

“Not against this.” She dragged her fingernails across his skin, leaving white tracks that faded fast. He felt exposed with her so close. Vulnerable, bounded. He liked the feeling, though every old warrior's instinct rebelled against it. “You're scared, so you run scenarios. I understand.” She slid her hands over his chest. The creases at the corners of her eyes deepened. She read him as if he were a strange text in a familiar script. “It's okay.”

He stepped back. “If this meeting goes wrong, I become a target. So do you.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Caleb has no scars to help him.”

“That was the idea. He can be the sweet kid neither of us were.”

“But if I fail—”

“You won't.” She kissed his cheek.

“You were worried, before.”

“I still am,” she said. “You mind if I head-shrink you a bit?”

“No.”

“You've grown up good enough to want to help people, and strong enough to do it. That has nothing to do with the scars your father gave you, and everything to do with the man who wears them. But you don't know that. You're scared of what happens to us if something happens to you—and since goodness and strength and scars are tangled in your head, you worry you haven't done right by Caleb because you haven't scarred him. But our son will be good and strong without the shit your father did to you, or the shit my parents did to me. My husband is about to make peace with the King in Red. I'm proud of you.”

“I love you,” he said.

“Damn straight.” They kissed again. He lifted her, and she laughed. Her kiss lingered on his lips, her weight in his arm. Later, when he stood in Chakal Square before his congregation, blade raised, sacrifice bound on the altar, she remained. But chant swelled to climax, the blade came down, pommel striking sternum like a hand on a drum, and in that sweep and the exultant rush that followed, he lost her.

 

16

The morning of the conference, Bloodletter's Street was cordoned off for blocks. Wardens moved yellow wooden barricades to admit the King in Red's carriage; dismounting, Elayne found herself in a field command post that looked much like those she remembered from the Wars. Stretchers against one wall, first-aid station nearby. Wardens marched or ran about. None were armed that she could see, beyond their truncheons. Small relief. If weapons were called for, she doubted they'd be long coming.

Couatl circled sharklike overhead. An adjutant ran off to summon the Wardens' captain, who approached, blank-faced with reflective silver like the rest, unidentifiable save for height and shape and the number stamped on his crimson skull badge. The King in Red drew the captain aside, and they conversed in hushed tones.

Beside her, Tan Batac shrank into himself: hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, head turtled down.

“Nervous?” Elayne said.

“Big day.”

“You'll be fine. These people want to talk.”

“These people want my head on a pike, and the rest arranged somewhere near as a warning to passersby.”

She chuckled.

“Listen to them.” Chakal Square was chanting. From this distance, the words melded to a meaningless ocean rhythm. “We brought these people everything. There are fortunes in the Skittersill because of me, because of my family.” He struck his chest, hard. A hollow sound. His hand darted back into his pocket as if startled by the noise. “We try to make this place a palace, and what do we get?”

“These people are angry because they think you've ignored them. Their anger will recede as you work together.”

“They'll come for me. Just you wait.”

Kopil returned with the Warden chief and two deputies in tow. “Is Tan still brooding on his imminent demise?”

“That isn't funny.”

The skeleton grinned, of course. “Let's hope this peace conference goes better than the last one, eh?”

The last one: the God Wars. The failed summit before the final assault on Dresediel Lex. Liberation forces approached the meeting scarred by years of war; Elayne herself had been seventeen and suffering nightmare visions of thorn-beings hunting her through deep jungle. They bore their losses with them to meet with gold-draped priest-kings of Dresediel Lex who deigned to grant them audience. The conference failed in the first minute, but days passed before anyone realized. “Let's hope,” Elayne said.

Kopil cracked his knuckles. “We'll be fine. The good Captain Chimalli here has ordered us an escort of Wardens.” No one was supposed to know Wardens' given names, but of course he did, and of course he used them.

“I hope your people can control themselves,” Elayne said. “Yesterday they almost stormed the camp to break up a brawl.”

“I'm sending my best with you.” Captain Chimalli's voice was higher than his bulk suggested, narrower, with an accent Elayne couldn't place. Elayne always expected the masks to change Wardens' voices somehow, but they did not. “Lieutenant Zoh's in charge, seconded by Sergeant Chihuac.” He gestured to each in turn. More names: a privilege extended for convenience. Better than numbers, at least. Zoh was a wall of a man, who in prehistoric days would have claimed kingship of his tribe by throwing the previous monarch off a cliff. He clicked his heels when he saluted, and his shoes were mirror-polished. Chihuac seemed more promising: five-six in combat boots, strong, solid. Elayne didn't trust either one, which said more about her than them. Even in the Wars, she'd seen violent meatheads inside every uniform.

“You understand your role?”

“To preserve respect,” Zoh said. “To protect. To pull you all to safety if this breaks down.”

“I can protect and pull myself,” Kopil said. “But power's a funny thing—people tend to forget you have it if you don't seem to. Do not use force unless we're attacked first. I need perfect beings at my side today, not men.”

Zoh saluted again.

“And take care of Tan Batac. He is more accident-prone than Elayne or myself.”

Batac glowered at that, but he kept his voice civil. “Thank you.”

“Very good,” Kopil said. “Now, bring us to my people.”

The noise built as they approached. Waves of chanted protest rolled over them, bearing the stench of close-packed thousands, of stale sweat and hope and fresh anger. Even knowing what to expect, Elayne caught her breath when she saw the kaleidoscope crowd—their bright colors and their mass. They raised signs, unfurled banners, sang old songs.

She had told Temoc when to expect the King in Red, and the direction from which he'd come. Now, assembled and indomitable, the Skittersill's people watched their nominal lord approach.

The Wardens formed a circle around Kopil, Batac, and Elayne, with Zoh in front. The King in Red stood taller than their escort, which would have worried Elayne if any weapon this crowd might wield could harm him. His skull held no brain, and the bones were just another anchor binding the long-dead man to the city he ruled. The crown at his brow gleamed crimson gold.

The red-arms who faced them stood aside to reveal a corridor into the camp, lined by more red-arms with elbows linked to resist the crowd's weight. The path was broad enough for their group, and empty save for scraps of trash and one broken, facedown sign. The gathered thousands stared.

They walked into the mouth of the beast. Elayne reprimanded herself, quietly, for seeing the crowd as a single insensate animal, for letting Batac's fear infect her. She'd come here before and emerged unscathed.

But never with the King in Red.

As they walked the noise faded, or a deeper silence blocked it out.

Kopil's bony feet tapped the flagstones three times with each step.

They met Temoc at the path's end, before a green tent. Chel waited by his side. He had not spent the morning's power: scars shone green beneath his clothes. The last time he met the King in Red, they had wrestled in the air above the body of a dying god.

Elayne looked to Kopil, but a skull's face met all changes with the same gallows humor.

Behind Temoc stood the leaders he had promised: the Kemals, Bill sporting an unkempt beard, Kapania's hair bound beneath a patterned bandanna. The Major lurked near them, flanked by a round woman and a lean fellow with graying hair and a black cane. A third man stood by the tent, silver studs at his wrists and scars at his neck and forehead: a debt-zombie, freed.

Six, and Temoc made seven, an appropriate number for a working of Craft, yet so few to stand for such a crowd. Then again, the King in Red represented the fourteen million of Dresediel Lex, and the hundred million souls in the city's banks, into which this camp could disappear like a drop of ink into the Pax. Even Tan Batac stood for the Skittersill, for the community of which these malcontents were technically a piece.

Yet those fourteen million were not here. The crowd was.

Temoc advanced on the King in Red. Chel followed, proud. Her arm sported a crimson band. She caught Elayne's eye, but kept her expression guarded.

Lieutenant Zoh blocked Temoc's way, taller by half a head than the priest though less massive, and, of course, not glowing. Temoc met the Warden's silver gaze. “Did you come so far to hide behind your men, Kopil?”

“No,” the skeleton said. “Stand aside, Lieutenant.”

Zoh hesitated just long enough for Elayne—and, more to the point, for Temoc—to notice. He withdrew. The ring of Wardens split into two lines flanking Elayne, Tan Batac, and the King in Red, opening Temoc's path to them. The priest strode into their gauntlet, radiating divine power and self-assurance.

He extended his hand to the King in Red, who clasped it in a bony grip.

“You look different,” Temoc said.

“The last time you saw me, I had skin. And eyes.”

“That must be it.”

“You look much the same.”

“Clean living,” Temoc said. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for meeting us. Though your people seem unhappy.”

“They are not my people.”

“They certainly don't seem to feel they're mine.”

“They were never yours.”

“I will reassure them.” Kopil released Temoc's hand, and the lights of his eyes flickered and went out.

Elayne saw the Craft he invoked too late to stop him without a struggle. So she watched, and hoped the King in Red didn't wreck the conference before it began.

A brutal wind whipped the square, a wind like none these southern people had ever known, a thousand miles' frozen prairie wind contemptuous of all the works of man. Chakal Square onlookers fell into one another's arms. Wails of terror broke against the wind's howl. A shadow closed out the sun, and the sky deepened to the color of a bruise.

The King in Red's face emerged from that sky like a bather's from a dark pool. Red gold burned upon his brow. He cleared his throat, a sound like a bomb blast or a mountain crumbling. The wind screamed so high and loud Elayne thought her ears might burst. Then Kopil spoke, his voice echoed by the demonic wind.

“People of Dresediel Lex,” he said, and what was left of her heart sank, because this was wrong, this was how you inspired an army about to invade some god-benighted state, how you whipped sorcerers and demons and soldiers to a frenzy, not how you addressed scared and angry civilians. “You have called me and I come. From Sansilva's pyramids, I descend to Chakal Square. I have shaped our city for forty years. I pledged to make us strong, and I toiled beyond the borders of this world to that end. My work makes you afraid, and angry. Do not let fear poison you against progress. I come to reassure you.” “Reassure” rumbled, thunderous. Someone nearby fainted.

“I will hear your challenges, through your commission. We will find common cause. The future of Dresediel Lex will not be tarnished. We have slain the gods, so we must do Heaven's work ourselves.”