“Perhaps.”
“So you’re not scared?”
“I am not.”
“Then why are you awake?”
Because, Temoc thought, fear and dread are not the same. Because to say I’m scared suggests that something has scared me, that I know the shape of the beast that chases me down dream corridors. That my fear has an object, and that object has a name, and this name is known or at least knowable to me. One cannot fear a dry hot wind, one cannot fear to lie in bed awake beside one’s sleeping wife, one cannot fear one’s child. To say I fear suggests that something makes me fear, and I have never yet encountered a thing I could not break with my bare hands.
And yet this boy watches me with my own eyes under my own brows above his mother’s cheeks, and when he questions me I reel. I am Temoc. Once a goddess set her palm upon my brow, once I slew a scorpion the size of a mountain, once I fought demons to a standstill on a bridge over a chasm as deep as death. I preach to those who stand against the King in Red. I am Temoc, father, and husband, priest, and I cannot be all those men at once. What father leaves his wife and child to seek war? What father sets aside his son for an ideal?
Temoc leaned across the table, and ruffled Caleb’s hair. The boy squinched up his face and pushed Temoc’s hand away. Wiry, lacking Temoc’s bulk—but still strong. Strong enough.
“I’m worried about you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I hope so,” Temoc said. He lifted the boy from the chair and embraced him. Caleb squirmed, then understood, and hugged his father back.
Outside, that dry, demonic wind blew on.
22
The next morning the sun rose. The tide rolled in. Airbuses drifted overhead. Stoves burned scrambled eggs, and cooks cursed and opened windows to let out smoke. Downtown highway traffic ran nose to bumper, slower even than usual due to rubbernecking near Chakal Square. An unlucky accountant’s carriage crashed into a fruit cart. Lemons rolled across pavement, squashed under hooves and wheels. Zest and spray mixed with sweat, horseflesh, hot wood, pavement, shit. The city groaned like a revenant new-woken on the slab, and shambled forth hungry for food it lacked a tongue to name.
In Chakal Square, the parties met. Elayne, nursing a skull-fracturing headache after last night’s adventure, strode down the red-arm’s cordon at the King in Red’s right hand. Tan Batac, to the skeleton’s other side, walked briskly—he must have slept well. He seemed to be the only one. Weakened by dawn, the hot wind still dried skin and robbed spit from open mouths. It even chased away the smog, leaving a sky that could not be called blue—pale, only, the color prophets gave death’s horse, with vague tones of orange and green and threatening thunder. The crowd did not mutter, did not growl. It watched.
There were no speeches. If Kopil had tried the voice-in-the-sky routine today, Temoc could not have calmed the people. They would have mobbed at once.
Temoc ushered them into the tent, and again they sat, and again the oculus began its slow progression—though today the sunlight ellipse seemed an accusing eye. Each side watched the other, exhausted and uncertain and at bay. They drank water and waited as the day forced itself alight.
No one was more surprised than Elayne when things began to move.
* * *
She asked the first question, yes, but she could not be held responsible for what happened next. “We left yesterday with Mr. Kemal’s spider,” she said. “And the dangers of miscommunication. Perhaps we could expand on that theme: have each side present the other’s position, as they see it, with as little emotion as possible.”
Temoc objected to the idea that one should set aside emotion when discussing homes and families. The Major refused to describe Tan Batac’s goals as anything less than apocalyptic. Elayne resigned herself to another day of shouted slogans and table-pounding, but few commissioners seemed to share the Major’s passion. Even Bel frowned as he railed about revolution. After the Major, each speaker took a calmer position, until Kapania Kemal summed up: “You want to tear down our home, and build a place where none of us can live.”
The King in Red’s laugh held little humor. “Change is inevitable. Even you commissioners are new to the Skittersill. The Kemals have a warrior’s clan name, ke, and Techita’s family were freeholding artisans before the Wars. Bel’s people have lived here since first settlement, but the very fact she calls you neighbors proves how much the Skittersill has changed. Hells, you’ve enlisted Temoc Almotil to your cause, and I remember when the priests of house Al came this far south only to choose sacrifices. So you’ll forgive me if your evocations of community and home sound rich. You want to protect yourselves from change, just like every conservative since the dawn of time. You’re on the losing side of history.”
Hal Techita struck the table with his stick. “Typical Craftsman’s argument, thaumocratic and reliant on false historical progressivism without a shred of—”
“Hal,” Bel said, and Techita stopped. “We can’t make this about philosophy or we’ll fight until the stars fall. You and I disagree on these questions—as do Tan Batac and the King in Red. Our problem is practical, not ideological.”
“These gentlemen”—and Techita spared no scorn on that word—“seem to disagree. We explain our position and they can’t even repeat it back without reference to the grand shape of history.”
“Then let me try,” said Tan Batac—the first words he’d spoken this morning, and still with that small smile, still with fingers interlaced over his belly, like one of those cherub-cheeked porcelain sages from the Shining Empire.
Hal eyed him warily.
“Our main difference,” Batac said, “is that you care about preserving the Skittersill as it is now, and I care about how the Skittersill must change to survive the next three decades, or five. You think I want to wire your spiderweb. I think you want to freeze it: to lock your current life in place, to keep it from changing.”
“We want it to change,” Kapania said. “Organically.”
“What do you mean by organic? Do you mean slowly? Because living beings move fast. Fifty years ago Dresediel Lex was a theocracy; today we’re not. Do you mean, in hermetic isolation? Because I can’t think of any living system disconnected from all others. Maybe those blind fish you get in caves, almost—but I don’t think you want to be a blind fish in a cave, even if that were an option, which it’s not. You’re in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world.”
“There’s a difference between evolution,” Bel said, “and decree. Your plans—” She waved at the maps spread on the table. “You want luxury apartments where we live. Some of these compounds have been inhabited for six hundred years.”
“But haven’t those houses changed in six hundred years?”
“Sure. After fires and disasters, after victories and marriages and tragedies.” She looked about the circle for confirmation. Even the Major nodded. “Things change. We care for lives lived here, now. Not for some crystal utopia.”
“But you don’t mind if the Skittersill becomes a utopia over time.”
“No.”
“So we really disagree,” he said, “on the question of how to regulate the transformation.”
“Sure.”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
And so, two hours into the second day, the talks began.
* * *
Elayne took notes. They broke for small group meetings, they broke for water, they broke for lunch, they broke to stand outside under the angry sky and contemplate the possibility of failure.
“I don’t believe it,” Kopil said. “They’re talking.”
“They were talking already,” Batac said, with a self-satisfied grin. “But we’re talking together now.”
“They will seek concessions, you realize.”
Batac searched the crowd, and nodded at some secret knowledge he gleaned there. “I can handle my investors, within reason.”
Elayne tried to shake her sense things were going
right for the wrong reasons.
Back in the tent, uncertainty receded. Concessions were offered, compromises raised. If Elayne hadn’t warded the tent herself she would have suspected a secret hand of usurping the delegates’ wills—but there was no arcane Craft in play. The parties had simply decided to cooperate, like a cloud deciding to rain.
“You want to protect the Skittersill,” Tan Batac said. “You don’t want it to become a museum.”
“The structures should remain,” Bel said, “and rent should be guaranteed.”
“What about bare spaces, decaying buildings? Do you want abandoned houses to stay abandoned when we could replace them with something new?”
“No,” Hal said. “We care about living beings, not dead wood.”
“I would be comfortable,” Bel said again, “if abandoned or otherwise damaged structures could be rebuilt, repurposed, even sold fee simple.”
“So long,” Bill Kemal added, “as owners are forced to protect their property. Or I bet we’ll face a season of suspicious fires.”
“What do you mean,” said Batac, “by ‘protect’?”
“Full fire suppression, earthquake and flood resistance. Pest control.”
“Especially against lava termites.”
“Expensive,” Batac said. “Few insurance Concerns will offer such a guarantee.”
“Someone will,” the Major said. “Or what good is your vaunted free market?”
“These terms will chase off anyone who wants to buy Skittersill land.”
“If the cost of insurance is high, there will be less demand for Skittersill real estate, which should keep rent and land prices low at first.” Bel pointed to the plans. “But the district will change, and after a while you’ll be able to realize these dreams of yours.”
Batac nodded. “We’ll need time to negotiate new insurance deals. Markets develop slowly, and comprehensive property-warding agreements don’t just fall out of the sky.”
“Not,” said the Major, “when you rig their auction to benefit your cronies.”
“That is a hurtful accusation,” though Batac did not seem hurt. “I don’t want to delay this agreement. Neither do you, I imagine.”
“What if the new wards require comprehensive coverage as of, let’s say, two weeks after they take effect?”
“Two months.”
“Within which you can send your arson squads to our homes. Two weeks is generous, to my mind.”
“I don’t even have an arson squad. Six weeks.”
They sparred with words. Sometimes Elayne thought Batac or Bel might flip the table, or the King in Red, grown large in wrath, would shatter them all to pieces. But they recoiled from the brink of each new crisis, and by four o’clock they stared at one another, wordless.
Wordless until Elayne said: “It sounds like we have a deal.”
* * *
She outlined the terms, read them back, adjusted a few figures, clarified key definitions. Passed copies to each commissioner, which all reviewed in silence. She recognized the shape of their concern. Recapitulation came after every debate, and trembling review: did I compromise my principles because I was tired and desperate to agree to something, anything? Which of us gave more?
“I recommend,” she said, “we involve the court at this point. Judge Cafal may have questions.”
“We cannot all go to the judge,” Bill Kemal said. “People get nervous. The Major has outstanding warrants for his arrest.”
“It is true,” the Major said.
“Plus, we need to sell this agreement to the square.”
The King in Red crossed his arms. “I thought you were empowered to negotiate.”
“Negotiate, yes. Not rule.”
“If you cannot guarantee their commitment—”
“We can,” Temoc said. “The people will listen. But they must know the cause to which they are committing themselves.”
“So what do we do now?” Tan Batac asked. “Wait?”
“No,” Elayne said. Every delay increased the chance someone would step wrong. Deal or no deal, pressure grew. “The Commission needs to sell the people on the deal while we finalize it with the judge. But we can’t go to Cafal alone. We need someone to stand for the crowd, someone they’ll trust.”
Glances flicked across and around the table. The Major coughed.
“Why,” Temoc said, “is everyone looking at me?”
23
“I should talk to them,” Temoc said, “before I go.”
They stood outside the tent, in full view of the crowd.
Elayne raised one hand. “I’ll set it up so you can speak in the sky.”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“I never thought you would feel stage fright.”
“I do not like speaking for myself,” he said. “I speak for something greater, or not at all. And anyway, there is no stage here.”
“You did fine last time.”
“Last time I had to stop a riot. There was no room for failure.”
“If pressure helps—if you can’t sell this, I doubt your commissioners will do better, which means that the peace has failed and we’re back to square one.”
“Much better.” He closed his eyes and flexed his shoulders in a way that caused his sternum to pop, a bass noise like an arm breaking. “Let’s go.”
She called upon her expense account with Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. Her blood chilled, and color drained away, leaving only wavelengths of light. The red-arms’ armbands lost their bloody hue. A girl with flowers in her hair held a screaming child in her arms, and the child’s face lost its flush and the daisies ceased to remind Elayne of a petal’s brush against her cheek when she’d been young and almost in love, in that vanishing breath between girlhood and the War. All that faded, but power flooded her instead, which was compensation.
The Craft she wove lacked the King in Red’s theatricality, which was probably for the best, considering the delicate moment.
She extended her hand to Temoc. Green and blue flame danced in her palm, tongues twisting between her fingers.
“You’re on,” she said, and opened her grip. The fireflower wrapped him round, flashing emerald as Temoc’s scars seized control. His eyes rolled back, his body went rigid, and his face emerged from the orange sky above.
“People of the Skittersill,” he said. “For the last two days we have discussed terms with the King in Red, and with Tan Batac. We have sought to preserve the city we know. They understand our concerns.” Murmurs of disbelief, a shout of “How?” From off to the north, laughter. Temoc laughed himself, his voice rich and full and wet despite the dry wind. “We have a deal. The structures we live in will not be sold or harmed until we wish it. They will consider our needs, our way of life. These talks have bridged a gap that seemed uncrossable. Nor is this is the end. We have shown our strength. We command respect when we stand together. Do not lose faith. I go to the Court of Craft, where I will present our deal to the judges.” “Temoc! Temoc!” A few voices raised in chant at first, a few hands lifted to the sky. Then, more. “The commissioners will explain our achievement. You will see that we have made compromises, but have not compromised. The world we want is the world we build, now, together.” Strong downbeats in that voice, hammer blows to drive his point home. Short words. A literal speech act: victory was victory because he named it so.
“Listen to the commission. Hear your leaders’ words. Do not falter. Wait for my return.”
He faded from the clouds. A blue space remained where the Craft had scoured the sky clean.
“Temoc.” The chant built and spread, men’s voices, women’s, children’s, bass alto tenor soprano, clear or reedy-rough, angry or rapturous or exultant or simply willing the future bright. “Temoc. Temoc. Temoc.”
The man, priest, Eagle Knight, father, old enemy, lowered his head. He gave no sign he heard them. To him the chant might as well have been the wind that bore it, the wind that whipped clouds and dust to plug the clear blue m
oment in the sky.
The red-arm cordon strained again, not this time against the protesters’ anger but against their need. Wardens surrounded Temoc, and Elayne, and Tan Batac, who seemed no more than a man in a rumpled, though expensive, suit. And the King in Red of course, who stood at Elayne’s elbow, and said: “He is dangerous.”
“He’s on our side.”
“Now.”
“Did you hear that speech?”
“I heard a dangerous man. And the only thing one knows for certain about a dangerous man, is that he is dangerous.”
Temoc smiled and waved as the crowd chanted his name.
24
The judge cleared her schedule—unheard-of in Elayne’s experience, but the King in Red was not a normal client and this was not a normal case. Cafal’s assistant ushered them to the inner office. The judge sat behind her desk, the same deep lines graven in the same square face, the same broad mouth fixed in the same passionless disapproval. Her sharp blue raptor’s gaze flicked over the three of them, lingered on Elayne, and settled at last on Temoc, who returned the stare without expression. Elayne thought about cats and kings, and wondered which was which.
Cafal addressed Elayne first. “Counselor. Have you fixed your problem?”
“Yes, your honor. The Chakal Square Committee have agreed to a compromise. They send Temoc Almotil as their representative.”
“Does he have Craft training?”
“I am a theologian,” Temoc said.
“Enough to understand the agreement under discussion?”
He nodded.
“It’s irregular for someone to claim authority in my court without a document to prove it. Do you really speak for those people?”
“Would we have met with him for the last two days if he did not?”
“You’re against a wall, counselor. In your situation, I might be tempted to meet with anyone willing to meet with me.”
“With all respect.” Temoc did not raise his voice, but they all looked at him. “Evidence is an echo of truth. My people have sent me, and so I am here.”
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