Last First Snow (25 page)

Long after he should have turned away, he came upon the fight. Wardens, inch-high black silhouettes at this distance, manned a wall of sandbags at the end of the road. Cries rose beyond the barricade. A red-banded arm crested the wall, and the first rioter lurched over.

The kid was young, clad in browns and blues save for that red band. He slipped the dismount, fell hard to the street, and as he tried to stand a Warden beat him down again. A swarm of red-arms followed the kid, rained on the Wardens from behind. The red-arms fought bravely but not well, and with merely human strength. The Wardens seemed frantic, angry: beat cops, out of their element.

They were strong, though. A woman—Temoc guessed she was a woman from the long hair—ran at a Warden, who kneed her hard in the ribs. A burly man tried to lift a Warden in a bear hug, but the Warden lifted him instead, and threw him down. Some red-arms fell and did not rise again. Dots of white and red stained clothing: blood and compound fractures, broken bones jutting from torn skin.

Temoc's scars itched. Gods growled half-thoughts and broken sentences in the caverns of his mind. For the fallen. Against all enemies. Unceasing and eternal. In defense of the weak. In service of the holy.

He could help. Twenty Wardens might be a stretch, but he could manage. Strike from behind without warning, hit the commander first and move through their ranks as a whirlwind. Chant the blood chants; his enemies' pain would feed the gods. As each Warden fell, Temoc would grow stronger—and with the red-arms at his back he could roll on to Chakal Square, to his destiny. They would cry the gods' names and the heavens would open. The demon wind would break and rain would wash his shriven city.

What then for Mina? What then for Caleb?

He watched the fight.

The Warden commander signaled retreat. The red-arms laughed when the Wardens fled. Foolish. Wardens unhooked slender cylinders from their belts and threw them underhanded. One bounced off the cobblestones, and a second.

Then came the noise.

A god cleared his throat. A goddess screamed. Metal horses galloped through a steel jungle. An enormous insect chewed through a fat man's gut. Temoc clapped his hands to his ears. The Wardens' masks protected them, but when the sound faded the red-arms lay writhing on the street. Blood leaked from noses and ears. A woman retched on a sidewalk. Long white cracks marred a Muerte Coffee window halfway up the block. From this distance Temoc could not hear the people moan.

He left them fallen, and walked to the store, where he bought vegetables, rice, beans, and two pounds of chicken at eight thaums a pound—demand, the butcher said with a shrug, what you gonna do. Eggs, tortillas. Tequila. Newspaper.

Mina was waiting for him when he came home. She sat in the courtyard with a cup of coffee and yesterday's news spread on her lap.

He should have said something about the barricade, about the noise, about the chicken. He didn't.

 

41

“You mean to tell me,” said the King in Red as he paced the war room under the glow of ghostlights and centipede screens, “that with twenty-four hours and practically infinite resources we haven't been able to find a handful of hostages?”

Elayne sat back in her chair and watched. She'd talked her way into the war room without a fight, but getting Kopil's attention was another matter. The Deathless King had not stopped grilling his Wardens since her arrival. How he expected them to get anything done while he asked so many questions, she did not know.

She wondered if it would be ethical to bill for this time.

The room smelled of sparks, sweat, and bone. Captain Chimalli ran his fingers over the map of Chakal Square. In the last hour crayon and colored pencil had crowded out the printed lines. Soon they'd need a new map; they'd gone through three already. In the basement of the squat building that served as Warden headquarters, a print shop churned out charts by the hour, engravers and cartographers on overtime pay. Gallons of acid spilled onto lead plates. Printing presses hammered ink onto paper, fixing scouts' reports into reality. “Since our first attack almost captured the Major, the Chakal Square crowd's grown wary. The hostages are held in the central camp.” He waved his hand over a dozen tents, the fountain, and the mat chapel. “None of our people know where. Scrying yields limited results.”

“What about the captives we've taken?”

“They refuse to talk.”

“Don't you have gentlemen who specialize in that sort of thing?”

“Are you asking me to torture these people?”

Kopil waved vaguely beside the hole where his ear once was, as if a gnat buzzed there.

“My men might object.”

“Don't use those men.”

“The captives' information may be out-of-date already. And every time we send Wardens in on a snatch-and-grab, there's more risk the crowd will seize one of our guys. At the moment they're scared of us. What happens if that changes?”

“Then it changes.”

“Which will encourage aggressive factions in Chakal Square, leading to more loss of life on both sides. Sir, we don't know what they plan to do with the hostages. They've made no ransom demands. Maybe they don't want to be seen as terrorists.”

“Bastards hold my city hostage, and we're wasting time. Do you understand how much this siege costs, Captain? I do. And so does the Chamber of Commerce, whose jackals gnaw at my heels even as we speak. What's happened with Temoc?”

“He's remained with his family. Playing the model father. We have him under observation, not so close he'd notice.”

“Without him, Chakal Square's defenseless against Craft, or close to it. Maybe we're thinking too small.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Stun the Square. Arrest everyone. Sort the hostages out from the guilty.”

“We don't have the jail space for so many.”

“Send them to prison, then.”

“Again, where? Our prisons are twenty percent above max occupancy.”

Kopil's hand balled into a fist.

“Your Majesty,” Elayne said before Kopil could continue. “A word, please. Outside?”

Kopil wheeled on her, and she bore his wrath without blinking. His skeletal menace might cow theists and underlings, but she was neither. “Captain,” he said, at last. “When I return, give me plans. Outside the box, inside the box, burn the box, I don't care. I want Chakal Square back, and this movement broken. Everything else is negotiable.”

Chimalli nodded. Elayne wondered if the captain had seen Dr. Venkat since his letter, and what he would have said behind closed doors about Kopil's commands.

The King in Red set his coffee down and swept from the room. Elayne followed. The doors shut behind them.

 

42

They rode the lift in silence to the roof, which was broad and flat and mounded with feathered serpents. Couatl slept here, coiled. Scaled sides swelled and shrank with their breath. A tail-tip twitched. Wings shivered. Wardens paced among the sleepers, stroked their sides, soothed them.

“Do they dream?” Elayne asked.

“Animal dreams,” the King in Red replied. “Flight and food. Hunting.”

“Is that all?” A crocodilian head peeked out of a ten-foot-tall coil. Its mouth could have swallowed her whole.

“Of what else should they dream?”

“They belonged to the gods, before the Wars.”

“Yes.”

“Do they remember them?”

“I don't think so.”

They reached the low wall at the roof's edge. The King in Red climbed up and offered her a hand, which she accepted though she didn't need his help.

Behind them, to the north, stood the Sansilva pyramids where the gods had died. Here, downtown, most of the buildings were modern, with slanted walls and bas-relief flourishes to evoke old Quechal architecture. Liberation laid waste to these streets forty years ago—they'd been lined with civilian structures of plaster and wood, less durable than sandstone and obsidian temples. Conquerors built the modern city on the wreckage.

They faced south, toward the Skittersill. If Elayne craned her neck she could see the district's houses: low and street-mazed with adobe walls and brightly painted wood. “You wanted to ask me something,” Kopil said.

“End this. Drop the barriers. Let everyone go home.”

“If only it were that easy.” He stepped out onto emptiness. “Walk with me.”

She did, and found firm footing on the expanse. The ground waited twelve stories down. She triggered a few levitation glyphs, minimum power.

“Don't you trust me?” he asked.

“Trust,” she replied, “but verify.”

They walked south, moving faster than their pace. Downtown streets latticed beneath them, brilliant lines and luminous intersections. The King in Red took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped it down, removed one, gripped the filter between his teeth, and offered her the pack.

“No thanks. I'm trying to quit.”

“Good idea,” he said. “These things will kill you.” He slid the pack into his pocket, and lit his cigarette with a flick of his fingers. “I should know.”

“Was that what did it in the end? Cancer?”

He exhaled a thin line of smoke. “Damn, I should do this more.” She didn't ask what he meant. “I went in for a checkup when I was, I barely even remember. Sixty maybe? This would have been before Belladonna transferred you to the DL office.”

“That was 'sixty-three.”

“A couple years before that. I went in with a cough, bit of a rattle in the chest. Joint pain. There was a growth in the lung. They could have taken it out, even then. Would have hurt, a lot, but they could have done it. I figured, why bother? I'd been working on premortem exercises for a few years at that point. I won't say I expected it—back then we didn't know as much about these things as we know now.” He gestured to the cigarette. “But you reach a certain age and you take precautions.”

“A certain age,” she echoed.

“I hope I don't offend. You were, what, twenty at Liberation?”

“Seventeen.”

“So you know what I'm talking about. The long slow night draws near. Looks like you've lived cleaner than I did. I was a mess, after the Wars. Twenty-two-hour days. We rebuilt this city with our bare hands, mortgaged our souls a hundred times over, a thousand, to pull Dresediel Lex out of the shadows. My life was work. No time for love, for the gym, for long walks on the beach or any of the other things people who don't know what it means to give yourself to a cause say we should do with our time. Maybe they aren't wrong. By sixty I carried a lot of extra weight and a vicious temper. I hadn't slept eight unbroken hours in a decade. So when the doctor told me what was growing in my lung I wasted a week on self-pity, then said what the hells, let's get this over with. I wasn't using the body for anything important. Took a couple months' vacation, threw myself into premortem prep, wrestled a dragon for the secret of eternal life, hid my death in a needle in an egg in a chicken in a trunk on an island in an ocean in a safe-deposit box down at First Lexican Bank, then went for the final buff-and-wax. And now I can smoke the occasional cigarette with impunity. I recommend early transfer to anyone who asks. Reduces the trauma.”

“Flesh has treated me well so far. I'll keep it as long as it's mine to keep.”

“Ever the romantic. That's the bane of your generation, I think, the youngsters. Though I'll grant—your body doesn't seem to have betrayed you as ferociously as mine.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I think.” And, after a few minutes' silent walk: “You do realize you're bringing us toward Chakal Square.”

“Really? I thought you were.”

“I'm following you.”

“Then who's driving this thing?”

She closed her eyes, raised wards, and woke her glyphs before she heard his low stone-grinding chuckle.

“You are an infuriating individual.”

“I had you for a second,” he said.

“You realize I was about to break your Craft, send us tumbling to our demise.”

“Who's we? You're the one still made of meat. And anyway, we'd have thought of something before we hit the ground. Now. You were telling me to give up.”

“I didn't mean you should give up, just that you should end this. Drop the barriers. Offer amnesty. Apologize. At the very least punish Zoh for what he did.”

“Show weakness, you mean.”

“It's not weakness—they know they can't beat you. Why not choose mercy?”

“Because.” They stopped. Chakal Square lay a hundred feet below and a quarter-mile distant. Smoke drifted up from bonfire constellations, and the space between the fires surged with people. Any lower and Elayne could have heard their songs and prayers, lamentations and drunken speeches. At this height the voices faded into silence and wind. The people were just currents in the dark.

“Because,” she echoed.

“Because we live off dividends of fear,” he said at last. “This is a city of millions—Quechal and foreign, rich and poor, strong and weak. We are all races, and none. We are human, and not. We are patchwork, and like any patchwork, our seams are our weakest point.”

“Alt Coulumb could say as much. Or Alt Selene.”

“Alt Coulumb's god binds its people together; Alt Selene has its death cults and warring spirits, both solutions of a kind. We thought our new order's enemies would be too scared to fight, and for decades they were. The memory of Liberation was enough. We beat the gods, that was the line—and if you don't get on board, we'll beat you, too. But these people.” She heard scorn in that word, and a hint of wonder. “They don't remember Liberation. They think the Wardens are my strength, rather than symbols of that strength, and the longer this siege lasts the more they lose their fear. If dockworkers and fanatics can stand against me in Chakal Square, why not the migrants of Stonewood? Why not the settlers of Fisherman's Vale? Why not the Midland farmers, who already resent us for taking their water? Why shouldn't the crime families get in on the deal as well? If Tan Batac and his people saw an opportunity to rebel, they would.”