She frowned at the thought. What kind of radical was Alt Coulumb making her, anyway? Focus on the mission, Tara. Follow Antonia in the absurd heels.
The club doors opened onto a marble stair that led down to a white sand beach. Tara blinked brilliant ghosts from her vision.
The beach was empty save for a man who was not a man anymore.
Antonia extended her hand. Tara thanked her and descended.
The King in Red lay in swim trunks on a lounge chair, his pale anklebones crossed atop bamboo slats. The red gold crown set into his skull glinted dull and bloody in the sun.
White sand pillowed Tara’s footsteps. Waves rushed and rolled. Bodies thronged the beach a hundred meters to her left and right: college kids tossed Frisbees, musician circles played guitars and drums and fiddles, surfers charged the breakers. Children kicked ullamal and cackled as they fell. Tara did not hear them. Their voices died on the crystal air.
The King in Red kept still as she approached. She gave his chair wide berth, rounding to the side. His ribs jutted from the chair like tree trunks a fire had stripped of bark and left to die.
One skeletal hand held a round glass three-quarters full (or one-quarter empty) of a weapons-grade pink cocktail shaded by four paper umbrellas and sporting a spear of tiny melon cubes interspaced with jadeite giraffes. Ice shifted in the glass.
He wore sunglasses, which made no sense. Golden tabs affixed the glasses to the holes where his ears would have been.
She stood, hands clasped behind her, watching and waiting. There were greater powers than the King in Red. It was just hard to think of any at this precise moment.
He raised the glass to where his lips once were, and drank. She watched the liquid disappear.
“Your Majesty,” she began, to be on the safe side.
“I know who you are, Ms. Abernathy. I know why you’ve come.”
His voice was almost human. The difference mattered.
“That will save time, Your Majesty.”
“Drop the Majesty. I have enough. I told Elayne I’d see you, and I have. You can go now.”
“I want to present my argument.”
“It’s good to want things.” He drank again, and again the fluid disappeared—reduced to chaos, all useful properties stripped to feed the Craftwork that kept the King in Red whatever he was. “Alive” was the wrong word. “I want to hear from an old friend once in a while for some reason other than business. You want me to hand you a fortune for no reason. Your stone companion wants to murder me, though he’s displaying admirable self-control.”
“Would you like me to stop?” Shale asked. Jewel facets glinted beneath his imitation human eyes.
“Try me.” The skeleton sounded bored. “Get this over with. I’ve killed so many of you before, in very many ways.” His voice went singsong for that last bit, then lost all humor. “I tore your goddess open and ripped her heart and lungs from the ruin of her chest. Break yourself on me, if you like. You’re not the hundredth or even the thousandth to try. And when I’m done with you, I’ll go back to my drink.”
He took another sip. Translucent giraffes danced with sun.
“Shale!”
There was no Craft in Tara’s cry, but Shale stopped anyway, halfway to the King in Red. He’d begun to change. His skin was veined with gray and hatched with gleaming gaps, his back a wreckage of wings. The human seeming reasserted itself; the jaw cracked to fit shrinking teeth together. He knelt, gasping, on the sand. His shirt hung tattered from his shoulders. Scars crossed his back where the wounds had been.
The King in Red sat up and turned to face them both, elbows on knee bones, ridged spine rising between his shoulder blades. Cocktail sweat darkened his fingers. Of their own accord, the sunglasses slipped down to reveal the dead-star sparks in his eye sockets. “Interesting. It listens to you.”
“He,” Tara said, “is an envoy of my client, Seril Undying of Alt Coulumb. Who is still alive.”
“As I learned yesterday.”
“News travels fast.”
“Fast as fear.”
“Ramp approached you.”
He shrugged. “I own a good deal of Kosite debt in my own name. Red King Consolidated holds more. She’s approached everyone with a substantial stake. Some of us have better things to do at the moment than fight a war, even a limited one.” He waved toward the waves. “As you see. So you needn’t worry about me participating in her coup.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Why did you listen to her?” he asked Shale. The gargoyle had recovered, mostly. Sweat slipped down curves of muscle. “Here I am. You’ve hated me for decades. I killed your lady, or close to it, and I liked it. I’ll even give you first crack. No shields, or wards, or tricks.”
Shale stood. Tara prepared to bind him, in case her voice would not suffice this time. Given how hurt he’d seemed in that momentary shift, her restraint might break him. He wasn’t in shape for a fight.
He might still try.
“Tara asked me not to fight you.”
“And you listened,” the skeleton said.
“Yes.”
Crimson sparks turned on her. “You’ve inspired a divine monster’s loyalty. Nice trick. It earns you my time.” He glanced at the sky. “In five minutes the sun will turn the waves to gold and mark a path straight out over the bay to my favorite island. The air and sea are perfect, and the world sings. You’ll be gone by then, one way or another. Speak quickly.”
“When you killed Seril in the God Wars, you stole Alt Coulumb’s skies from her.”
“They were spoils of war.”
“Alt Coulumb’s liturgy holds that Kos owns Alt Coulumb’s skies in the event of Seril’s death.”
“Which is why I’ve never been able to use the rights I won, outside of as collateral.” He finished his cocktail, ate the fruit, removed umbrellas and straw and jadeite giraffes and arranged them on the sand. “I claim ownership, Kos resists. I almost got my way when he died, but it turns out he was faking.”
“Neither of you rightfully owns that sky. It belongs to Seril.”
“Who we both thought was dead. When you hurt someone like I hurt her, she tends to die, goddess or not.” He tightened his grip. The glass cracked, grimed and gritted, and slid as sand from his fingers to the beach.
“You pledged Seril’s sky as collateral for loans to develop Red King Consolidated.”
“I pledged everything to support the Concern. My soul. Others’. If not for that, this city would be a desert now.” He raised his hand. Another drink floated over from the clubhouse.
“Do you think your partners would be happy to learn you used stolen property as collateral?”
“I paid off those loans long ago—not that I accept your characterization of the property as stolen. If you want to argue that point in court, send my people a date, and I’ll schedule my countersuit of libel for the same day so we can get all this over with at once. Is this the best you can do, Ms. Abernathy?”
She felt the same anger she’d seen in Shale, and squelched it. “A fight wouldn’t be good for either of us. I have a thousand years of documentary evidence on my side. And you’re—you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Where does it end? You’ve killed my client, and your own gods, and your own people. You just tried to goad Shale into suicide by Craftsman. How long can you keep this up?”
The glass settled in his hand. “I’m a Deathless King. I can keep this up forever. Sort of in the job description.”
“Why don’t your old friends visit you anymore?”
The sky cracked and blackened and split with lightning. The earth opened, and fangs of fire jutted up. Black thorn-vines curled around Tara’s limbs, growing as they pierced clothes and skin and meat. Far away, everyone screamed.
Then she stood unharmed on the white beach beneath the blue sky as the sun crept to apex. Waves rolled. The world endured.
She remembered it ending. It had, a second ago.
<
br /> The King in Red swirled his drink. Pink alcoholic slush churned beneath paper umbrellas. His laugh sounded like the rasp of sandpaper over fingernails. “You do speak your mind, Ms. Abernathy.”
She did not trust herself to move, but she could speak. “You’re long in Coulumbite bonds. If Kos falls, you lose millions of souls. Give Seril back the sky, and your stake’s safe.”
“Or I could swallow the loss and watch your self-righteous mistress die, because it amuses me to do so.”
“My client,” she corrected. “Not mistress. And with all due respect, if you wanted to do that, you’d have joined Ramp.”
He sipped his cocktail, and damn him if he didn’t make her hold her breath.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “you’re speaking with the wrong guy. I donated my aerial rights to Alt Coulumb when Kos returned from the dead.”
“Donated?” The word felt strange in her mouth.
“Gave them away. Like a sacrifice, only no gods involved. We’re supporting a spinoff Concern of, I guess you’d call them paladins—heal the broken world, protect the innocent, all that crunchy granola stuff. The sky rights don’t move the needle for RKC anymore, but they’re a key asset for the Two Serpents Group’s portfolio.” He snapped his fingers. A white business card appeared and floated to her hand. “Their team’s up north, dealing with a mining disaster in Centervale. My office has the details. Have fun telling the do-gooders they should stop feeding orphans to save your goddess. I’d watch, but your five minutes are up, and I want you out of my nonexistent hair.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He grinned, not that he had a choice. “Tell Elayne to drop by when she’s ready to talk. We’re neither of us going anywhere.”
“Come on,” she said to Shale. “We have work.”
The King in Red waved to them, then settled back into his chair to watch a view that seemed no more or less perfect to Tara than it had five minutes before.
48
Stone walls narrowed the sky over Claire’s head to a slit. “You’re sure the woman we want lives down here?”
“‘Sure’ is a funny word,” Ellen mused from farther down the alley. Scratches and graffiti marred the stone higher than human hooligans could reach. “It’s not spelled like it sounds, and in plays when someone says they’re sure of something, you know they’re wrong.”
Claire slipped in something she hoped was mud and caught herself against balloony painted letters that read BEWARE LEOPARD. That morning before dawn she’d sat beside Matt for a grim ride through the fog during which they’d both failed to think of things to say. He’d gone silent after their chat with Ms. Abernathy the day before. He didn’t know what to tell Claire to do.
As if she needed telling.
Which didn’t mean she was eager to do it. Last night, on the moonlit roof, offering Ellen help seemed a way to make a difference without returning to that cold hospital room where her father lay. This afternoon, rubbed raw by coffee and hoarse by shouting after customers in the market, she felt less sure. “You can’t trust folks in the Ash.”
“That’s Dad talking.”
She caught her retort between clenched teeth. Ungrateful—
Sister.
“Sorry,” Claire said.
Ellen stopped, surprised. She’d leaned toward Claire as she did to resist the wind, or their dad when he was shouting. “Thank you,” Ellen said. “Hold on.” She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again Claire thought she saw light inside, like when a priest offered blessing. The light passed, though. Maybe it was only a reflection. But Ellen’s smile, too, seemed like a younger girl’s—the smile Claire’d received as payment when she let her five-year-old sister win at tag. “This way.”
Carriages rolled down Summer past the alley’s mouth. Ellen stopped on a dirty stoop, straightened her blouse, and knocked.
No answer came, nor any sound of footsteps.
Overhead, a crow called.
“Nobody’s home,” Claire said. “We shouldn’t wait around.”
Ellen tried the knob. The door creaked open onto a narrow winding stair. “Come on!” And before Claire could react, Ellen ran inside and up, jumping three steps at a time. Her skirt flared as she disappeared around a corner.
Claire caught up with her on the third-floor landing. Ellen had already knocked on the door of apartment 3A, and stood, hands behind her back, face fixed in an expression Claire also knew: nervous, and trying not to show.
Hard rhythmic taps approached behind the door. A cat cried. Claire wanted to leave, but not so much as she wanted to look strong for Ellen.
You think you know a city, she thought. You’ve lived here all your life, and then you follow your sister down a side street you’d never walk alone, and you remember there are people in this town we don’t know, and things that aren’t people but wear their skin, and maybe we’re about to die because you just knocked on some monster’s door.
The footsteps stopped. A cracked voice said, “Who’s there?”
Hells, Claire thought. I’m as crazy as I think she is.
“Ma’am, I’m Ellen Rafferty. We share a friend. She’s helped us both, and now she needs our help back.”
Chains unchained. Locks unlocked. The door cracked.
The woman within—dark skin and white eyes and a narrow white cane with a rubber tip on the end—wore a housecoat and fray-hemmed trousers, and did not look like a monster at all. “Come in,” she said. “Tell me more.”
* * *
A large and scared and ugly crowd gathered to hear the evening news.
Abelard on tiptoe craned his neck to see over the mounded shoulder of a bald, jean-jacketed man who stank of fish and salt. Past him and a sea of surging heads and shoulders and clapboard signs, the bare stage rose before the Crier’s Guild doors. Fisherfolk and dockhands, secretaries, line cooks, stevedores and factory women, Craftsmen and priests and bartenders off-shift had come hungry to hear what truth there was to the rumors of a Goddess’s return.
The sun declined.
Abelard ached from a day sprinting around the city preaching to preachers. The dawn song had conveyed Ramp’s challenge, and fear of the coming struggle burned through the city. Abelard went where Hildegard sent him, spreading grace to parish priests and local deacons. The Lord, he repeated, is pleased by the Goddess’s return. He asks for our faith as He fights on her behalf.
Even among priests, reactions ranged: acceptance, rage, glory, denial. One man, bent-backed and broken-voiced and old enough to remember Seril leaving for the wars, wept. Abelard held his hand.
Tonight Lord Kos would have many long talks with His chosen shepherds.
But their flocks took the news harder.
So Abelard had come to the Guild for evensong, in case of need.
“We can’t deal with this many.” Sister Evangelist Hildegard pressed beside him in the throng: crimson robed, dark skinned, hair bound in a kerchief. “The Suits rerouted traffic down through Providence, but any trouble and we’ll be crushed.” Bodies filled the square and the blocked street. “Those guys make matters worse.” She pointed up to the rooftops, where a ring of silvered Blacksuits stood.
“Justice can keep the peace.”
“You don’t stop a riot by punching people.”
“If you punch enough of them, maybe.”
“That would just make things worse.”
“Stun nets?”
“Can kill. Let’s hope the Criers give a good show. If they don’t—” She clapped Abelard on the shoulder. “Good thing we have a saint handy.”
The doors of the Crier’s Guild opened, and the crowd hushed.
* * *
Zurish tribesmen don’t have 120 words for snow. It rains every day in the jungles of Southern Kath, but folk who live there lack the 70 names for water falling from the sky that armchair wits on six continents commonly ascribe to them. Grow up in the Northern Gleb and you’ll see a lot of sand, but it’s all sand in the end.
&nbs
p; Gabby Jones knew this. But the myths had roots: live with anything long enough and you’ll learn its grades. Girls from Northern Zur, where the sun takes three months of vacation every year, know the differences between snow that falls like a rock and snow that floats like a feather and snow that burns.
In the same way, performers learn varietals of silence. There’s the cut-rate hush of the obligatory concert on a too-hot summer afternoon, and the sweet tense calm before a loved but rarely seen performer steps onstage. The sad quiet with which a crowd awaits a casualty report sticks and clings. The silence of a barroom when a sweating Crier calls “Extra”—the pause before an enormity’s announced—that silence cuts surer than glass.
But such silences take their form only when the performer steps onstage. Behind the Crier’s Guild front door, at the head of her choristers, Gabby heard the crowd’s rumble: angry, expectant, exited, confused. Robes swayed as her singers shifted.
She opened the door, and the silence fell.
The crowd filled the square, filled Providence, filled Flame beyond. She stepped, helpless and proud as a bowsprit carving, onstage.
She’d done this before.
Admittedly, not in front of so many people. Each member of the Crier’s Guild had her own specialty. Gabby wrote music and reported stories to match that music. She sang to keep her voice in trim. And, rarely, for pieces she could not bear handing off to Madison or Sternbridge or Yao, she directed the choir.
But this was bigger than the Ash Riots or the dreamglass crisis. These people were angry and scared. They needed security, which her interview with Aev and Cat and Seril did not offer. She would challenge their faith at a time when they yearned for its comfort.
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