Four Roads Cross

by Max Gladstone

  “It’s true,” Claire repeated.

  “And you all say they’re not a problem. They’ve been under my roof. They’ve touched my girls.”

  “Sounds like they did you a favor.”

  “What they’ve done, Sforza, is beside the point. What they might do, matters. Stone Men are traitors, butchers. So, my daughters can call them. Let’s call them to the square tonight. Let’s have it out face-to-face. No more shadows, no more tall tales.”

  Ray shrugged. “Doubt we’ll see anything.”

  “You call my girls liars.” Corbin’s voice tightened to breaking.

  “It sounds like a story, is all. And even if they call, who’s to say the Stone Men come? But I’ll watch. The boy can make the morning runs tomorrow.”

  “Hells, I won’t miss this,” his son said around a mouthful of burger.

  “Then we’ll both be tired on deliveries, and so be it when we crash and suffer grievous death.”

  “You’re tempting fate,” Sandy said. “This is a damn fool enterprise and I’ll not lend it my support.”

  “But you’ll come if we do it.” Corbin’s teeth were thin and white. “Just to watch, of course.”

  Matt drank. He realized everyone was looking at him. He crossed his arms and leaned back. “It’s their choice.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The girls,” Matt said. “We do this only if your girls want to.”

  Ellen looked to her father first, then Claire, then nodded. Matt had seen that expression on young soldiers in the Schtumpfeter Museum’s God Wars paintings—kids sent to do and die on distant sand. He felt he’d done something wrong, and the tightness around Sandy Sforza’s mouth, the sharp lines in her brow, suggested she agreed.

  Matt thought he should stop the whole thing then, argue Rafferty into letting his girls alone, convince them all to leave the affairs of Gods and monsters to greater fools who didn’t have to work for a living. But he said nothing, and the others planned against the night.

  9

  Twilight in Alt Coulumb summer is a wrestling match, or a bout of violent sex. Sun and moon share the sky, the west blushes with exertion, the first and most aggressive stars pierce the blue to begin their evening’s battle with streetlights and office windows. The night’s triumph is inevitable as prophecy, but wet air holds the day’s heat, sweaty fingers tangled in solar curls. The heat lasts even as the sky fills with stars.

  Some parts of the city only live on such an evening. Far to the east, the Pleasure Quarter offers cosmopolitan seductions to sailors fresh ashore, to foreigners from the Old World, from Iskar or the Gleb or from Dread Koschei’s realm in Zur, from the Skeld Archipelago with its small gods and sunken cities, from Southern Kath where skeleton kings command indentured zombie hordes to work plantations in blistering heat. Hot Town’s something else again: footraces and drug trade, street music on drums and guitar, food carts selling a hundred variations on fried dough with cinnamon and powdered sugar, cheap carnival rides powered by burly mustachioed men, streetwalkers in private practice. This is where Westerling locals come to sweat and eat and shop and drink and sweat some more, as their parents did and their parents before them down the long centuries before Craftsmen stole fire from the gods and made the world weird. The Hot Town opens storefront windows and unrolls rugs of wares onto sidewalks and streets. Turquoise pendants and silver wirework glitter beside dyed silk scarves and shawls and stalls of pirated books and obscene unlicensed street theater.

  So fixed were the people milling about their business of pleasure that they missed the broad-winged shadow that flitted overhead, gray against the darkening blue, as night wrestled day to the ground and kissed him so hard their teeth clicked.

  Aev knew the scene below of old, had watched the street fair for centuries since her first kindling within a stone egg perched atop Alt Coulumb’s highest tower. The vices did not change so much as the clothes in which the practitioners wrapped themselves. She’d suffered forty years of exile in the Geistwood, hemmed in by trees, robbed of stone and familiar streets, but this was home. What matter if it feared her? What matter if these ants below thought her a harbinger of doom, believed Her Lady dead? Peace came with time and effort, and stone was well suited for both.

  Aev flew east and south along the Hot Town strip, skyscrapers to her left, brownstones and tenements to her right. Fountains of ghostlight erupted at irregular intervals from gridded streets. The moon hung slivered in the sky, but growing—gravid with uncertain future.

  Ahead of her rose the Temple of Kos in the center of the green: an enormous black needle that burned in the vision of the heart.

  Once the God’s radiance would have been tempered by moonlit silver chill. But the goddess, returned though She might be, swollen from the echo Aev had sheltered in Geistwood shadows, was small set beside Her lover. He was a city and more, grown fat on foreign trade, while She belonged to Her children alone.

  Aev sang in flight.

  Wings flower-petal-spread

  And teeth and claws the thorns

  I grow to seek my Mother’s light

  Her flesh my flesh, her skin my form—

  Doggerel not worthy of inscription, but when moved to sing, one sang.

  The moon swelled with her voice. Cold fire danced along the crystal lattice of her nerves, and she heard with heart’s ear an answering song.

  She flew in widening circles until she reached the temple’s peak, at such height the city seemed made from children’s toys. The sea spread east past the docks to a horizon silver flashed by moon. She darted across the temple green. Any who looked up would take her for a swallow or a tiny bat. Deprived of context or comparison, they couldn’t know her size, or guess her speed.

  She landed lightly on the roof, wings flared to brake. The wind of her arrival blew back the hood of the monk who awaited her: a tall thin young man with hollow cheeks and a shaved tonsure, whose cigarette was mostly ash. She knew him: the boy who fell and rose again, born aloft on the fire of his reborn God. “Abelard,” she said. He still flinched at the sound of her voice. “You look well.”

  “Aev.” He bowed, with hands pressed together. She’d said “well,” but he looked paler than she remembered. He was not often in the sun. He lit a new cigarette from the ashes of the old, and ground the last beneath his boot.

  “Those things will kill you.”

  “Not while God provides.” He took a drag. “Besides, it’s comforting. Did you have a nice flight?”

  She nodded.

  “Come on. They’re waiting for you.”

  She furled her wings and let him lead her into her Lady’s lover’s temple.

  10

  “This is the simplest way to kill a god,” Tara said. She stood at the foot of a long table in a dark room in the upper reaches of the Temple of Kos Everburning. A whiteboard on a pine easel somewhat spoiled the hidden chamber’s overall severity. “You find a flaw in his defenses. A deal that cannot be broken. A treasure the god cannot help but defend. Then you hammer it until the god breaks.”

  Around the table sat the guests she’d spent the day inviting. At its head loomed dark-skinned Cardinal Evangelist Bede, globular beneath his crimson robes and puffing on a pipe, beside Technical Cardinal Nestor, a thin cold man with a thin cold face, elevated to his current post for stability more than genius. Neither of them looked at Aev, who stood, since no chair was large or strong enough to hold her. Abelard sat between the cardinals and the gargoyle, hands twitching in his lap. Across the table, Blacksuit representatives held attention. Catherine Elle uncrossed her legs. To her right sat Commissioner Michaels, a woman in her early fifties, heavy with strength. These would be enough for tonight’s purposes.

  They watched her.

  “You all have heard the news by now: for a year, Seril’s children have been offering, let’s call them neighborhood watch services, throughout Alt Coulumb. Pray, shed a little blood, and the gargoyles will aid you.”

  “We should have been to
ld,” Michaels said. “We should be working together.”

  “We would have told you,” Aev shot back, “if your people hadn’t stoked hatred of Seril for four decades. We have to build love for Our Lady—not for Justice, but for the Goddess in Her own aspect.”

  Cardinal Evangelist Bede withdrew his pipe. Smoke wreathed his round face. “The church could have supported your mission. Subtly.”

  “Our Lady is not your Lord. The Church of Kos has done good to redress the evil its priests wrought. But unless you mean to schism—no?—you cannot create worshippers for Seril. We must do that ourselves.”

  “These are all good points,” Tara said. “But they aren’t why I called you here. The problem we face tonight is thaumaturgical, not strategic.” Stares around the table, ranging from blank to knowing to (in Abelard’s case) worried. “Aev’s actions did not matter so long as they were secret. Now the gargoyles have revealed themselves, questions will follow. Their answers invite more questions. And at the end of the chain, Alt Coulumb will face a crisis of faith like none we’ve ever seen.”

  Nestor tapped a long thin finger on the table. “Our God died last year.”

  “Briefly,” Tara said. “Due to bad actors misusing privileged information. Last year we dealt with a few traitors. I’m worried about a systemic attack. About war.”

  “Explain.”

  She opened her mouth, but Bede spoke first. “She’s talking,” he said, “about a credit crisis.”

  Confused silence around the table. Gazes shifted back to Tara.

  “Kos the Everburning is one of the most stable gods in the world,” she said. “Alt Coulumb didn’t fight in the Wars, so it wasn’t razed; its confirmed neutrality back then indicates it will stay neutral in future conflicts. As a result, this city is one of the few places gods and Craftsmen coexist. Kos capitalized on his position. Your God’s credit rating is impeccable—even his death and rebirth didn’t shake it, though Cardinal Evangelist Bede and I had to do some rapid footwork to ensure that. Kosite debt is a storehouse of value around the world. Gods and Concerns and Deathless Kings on six continents buy church bonds, which brings the city a regular flow of liquid souls. Kos has leveraged himself well, thanks to the work of the Cardinal Evangelist and his team.”

  Bede dipped his pipe in gracious acknowledgment.

  “But Kos’s position depends on the market’s faith in his stability. How many souls does he possess? What are his liabilities? How risky is his behavior? For forty years the answers to these questions have been clear. But suppose the math changed. Suppose, say, Kos Everburning was found to have immense undisclosed liabilities.”

  “Craftsmen wouldn’t have the same faith in him,” Abelard said, clearly uncomfortable with the use of “faith” in this context.

  “And if that happens, Kos’s risk of default rises. Firms holding church stock will claim we lied to them. Our creditors might argue that, given the undisclosed risks, we sold them debt under false pretenses—so we owe them more soulstuff. A lot more. Which, of course, makes our debt even riskier to hold. And the spiral continues. Craft firms gather, smelling blood. The world’s trust in Kos collapses, while his need for the funds guaranteed by that trust balloons.” She brought her hands together. “Which is only the first problem.”

  “That sounds bad enough,” Cat said.

  Bede nodded, and took up the thread from Tara. “It is, for us. But the trouble cascades. Because Kosite debt’s been safe for decades, thaumaturgical markets use it as a baseline. Whole economies in the Vinelands between Dhisthra and the Shining Empire depend on church bonds. If our bond prices collapse, many thaumaturgical instruments will become impossible to value—and uncertainty in high-energy magic is, to put it mildly, not good.”

  “Not good?”

  “Imagine demons pouring out of rifts in reality the size of continents. Cities compressed to one-dimensional points. For starters.”

  “Which means,” Tara said into the silence, “the Craftwork world can’t afford to let Kos’s value collapse. If they lose confidence in him and in the priesthood, they’ll attack. Rather than allowing him to die, they’ll kill him and rebuild him to save themselves. Skyspires encroaching on Coulumbite airspace, dragons in the heavens, demons creeping out of downtown shadows. They have to save the world, you see.”

  She let the silence stretch. They sat in the center of the God’s power, in a great and prosperous city, and she had to make them feel uncertain. She thought she’d succeeded.

  Hooray.

  “But all this,” Abelard said, “happens only if Kos has undisclosed liabilities. Which he doesn’t.”

  Bede’s chair creaked.

  “Not by your standards,” Tara replied. “But Seril complicates things.”

  “Complicates doesn’t sound good. I don’t like complicates.”

  “Even though they don’t share explicit contractual bonds, Kos and Seril are linked by, let’s call it sentiment. Kos died last year because he tried to support Seril in her exile. To a Craftsman, that looks like an under-the-table guarantee that Kos will bail Seril out if she’s in trouble. And this is a goddess who makes trouble for herself—remember, she ran off to the Wars and left Him.”

  Aev growled. “She fell in combat; She stood alone against murderous hordes.”

  “Which sounds great in a poem,” Tara said, “but to a banker the important word is ‘fell.’ Seril takes big risks, and they don’t always work out. Let’s say an Alphan Securities banker wants to analyze Kos. She learns that Kos protects Seril—who tends to find Herself in sticky, fatal situations. Seril lacks assets or income. Her power’s tied up in the gargoyles and in Justice, neither of which is liquid. To our banker, Seril looks like a massive undisclosed liability—Kos has given tacit backing to a volatile, costly entity. Now that people know the gargoyles are back, they’re already wondering if Seril’s come, too. When she’s found, and she will be, we’ll see our first test of the tacit guarantee. Someone will try to kill you and your people.” She nodded to Aev. “If Kos defends you, an attack on him will follow soon after, through the courts.”

  “We do not need Kos to defend us,” Aev said.

  “You might. This isn’t a battlefield. Your enemies won’t announce themselves. They don’t want a fight. They want you to die.”

  Nestor leaned forward in his chair. “Why are we just hearing this now?”

  “You,” Cardinal Bede said, “are hearing it because the time has come for you to share the uncertainty Ms. Abernathy, Aev, and I have shared for the last year.”

  The gargoyle nodded. “Why do you think we have kept such a low profile?”

  “This is your idea of a low profile?” Nestor asked.

  Aev’s growl caused the easel to rattle against the stone floor.

  “We don’t have time for recrimination,” Tara said. “We need to work together.”

  The Technical Cardinal frowned. “What options do we have?”

  She remembered that burned paper, but she said, “At Cardinal Bede’s direction, your priests have spent the last year preaching groundwork for Seril’s return, which gives Her more faith to draw upon. That’s good. And Aev and her people have built themselves a solid mystery cult from scant resources, based on dreams and aid in dark alleys. Much as I wish they’d taken fewer risks, they’ve built the foundation for a Serilite movement in Alt Coulumb. It would have worked if we had more time.”

  Stone wings twitched in the dark room.

  “In addition to encyclical support, I have diversified our Lord,” Bede said, “using commodities investment to reduce his exposure to a sudden collapse in our creditworthiness. That protects us in the short term, ensuring Lord Kos will not walk weaponless to battle, if it comes to that. Meanwhile, Ms. Abernathy has pursued options for protecting Seril Herself.”

  Tara recognized her cue. “Seril’s lack of liquidity is Her main weakness. By attacking the gargoyles, a Craftswoman can hurt Her directly. I’ve spent the last year tracking Seril’s treaties
with old gods, without much luck. Other than Kos, most of Her partners died in the Wars, and their debts to Seril were written off in the necromantic process.” That dead end had taken eight months of work. “My next step’s to seek property Seril lost in the God Wars. This is a long shot: the Wars were hectic, and many Craftsmen immediately used power they seized from one god to kill another. But we might find something useful. Meanwhile, we have to ensure news of Seril’s survival breaks under conditions we control. Aev’s people have promised not to answer prayers. I’ve called for double Blacksuit patrols in the Paupers’ Quarter during the next few nights. In the meantime, bring any ideas, concerns, fears, or prophecies to me first.” She looked around the table. “Some of you have to run. I’m sure there are more questions. I’ll stay to answer those. I know the news sounds bad. But we can win this. We will.”

  Nods, with determination in various shades of grim.

  She’d convinced no one. But they pretended they believed her, that everything would work out for the best.

  Tara hadn’t expected more. She didn’t quite believe herself, either.

  Abelard excused himself; Aev followed. So did Cat. That left Tara, the Commissioner, and the Cardinals—and then the hard questions came.

  11

  Cat closed the conference chamber door, guillotining Cardinal Bede’s rambling many-subclaused question before His Eminence reached a verb. The door she’d chosen led to a stone landing and a stair winding down and up. The hem of a rust-red robe disappeared around the stair’s descending turn. “Abelard,” she called, but he didn’t stop, and she found herself alone on the landing. Or so she thought.

  A stone rumble from the shadows brought her hand halfway to her badge before she recognized the voice. “I do not think he wishes company,” Aev said.

  “Do you guys have lurking contests or something?”

  Aev stepped forward. Light chiseled her planes and angles from the black. “Why?”

  “If so, you’d take the ribbon.”

  Aev gestured to her bare stone torso. “Where would I pin a ribbon?”