Last First Snow (23 page)

Elayne accepted the letter. “How many?”

Chimalli ground his thoughts between his teeth, oscillating from over- to underbite. “As many as she can spare.” He saluted, said, “Ma'am,” and turned and left.

How old was he? Early forties, perhaps. She remembered that age. You thought you understood the world, and the limits of your understanding. You thought the worst was over.

She flew north, to Grace and Mercy Hospital.

Dr. Venkat was a round Dhisthran woman about Chimalli's age, who Elayne found in an observation theater that smelled of alcohol, fake mint, and faker lavender. Venkat walked a pen through her fingers. The operating room below was painfully white. For all the times Elayne had wanted to strangle Tan Batac, or flay him slowly, she didn't know how to feel when she saw him butterfly-pinned and bloody on the table. “Will he pull through?”

Pursed lips. A nod.

“Soon?”

“No.”

The voice took her by surprise: an alto soft enough to soothe burns. “Can I talk to him?”

Venkat shook her head.

“He might have seen who tried to kill him. We need anything he can give us.”

“If we wake him before he's ready, he might never wake again.”

“I could walk into his dreams.”

“Ms. Kevarian,” the doctor said. “The Wardens who brought Batac said you applied first aid.”

She nodded.

“You stopped the bleeding, but your Craft drained his soul. There was hardly any apperception left for me to save by the time he got here.”

“I did what I had to.”

“And thanks to you, he survived. Barely. We have drugs to keep him under, drugs to help him dream. Exposure to starlight will help his soul regrow. But if you shove around in his mind before he's ready, you might break him so badly that the person who wakes up won't match the one who went to sleep. Which is why we don't usually let necromancers operate on living patients.”

“I saved his life.” Even to Elayne that sounded plaintive.

“I'm sure his family is grateful.”

She resisted the urge to swear. “I have a letter for you, from Captain Chimalli.”

The woman's eyes flicked away from the operation. The pen stopped its revolutions, rested on the railing. Neither of them spoke.

Elayne hadn't opened the letter, or read it. She'd guessed. The captain had little time to write and seal a note. There were few messages a man in uniform might keep on his person, just in case—and a few people to whom he might address them. He wasn't related to Venkat. Lovers, then, or close friends.

She didn't like using such leverage, but she needed every lever she could pull.

Venkat slid the pen into her pocket. “Give me your card. I'll tell you when he wakes.”

“As soon as. Please.”

Venkat nodded. Elayne passed her the card with the letter. “Thank you.”

Elayne was still human enough to give the other woman space, to let her stand and watch the blood and read the letter with her hand clenched around the railing. Elayne was still human enough to leave.

A small suited man stumbled into her by the lift. She recovered her footing, and helped him up. He wore pince-nez glasses, which she hadn't seen anyone but skeletons wear since the thirties, and them only because skulls lacked ears. The combination of spectacle-enlarged eyes, narrow shoulders, and forward-sloping face made the man resemble an officious ferret. “Excuse me. Do you know where I might find Tan Batac? I understand he was admitted here.”

Assassin, perhaps? Elayne closed her eyes and examined him as a Craftswoman: no glyphwork, little Craft, soul leveraged with a few bad loans, folded contracts in his briefcase. No threat.

“I'm a business associate,” he explained. “Jim Purcell, from Aberforth and Duncan. I need to review some specifics for a deal, get a signature.”

“You'll be a long time waiting.”

“It really is important.”

“Talk to Dr. Venkat in the observation theater. Give her a few minutes, first.”

The man blinked at her through his pince-nez, but at last he said, “Okay.”

“Good luck.” Elayne left him, and left Grace, too.

 

36

At sundown Chel stormed the RKC offices on the Square's eastern edge. She led the charge with Tay by her side, but it was Zip who threw a trash can through the building's front window. Glass showered onto the tile floor and glittered like cutting frost.

They ran through the empty foyer past a reception desk, froth on a human wave. If they stopped running they'd be trampled by those behind, ground into the glass. Not that Chel wanted to stop. Night after night standing guard, pacing through the camp, all that over in an afternoon. She ran, and offices broke behind her.

The charge spent itself down side passages and up stairs. Wood splintered and drywall burst and shattered pipes sprayed precious water onto bathroom floors. The Major's people did most of the damage, hunting trophies, stripping the office accoutrements with which the King in Red's contractors defaced this ancient temple. Holes in drywall bared carved stone beneath.

Chel ran through galleries and past open workspaces, and her red-arms followed.

“I don't see the door,” Tay shouted.

“It's here.” She was barely breathing hard. “The Kemals said—There.” Left through the break room to the office cafeteria, windowless and ghostlit green, past empty tables into an unlit kitchen. Pans and colanders hung from the ceiling, and knives on the wall. She smelled disinfectant and char, dish soap and grease. Behind the kitchen they found the stockroom, piled with boxed onions and potatoes. A steel door took up most of the wall. It closed down, like the door to a garage.

Tay tried the latch first. “Locked.”

Chel slipped a sharp-toothed key from her jacket pocket. “The Kemals used to cater here.” The key fit, and the lock popped open. The door drifted up. A sliver of sunset shimmered on the stockroom floor like molten gold.

“What now?” Zip asked. “We run for the docks?”

“No. We don't know how long this siege will last, and the Kemals don't have enough food for the camp. They can bring supplies through here.”

“The Wardens will catch on.”

“Which is why we have to be careful.” She addressed the whole room of red-arms. “You hold this storeroom. If anyone goes out that door, we'll tip the Wardens off before we're ready. If we're smart and wait 'til sundown, we can get a few supply runs through before anyone notices. If we're dumb, we get nothing. Got it?” Nods all around. “I'll tell the Kemals.”

“I'll come with you,” Tay said, and they left together.

He held himself tense until they reached the cube farm. Then he laughed. “I thought for sure everyone would run right out those doors.”

“That'll come later.”

“Why not now? You saw those witch-walls up on Crow. The Wardens are angry. This won't end well.”

“We stay because we can help people. Don't worry. I'll run when time comes.”

“When's that?”

From the front hall, she heard screams.

“Now,” she said.

*   *   *

Six men and two women knelt on broken tiles—three Quechal, five pale-skinned Old-Worlder types, Camlaander or Iskari blood, Chel couldn't tell the difference. They were desk jobbers: faces and hands soft, smooth. They wore office clothes, creased wools and ironed cotton, ties and jackets, and every one had showered this morning. Most of the men carried a luxury of extra weight in their hips and stomachs and jowls. One was gym-rat buff—his nose was broken and leaked blood, and he pressed a hand to probably broken ribs. Another man was crying.

The Major's troops stood behind them, armed with lengths of pipe. The Major paced in front of the hostages, and pondered each in turn. He'd made it halfway down the line.

“For gods' sake, Stan,” said the woman kneeling beside the crying man. Her back was straight, and her cheek bore a fresh bruise.

A circle of red-arms and protesters watched the Major, his men, and the captives. Chel abandoned Tay to shove through. She shouldered aside a larger man, and stormed to the Major. “Let them go.”

He turned slowly. His helmet bore the imprint of a fist. Behind the mask, his eyes shone with fervor. Temoc had looked like this during the sacrifice. “Red King Consolidated told employees at this office to stay home. It seems these did not receive the memo.”

The man with the broken nose spat blood onto the glass; one of the Major's troops kicked him in the back.

“You want them as a bargaining chip.”

“Lives for lives. We return these innocents, and the King in Red sends us the murdering Warden for punishment.”

“Don't do this.”

“Why not?”

Gods. Temoc asked her to keep the camp together. How could she do that? She dropped her voice, but the room was quiet, and everyone heard. “You hold these folk for ransom and the papers will make us out to be killers. We need sympathy more than leverage. We need food.” Which was as close as she could come in front of an audience to saying: you do this and the Kemals won't work with you anymore. And they're the ones with the corn. To put it more bluntly would force the Major's hand. She'd fought enough dockside rats to know you never cornered one. “Our fight's with the King in Red, not his drones.”

The crowd was an even mix of her people and his. His troops were armed and armored, but the fight wouldn't be clean, or easy, and he couldn't risk losing.

She hoped.

“We will take them,” he said, “to the camp. The Commission will decide what to do.”

She knew how that would go: back-and-forth, argument, sideline sniping, balance of power, nobody willing to agree. The captives would be safe, for now.

But she couldn't smile, couldn't make off like she'd won—or let it seem she'd lost, either, which would disappoint her supporters in the crowd.

Gods, was this how Temoc felt all the time?

“Let's go,” she said.

 

37

A city-sized web of light hung between Elayne and the abyss. The web's strands were thicker than mountains, its bonds firm as those at an atom's heart. She scourged the web with Craft. She sliced its strands with fine logical blades, burned them with fury and frustration, lashed them with waves of flame and bound them in paradox.

The web endured. From this side, at least, it was unbreakable.

She drifted through interstices the size of city blocks, into the below. Great and terrible beings moved around her, like the blind fish that swam at the ocean floor. She ignored them, and struck the web from underneath. If she—one woman, alone—could force the slightest flaw in this edifice, could sever its most slender strand, it would never endure a full-on attack. A demonic incursion would bring more might to bear than even Elayne could manage.

She raised both hands. Talons of shadow boiled up from the deeps, hooked the web, and pulled down. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her arms shook with effort. The web twisted and stretched, but did not break.

“Are you satisfied?”

She did not acknowledge Judge Cafal's presence, or her question, at first. Slowly, methodically, she tested other angles of attack, with no more success.

At last, defeated by her own creation, she rose through the black. A demon caught her around the ankle with a barbed-wire tongue and tried to pull her down into its gaping maw. She killed it, tore the tongue from her leg, and joined the judge in the vasty heavens.

Cafal here looked no different from Cafal in the fleshy world. Seeming and soul in perfect accord: Elayne respected that.

“Your honor. I thought you would be asleep.”

“I can't sleep,” she said. “A hazard of the profession. Given the Skittersill's troubles, I thought I might check your new wards. I did not expect to find you trying to destroy them.”

“Testing,” she corrected. “A signed contract binds all parties, whatever their feelings after the fact. The Skittersill riot should not damage the wards. But theory and practice seldom see eye-to-eye.”

Cafal laughed. “Don't I know it. You found the wards secure, of course.”

“Yes.”

“Then why so glum?”

“I'm not,” she said.

“You wrought well, counselor. You knew that. You're not here because you're afraid you missed a weakness. You're here because you hope you did.”

She considered lying, or playing dumb, and decided both tactics were beneath her. “We can't stop violence in Chakal Square. Conflict is self-sustaining: when attacked, Wardens respond with force. The crowd meets that force with force, and so on. We need to dampen this resonance. We have something they want: the Warden Zoh. But they have nothing we desire, and so the King in Red does not need to listen to them. If the wards were flawed, we would have to resume negotiations.”

“You are dangerously close to violating your fiduciary duty.”

“My client's current course of action is detrimental to his long-term interests. I am more faithful to my client than he is to himself.”

“That kind of faith is beyond your remit. The King in Red is in good standing with the Courts. The Skittersill ward remains strong, as you see. You built the thing, and even you can't break it.”

“We have to stop the fighting,” she said.

The judge raised one eyebrow. “Do we?”

The answer seemed so obvious that Elayne checked herself before speaking, as if she were back in a Hidden Schools classroom. “I see.”

“The King in Red and his people have a civil disagreement. The court has no place in this.”

“You wouldn't say that if you had seen what's happening in the Square.”

“Perhaps not,” Cafal said. “But the Craft can only do so much.”

“Is that why we fought, your honor? To let people die needlessly because the Craft can only do so much?”