Four Roads Cross

by Max Gladstone

  She did not let up the stare for a few seconds.

  She closed her eyes. That made it easier.

  “Hi,” she tried. “You don’t know me, and you don’t have reason to trust me. But if you show me where it hurts, I think I can help.”

  Silence.

  Oh, what the hells. “Please,” she said.

  Rock ground rock. A thunderstorm smell stained the air. Strong wind struck her in the chest. She tried to steady herself on the wall—

  And failed, because there was no wall beside her anymore.

  A tunnel gaped to her right, its black walls covered with enormous painted figures that glowed the same red as the mine’s crystal veins.

  “Not one word,” she told Shale.

  He offered none.

  They descended together.

  54

  Cat waited in line for the sunset service at the Church of Sacred Ashes in Slaughter’s Fell. The locals had come out in force, heavyset men in pit-stained work shirts and women with worn fingers. A mom in denim slacks caught her youngest by the arm and yanked her back from the street. Cat stuffed her hands in her coat pockets, hurting for a smoke, a drink, a fang, avoiding the blank stares of black windows in whitewashed houses. She watched the houses so she didn’t have to watch the people. A scar-cheeked young man beside her offered her a cigarette, which she declined though she wanted to say yes.

  It had been a long day after a long night.

  Church doors opened and they filed in.

  Parishioners packed the pews. As many stood in the back as found a seat. Cat scored one of the last pews, though the benches were so tightly packed she might have rather stood, or popped wings to give the locals a taste of real divine intervention. She squeezed between a bearded man in a golem mechanic’s shirt—CAPISTANO SERVICE & REPAIR, grease stains included—and a dark-skinned girl with bushy hair, thin wrists, and thick glasses, who, after her mother hipped her into the pew beside Cat, slid the prayer book from the wooden pocket, and buried herself in the order of solstice ceremonies, high rite, second version, summer colophon. The evening congregation was a brew of hushed voices, pressure, and too-close bodies’ heat. Cat smelled shoe leather and popcorn, oil and engine grease, aftershave, deodorant, perfume, and the bodies all that aftershave, deodorant, and perfume were meant to cover.

  The people filled the church floor, but they did not fill the church. Arches made the roof seem taller than the sky.

  On tiptoe she could just glimpse the cage-throne for the god’s fire on the altar.

  “Huh,” she said.

  It wasn’t burning.

  “The altar?” That was the man beside her, the mechanic, Capistano. “They don’t keep it lit in Deliquescence. Guess you don’t come often.”

  “It shows?”

  “Safe guess. You think church’s this busy any given day? Lot of people scared tonight.”

  “I haven’t done much churching since I was a kid,” she said.

  Moon-whisper, soft and still: You worship through your work.

  “It’s easy.” Not the mechanic—the girl to her right, her eyes large and liquid behind glass. She raised the book. “They’ll tell you what page to read. You say what it says in italics, like here. If you don’t know how to say it, I can help.” Because in this part of the city it wasn’t fair to assume everyone who came to church could read. And Cat was wearing Feller drag, jeans and jacket and worn boots, top two buttons of her shirt undone, a tear at her knee and a fray at her cuff. This was how she dressed growing up, how the kids she collared on patrol still dressed. Not much changed in Slaughter’s Fell, though what change would look like here she didn’t know. Suited uptown kids like those pricing out the locals up near the PQ market wouldn’t fix anything, for sure.

  “Thanks,” she said, which carried farther than she meant. A hush fell over the assembly.

  She followed the girl’s gaze to the altar, and the priests.

  Old Carmichael stood in the center. Cat recognized none of the acolytes who followed her, and wondered if she’d come to no purpose. But the old woman spread her hands and intoned, “Behold His fire,” and from stage left (did priests call it stage left? altar left?) Abelard emerged, bearing in his cupped hands a burning coal. He set the coal inside the altar’s cage-throne. The flame danced. The choir sang. He took his place.

  The girl guided Cat through the services so well Cat lost her way only once—her own fault, when she flipped two pages instead of one and landed in an exorcism rite. Carmichael’s sermon focused on duty, faith, and hope. Cat was too tired to follow most of it, but the congregation drank her words like thirsty earth drank rain. They needed.

  Seril laughed moonlight when Cat joined the long alterward line to receive the ashes from Abelard. She moved slowly, like a tourist in a fabled city, weighing each street sign, intersection, tree, and graffiti mural, while locals sprinted past to work.

  Her line evaporated and left her exposed to her friend, who held the dish of fire. She stepped toward him, set one arm across her chest as the service book indicated for those who wished a blessing but not the ash. He did not recognize her until he’d already dipped his hand into the fire. His eyebrows rose, and his body hitched in its performance of the rite. He caught himself before he spilled the flame.

  His fingers, when they touched her scalp, were harder than she expected. Calluses, like those that glazed her knuckles.

  The girl and the mechanic waited for her in the pew. The girl glowed with faith and sweat.

  After service, Cat lingered outside the sacristy door, leaning against a tree trunk. Acolytes emerged two by two, and at last came Abelard, wearing rust-colored everyday robes, cigarette smoldering. “You did well,” she said from the shadows, and grinned when he started and turned.

  “Half gave me a heart attack.”

  “God will provide.” She hugged him. “Nice service. Why didn’t you give the sermon?”

  “It’s Carmichael’s congregation. I wouldn’t presume.”

  “Not even now that you’re a saint?”

  “I’m no more a saint than you are.”

  “Low blow.”

  “Technical branch doesn’t sermonize. If I tried, I’d scare these people half to death with stress tolerance analogies.”

  “Gustave preached. And Tara said you made a good speech at the church hearing.”

  “I had to,” he said. “I’m surprised you’re here. Usually couldn’t drag you into church with a team of horses. Or back to the Fell, for that matter.”

  “I tried to find you at the temple, but they said you’d gone to hold evening service. I figured you’d come here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need a reason to see a friend?”

  He ashed his cigarette onto the sidewalk, crushed out embers with his shoe. “Walk with me?”

  They did, down Wilson and north on Candlemarch. “Been a long time since I was back here,” she said when they passed gated Alowith Park. Puddles broke streetlights to rainbows. “Out of uniform, I mean. You remember Nick Masters? Offered me a smoke in line for the service tonight. Didn’t recognize me, or if he did, he didn’t say.”

  “You broke his big sister’s nose.”

  “It was a fair fight. I was six, she was eight, and she had it coming.”

  “You’re limping.”

  “Turns out,” she said as they passed the park, “not everyone reacts to apocalyptic news as well as the good people of Slaughter’s Fell. There was a riot dockside. I got run over by a wagon, if you can imagine. In the Suit, but I’ll still have a nice bruise when this is over.”

  “Sounds bad.”

  She threw a pebble at a squirrel. The squirrel leapt to another branch, and then to a different tree. “It was, a bit. How do you think we’ll do tomorrow?”

  “The people have faith, though it’s a stretch to get them supporting Seril. Bede’s confident Wakefield can defend Kos. The question is, what will happen when Ramp turns to Seril. We can’t help He
r without exposing ourselves. So we’ll see.” He lit another cigarette, offered her one.

  “Not my poison.”

  “I’m headed to Mom and Dad’s before I go back,” he said. “Come with me. They’d be happy to see you.”

  “I have work,” she said.

  “Tara will get back in time.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “You’ve heard nothing from her.”

  “A nightmare came through last night, but it wasn’t clear.”

  “Give me an old-fashioned letter any day.”

  “I know the feeling,” he said. “Now, Cat, will you please tell me why you’re here?”

  She grew interested in the sidewalk between her boots. He waited. She’d learned to wait when she became a Blacksuit, but she hadn’t expected Abelard to have the knack as well. All that kneeling must add up. “I have a plan to help Seril. You said it yourself—there’s only so much the church can do.”

  “Cat—”

  “Kos listens to you. If you ask Him to keep me safe, I think He will. And in a fight, everything you want to do that isn’t win is a weakness. If He tries to shield me, He’ll be helping Seril, which won’t do us any favors.”

  “You think He’d look after you just because I asked?”

  “Yes,” she said, and stepped in front of him, turned so they could see each other. “I think you’ve asked Him already.”

  He looked away.

  “Let me do my job, Abelard.”

  “It will be a hell up there,” he said. “The things these people do. You know how scary Tara gets, and she’s friendly by their standards.”

  “You want me scared?” Something behind her eyes felt hot. “Okay, I’m scared. But I can help, and if I can help I have to, and I’m asking you not to stop me.”

  They reached his family’s door: black wood in a red brick building three stories high. A candle quivered in the third-floor window. A long time ago she’d drawn chalk heroes on the sidewalk where they stood, saviors in pastel.

  “Okay,” he said. “Just.”

  “What?”

  “Come up for tea. The folks would like to see you. So would I.”

  “Okay,” she said, and they climbed the steps together.

  55

  Night claimed Alt Coulumb. Dockside, Blacksuits swept up remnants of the riot. Churches and chapels and street-corner confession booths crowded with the living and the dead in search of counsel. In the Pleasure Quarter revelers danced and spun in frenzy. Long braids described black circles as fire-eaters breathed light into the dark. “Tomorrow” was a word few tongues dared whisper. Criers sang the coming doom. There was faith: the city remembered the choir in the sky. But fear flourished in faith’s shadow.

  So lovers loved, drunks drank, preachers preached, fathers fathered, mothers mothered, daughters daughtered, sons sonned, and reporters—

  Gavriel Jones remembered the Paupers’ Quarter market as an angry crowd and a swinging cane and stone wings beneath an impossible moon. The crowd tonight was softer and less dense. Rugs and carpets and chairs lay around the Crier’s dais, and people, mostly women, busied about assembling camp. A girl with short spiked hair dyed pink and half her face tattooed in the pattern of a skull lifted a rug from a cart.

  “Expecting more people?” Jones asked the girl.

  “Yeah.” She unrolled the rug with a snap of her strong arms. “Claire says. Grab those, put them down here, and here, in an arc.” Then she saw Jones for the first time and saw, more to the point, her orange waistcoat. “Shit.” The girl flowed up from her crouch, folded her arms, cocked her head up and back, a picture of the kind of punk Jones had been herself years ago, though she never let the needles near her face. “You aren’t here to help.”

  “I might be,” Jones said.

  “You’re a Crier. You want a story.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” she said. “What’s yours? Don’t often see a Hot Town kid setting up a sit-in.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “More than you think. We could compare scars sometime.”

  “Yeah?” Her curled lip and bared teeth skewed the skull-tat weird. “Maybe we could. Anyway, I’m not talking to you.”

  “Current evidence to the contrary.”

  “Fuck,” she said. “Lady’s got my back. I got hers. You forget that when you put on your fancy coat?”

  “That why you’re here? Manners?”

  “I’m here to unload carts. You want to help, then let’s go.” She pointed with her head, a lioness’s move, languid and slow. “Otherwise you talk to them.”

  Jones recognized the three to whom she turned: the big man moving stiffly, and the girls. “Adorne?”

  “Ellen,” she said. “Or Claire.”

  “Thanks. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Gabby Jones.”

  “I know,” she said, then: “Kim,” and turned back to the cart and the rugs and the work of unloading.

  Claire—blonder of the two, hollow cheeks, sharp controlled movements—met Jones halfway, leaving Ellen to resolve a question of supplies. Gabby almost hadn’t recognized either girl: when she last saw them they’d stood hostage to their father. They’d grown in two days, or she had. “Ms. Jones,” Claire said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I keep my ears open, and I hear things. What about you?”

  “The Lady needs help.”

  “You shouldn’t be here, kid. I’ve seen people side with gods against Craftsmen. That doesn’t end well.”

  “Seril helped us,” Claire said. “We’ll help Her tomorrow.”

  “You read much history, Claire?”

  “Enough.”

  “You don’t want to be out here when they bring the big guns.”

  “If you won’t help us,” Claire said, “at least don’t get in our way. We have work to do.”

  Damn kids, damn idealists. But to sit here and pray as the sky burned overhead—there was a stupid courage to that, even if Gabby knew how that sort of courage ended. Tomorrow Aev would fight in the skies. And Gabby would watch from the sidelines. That was her job. She’d told Tara as much in this very square, days ago.

  “Ms. Jones.” Gabby jumped. Ellen’s approach had been soundless. She carried a sleeping bag under one arm. “Our Lady doesn’t stand much chance alone.”

  She remembered Aev in the alleyway: moonlit talons and jewellike glittering eyes. And she remembered fire falling in Dresediel Lex, a long time gone. “No.”

  “You came because you want to help, but don’t think you can. Stay. Tell our story.”

  Jones had a beat to cover, leads to follow and ledes to write.

  But she had started all this, in the small way a teller starts a tale. And if they died and she didn’t, she could forge of their story a weapon to throw against the wizards in their glass towers. To fight back, as she hadn’t fought twenty years ago.

  “I can’t join you. It’s not…” Professional ethics made a hollow sound when struck.

  “You could help us build camp,” Claire said. “If that won’t strain your morals.”

  “No,” she said. “I can do that much.”

  56

  The nurse led Dr. Hasim to the room where Umar lay. A pale man slept there too, in a long white bed separated from Umar’s by a blue curtain. “I’m sorry,” the nurse said as they entered. “There weren’t enough beds; we had to fit him somewhere. We’ll move him soon, now most of your group’s awake. But he hasn’t responded since he arrived.”

  “Thank you,” Hasim said. “Leave us, please?”

  The man left.

  Hasim placed a chair by the bed, so soft it made no sound. Umar did not twitch. Even so light a movement would have broken his normal featherweight sleep. Sunrise could wake Umar through blackout curtains. A cat’s padding across the carpet made the big man twist and grumble. Falling temperatures, or rising, or a gust of wind, or the moon in the acacias, snapped him awake and philosophical. Hasim himself slept deeply, and shared th
ese moments only in the half consciousness that ensued when Umar shoved him awake to talk. Fear haunted Umar at night: fear they would be attacked, the city would fall, the Refuge would fail. Many predators preyed on small gods. But he also jostled Hasim awake to debate the reality of shadows, the meaning of prayer, the logic of resurrection, the lives of gods.

  Mention these matters to Umar in daylight, and he would laugh. Umar’s god, like him, preferred the strength and speed and blood of living things to scholarship. Hasim enjoyed Umar’s game of anxiety and denial. It was one of many games they played together.

  In Alt Coulumb, now, Umar’s hand lay on scratchy sheets, far from the delicate cottons of their bed. Hasim took his hand, felt hard callus ridges. Umar’s palm was heavy with muscle. He squeezed. Umar did not respond.

  “We’ll fight,” Hasim said, leaning close to Umar’s cheek. “Aedi cast the deciding vote. If you can believe that.”

  He watched for a twitch in the broad chest, a flare of a several-times-broken nose. None came.

  “I wish you were here to help us.” His voice caught, and he forced himself to laugh. “I’ll fight, Umar. Me. Life’s road takes strange turns.” No answer. “I thought you would find that funny. I won’t shame you.”

  That was how they talked to each other, building trust falls into conversation. You could never shame me, that was Umar’s line. But Umar said nothing.

  “I won’t shame you,” he repeated, louder, so wherever he was he could hear.

  He kissed him once. His beard was dense and pillowy against Hasim’s cheek.

  Hasim left the chair by the bedside. If the nurses did not move the chair back, and Umar woke while he was out, Umar would see Hasim had come to sit with him. Just in case, Hasim left a note. We are well. I love you. Superstition tugged at Hasim as he signed his name, but the hexes he feared were all an ocean away. He doubted many here could even read Talbeg.

  He wrote Umar’s public name on the envelope, and added a seal so the letter would burn if opened by anyone but him. He set this on the bedside table before he left.

  As the door closed, Umar shifted beneath the sheets.