Four Roads Cross

by Max Gladstone

  The city began to die.

  Time ran slow, because there was not much left.

  Many thoughts dovetailed in Tara’s head at once.

  The demon that came through Daphne’s mind was not protected by the Court of Craft. It crushed court wards and burst the guardian circle. Kos could engage it directly, now, and Seril, but unbound demons moved faster than faith. They might last mere seconds in real time, but in those seconds they could rewrite the world from underneath the gods. As the demon grew it would kill and convert, and as their faithful died or were swallowed by the glass, Kos and Seril would falter, weaken, change to demon-things themselves.

  Glass closed her around, reflected her against herself, remade.

  Tara remembered the Keeper in the mountain, her fear, her triumph in torment. She could do the same. Give this demon something to eat instead of Alt Coulumb and its gods, instead of Abelard and Cat and Aev and Raz and Bede. Something still mostly human. Something that could die.

  Something like her.

  She’d walked within the Keeper, seen her heart. She thought she knew the trick of it.

  A cage of her hair. A lake of her blood. A mountain of her bone. A maze of her mind.

  Invite the demon into the terror palace of her dreams, and, before it could break free—fall.

  There were wards around a Craftswoman’s dreams, glyph walls to prevent intrusion, subroutines to scrub parasites away. She turned them off. She opened her gates.

  The demon swelled above her, a spider taller than buildings.

  A chain around your neck, a skull’s imagined voice whispered in her ear. I was right.

  No.

  “Come on,” Tara said, and bared her teeth, and let the demon in.

  * * *

  Raz saw Cat fall. Her wings caught air, slowed her, but she crashed onto a neighboring rooftop. He smelled her blood through silver.

  Above him a demon blossomed. He’d seen these before, or things like them. City smashers. Undefined, indefinable. Craftsmen had used them as weapons when the Wars turned bad.

  Cat lay still.

  Raz put the blood jade between his teeth, bit, and drank.

  It tasted sharp.

  All of a sudden even the demon in the sky seemed slow.

  He put his hands into his pockets. This wasn’t what he’d imagined at all, but it made a kind of sense.

  He walked up into the air, humming softly to himself.

  * * *

  Tara offered—

  * * *

  Demonglass scythed toward Raz, slow as an opening flower.

  He ran his hand along the blade’s edge. It felt rough. When he drew his fingers away, he saw the edge had dimpled his skin.

  He flicked the glass, which broke.

  The demon had an outer skin, which he stepped through. Inside, he found its angles mostly wrong, so he righted them.

  In the demon’s center hung the remnants of a woman. He walked toward her.

  * * *

  —herself, and the demon—

  * * *

  Daphne saw the man approach, humming tunelessly.

  The demon tore her, demanded her, but she was its door, and consuming her it would consume itself.

  So she remained.

  The man approached. The demon roared.

  He cocked his head to one side, listening.

  “I’m no good at this sort of thing,” he said. “Want an explanation, you’d be better off asking Tara, or Lady K.”

  He was very close to her now.

  “You’re dangerous because you’re undefined, because the world doesn’t know what limits to place on you. Now, the thing to which I just joined myself—it’s very old. Older than gods. Nothing lasts this long unless it’s quite simple.”

  He sounded sad.

  “You know the joke, that there are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who think there are two kinds of people and the ones who don’t? This is the former. As far as it’s concerned the whole world’s made of things it’s eaten, and things it hasn’t yet.” He bared his teeth. “As far as it’s concerned, you’re not undefined at all. It knows just what to do with you.”

  His fangs went in. Glass cracked around her.

  We can choke him, the demon said, and Daphne realized it was talking to her. He can eat us, but he does not know if we can die. You’re the only part of us that can. Endure, and we can clog him with ourselves, we can sate even this hunger. Stay strong. Work with me, and we’ll have glory you cannot imagine. And the pain will stop.

  Daphne’s broken memories held a man in suspenders with a pleasant smile, who cupped her cheek and said the same words to her in a voice so sweet and steady she could not help but listen.

  This time, she turned away.

  * * *

  —Died.

  Tara waited for the crack in the world she knew was coming. It didn’t.

  She gasped. She hovered, empty, in air. Alive. Free.

  Demonglass cooled and hardened. Weaker pieces shattered—boiled off to unreality and tumbled to the pavement as drops of wet confusion. A three-legged arch remained, towering above Alt Coulumb. It caught the moon, and shone rainbows on the earth.

  Gargoyles and Blacksuits flew; the Judge let her diamond shield dissolve. Ramp was gone.

  At its apex, the glass arch held a single flaw. Tara could not look on it directly—the light it shed hit her eyes wrong. She thought it was a woman’s silhouette.

  * * *

  Jones felt the change in Market Square—they all did. The world was dying, but then it wasn’t, and a glass arch bloomed to the north. Jones had never seen anything like it, which in her experience meant her next step should be run to a safe distance and take notes.

  She stayed.

  Then they heard the cheers—from the sky, from the surrounding buildings, and at last from their own throats, cheering before they knew why, tumbling over one another, rolling and laughing and pointing at the arch and the moon at once smiling and impossibly full. Onstage, the Rafferty girls embraced. Jones saluted Aev and her people, up there in the sky. Then someone tackled her from the side and kissed her, and to her surprise (she wasn’t a casual girl, ask anyone) she kissed back.

  * * *

  Abelard collapsed, laughing and weeping, when he felt the demon break. Cardinals and Technicians rejoiced, overcome by awe.

  Then Abelard noticed the moon through the sanctum window, and felt the Everburning Flame warm against his neck, and heard—thought he heard—the clearing of an enormous throat.

  “My masters and teachers,” he said. “Our Lord would appreciate a bit of, um. Privacy.”

  In five minutes the sanctum was empty for the first time in Abelard’s memory. He was the last to leave.

  That’s two I owe you now, the fire said to him.

  Don’t mention it, he replied. What are friends for?

  * * *

  Cat was mostly conscious when the vampire crashed to the roof beside her.

  She lay in the ruins of her own skin—the Suit ablated to break her fall. She had some broken ribs, one leg didn’t work, and she’d stuffed her fist against the hole in her side to keep the blood contained.

  The vampire, fallen, made a crater in the roof. She crawled toward him, dragging her useless leg. He was very still. Then he coughed, rolled onto his side, and vomited a glassy fluid that evaporated as it left his lips.

  “Sexy.”

  He turned to her, his face a horror mask. She caught his wrist before he could pull out of reach, and held it.

  “I’ll—Cat, I am so hungry. It wants to eat and eat and eat. I have to go.”

  “Don’t.” She felt as weak as he looked.

  “I can’t hold on, dammit. Your blood’s right there, I’ll—” Teeth, out, pointed, dripping. The eyes were Raz’s, and not. A new emptiness at their pits made their colors turn, like ruddy whirlpools. He seemed to be drawing inward toward a point not present in any physical geometry.

  “I get it.” She wi
nced. “Eternal hunger. Call of the deep. Here.” She reached for her medallion.

  “Your Suit won’t help.”

  “Shut up for one minute.” Took a second to work the thing out one-handed. The holy symbol swung between them: the blind woman enrobed.

  One last chance.

  Okay, Lady, Cat prayed. You win.

  The blind woman looked up at Cat and smiled.

  Cat was stone, was sky, was an insect beneath an enormous entomologist’s gaze. The Seril who addressed her in the shower, and on the city’s rooftops, had been smaller, conceivable almost as a kind of invisible person, who saw the world as mortals did. Not so this Being. Yet She had not changed, only grown more Herself.

  That made what she was about to do better, and worse.

  I offer myself to you, she prayed. Save him.

  The light waited.

  You called me priestess, before.

  But Cat had denied it.

  I fought for you. I saved you. I learned from you. I was pierced for you. I almost died for you. I was scared of the word, that’s all. Just keep him here, before he goes away forever. Please.

  Nothing changed.

  She would lose him.

  Raz looked different. He was lit, she realized, by trebled moonlight: from above, and from her own eyes.

  She set her hand on his forehead.

  “I offer you asylum,” she said, not knowing how the words or gesture came to her, “under the protection of Seril Undying. The Lady will answer any liens against your soul. I give you back yourself.”

  “You can’t,” he croaked. “They want me. They’ll take me.”

  “They helped us, and you fed them in turn. The Lady will pay whatever more they feel they’re owed.”

  “They won’t—” He broke off, coughing. “They won’t accept that. They want me. Father of a line. They’ll come for me, on land or sea. And for you.”

  “And when that happens, we’ll be ready. Together. You can live here—at least some of the time. Seril’s protection’s strongest in Alt Coulumb. If you’re worried about the rent, I have a nice couch. And I could get better curtains.”

  “I hate this city.”

  “But not the people in it.”

  “No,” he said.

  He was silent for what felt like a long time, and so was she.

  “You said you wouldn’t stop me from doing something stupid to save you.”

  “I did.” She nodded. “But I never said I wouldn’t do something stupid to save you back.”

  “I accept.”

  His teeth receded. The whirl in his eyes stilled.

  Far away, something ancient screamed.

  He exhaled, and some of the animal left him, and some of a man she’d not yet come to know returned. “They’ll be after you, too, now.”

  “Worth it,” she said.

  Lights bloomed in the sky. Silver and red nets and circles, twining—like fireworks but not.

  “Now come on.” She tried to sit up, and failed. “Drag me to the hospital. I’d like to beat the rush.”

  * * *

  Tara flew over the city. Over her city. Free.

  Stone wings beat, and Aev approached her. “Shale?”

  She turned from the flaw in the demonglass arch. “He’s trapped,” she said. “Out west. He—threw himself into a monster’s mouth to save us. I’ll get him back. Bring him home.” She heard the weakness in her voice and didn’t hate herself for it.

  That’s new, she thought.

  Aev touched her arm. Then, before Tara could push her away, the gargoyle hugged her. Her stone was cold and warm at once.

  “Thanks,” Tara said when they were done.

  “We are wounded,” Aev said. “We are tired. We will heal, and go back for him. For now, let us celebrate like free women.”

  “And Abelard. We should pick him up. He needs a break.”

  “Do you think he can keep up?”

  Tara grinned. “I’d like to watch him try.”

  69

  The gray tower stood at a cliff’s edge over a cold ocean where waves frothed amid sharp rocks. The tower’s windows were blind eyes against the sea, save at the summit, where one light shone.

  Madeline Ramp turned from the ocean to her chamber. She required few homely comforts, which was why she carried all she needed with her: a cauldron, a well-stocked icebox, a good bed, several bookcases. In one corner, a cello swayed through an Old World sonata.

  A package rested on her oaken clawfoot coffee table. The postman dropped it off “between 2:00 and 6:00 P.M. Seconday” to one of the addresses on which her front door opened. In fact the package had not arrived ’til well past seven, but under the circumstances she would not complain. She had not yet opened the box. Best to savor anticipation, the man himself had said. Like unwrapping a peasant.

  She was quite sure that had been a slip of the tongue, but she’d not asked him for clarification.

  She walked to the charcuterie spread she’d prepared, rolled a straw of prosciutto, popped it in her mouth, and chewed. She tasted meat and salt, smoke and fat. A bottle of pinot noir tipped wine into a glass, which floated to her hand as she turned back to the box. Bunny slippers scuffed across the gold thread of a Skeld rug.

  She settled into her armchair, and with a flick of her fingers began to unwrap. Brown string untied itself and curled into a coil on the table. Tape split.

  She ran her fingertips over rough cardboard and checked for signs of tampering, finding none.

  She opened the lid, plunged her hand into packing immaterial, and found—

  Nothing.

  Wine sloshed over her fingers. She set the goblet down and groped in the impenetrable shadows. It was here. It had to be. Shrunk, maybe, or phase-shifted by post office mishandling, she’d flay the boy who brought it to her, or better yet find him in dreams and—

  “Looking for this?”

  Tara Abernathy sat in the armchair opposite, legs crossed. She held a silver-glyphed skull in one hand, like a jester’s puppet or a philosopher’s dummy.

  “Ms. Abernathy,” Ramp said. “I thought you would know better than to bother me in my home.”

  She did not need to move. The leather of the chair in which Abernathy sat split into thin straps, lashed up and around to snare and bind—

  And passed through the woman as if she did not exist.

  The straps reared back and swayed like confused cobras. Abernathy slapped one, and it slithered to quiescence within the upholstery.

  Ramp glanced down at the open box. To either side of the lid she saw, taped, a business card: TARA ABERNATHY, CRAFTSWOMAN. No logo.

  “Projection,” she said. “A shame. I can’t offer you a drink.”

  “You would have tied me up to offer me a drink?”

  “I have a strict vision of hospitality.”

  Abernathy smiled at that, a bit.

  “Do you know who that is you’re holding?”

  “Yes,” she said, with a touch of distaste as if she’d smelled something foul.

  “One of the greatest minds since Gerhardt. If not the greatest.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Tara said, assuming a mockery of the man’s voice, that old country Craftsman’s tones he’d faked so well. She tilted the skull down and sideways, so it seemed to be embarrassed. “I’m just a plain simple bastard.”

  “Impertinence. You do not understand what Alexander Denovo was, what he did.”

  “I understand better than you, I think.”

  “I worked with him for decades.”

  “And I was one of the people he worked on.” She considered the skull. “You know, I prefer him this way. Looks less sinister, for starters.” Tara uncrossed her legs, stood, and paced the small chamber, tossing the skull from hand to hand. “Justice found what was missing from the evidence locker. The package was harder to trace. We thought we were out of leads, until a friend asked for my help with a family matter. Her father showed up in the middle of our court date in t
he sky, ranting, warped. Someone had messed him up with Craft I recognized. Turns out he was roommates with a Talbeg priest who also escaped the hospital during the crisis. We found the priest—who’s fine, by the way, thanks for asking—and we found the post office. The whole thing involved too many last-minute heroics for my taste. We had to waylay the delivery truck this afternoon. Sorry it was late.”

  Ramp said nothing.

  Abernathy tossed the skull into the air, caught it, and hooked her fingers through the eye sockets. “During the package chase I got talking with Cat, and Raz, and a bunch of other people, and talking leads to thinking—about Maura Varg’s mystery client, who hired her to pick up indentures in the Gleb and collect a load of dreamglass in Alt Coulumb, even though dreamglass is illegal there. We asked ourselves where Raz’s tip came from, and I remembered the mysterious gray-eyed girl who set Gabby Jones on the Seril story in the first place. Daphne has—had—gray eyes. Jump in whenever you’re ready.”

  “Why? So far I’ve heard only conjecture and spite.”

  “You covered your tracks well. Idols paying idols to rent the gray-eyed girl’s apartment. A different set of shell Concerns and Kavekanese mystery cults to hire Varg. But the Talbeg priest who stole this skull had a demon inside him, like the demons in the others, and he sent the skull to you. So that chain leads us at least as far back as Varg.”

  “Your chain has flimsy links, Counselor.”

  “Did you attack Kos just to cover up your theft?”

  “I brought suit,” Ramp said, “because Seril is a weakness at a time we can afford none. Kos and the Iskari are bad enough: gods and their servants prating on as if the Wars never happened, binding simpletons to their service. They’re brake pads on the troika of history. But at least the Craft binds them. With Seril’s return Kos gains new freedom, which slows progress. These gods of yours are a dead end for life on this planet: a disgusting self-centered inversion, music played on the deck of a sinking ship when we should be saving ourselves.” She shrugged. “More to the point, I brought suit because my clients asked me to. You do remember clients? Or has your time among god-botherers replaced fiduciary duty with faith?”

  “Is that the game we’re playing? Denials and pushback?”

  “You accused me of acting for an ulterior motive. I tell you I had none. But Alexander’s skull is a treasure. Whoever thought to send it to me has my thanks, whatever their methods.”