Last First Snow (13 page)

The others emerged from the tent, two by two. Bel and the Major talked in low voices, Most rushed off for refreshments or the restroom. “If not for your friends,” Elayne said, “the crowd would have charged us. Temoc would not have had time to calm them down. You saved the peace. If we make a deal, it will be because of you. Respect that.”

Chel raised her head, and closed her eyes, and stood haloed in light. A cloud passed between her and the sun. She opened her eyes again. The shadow passed, but the golden moment was gone. “I do. But I'm still afraid.”

“Good,” Elayne said. “You're doing something big. Fear helps you manage it.”

“Maybe.” Chel looked down at her hands, which were small and thick and callused, and back up to the crowd and the red-arms and the Wardens and the tangled future.

There was much Elayne should have said then. There were many questions she should have asked. But the King in Red called her name, and raised a bony hand. “I have to go.”

“It's okay,” Chel replied.

As Elayne left to join the skeleton, she did not feel so sure.

 

18

The day's end came slowly and too soon at once. Temoc lost count of the shift and retrenchment of battle lines within the tent, as parties on each side surged toward common purpose only to retreat once more to platitudes. He was used to this sort of thing, from parishioners' feuds and the arguments that sprouted like crabgrass wherever two priests met. But at a mediation table he'd hoped for statements of fact, and compromises made on the basis of those facts. He had not realized facts themselves could be ideological.

Tan Batac claimed updating the wards would require allowing the sale of Skittersill property on the open market. Otherwise, the land would remain undervalued, uninsurable. Kapania offered counter-examples: former temple property made public, Iskari palaces converted to colleges and museums. These institutions were obviously insured. But (Kopil interrupting now) they were not insured at a fair price by free men. Their maintenance required constant divine intervention. Iskar, of course, still had its gods. And so it went. Examples from Alt Selene and Shikaw and Oxulhat and the Northern Gleb set against others from Camlaan and Telomere and the Shining Empire. The very definition of ownership under the Craft required that owned property be sellable—but that definition had been first codified a few centuries back, after the founding of Dresediel Lex.

The luminous ellipse their tent's oculus cast crept off the table, glinted against the Major's gauntlets, climbed the wall, and disappeared. Sunset turned the visible sky to a judging bloodshot eyeball.

“If I hear you correctly,” said the King in Red, “you are not interested in the benefits this project offers, which by my count include jobs, increased property value, and improved safety as a result of modern construction and modern wards. But I do not understand how this could possibly be the case. Do you prefer the Skittersill poor, unemployed, downtrodden, and decaying?”

Bill Kemal rolled his knuckles under his chin. “We,” he began, more to hold his place against the other commissioners than because he knew what he was about to say, “want to help our community. That's all everyone on my side has been saying. I think you're focusing so much on the ‘help' that you miss the ‘our' in front of community.”

“Explain.”

“I.” Again the placeholder. “Am not sure I can put it clearer. We all live here. We've built lives in the Skittersill. This deal you propose might improve a bunch of numbers, all those values and figures and things. But if it destroys the community, those numbers don't matter. Think of it like this, right?” The sparks of the King in Red's eyes blinked off and on again as the skeleton tried to parse that sentence. Bill did not seem bothered—Temoc believed he would have said “bugged”—by that blank stare. “You have a spider. A normal one, little house spider, not like those big guys down in the Stonewood. It strings its web in a corner of your house and it looks all weird, misshapen and baggy, broken threads, and you think, poor guy, you should help him out. So one day you replace his web with a better one made of wire: sturdy, tight, strong. You think, awesome, little spider guy's really going to like this new web. But you don't see him around anymore. Because the things you thought were important about his web weren't the things he thought were important. Or she. The wire isn't sticky like the web, you didn't get the shape right, the spider can't fix the wire on its own if something bad happens. Maybe he's a sheet web spider, used those loose strands of silk to catch bugs—only you don't have any loose strands in the web you made, because you didn't think they were important. Like that.”

“By your logic we should never attempt to improve on nature.”

“No, man, that's not the point. Say you went down there to build your new web, and the spider guy looked up at you and said, ‘Hey, don't do that, it doesn't work that way.' Do you listen to him, or do you wave him off and go ahead with the wire?”

“I contact the Hidden Schools to report the discovery of a previously unknown diminutive species of talking spider.”

“Yeah, well. After that, I mean.”

“Perhaps there are things I could do to improve the spider's conditions that the spider himself, or herself, has not considered. Options not open to the spider, as it lacks my power.”

“Sure. But you don't know whether any of those will really help unless you get to know the spider.”

The King in Red leaned back in his chair, and tapped his forefinger against his jaw. Bone rasped bone. The skeleton did not speak, but the texture and weight of the silence did not let anyone else interrupt. The sky watched. Temoc had read tales of ice-locked Skeldic ships back in the ages of polar expedition: the ice's first crack signalled coming change, freedom or death. And always there came a pause after, as frostbitten sailors waited to learn which.

Better to end at a moment of awkward possibility. Preserve the seed, and hope it flowers overnight.

“On that note,” Temoc said, “shall we adjourn? Think on what's been said here today, and how we can move forward?”

Tan Batac did not speak, nor did the King in Red. Ms. Kevarian took up the slack. “Good idea. We've intruded on your hospitality long enough. Let's pick up the arachnid theme tomorrow.”

And so they left. Chel ordered the red-arms to make a path for the King in Red, Ms. Kevarian, Tan Batac, and their Wardens. As the crowd parted, Ms. Kevarian turned to Temoc. “Progress.” She'd found a new broadsheet somewhere: printed this afternoon, with an engraving of the King in Red's face over Chakal Square. “Committee Meets with Despot.” “Provided we can hold the front.”

“I hoped the broadsheets would respect our work. Maybe Chel's people can stop them at the distribution level.”

“Would that help?”

He let out a breath he did not realize he had been holding. “Not likely.”

“Get some rest, Temoc.”

“You, too.”

“I don't need it as much.”

“Because you're a half-undead sorcerer?”

“Because I'm not leading a revolution.” The path opened, and the Wardens gathered, the tall Lieutenant at their fore. “See you tomorrow morning.”

He watched the King in Red's party leave, and the crowd watched, too—his people, grown so vast. In the beginning, he knew every name. Who were these newcomers? What did they want? If—when—the committee reached some compromise, would they disperse? Or, like magic knives in old tales, would they demand blood before they slept?

The Major caught up with him at the water tent, and waited while Temoc drained a tall tin cup of lukewarm water, cut with lemon to disguise its aftertaste. Temoc poured a second cup, drained that too, and poured a third before acknowledging the Major. “I'm glad you restrained yourself from killing Tan Batac. At least Bel gave him a taste of his own medicine.”

“Never anger teachers,” the Major said. He took Temoc's arm and guided him away from the onlookers at the water tent. “Will you return home tonight?”

“I need to remember what we are fighting for.”

“We are not fighting yet,” the Major said. “But we may be soon. And I do not think you should go. Strong forces stand against Chakal Square. Confronting them, full of anger and commitment, and yet not fighting, requires will. The King in Red almost broke that will this morning. He is not stupid. He wanted a riot, an excuse to call his butchers to their business.”

“You imagine conspiracy,” Temoc said, “where foolishness suffices. The King in Red has spent so long in boardrooms he has forgotten how to speak to people. I dislike him. He destroys homes and lives and civilizations in the name of progress toward some bloodless future in which we are no different from the skazzerai that spin webs between the stars. But he is not such a monster as to do what you claim.”

“Either he meant to start a riot this morning, or he did not—either he is foolish, or clever. Either way,” the Major said, “we need you. Stay.”

Sunset seared the sky. The Major's armor caught and held its light.

“Without my family, none of this has meaning.”

“These people are your family.”

“I have to go,” he said. “I will be late for evening service.”

Temoc left the Major beside the water tent, aflame with the dying day.

The crowd pressed so thick around the grass mats Temoc could not reach his altar. An old woman sat on the shoulders of a tall, stooped man. A round-bellied dockworker shaded his eyes with his hands. Three kids jumped, one after the other, to look. All sought Temoc and none saw him, none would even step aside until Chel shoved and shouted, “Let Temoc through!”

They turned then. Drew back. Knelt.

He wanted to run. So many eyes weighed upon him. No man could bear so much hope alone. Master Alaptan, whose crown bowed his long and narrow neck, had warned young Temoc about the eyes, their weight. This was why priests wore raiment, this was the reason for the flowers, the scars, the knife and altar and the beaded skirt: so you could stand beneath such pressure without shattering.

When he was young, he'd thought the old man had meant the weight of divine power, of the people's hunger for corn and thirst for rain. But another thirst remained when all those needs were met.

Temoc was the last Eagle Knight. He had been trained from childhood by his father and his many uncles of the priesthood. He charted a faithful path in a world that rejected faith. Only for this reason could he bear the weight of those eyes and stride toward the altar. Only for this reason could he chant the old songs before this throng. Only for this reason could he bind a sacrifice to the altar and raise his knife and feel faith flood him as he called the gods to sup on unshed blood, feel bliss so sweet he understood at last the addicts who wept before him saying, Father, if you do it once you'll do it again.

And only for this reason could he leave and walk alone through the crowd past the red-arms' cordon and the Wardens'. Walk, rejecting cabs and carriages, deeper into the Skittersill. Turn onto the first side street, the second. Enter the gates of his house. Meet his wife at the door. Hug her close, kiss her deeply.

Only for this reason could he forget.

 

19

Tay hid the broadsheets beneath his jacket, and only set them down when no one was looking. That was the deal. He paused beside a tent circle and glanced around, saw students and other red-arms and a family gathered by a gas stove, no one he knew. He knelt fast, tugged broadsheets out of his jacket, and left them on the stone, headline facing up. “Committee Meets with Despot.”

He straightened faster than he'd knelt. Five hundred sheets they gave him, and five hundred sheets were hard to hide. He looked like he'd gained twenty pounds, and the paper padding made the jacket even hotter than usual.

Two hundred sheets out so far. Another half and he'd be done. Late to dinner, but he'd eat fast and make his shift no problem.

He turned the corner and almost ran into Chel.

She did not look happy.

“Hey,” he said, too quickly. “Thought you'd be at dinner.”

“I was, but you weren't. What's up?”

“Nothing.” Banjo music twanged a few tents over. Always music in this camp at night, and most of it he didn't know. He sweated, though not from nerves. This heat, that's all, the heat and the jacket. “Went for a walk.”

“You know people around here?”

“Yeah.” He hunched over to hide the bulge in his jacket. If he took his hands out of his pockets the papers would slip, so he pointed with his chin instead. “You know Old Cipher? His kids got a tent over that way. Mending clothes and stuff. I dropped in, said hello.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart.” She drew close to him, beautiful as always and her eyes clever. One hand circled around his back, another touched his chest—and the papers, under the jacket. “What's this?”

“Nothing.” He tried to back up but there wasn't any way to go without taking her with him. She yanked the jacket open. Snaps popped like knuckles, and the sweat-sogged broadsheets fanned out from within. She pulled one free—ripped the sheet in half, but enough remained for her to read. “Meets with Despot.”

“Tay,” she said. “Qet's cock. The hells are you doing?”

“I can explain.”

“You see what's written here? Did you read this thing?” She snapped the flimsy gray paper in his face like a whip: accusations of treachery. Movement in danger.

“I don't like it, just pass it out.”

“Which makes it so much better.” The air above her rippled like the air above pavement on a hot day. Or else there was something in his eyes.

“We read the sheets before we came here.”

“We read the sheets before they turned mean. They don't like Temoc, or the Committee, or you, or me, or the red-arms. They want people riled up. They want fights. Do you?”