The Ruin of Angels--A Novel of the Craft Sequence

by Max Gladstone

  She hurt when Ley smiled, and she wondered if knowing that would make Ley smile less. “I need you to help me raid the Altus facility in the Wastes.”

  Zeddig waited for Raymet to respond, but Raymet was sputtering too much to form proper words.

  “Four years back, the Iskari tried to extend the wards around the Gleb Line train, hoping they could use the Wastes for high-energy Craftwork research and development, because reality’s weaker out there. Rules are flexible. Altus built their first launch facility there; when the wards collapsed, the Wastes swallowed the whole thing in an instant. The people are all long dead, but the systems should still be there—just inaccessible. I need to get inside. It won’t be a problem.”

  “A problem.” Raymet had finally recovered. “A god-haunted ruin infested with monsters and ordnance. In the middle of the Wastes.”

  “It won’t be a problem,” she repeated, calm as ever, “for the right team. You get me to Altus. I get you to the Stacks. We go our separate ways.”

  Raymet wasn’t done: you haven’t given us one single reason to trust you, you’re on the run from the Wreckers, there’s blood on your hands, and you’re swanning in as if we’re the ones who need your help. You ran with us while it was fun, then turned tail. We’re not toys. We’re not, fuck, I don’t even know what you play with back where you came from, we’re not dolls you can toss aside and pick back up as you fancy.

  Ley watched Raymet rant, and Zeddig watched her in turn, watched her jaw twitch at “dolls” and “toss aside” as Ley fought her instincts to cut back—watched Ley need this in a way she had never needed anything. Even naked and sweating, Ley did not let herself want, simply, visibly. She was muscle tensed to guard an injured nerve.

  “It’s your choice,” Ley said when Raymet was done. She faked carelessness so well even Zeddig almost believed her.

  “Raymet.” Zeddig took her by the shoulder. “Outside, please.”

  Raymet resisted, but let herself be guided back out of the office, let Zeddig toe the door shut behind them. “Z, this business stinks.”

  “I think we should do it.”

  “She fucked you over and left, and you want to go into the Wastes with her?”

  “She thinks we can make it.”

  “How can you trust her?”

  Good question. She deflected. “Think about the Anaxmander Stacks. You know what’s in there.”

  “Heritage,” Raymet said, sourly.

  “Heritage,” Zeddig agreed, “and a fortune. The Stacks don’t belong to a House Library. Selling the duplicates alone would set all three of us up for life.”

  “Unless she leaves us to die once she has what she wants.”

  The hard part about arguing with people at least as smart as you, Zeddig had found, was that sometimes they were right. “She won’t.”

  “She did before.”

  Zeddig remembered the courtyard of the Hanged Man the night she and Ley broke up—no, “broke up” wasn’t the right term—the night their six months’ war grew too hot. Dreamdust addicts sprawled on couches, mewling in their stupor as drums and bass pulsed from the dance hall upstairs. She reached for Ley’s arm, but Ley always could slide away when she wanted. “She didn’t leave us to die.” Just me. And not to die: just to live my life without her. “She just left.”

  “She stole our work and ran off to make her fortune, and if that suit’s any sign, she did well. She’s not Talbeg. She’s not even local. She’s in trouble? She can just leave.”

  “It’s a risky job. We’ve taken risks before.”

  “What will you do when she goes?”

  That question should not have caught Zeddig by surprise. She should have an answer. It hadn’t even occurred to her. To Ley, she was all levers and buttons and dials: a system to be pressed and turned at will. She should have thought further ahead, so she could give Raymet an answer more honest than: “I’ll be fine.” And: “You’re telling me you don’t want it? Fortune, glory, and our history all in one blow? You don’t want to give a middle finger to those fuckers in the tower?”

  Ley wasn’t the only one who knew levers and buttons and dials.

  The reaction bubbled on behind Raymet’s eyes. She stared at Zeddig, fiercely, not because she was certain, but (Zeddig thought) because the opposite: everything inside her moved, and her gaze could at least be still. Zeddig saw the decision form, though regret remained in solution. “I’m in,” she said, “if Gal is.”

  Zeddig opened the door. Ley leaned against the bookcases that lined the office’s far wall, scanning a two-thousand-year-old clay tablet. She raised one eyebrow, and waited for Zeddig’s question.

  “Why did you come to us?” Zeddig asked.

  “Because you’re the best.”

  She was lying. Or she was scared. Or she was on the run, hiding in her ex-girlfriend’s business partner’s basement, and she could not bear the weakness of her position, and presented this cool front to keep things . . . professional. Or she was what she seemed. Zeddig wondered which truth would hurt her more.

  “We have one more partner. Convince her, and you’re in.”

  “Fantastic.” Ley turned away quickly, replaced the tablet on its shelf—and in the instant she turned away Zeddig thought she saw Ley’s facade crack, revealing relief below. Or else she’d imagined it. Or else the crack was meant to soften Zeddig for the next request. “I have to do one small task first. A loose end. And I need your help.”

  “Of course,” Raymet said.

  “It’s nothing serious. I just need to spend a few minutes as a maid.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  IN THE CARRIAGE BETWEEN the Authority tower and Kai’s hotel, the cat discovered Fontaine was allergic.

  “We could open a window,” Kai suggested as she pulled Behemoth back into her lap.

  “I’ll be fine.” Fontaine sneezed into a handkerchief. “Once the beast is somewhere else. I must say, Ms. Pohala, you have an odd sense of how to maintain a low profile.”

  “Most people don’t get arrested on the first day?”

  “You weren’t—” She sneezed again, and wiped her tears with her wrist. Behemoth tried to writhe from Kai’s arms. “Arrested, quite. The Authority detains, but it’s not the same, technically. It’s all a bit sordid, to be honest, but for the best. Roughly speaking. The Rectifiers fulfill a vital function—without them, we’d all fall into the Wound. But such mechanisms have a range of, oh, unfortunate associated tangles. Once a well-meaning, even compliant, individual gets caught in the system, extraction can prove difficult. It doesn’t happen nearly so often as the radical press make it out, but, you know, it does, ah, happen.”

  Unfortunate associated tangles. Kai remembered her own “mixup” back on Kavekana—Penitent stone closing around her limbs, crystal spears piercing her flesh, the splintering pain of superhuman strength and speed. She remembered her mind forced to think and her body forced to move, and suppressed a shudder at the word “compliant.” But no sense mentioning all that to Fontaine now. “What do they do with people who get caught?”

  “Depends on the nature of the offense. Nothing for you to worry about.” He smile was wide, from an earnest desire to change the topic, or from pills, or both. “Your Mr. Twilling contacted me through the nightmare telegraph, and he sounded, let’s say, concerned you might be in trouble with our Rectifiers. I said, certainly not, she was bound for a restaurant and then her hotel, and he said, check, and when the hotel confirmed that you never checked in—they almost cancelled your reservation, would you believe—I started for the Authority tower at once.” Behemoth sank claws into Kai’s arm, pulled free, and jumped to Fontaine’s lap; Kai caught him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him back. How would Twilling have known about any of this?

  “Thank you,” Kai said. “Whatever they get up to in that tower, I want no part of it. Clever thinking, too—getting me out like that.”

  “You may not think so when you see the bill.”

  Kai blinked. />
  “Well, you see. Ah.” Fontaine blew her nose again. “Official Friend status is reserved for financial partners of the Demesne responsible for at least ten million thaums of foreign direct investment.” Kai thought she displayed remarkable self-control under the circumstances. She didn’t scream, for example. Fontaine, teary from cat and bloodshot from drugs, opened her briefcase and sorted through the forms. “I postdated the paperwork—there’s no direct transfer of funds required at this time to maintain status, but a calendar-year commitment is standard, I’m afraid. It’s a good thing our meetings today were so productive!”

  “I,” Kai said, forcing herself to breathe deeply, “thought you had faked the paperwork.”

  Fontaine gasped.

  “I mean, ten million thaums is a big commitment for an exploratory mission.”

  “Of course,” Fontaine said, “I understand. But—at the risk of besmirching the Rectification Authority’s reputation for probity—Lieutenant Bescond has a slight personal tendency toward, shall we say, obstinacy and vengeance. IFI’s records office is closed for the night, so her queries won’t be answered before the market opens tomorrow. But when she does query, if she discovers you have not been granted Official Friend status, you may find yourself regrettably, and this time unavoidably, detained. If you take my meaning. The bureaucracy is an enormous many-legged beast, and we control it with flimsy reins. So: I’ve prepared the paperwork. Your options, as I see them, are the following: sign a formal commitment of funds, or get yourself on the next flight from Agdel Lex, before our records office opens. The six-twenty should still have first class seats available.”

  Kai glanced up from the paper. “You get a commission on this, I assume.”

  “That’s not the point.” Fontaine looked hurt, but when Kai didn’t speak, she gave in. “Well. Yes.” The carriage jerked to a stop before a sprawling mansion. Fontaine opened the door with a smile. “Have a pleasant evening, Ms. Pohala. I suggest a swim: the Arms has a brilliant pool.”

  Kai took the contract with her, and the cat.

  No doubt travelers’ guide writers lavished mellifluent descriptions on the Alikand Arms, highlighting for the discerning tourist its sculptural fountains and panoramic views of the port city (with roofs sloped to obscure the uncomfortable hulk of the Rectification Authority), as well as the hotel’s restaurants, its swim-up bar and morning all-ages calisthenics classes, and the massage parlor. Kai, who’d asked IFI to put her in a business hotel, glowered through check-in, especially when she wrote the glyphs for the Priesthood travel account on the bill and imagined the argument she’d have with Accounting to justify the expense. Behemoth yowled. Kai asked the regulation-smiley desk clerk for a saucer of milk (cats liked milk, didn’t they?) and a litter box to be delivered to her room, and received a nonplussed expression and some nonsense about the Arms’s no-pets policy, which she answered with a glare, and: “Saucer. Milk. Litter box.” Then she snatched the key and staggered toward the lift, looking godsdamn fabulous in heels, in spite of, well. Everything.

  Room: spacious, opulent. Carpet: thick. View: the travel writer Kai wasn’t would have gushed ink. Cat: toilet trained, which Kai had not realized was a thing. Kai, herself: exhausted.

  She closed the door with her back, and slid down the wood, until she sat with the palatial suite in front of her, and the whole world at her back.

  Bescond, in the heart of that fucking pulsing tower. Abernathy, uncomfortable with the Authority, uncomfortable with the entire mess, but still, there. The Craftswoman might have stopped Bescond before things got ugly. That had been Kai’s play, her edge: lean into the hairline fracture between the two. And if that didn’t work? If Abernathy decided her business with Ley, or this Vane person, justified extraordinary measures? Unfortunate associated tangles. The Penitent shell closing around her again. The voices, and the pain.

  And, somewhere beneath all that, she was still wrestling with Ley, gods, bloodslick Ley, knife in hand, on her balcony, as the body cooled. She remembered her sister’s face as she slid free. “I’m sorry.” Kai’d seen that expression before, on a dying goddess, reaching toward the light. That was the look of a woman who saw her last chance breaking.

  Desperation like that didn’t grow in hours. It must have lurked there, hidden, through their conversation at Sauga’s. Whatever trouble Ley was in, she’d thought investment could help. But failing that, she reached for a knife.

  If Kai had listened to her—if she hadn’t assumed, if she asked, if she hadn’t been so fucking tired and so certain in her judgment—

  Ley needed her, and she didn’t listen, and now they were both alone in a broken, breaking city. Because whoever Ley found to help her, she wouldn’t bring them close, wouldn’t let them in. Ever since they were kids, if Ley was in trouble, she had to get out herself. She couldn’t reach for people. That was her big sister’s job: to see when she needed help, and reach for her instead.

  Kai realized she crying. Tears felt good. Breath came to her by the grace of some power too meat-deep to call anything but a god. She sobbed. She couldn’t do this in public, not ever, could barely cry with even just one other person watching. Too proud.

  A cold nose touched the back of her hand. Behemoth rubbed against her stockings and purred. She’d drawn her knees up to her chest; he topped them with a pounce, and slid down into the hollow, warm fur against her belly.

  She heard, and ignored, a knock on the door.

  Six twenty, the flight out. She couldn’t stay. Ten million thaums—the High Priests would kill her.

  Behemoth rumbled. Kai stood, slowly, with the aid of the wall, and felt like a much older woman. Scar tissue pulled in her back and legs. She opened the door.

  Saucer of milk. Litter box (unnecessary, thank gods). And a slip of paper under the milk. A bill? They should have just billed it to the room. She picked up the paper, and turned it over.

  Then she started to run, barestockinged, down the hall.

  The elevators weren’t moving. The near stair was empty, up and down. So too was the farther stair. No fire alarms sounded that she could hear. She shoved through the “Service Personnel Only” door into a closet where three janitors played poker, a razor-toothed goddess flickering above their table. She ran five floors down to the lobby, still shoeless, and saw milling crowds, and no sister.

  When she returned, Behemoth raised his head, having finished the saucer of milk, and regarded her with mild interest.

  The unsigned note read, in Ley’s hand:

  I’m fine.

  I’m glad they let you go.

  Leave the city.

  You’re not safe while I’m here.

  And, more terrifying than all the rest:

  I love you.

  The cat asked a question Kai could not answer.

  She grabbed Fontaine’s contract off the floor, slammed it against the wall, drew a pen from her purse, and signed her name.

  Chapter Sixteen

  LEY CHANGED OUT OF her disguise in Raymet’s carriage, while Aleph the spider-golem clunked them down narrow side streets. She ditched the wig onto the bench seat, and unbuttoned the uniform blouse—Zeddig turned her back too late to avoid seeing a flash of skin. “I’m glad you had these uniforms, but I always wondered why. The Arms wasn’t built over anything important.”

  “Not anything recently important,” Raymet corrected from the driver’s seat, apparently unconcerned with Ley’s undress. “There was a Telomeri villa on that site two thousand years back, during the occupation, and those assholes keep archives in basements—mystery cult nonsense, for the most part, but we found an Elements in the steam tunnels once, guarded by half-living geometry. We don’t go back often these days, because Zeddig doesn’t like being a maid.”

  “The uniforms are scratchy,” Zeddig said.

  “Also, you tend to punch people while you’re wearing them.”

  Aleph juddered over a gap in the cobblestones. “I’m decent,” Ley said, “more or less.” When Zed
dig turned around, she was: her shirt done up to the button below the collarbone, sleeves rolled, hair still a pointy mess from the wig. “And now shall we our darkest deeds darkly do,” which Zeddig thought was Cawleigh; she groped to cap the line.

  “Like slugs we’ll paint the world our greenish hue.”

  “Shimm’ring hue,” Ley corrected without superiority: just the care of artist for work, like a potter smoothing a vase lip straight. She grinned, and looked up through the strands of hair that had escaped her fingers’ comb, and for a moment they were almost them again, damn distance and time.

  They climbed. The Arms’s colonial gables set behind a horizon of sun-dried plaster and laundry lines. Stars glistened. A dragon flew overhead, twisting against the confused currents of the city’s sky. A coffee seller hawked his wares in a high warbling cant unchanged since the wars. “What did you need back there, anyway?”

  “I had to be sure of something,” she said. “That’s all.”

  Zeddig asked, “What?” Meaning, among other things, “Who.”

  But the shutters behind Ley’s eyes closed, and she said nothing else on their ride back.

  Raymet spread a sheet over the couch for Ley, next to the living room table covered with dice and armored miniatures, and brought her a pillow cased in a T-shirt screen printed with the flower logo of an old friend’s band. Raymet sniffed the blanket draped over the love seat, made a face, dumped the blanket into a hamper, and fetched a fresh, if dusty, quilt. “Don’t suppose either of you brought a toothbrush?”

  “I was running for my life,” Ley said. “Must have slipped my mind.”

  “What she said.”

  Raymet dug in the cabinet beneath her sink and produced a few bamboo models, sealed in wax paper. “Good night.” And she stormed downstairs to her own bed, before Ley or Zeddig could respond.

  Zeddig followed, and found Raymet hanging in her room. She’d slung a thick rope over a hook in her ceiling, and dangled from that hook now, shoulders flared. Cords stood out on her forearms, but her hands did not shake. Her grip seemed effortless. Zeddig knew how much effort Raymet used to sell that lie.