Zeddig remembered this woman in Hala’s Fell, rich with smells of cardamom and butter, remembered warning her off, thinking: there was too much of Ley in Kai to let her get involved. Two of those would fight until they broke.
Behind Kai spread the Wastes, and freedom, or death.
And behind Zeddig rose a tower of fallen friends, caught in Iskari coils. She was their hope. If she stayed free.
“No,” Ley said.
But Zeddig said, “That’s not your choice to make.”
Ley stared up at her.
“You promised me the knife.”
“To use. Not to give my fucking sister.”
“A promise is a promise,” Zeddig said.
“You don’t know what you’re doing—”
“Saving us. And my friends.” She reached for Ley’s belt. Ley tried to fight her, but she had no strength—wrung out by their flight, by her wound, by fading adrenaline and the disaster in the tower.
Zeddig was almost as weak. Almost.
The knife felt weightless in her palm. The blood drop glittered in the blade. A voice cackled in triumph, but she did not listen or care.
“Break down the fence.”
The Craftswoman shrugged, and the fence fell.
“Your word. We’ll not be followed.”
“Zeddig, you don’t have any godsdamn idea what you’re doing—”
“I do.”
Zeddig looked down at the blade that was not a blade at all. So light a thing. She spat out a foul taste in her mouth, and tossed it across the sand to Kai.
The blade rolled to a stop at her feet.
Ley lunged for the knife, but her bad leg buckled. Zeddig caught her, wrapped her arm around Ley’s shoulder, hoisted her to her feet.
“Come on,” she said. She felt tired and firm—scoured as an abandoned building, all façade and polish worn away, until only the skeleton remained.
Ley sagged into her, and, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, they limped into the Wastes.
Chapter Fifty
THEY DRAGGED IZZA AND Isaak over broken glass and shattered concrete to the entrance hall. Izza bit and tore them with her nails, but the Wreckers’ arms bound her tighter the harder she fought, and though they no longer tried to poison her with their sour joy, contentment spread like oil slick from their touch. Izza had never frozen to death, but she imagined that would feel like this, sensation fading until none remained to lose.
The Wreckers knelt them beneath the Altus logo, by the receptionists’ desk. The one that held Izza bled purple from Izza’s knife and Isaak’s claws, limping, weak from its torn limbs. The second, which had surprised them as they made a break for the door, held Isaak, so tangled through him he was hardly visible save for his eyes. Beside them, the Wreckers held Gal and Raymet, Raymet unconscious, Gal supported by the mass of arms that bound her. The Camlaander was awake, pupils dilated, and she seemed vaguely disappointed.
Izza tugged against her Wrecker’s arms, but they didn’t give.
The Lieutenant paced before them, hands in the pockets of her overcoat, head down. “Hells do you mean, lost? They were together—” The Wrecker behind Izza gurgled, and Izza felt a stab of professional triumph. Someone made it, at least. “Follow them into the Wastes. They can’t have gone far. Sedate these four, find the others, and come back.”
A shadow impinged on the light streaming through the open door. “Lieutenant Bescond,” Kai said. “May I interrupt?”
The Lieutenant turned, slowly.
Kai entered, with the Craftswoman at her side. “I have something you want.” In her grip glittered a knife made of geometry, with a drop of blood at its heart. “My sister goes free.”
“That,” the Craftswoman confirmed, “was the deal.”
Bescond stood vicious and sharp in silhouette, against Kai, against the Wastes outside, against the world. “I could take that from you right now.”
The Craftswoman’s voice remained casual, as if discussing weather. “If you do, you’ll stand in material breach.”
The shadows in the broken room darkened, and cold wind blew in from the Wastes. The Wrecker that held Izza twitched. The others shivered. Gal smiled like a war.
Bescond rolled her shoulders back, as if shedding a heavy cloak. “Fine. Give me the knife.”
“Let the others go,” Kai said.
“Our deal doesn’t cover them. These two”—she pointed to Gal and Raymet—“are bound for the tower. These two”—to Izza and Isaak—“are thugs, juveniles. Jails for them. We dealt for your sister.”
Kai glared at the Craftswoman, at Bescond. Then she reviewed the prisoners one by one, settling on Izza.
Izza’s mind, sluggish, clicked into motion then. If Kai wanted wanted Izza free, all she had to do was make the case. Without their spy in the enemy ranks, Kai could not have traced Ley, could not have caught Zeddig and this godsdamn knife. Izza was an Iskari hero. Of course Bescond would let her go.
By her side, Isaak shouldered against his bonds, and snarled through sharp teeth. He glanced over to Izza. Blood streaked his face. Beneath all that fury and sharp teeth, he looked lost and scared.
Izza glared at Kai, and prayed with all the strength inside her: Don’t you fucking dare.
Kai’s knees buckled with the force of the prayer. The Craftswoman took her by the elbow—but the moment’s weakness passed. Kai straightened, and offered Bescond the knife.
“Deal.”
Bescond took the blade, and held it so the Waste light shone through. Izza knelt at the wrong angle to see how triumph looked on the woman’s face.
Chapter Fifty-one
KAI STAYED NUMB THE whole trip home. Wreckers marched them back across the Wastes, their laced arms transmuting to sand dune stillness the slow anguished motion of the gods on whom they tread. After an hour’s walk they found a waystation, a creepy ramshackle platform of rotten wood and cracked concrete guarded by the track wards. Bescond set a flag and they waited together and separately, each in her own head.
Tara did not look at Kai, or anyone else. She seemed far away—seeing and hearing other people, wishing she could make them real by sheer focus. Bescond marched along the platform, hands in coat pockets, shoulders back, self-assured and whole, situation in hand, that’s what her body language said, all but the set of her jaw. She checked her watch three times each circuit of the track. Perhaps her watch held a step counter, and she wanted to hit her daily goal.
Then there were the prisoners.
Izza had not looked at Kai since that moment back in the tower. The boy, Isaak, kept his head down and did not move. The Camlaander sat cross-legged, bound fast by two Wreckers and gloriously composed, as if unprepared to admit the existence of the outside world. Not submissive—just submitting. The thin Gleblander by her side cursed everything nearby, and everyone, then asked for a cigarette.
They waited for the train.
Wind howled. Kai told herself it was wind. She did not look at the horizon. Too many hands rose to tear the sky, too many Beings forced themselves upright only to be pulled down once more by ropes of plasm.
Ley was out there.
She didn’t think about that.
The Express returned. They felt its approach first as a stillness of the not-quite-gods. Against the world’s curve, against physical and thaumaturgical law, against the bloody burden of its cargo, the engine worked. The train dawned to the south, an earthquake wrapped in steel. Insulating gel sloshed around cargo containers, around their vital weight of necromantic earths, of bones and oil. The Express was an enormous perfect vessel of trade, a weapon like the ball of knives in old Quechal tales, volleying between the Hero Twins and their opponents in a sacrificial game of ullamal, killing where it touched, rebounding to kill again. While the game endured, the blade-ball moved. The ball was the game, the game the ball.
But the Express stopped for them. They belonged to it. Mites, they crawled upon its back, eating the dust they found, and called that living.
> Kai sat in the passenger car, not reading the newspaper by the fake light through the fake window, not looking at Bescond across from her, who did read the paper, not looking at Abernathy who stared, troubled, into her folded hands. Kai had seen art gallery collages of engraved black-and-white people scissored out from newsprint, pasted into backgrounds of glossy fashion magazine ballroom luxury. She felt like that, in the train, after the Wastes.
Ley was out there.
Somewhere.
Broken-legged and lost.
The world lacked a knife so subtle as Kai’s heart. She bled within. Ley had glared at her through loose strands of hair, dark eyes sharp with fury. You should have listened. You never should have chased me. You should have let me go.
If not for Kai, Bescond would have hunted Ley and Zeddig across the Wastes, caught her for sure—two women on foot, one of whom could barely walk. Once she had the knife, Bescond would not have let Ley go, or even Zeddig for that matter. She would not pass up a chance for revenge against a woman who made her life piercing the Iskari shell.
There was no other way. But even so, Kai had played along. She gave Bescond the knife. Her mind was a cavern, and regret a bonfire, and she knelt in chains as memory cast distorted shadows on the wall.
Izza’s rejection, her furious prayer to be left alone, had been easy to bear. But only by comparison.
The train reached its station. Bescond kept still. Abernathy waited. Venting the insulation slush took almost an hour. The conductor tapped the door with her knuckle, and said, in flawless Iskari, “It is now safe to descend.”
Kai stumbled into her room at the Arms and shut the door with an exhausted slump. Behemoth curled, head tucked into belly, a roll of black fur on the windowsill lit slantwise by the last of the sun. The cat raised his head, blinked in suspicion at the general scheme of wakefulness, and lowered his head again.
Kai changed the food and water bowls, emptied the litter box, sunk twenty thaums into a tip for tomorrow’s housekeeper. That, too, felt sick, after what she’d seen and done today. All of this did, this normalcy. She remembered Abernathy: Where do you think your pilgrims get the soulstuff they invest with you, the wealth they hope to hide from gods and men? Are they legitimate, really? Entrepreneurs? All of them?
What are you, if not a scavenger?
Descending sunlight stung tears from her eyes. The cat’s purr echoed. So did his breath. There were no other sounds in the hotel room. Kai hated hotels. Should have found another place to stay. A corporate apartment. A bed and breakfast. She might have even asked to spend the night with her—
sister
Enough.
She took a saucer from the coffee service, drew a new supply of needles from her open luggage, sank to the floor, and let a drop of blood swell from her forefinger into the dish. Grace addicts collapsed veins this way. She needed a better solution. They really should reform the Blue Lady’s theology to something less bloodthirsty, less pain-focused. Even if the Lady had been born from pain, even if Her followers had more pain in common than anything else.
Kai’s heart pulsed as the blood struck porcelain. She watched a pattern form, watched shadows track across carpet as light changed and died. The bloodspatter was a tunnel into the depths, and she descended winding down to find at the world’s heart a Lady radiant blue, her savior and salvation, perfect in her cleverness, a flash of the pads of running feet, a glint of horn and tail like a buck from the kind of woods they did not have on Kavekana—the Lady who chose Izza as her prophet—the Goddess who Izza, prophet, formed.
Kai’s Goddess too.
Kai framed herself for each client, for each idol she served. She was a killer, when their service called for death. Gods of pleasure, Ladies of love, required ecstasy and repose: you stripped yourself bare, you fit your being to requirements, you gave the idol what it needed to keep its story spinning. Queens of Heaven you met with submission or command, depending on the mythos. Such gods were masks, and she donned masks to meet them.
But the Blue Lady was a Goddess of ambush, subversion, and escape. She preached: outrun, outwit, endure.
Kai outran—some. Kai outwitted—occasionally. Kai endured—but in a different way from Izza, less hungry, more obstinant. She was not fast enough. She was too comfortable.
The Lady darted ahead through the minefield of her mind.
Ley would have been the Lady’s better servant. She always was better at things, more kind and fierce at once. When Father died, Kai did not weep. Ley wept. When they read reports of war in Kho Khatang, when the body count rose, Kai did not rage like her sister raged. When the Kavekanese labor market teetered on the verge of collapse, when the shipping business failed, when idols became the island’s main industry, when the choice came to stay or leave, Kai stayed, and Ley left.
Yes, Kai had her reasons: when Father died Kai planned dinner and breakfast, she cooked, she cleaned, because someone had to. When she read reports of war, there was more to be done than raging: she climbed the mountain to petition priests for aid. And when the choice came to desert your island, or to join its priesthood and stave off disaster serving pilgrims who, yes, might be in point of fact bad people, she stayed. But though she had her reasons, facts remained: She did not weep. She did not rage. She did not leave.
Kai had helped Bescond to save Ley. But the strength of Ley’s scorn, her anger as Zeddig dragged her into the Wastes . . .
The Lady ran, and Kai pursued. Why? Did Kai want to run, to evade, to step lightly and travel lighter, to break power’s hold? Or did she pursue because, on a level she could not admit even to herself, she wanted to catch Her, and tie Her down, and stop Her running?
All those years ago, on distant Kavekana’s shore, she tried to save her sister from the tide, from her single-minded vision, from the pain of the gallowglass at her ankle. She’d thought, today, that she was dragging Ley to safety once again—but no, that was Zeddig. Kai was not the sister, but the sea.
She called to Izza through the Lady’s light.
Izza did not answer.
She ran through the dream, alone.
No.
Not alone.
She heard laughter.
Girl, said the deep voice in her head, said the hand on the back of her neck, the touch that slid away even as she reached for it, there’s more to crime than running. And there’s more to running than escape. Don’t just watch your feet. Look ahead.
Her heartbeat steadied, and her breath, and her pace in the forest of her mind.
I saved her. I screwed up her plans, but I did save her. That was the idea, and if she’ll never forgive me for it, I can live with that, because she’s free, and safe.
I hope.
But Ley’s not deranged. She’s determined, and brilliant, and selfish by virtue of that brilliance, and strong enough to hurt herself and the world.
And so am I.
Ley thought Bescond’s people should not, could not have that blade. While she was in danger, that didn’t matter. Now she’s safe—as safe as I can manage. (Don’t think, what if something goes wrong, don’t think, what if she can’t find a way back through the Wastes.)
So, shift priorities.
Whatever Bescond wants with that knife, Ley didn’t think she could stop it without a murder and a heist. So—fine. Ley was not a subtle human. She jumped first, thought after. That was not Kai’s play. Kai helped the Wreckers, and they had swallowed her. Fine. Start from there. Be a hook in their gut.
Kai ran through the forest of her mind, and ran, and ran, and at last found the strength to turn—and there was light.
Her prayer flowered back into the world, where she found Behemoth nosing at the saucer and blood. His tail twitched.
Kai lifted the saucer before the cat could lick. Behemoth batted at her wrist, but missed; Kai scratched between his ears, then rinsed the saucer, grabbed her keys, and marched out into the night.
Chapter Fifty-two
ZEDDIG AND LEY LIMPED side by side
into the Wastes.
For a long time they did not speak. Silence spoke loud enough for them both.
Ley placed all the weight she could bear—not much—on her broken leg. Or, Zeddig realized, reading facts less charitably and more true, she placed as little weight as possible on Zeddig.
They climbed dunes that were the spread of a broad slumped back, and skidded down a tricep. To control their fall, Zeddig dug her heels into skin, and tried to think of the grit sprayed in her face as sand. They found a flat ridge on the back of a massive snake, and limped along. Behind them, the tower receded, its peak still visible above the swell of half-dead bodies: a taunt, a memory that refused to fade.
Ley’s ward held even without the knife—for now. Zeddig kept her delving gear ready just in case, but she opened the jacket and pushed back the hood and enjoyed the sweat. Heat pressed her, not the oven’s weight of Agdel Lex, the breath of the conqueror squid, but the heat of heart and skin. She cooked herself with effort. Better that than freezing, or being torn by gods.
The snake held its shape as they crossed its back. Little else did. Landscape shifted, forms devouring forms to be devoured in turn. Small hands ripped plasmic gobs from giants, and stuffed them into tiny maws. A body became a forest, became a maze, became an undulating sea of limbs, became coral fronds, wove into a wicker basket in the shape of a man, burned glittering flames, melted back to skin.
Zeddig guided them north by the sun. They’d walked northwest to reach the tower. A day’s hard walk, and a night’s, and they’d reach Agdel Lex. They had water, and rations. If Ley’s ward lasted, they’d make it.
That left only Ley’s dead furious weight beside her.
“I made the right choice,” Zeddig said.
“Dear Zeddig,” with more venom than Zeddig had ever heard coat the word “dear,” “I have nothing to say to you.”
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