“You’ve made your choice,” she said. “And you’ll live with it.”
“To live with something, you have to be alive.”
“I would stop you if I could. You’d thank me for it in the end. But I don’t think I can. All I can do is ask you. What would you have done, if you wanted to destroy the Skittersill without getting blood on your hands?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do you think it’s right that anyone profit off what happens in Chakal Square tomorrow? Do you think it’s right that bystanders will die while Tan Batac grows richer?”
The sky above Sansilva was the only part of the city not covered by Craftwork clouds. Stars glittered like glass slivers spilled on velvet. Purcell’s was the sole breath in the room.
“I won’t call off the attack,” Kopil said.
“Then help me save the people outside the square. Help me save the Skittersill.”
She waited. She did not hold her breath.
He nodded.
“Thank you.”
“Even if Tan Batac is innocent, he will be enraged when he learns what you’ve done.”
“I’ll survive.”
“And in exchange for my aid, I want your word: you will not protect the rebels in Chakal Square. Save their surrounding hovels, and the wretches crouched within them. The people in the Square are mine. Better, in fact, if you stay away from the Square altogether.”
She could not meet his gaze, but she did anyway. “I will not protect Chakal Square. I will not protect those inside its borders. Nor will I set foot on its stone.” The promise convulsed between them, and settled, harder than steel.
“Very well.”
“What,” said Purcell, “just happened?”
“We have an agreement,” Elayne said. “You’re about to give me the contract. I will sign it for Tan Batac.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Allow me to demonstrate.”
“No. I mean.” He’d retreated from them both already, and he took a few more steps back, hugging his briefcase. He glanced for a door or some other avenue of escape, but found none. “Tan Batac can’t sign, and no one else can sign for him.”
“I represent Batac and the King in Red in the Skittersill matter. Your insurance contracts are a piece of that matter. I can sign in Batac’s place.”
“The contract won’t bind.”
“We’ll make it work,” she said. “Trust me.”
“Batac’s Concern will refuse to pay. The courts will not honor the contract.”
“I will provide the initial funds,” Kopil said. “Batac will settle the rest when he awakes.”
“But he hasn’t agreed—”
“He will.”
Purcell’s head jerked left and right. “I’m sorry. I know you think you know the man. But there’s a lot of soul at stake. If Batac protests the deal when he wakes up, who’s liable for damage to these properties? Or for the expense of protecting them? You can’t just—”
“You mistake me,” said the King in Red. “I do not say a man will sign a contract because I believe he will sign that contract. I say he will sign, because he will sign. Do you understand?”
Purcell took another step back. His skull made a loud hollow noise as it struck the crystal dome. He looked up at the Craftsman and Craftswoman approaching him, and held out the briefcase.
“Good man,” Elayne said. She opened the briefcase without touching it, and snapped her fingers. Contract pages fanned out to hover in a circle around them. She scanned them, found the page she sought, fished a pen from her pocket, and marked Tan Batac’s name on solid line there, with an added glyph tying the name into the contract they’d signed months back to appoint her mediator. Flimsy argument. Any competent court would overturn Elayne’s right to sign. But once in a while there was an advantage to being war buddies with the Powers that Were. Invisible gears shifted and meshed as the Craft took hold. “So mote it be.”
“So mote it be,” the King in Red echoed. The contract stacked once more and floated back into the briefcase, which clicked shut. “He does have a point, though. That signature is too weak to hold by itself.”
“I’ll enforce it.”
“I will not hold back on the assault for your sake,” he said.
“I know.”
“Fair enough.” He turned from her to Purcell. “As for you, Purcell. You will accept my hospitality tonight.”
Purcell was sweating. “I’d really prefer to return to the hospital. Or to my family.”
“Mr. Purcell. You are privy to a number of plans that cannot be announced until they become accomplished fact. This pyramid is large, and we have many apartments set aside for our guests. Some are more comfortable, and some less. I hope you will agree to stay in one of the more comfortable rooms.”
“And if I … refuse?” That word only made it past his lips over the extreme protest of his survival instinct. An interesting world we’ve made, Elayne thought, where bureaucrats risk death for technicalities.
“Well,” the skeleton said, turning his head as if he’d never considered the possibility. “I suppose we’d have to house you in a less comfortable room.”
There was not much air in Purcell to begin with, but what there was went out. “I’ll go.”
“Good.” Behind Purcell, the floor screeched open to reveal a staircase winding down. Two Wardens climbed from the shadows. “These men will take you to an apartment. Ask if you need anything. It may be granted. And don’t worry. All this will be over tomorrow afternoon.”
Purcell followed the Wardens down. Elayne felt a pang of pity as the floor swallowed them. “What now?”
“We attack after dawn, as planned. Who knows how long the battle will last?”
“Not long.”
“Probably not.” Kopil sagged. “I wonder why I am helping you.”
“A shred of goodness left in your heart?”
“Not even a shred of heart,” he said. “Mostly I’m helping because you asked.”
“I should go,” she said. “You know how weak that signature is. Aberforth and Duncan will fight tooth and nail for every thaum I pull from them.”
“Yes. And I plan to use gripfire.”
Stars watched. Worn obsidian carvings danced their frozen dance. Books sat on shelves, dead words on dead wood from dead forests.
“On civilians,” she said.
“They’ve sacrificed to blood gods. That makes them enemy combatants.”
“You mean you think they deserve it.”
“Well,” he said. “More or less.”
“More or less,” she echoed, and walked away from him.
“Where are you going?”
“To the front.” The wall flowed apart, ushering her from the pyramid’s chill into the demon wind. She walked without looking back, toward the pyramid’s edge and off, and flew south alone toward Chakal Square.
56
Seven things Elayne saw as she flew toward Chakal Square and the next day’s burning:
1. Lights flooded a Downtown park. Brass instruments glinted gold from the bandstand, and people danced. Skirts twirled and unfurled around girls’ legs. Dancers in slacks orbited as dots around swelling and collapsing suns. Too high up to hear the music, she placed it anyway as swing from the dancers’ rhythm.
2. Huge golem-towed trucks snarled in traffic on an elevated highway, bearing goods from Longsands warehouses to train stations and the airport. Spider-golems skittered forward one massive claw limb at a time, and human drovers walked among them, gnats trying to correct the movement of greater forces. The cause of the traffic, farther up the highway: a truck on its side, four golems straining to right it while men ran between them, waving hand torches.
3. A billboard on an old sandstone pyramid, lit by bright blue ghostlights, bore a picture of a geyser and the word ACTUALIZE in block letters. If the billboard offered more context or instructions, they were too small to read from the air. She did not remember the old use of the p
yramid upon which the billboard stood. Southern temples often belonged to moon gods. Or perhaps it had been a school, or a prison.
4. A half mile from the Skittersill the blackout began, and the sky opened. No lights shone below save the occasional red bloom of a fire. The stars here were sharper and clearer even than in Sansilva, where, despite the Craftsmen’s best efforts, some light seeped up to dilute the stars above the city center. The Quechal gods had reclaimed their city. Black ribbon streets divided black blocks of black buildings below a black sky. Interesting choice, if it had been a choice, for the gods to clear the clouds away: Quechal religion did not trust stars. The night sky, for them, was an iron web enormous spiders wove to steal the sun’s light. This new blackness was defiance of a kind, and a reminder to their people: you have enemies, and they work against you.
5. Wardens swarmed in camps lit by the brilliant ghostlights road workers used after dark, which mimicked noon sun but lacked its heat. From this height, their chaos resolved to order: each camp divided naturally into sectors, bunks here and armory there, temporary cells, guard rotations, clinic. Couatl circled. One passed near enough to ruffle Elayne’s suit with the wind of its wings. With streetlights lit, Couatl shimmered from below thanks to their jeweled plumage. Without that light, nothing set them off from the sky where the demons lived.
6. Elayne could not read Chakal Square from overhead as she had the Warden camp. It looked like a forest made of people—individual humans visible only around bonfire edges, sleeping or dancing or drinking, making music or love. Beyond the firelight circles they were droplets in an ocean. Tendrils spread down alleys into labyrinthine Skittersill streets. Here and there, half-lit, she saw some structure: the beds of a field hospital, the command tents broken by the Wardens’ assault, the makeshift temple. Grass mats, and the altar makeshift no longer—anointed in the old way, with blood.
7. Gods moved through the Skittersill. With closed eyes she saw them. Back in the wars she’d shipped out to the Shining Empire from a port in Xivai where whales gathered by the thousands to mate. Sometimes they exploded from the waves in majestic fountain breaches, but even hidden, they shaped the surface. The sea boiled with whales.
As Chakal Square boiled with gods, tonight. Elayne did not recognize most of them, nor could she see them all at once. Like whales, they presented hints to form: a gnarled face with a fanged mouth, an arm elegant as an Imperial dancer’s, a hunched back and a single blinking eye.
They had slept long, and deep, and they had fallen far. So, woken by Temoc’s sacrifice, they rooted in their faithful’s minds and took strength from the dreams engendered there. Nightmares would rule Chakal Square this evening. No quiet rest before the day, and the fire.
* * *
She landed hard on the woven grass mats of Temoc’s chapel. The force of impact knelt her, and raised a cloud of dust. Guards and faithful cried out in terror. A bowstring sang and an arrow slipped through the dust cloud to stop inches from her suit. Shaft and feather crumbled. She plucked the arrowhead from the air and held it between thumb and forefinger as the dust settled.
The kneeling faithful recoiled. Red-arms in scrap armor forced through the crowd, brandishing makeshift weapons. Others raised bows with arrows nocked. Torn tents and broken tentpoles rose into the sky. Flames licked the night.
Temoc stood by the altar. His hands seemed clean.
She saw Chel too, and the man with the broken nose, Tay, both running half-clothed from a nearby tent. Hair in disarray. Elayne forced the smile from her face: at least someone was enjoying the night while it lasted.
Temoc walked toward her. The crowd gave way to let him pass. “Elayne.”
“Temoc,” she said. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“If you have come to fight, know that my gods live. I am your equal now.”
“Before you try to kill me,” Elayne said, with slight emphasis on try, because it always helped to plant seeds of doubt in a potential adversary, “you should know I’ve come to help.”
“You have come to join us against your master.”
“I’m not a fighter, Temoc. Not anymore. I’m here to save people, like I saved you. Like I saved your son.”
That broke the paladin’s facade. “Caleb,” he said. “Is he—”
“Well, no thanks to you. Golems chased him and Mina from the Skittersill after you left. They’re fine.”
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t think I should give you that information.”
“So you have come to torment me.”
“Hardly.” She looked from him, to the crowd, and back. In a blink, she saw the gods gathering too, through lightning-seaweed lines of Craft: not manifest, though awake enough to listen. “I’ve come to offer you a trade. Tell your people to leave. As many of them as will go.”
“And in exchange?”
“In exchange I save the Skittersill. Or try.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The King in Red will strike tomorrow morning. Your sacrifice made him angry. He thinks the God Wars have come again, and he will destroy you. He’ll use gripfire. It will catch, and spread. The Skittersill’s undefended now—we’re inside the insurance renegotiation window. People will die whose only crime is living near the Square. The Skittersill will burn. I can’t save the Square, but I can save the surrounding district, and the people there, if you help me. Otherwise, tomorrow, the fire starts, and who knows what Tan Batac will build in place of all that’s burned. You’ll have lost in every way.”
“The gods will help us.”
“Can they save the Skittersill and fight the King in Red at once?” And addressing him she addressed the crowd, and the gods.
Temoc did not answer. Neither did they.
“Caleb will recover,” she said, after too much silence passed. “He’s young. Mina’s safe, and angry, and hurt.”
“What do you need?” he said.
“The Skittersill. I have to know it. Perfectly. Intimately. I have to know it like someone who has lived here for sixty years. Backstreets. Shortcuts. Rooftops at sunset. Sound of rain in gutters. The color of the alley cats, and their secret names. I need the dream of this place.”
“Is that all?”
She had no patience for sarcasm. “I need men and women who know this ground, and these people. The process is dangerous, but I think I can protect them.”
“You think.”
“We will be a fire brigade in a firefight. There is a limit to how much safety I can offer. But I need volunteers.”
His chin sank to his chest. It might have been a nod.
“He’ll go.” Chel’s voice. Elayne glanced up, startled by the interruption, to see Chel shove Tay forward. He glared from Elayne to Chel, shaking his head. “He knows the Skittersill as well as anyone. Born and raised here. The other red-arms too, Zip and them. They’ll help you.”
“What about you?” Tay said it first, so Elayne didn’t have to.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “I started this. I’ll see it through.”
Elayne did not interrupt the pause that passed between Chel and Tay, did not speak to draw their eyes from each other. At last, Tay’s shoulders slumped. He nodded. He took Chel in his arms, kissed her, broke away, and walked toward Elayne.
“We will send the others,” Temoc said. “Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
He offered her his hand. It was clean, though firelight dyed it red.
They were close enough for him to whisper and be heard. “I had no choice.”
“I don’t believe you,” she replied, with false conviction.
She left him standing on his grass mats before his altar, beneath the stars.
57
Elayne walked on air through Chakal Square to the meeting tent, with Tay beside her. Others followed: red-arms and interested faithful, armored hooligans loyal to the dead Major. She kept her glyphs’ starfire damped, but still she glowed.
“You didn’t
fly when you came to us the first morning,” Tay said.
“I prefer to walk on the ground. It’s easier.”
“Why aren’t you doing that now?”
“I promised I would not set foot in Chakal Square. My word binds me.”
“We’ll leave the Square, then?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
They reached the meeting tent. Night dyed the deep green canvas almost black. The tent had served its purpose during those long tense negotiation days, but tonight it would only block out the sky, and she needed all the starfire and moonlight she could catch. With a sweep of one hand she shredded the canvas and toppled the poles. The circle she’d etched into stone glinted silver.
Elayne crossed the circle and settled once more to ground. Gods cursed and threatened, but she ignored them. Those Wars were long done, at least for her.
For some, they would never end.
Tay joined her in the circle, stepping high across the cold flames as if climbing from a boat to shore. He turned, and blinked, like a man who’d walked long in the mist and stood now in the sun. “It feels different.”
“This circle is not a part of Chakal Square. Here, I can protect us without breaking my word.” She drew her work knife, and lightning sparked along its edge.
“What should I do?”
“Stand still.”
The limits of the ward were set, burned into stone and notional space. To change them she would have to wipe away the ward and begin again, for which she had neither strength nor time. So small a space, with so many left outside. But large enough, she hoped.
“First,” she said, “I assert my right to claim insurance for the Skittersill.” She carved a circle seven meters in diameter within the ward, and inside that a second circle, concentric and three meters across. That circle she tied to the contract she’d forced Purcell to let her sign, and through that contract to her representation pact with Tan Batac. “And then I prove I am who I claim.” To the second circle she added a few drops of her blood—always err on the conservative side with human fluids. A little goes a long way.
Last First Snow Page 29
