Last First Snow (35 page)

“Not more of those things?”

“Assassin golems,” she said. “Mechanical forms animated by bound demons. Expensive. We don't like to give demons a mandate to kill—they stretch the limits they're given. Hard to trace, but hard to replace, too. I don't think you'll see more of them. Anyway, this is as safe as you're likely to be in Dresediel Lex, outside of the King in Red's care.”

“I won't go to him.”

“I did not suggest it.”

“He tried to kill us.”

“Golemetry isn't his style. He likes a personal touch. And what would he gain by killing you?”

“He could get to my husband.”

“Which would just make Temoc angry. Trust me, the King in Red was happy to let him wait out the siege in your house. He wanted you and your boy safe. When he finds out about this, some Wardens will lose their masks.”

“Does that make it better?”

She checked herself. “No.”

“I'm tired,” she said.

Not for the first time Elayne wished there was a way to peer inside another mind without breaking the mind in question. Mina had seen Temoc go back to war, seen his face before he ran. So much depended on Temoc now—where he was, what he had done. She wanted to grill Mina until she wept.

“Would you like more coffee?”

“No,” Mina said. “A pillow would be nice. And a blanket. It's cold in here.”

Elayne had not noticed. “I'll find one. Sleep well.”

No response.

She left, and spent a quarter-hour searching for a nurse who didn't look too busy to interrupt. As the clock ticked toward midnight, she decided that looking too busy to interrupt was likely a survival trait for nurses.

She returned to the station with the coffeepot, in hope someone there could point her to the linen closet. A graying man sat behind the desk, scratching incomprehensible words into the blanks of equally incomprehensible forms. She cleared her throat.

“Excuse me?”

Neither Elayne nor the nurse had spoken. The new voice, from behind, belonged to a sharp woman in a charcoal suit, who stood at rigid attention. The wheels of Elayne's mind turned slowly. “I know you.”

The woman nodded. “Yes, ma'am. I work for Red King Consolidated.”

“Of course. From the meeting. The woman with the head for numbers.”

“Yes, ma'am.” She produced a thin piece of folded vellum sealed in red wax with a star-eyed skull.

“You're a courier?”

“The boss wanted this delivered to you in person.”

“Thank you.” Elayne opened the seal with a narrowing of her eyes, and read the message there.

Read it again, and felt the courier watching.

The assault failed. They turned to human sacrifice. Tomorrow, we burn them out. Come see. Come help.

The signature, a skull in red ink or human blood.

“Thank you,” she said. “You can go. I'm sorry he sent you. It's late to run errands.”

“What reply should I bring him?”

“Did he ask for one?”

“No.”

“Nothing yet,” she said, folding the letter. “Nothing, now.”

Behind her eyes, the fire fell.

 

53

Three in the morning. Elayne couldn't sleep, and had given up pretending that she might. She wandered the hospital from room to bloody room. She noticed, eventually, that she still held the King in Red's letter, turning it over, brushing smooth vellum with her fingertips. She returned the letter to her breast pocket.

No more negotiations, no more clever strategies. Dawn would bring the end. This was how Kopil fought the Wars, too. Maneuvers to start, elegant traps, and when those failed, crushing force.

Mina slept in Caleb's room. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep. Dr. Venkat gave her something, in the end. She'd pushed three chairs together and lay across them, beneath the scratchy hospital blanket Elayne had found for her. Her head rested on a synthetic-fill pillow. Her hand lay beside her face, curled into a claw. As Elayne watched, the fingers smoothed, then clutched again, nails raking the seat cushion.

Caleb was not bleeding anymore. His eyes were still beneath closed lids. Too many drugs to dream.

Elayne left them to their rest.

She was not the only one awake. Nurses made rounds, and doctors too, steps quick, clipboards in hand, smelling of bad coffee. A nurse offered to call Elayne a cab, and she declined. Dr. Venkat did not so much walk the halls as blow through them like a storm, her scowl deepening as the night wore thin. Out of the corner of her eye Elayne saw the doctor dry-swallow two pills, which was none of her business. She was a shadow in a building that hated shadows.

She came, eventually, to the room where Tan Batac lay.

From the door she could not see his face, only the body swelling beneath stiff white sheets, fat fingers stripped of rings. A big man for his frame, but a small stone to cause such an avalanche. Even if he woke, healed, nothing would change. The burn would come, the people of Chakal Square would die. One man with a rifle, and everything breaks.

The miracle was not that one man's death could spark such a conflagration—the miracle was that for a while doom seemed escapable, that Chakal Square might have ended in peace if Tan Batac had not stood in the path of a bullet.

They would never know who tried to kill him. The assassin might have died already in the riots, in the Warden raids. If not, he'd be dead by tomorrow afternoon at least.

She stepped into the sickroom.

Batac's face was round as ever and red-cheeked. Machines ticked off his slow, sleeping pulse. His eyelashes were longer than she remembered. No movement behind those eyelids either, and no wonder—more drugs in his system than in Caleb's. This was the shape of his face without a soul to play puppetmaster. And yet his lips curled up in a slight soft smile.

“He looks peaceful, doesn't he?”

At the unexpected voice Elayne jerked around, raised hands wreathed in fire. The thin man in the black suit sat perfectly still, like a rabbit who'd seen the hunter. Wide eyes reflected her flame.

“I'm sorry.” A pink tongue darted between the thin man's lips and retreated without wetting them. “I should have spoken up, I thought you'd seen. I mean, I generally sort of blend into a room, and you looked so serious I didn't want to disturb.” His fingers twitched and tapped against his leather briefcase. “I'm sorry?” he tried again.

She put the fire away, and ran her thumbs down her lapels, re-ordering her mind. “Don't worry about it. I'm on edge. The last few days have been stressful.”

“I know,” he said. “That is, I don't mean to say I know what you're going through, wouldn't presume. Just, it's been hard for me, too.”

“You came to see Tan Batac that first day. Purcell, from Aberforth and Duncan.”

“Yes,” he said, and, “Jim,” with the inflection of a question. He extended his hand.

“Elayne.” He had the grip of a man who'd practiced his handshake with a coach. “Dr. Venkat didn't kick you out?”

“No. I mean, she wasn't happy about my wanting to stay. And they've been busy. But his family gave me a waiver, and I told her she wouldn't need to bother, I could take care of myself and I'm unobtrusive really.”

“I would say so.”

“I get that a lot. I'm sorry if I interrupted anything.”

“Nothing important,” she said, and lowered herself into a chair. “Fears and worries, that's all. That's the funny thing about history.”

“There's something funny about history?”

She laughed. “When I was a young woman, I thought myself an actor, someone who moved the world. And I was. But the older I grow, the more I feel like everything I thought I willed, I willed because of forces beyond my control. The closer I stand to the center of history's river, the more I'm swept in the current. In my youth, I broke gods, and my power has grown since. But power is time's tool, not mine.”

“I don't know much about that,” Purcell said. “People have told me what to do more or less my entire life, and people told them what to do in turn, and even the people who told all those what to do didn't seem like they had much choice.” He tapped the briefcase again, a double tattoo. “We do what we can.”

“Doesn't seem enough, does it?”

“No. But sometimes when the world's falling apart, the best you can do is sit in a sickroom and wait for your client to wake up so he can sign some papers.”

“Why are you here, Jim? I don't recognize Aberforth and Duncan.”

“We're not a Craft firm as such,” Purcell said. “We're an insurance Concern. Anything you want to protect, we'll protect it, for a price. We even have a subsidiary warding idol run out of the Skeld Archipelago, if you want to go a step further. As to why I'm here, well, I shouldn't talk about that. Sensitive times and such, you understand.”

“Maybe I could help,” she said. “I've done little enough the last few days.”

“I don't know what you could do, unless you can wake up Mr. Batac, and Dr. Venkat says nobody can do that except Mr. Batac himself.”

“You need his signature.”

“Basically,” he said. “Emergency modifications to an existing policy.”

“And your bosses are okay with you waiting in a sickroom for three days to get a signature? Must be a big policy.”

“Oh, yes,” he said.

“What is it? Batac's mansion?”

“Not quite,” he said.

“I represent him, you know,” Elayne said. “And the King in Red. If there's something he needs to know, tell me. Especially if it's urgent.”

“Well.” Purcell shifted in his chair.

“What are you insuring?”

“The Skittersill,” he said at last.

Grace and Mercy employed top-flight Craft to keep its air cool and its temperature even. A team of climatologists could travel from the kitchens to the roof without encountering a fractional fluctuation in temperature. That Craft must have been malfunctioning, because Elayne registered a drop of several degrees. “The Skittersill.”

Purcell smiled with an honest man's relief at sharing a secret kept too long. “Of course. One of the many roles of Mr. Batac's Citizens Coalition is to negotiate joint property insurance and protection for the group's Skittersill holdings. About seventy percent of local real estate around the Chakal Square region.”

Which she knew. Which she had known. Oh, gods. Five minutes ago she'd been talking about the river of history. Now she hovered overhead, seeing the pattern of its tributaries, their courses and channels dug to direct them. “You're here because of the agreement. The Chakal Square Accords.”

“Naturally. He contacted us on Firstday, with stipulations for the new protection and insurance contracts.” Five days ago. Before the riot. Before he raised the possibility of insurance requirements in conference. “More restrictive than usual, more expansive. The Chakal Square Accords void many provisions of our old coverage, you understand. Mr. Batac wanted to be sure there was no gap.”

No gap, or no appearance of a gap? “Surely someone else at the Citizens Coalition can sign for you.”

“It's pretty irregular. The coalition claims Batac has sole signing authority. Under the terms of the accord, it is possible Aberforth and Duncan could be liable for damages to the Skittersill during the lapse in coverage if we did not make our ‘full best effort,' I believe are the words, to secure Mr. Batac's signature. So, here I am.”

“During the lapse in coverage,” she repeated. “Which started when we signed the accords.”

“The accords void our existing coverage.” He nodded. “My bosses are likely glad he's asleep. My Concern is not eager to commit to such broad coverage under the current conditions. Just between us, I'm sure that if not for the best-effort provision, I would have been ordered home long ago. We're happier collecting Mr. Batac's new, higher premiums than covering so much damage, as I'm sure you understand. Just business. I haven't been down there, but I understand damages run in the thousands of souls already, not even counting the prevention and protection clauses.”

Tens of thousands, more like. And tomorrow, when the King in Red rained vengeance on the Skittersill, that figure would multiply, while Tan Batac lay here, smiling despite the hole in his gut.

The smile had not changed, but it seemed more sinister.

“Purcell.” She stood. “Follow me.”

“I have to stay here. Mr. Batac—”

“We'll have an orderly contact us if he wakes. I have a friend you need to meet. Maybe he can help with your problem.”

“It's late. Will this person even be awake?”

“He doesn't sleep, as such, anymore. Now. Come, or I'll drag you.”

Purcell glanced around the room, looking for some excuse to remain, or perhaps a handhold in case she made good on her threat. He found nothing. “My employers—”

“Can wait. We have a city to save.”

She walked fast for the elevator, tapped her foot as the numbers climbed, and when the doors rolled back pulled Purcell in after her and pressed the button for the roof. Hold on, Temoc, she thought, as if sheer force of will could send her words tumbling across space. Hold on.

On his bed in his empty room, Tan Batac kept smiling.

 

54

The people of Chakal Square slept, and gods walked through their dreams.

Temoc knelt before the altar, and listened.

By Bloodletter's Street, a boy armed with a nail-studded stick stood at his post and drank tequila from a brushed steel flask. Fire quickened in his throat, and down. “Don't hog,” said the man beside him—massive, tattoos peeking from his ragged shirtsleeve. “Pass it down.” The boy drank again, and thought of his sister, who had warned him against joining the Chakal Square protest, who said the family needed him, only death could come of standing against the King in Red. He finished the drink, taking more fire into his stomach. He had died tonight, almost: a shattered spar right through him, blood seeping from the wound. But then the Couatl turned back, and the skies opened, and the earth as well, and he heard a voice like his father's only bigger, older, deeper, words in a language he did not know but to which his body answered, calling him to rise, to stand, to serve. He was one wave in an ocean that had learned to speak. He passed the tequila, and the man beside him drank too, and when the man finished the light in his eyes was the same as the light in the boy's, and they were brothers.