Tara nodded.
“For this reason, we have a reputation that makes it hard to get normal work.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not as if I chose this.”
“You did,” she noted. “Vampiric infection won’t work unless you accept it.”
“Better unlife than death, as your boss said when she gave me the option.” His anger spent itself on her silence. “I suppose you’re right, though. I made the choice, even if it didn’t seem like a choice at the time, and its consequences have leapt in and out of my wake ever since. Like dolphins.” He made an arcing motion with one hand, and Tara saw nine feet of silver-blue glittering wet in moonlight above a silent sea.
“You were hired by a Craftsman.”
“I was hired south of Iskar in the Northern Gleb, in a port about thirty miles from the border of King Clock’s land. A man sought me out. Six feet tall, maybe, with thin, sallow features. Narrow mustache, long nails. Moved like a snake. Fringe of white hair.” He wiggled his fingers in a vague semicircle around the edge of his scalp. “Wore a silver skullcap. He…” Raz’s features twisted in confusion. “He wanted us to deliver a package. A chest of magesterium wood, with little silver runes. Told us to bring it east, to the Golden Horde…” He frowned. “No. Not to the Horde. We delivered it to Iskar. I can’t remember which city.” The words came out strangled. Had he been human, his forehead would have been beaded with sweat.
“When we first met, you said the Bounty came to Alt Coulumb from Iskar via Ashmere. Why stop there?”
“We needed repairs, fast ones. Most of the ship had to be replaced. Burned sails and a broken mast. Demon scars on the hull, a hundred small holes in the keel. It would have taken weeks had there not been a good Craftswoman at the docks.”
“I thought sailors didn’t like Craftswomen touching your ships.”
Raz bared his fangs. “Your boss robbed me of the luxury of such superstition a long time ago.”
Tara considered her next words. Raz was in a delicate mental state. Beyond the blackout curtains, orange light threatened the horizon. Morning weakened him, but if she pushed too far too fast he might break. In his rage he could cross the room and tear out her throat before the sun caught him, whether he liked the taste of her blood or not.
“Raz, when was your ship damaged?”
He looked at her as if she’d spoken nonsense. “In the battle.”
“Which battle?”
“With the Iskari treasure fleet. Three days ago.”
Good, she said to herself. Play dumb a while longer. Bolster his confidence. He likes telling stories. Ask him for one. “Treasure fleet?”
His grin turned rakish. “The Iskari still have colonies in the Skeld Archipelago and on Southern Kath. Diamond mines, silver. Oil. Magesterium wood. Every year, the navy brings treasure home in ships so big it seems wrong to call them ships anymore. Hulls of mystic wood worked by Craftsmen and reinforced with silver and cold iron. Sheets of steel, sails preserved by demonic pact. Charms and wards calm the waves about them, keep the winds loyal and turn attacks away. The Iskari treasure fleet.” His voice rose in rapture, and sank to a sigh. “Beautiful sight on a blue morning. Impossible to take.”
“Impossible?” she asked in her most curious voice.
“That’s what everyone said.” He turned to the window, his gaze passing beyond the curtains, beyond the city, to the sea. “They were right, but we came close. Night hid our vessels from enemy eyes and curses. The Craftsman called dead ships from the depths to aid us, crewed by lumbering monsters that once were men. Without him, we would have broken on their defenses. Without us, his clumsy dead things would have been too slow to cordon off the fleet. The Iskari called sea serpents to rake our hull and breathe lightning on us, but we pressed the attack until the fire came.”
This part Tara knew. The fire struck near dawn, Iskari time, around two in the morning in Alt Coulumb. Walls of flame and billowing columns of steam erupted from the suddenly boiling ocean as the treasure fleet’s admiral invoked the Defense Ministry’s contract with Kos Everburning. The pirates scattered, dead ships sinking again beneath the waves. Kos’s wrath scorched the Kell’s Bounty, burnt her sails and shattered her mast and raked her hull. The crew clustered on deck and prayed desperately to whatever gods might hear them—one or two Kosites begging for His mercy—until the fire died with its Lord.
“The treasure fleet escaped in the flames,” Raz explained. “We seized what we could from the wreckage of the ships we burned, and made for Ashmere.”
“Was that,” she said, like a girl taken in by a fantastical bedtime tale, “before or after you delivered the package in Iskar?”
The question brought Raz up short. “What?”
“Did you deliver the package before or after the battle?”
“Package…” He shook his head. “What package?”
“The one the old Craftsman asked you to deliver. Did you deliver it and then have this battle, or have the battle and then deliver it?”
“What battle? We dropped off the chest and went straight from Iskar to Ashmere. That’s it.” Raz’s words hung in the air. He heard them, and understood them, and his expression grew dark. “I…” His eyes were wide and red. He looked the way Tara herself must have the morning before, drowning until he threw her the line.
She sat on the edge of the bed and laid her hand on his bare arm. His skin was cold, of course. “You’re not crazy. You made a stupid deal with what sounds like a desperate man, or maybe a desperate woman, but you’re not crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I found you at the Xiltanda, someone was trying to burn out your mind. That kind of thing is incredibly hard to do, even standing right next to a person. To do it from a distance, he must have had your permission.” She waited for him to respond, but he said nothing. “You met a Craftsman who needed your expertise and wanted anonymity. He proposed a trade. A large share of the treasure, for your memories of the event. The attack failed, but last night he took his part of the bargain anyway. He tried to burn out your mind, and I don’t think he intended to stop with your memories of the attack.”
His tongue shot out to wet lips that did not need to be moistened with saliva he no longer possessed. Another tic. Tara wondered how many little human mannerisms survived in him. “I don’t remember a deal.”
“That would have been the first thing burned out. I’m sorry.”
“I remember the wizard with the skullcap. The magesterium wood box.”
“Raz,” she said slowly, and she hoped kindly. “Memories are stories the mind tells itself, based on what it believes happened. Can you think of a Craftsman you know who’d wear skullcaps and robes? Might as well expect me to flounce about in a skull bikini. The secret mission with the mystery box is straight out of a DeGassant adventure serial. When those memories were burned out of you, your mind tried to bridge the gaps with half-remembered snatches of story. Cliché mystery-play villains. Plots that have bored a thousand readers. Be glad I stepped in when I did. The mind’s awfully inventive. A few more minutes and it would have been impossible to convince you there was a difference between your story and the truth.”
Raz slumped back into the pillow. “Will these memories go away?”
Lying would be too easy. “No.”
“Ah.”
“If you’re careful, and honest with yourself, you’ll be able to reconstruct what you did in those days. You won’t forget the other story, with the wooden box. Your memories will lead you back there once in a while, and you’ll catch yourself recalling things you know aren’t real.”
Beyond the drawn blinds, the first errant rays of sunlight peeked through the deep urban canyons of Alt Coulumb. “This city,” he said. “Nothing here ever quite works out for me.”
“You’re a strong guy. You can handle it.” She gave him a moment before asking her last question. “Do you remember anything about the person who really hired you?”
&nb
sp; “No.”
“Thank you, Captain Pelham.”
She began to rise, but his hand settled around her arm like an iron cuff. His nails, sharp and hard as diamonds, dug into her skin. If he squeezed a little her flesh would tear.
She counted the length of her breath.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. This is not something people often say if they are not about to hurt you, but Tara believed him.
“I know.”
“You seem like a good kid, Tara.”
“Thanks.”
“Is this what you want?”
She wanted her arm back. “What do you mean?”
“Working for a big firm. Ripping my brain open on a rooftop at midnight. Is this what you want?”
There were a lot of answers to that question, but only one came to mind. “Yes.”
His grip slackened. Her arm slid free.
“Can you close the curtains the rest of the way before you leave?”
“Sure.”
10
A young man with a hollow face stood on a street corner Northside, overshadowed by steel towers and the tracks of an elevated train. He wore a jacket of rough orange cloth and cradled a lute in his thin arms. One by one he plucked its strings, tuning each to match notes that reverberated in his mind.
Pedestrians ignored him, the rich in their cloth-of-gold robes or sleek jackets, the idle ladies in layered confections of lace and cotton and silk, the workers dressed stark and severe. His fingers hovered fearfully above the lute’s fretboard, then descended.
He strummed and sang of a four-carriage pileup on Sandesky Street, Northside, sang of a critical low in the three-week barley reserves, sang of the slaughter by knife of a family of three in a Westside tenement, of the killer at large and Justice on the hunt. He sang a rumor leaked by off-duty Blacksuits too much in their cups and too loose in their tongues: the Stone Men had returned to the city. Once more their talons marked the innocent buildings of Alt Coulumb. Justice suspected them of one murder already, and citizens were warned to be watchful, lest this outbreak spell the end of forty years of freedom from heretical fanaticism. Stone Men could be anywhere, disguised as anyone.
This last point wasn’t precisely true, but it attracted attention and earned the young Crier tips. The protestations of his professional honor were overcome by the hunger pangs of his not-entirely-professional stomach.
Across Alt Coulumb, men and women of the Crier’s Guild sang this dawn song, the morning edition, until sweat slicked their faces and deep impressions of lute strings marred their calloused fingers.
A drop of sweat rolled into the young Crier’s eye, and he blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the world looked much as before.
Had he been more attentive, he would have noticed a new arrival, a man watching him from across the street through the shifting maze of pedestrians and carts and carriages. A mane of dark hair and a bushy brown beard framed his face; his shoulders were wide and his eyes round. He wore a tweed jacket, and his hands were thrust firmly in the pockets of his pleated wool slacks. His angular mouth had trapped an approving smile and did not relinquish it no matter how it struggled.
The man in the tweed jacket listened to the song. The Crier did not mention Kos, nor the death of Gods. A smart analyst could parse the endless thaumaturgy section (“For Alphan Holdings riseth in price / Two and a quarter to four and six tenths, / And Lester McLuhan and Sons doth decrease…”) and note a twitch in the energy market, but Church security held. The salient facts of Kos’s death remained unknown.
Good. Once that news leaked, chaos would burn through the city, and chaos was bad for business.
Alexander Denovo pulled out his pocket watch. It gleamed silver against the hard, cracked skin of his blunt-fingered hand. His family owned many watches, but he had built this one himself early in his study of the Craft, laboring for long hours with delicate tools, reveling in the exquisite predictability of its clockwork motion. Gears turned within its slender shell, and its face bore many dials, some marked with the usual numbers, some with mystic sigils, some with phases of the moon. One bore every letter of the alphabet. Little knobs and buttons rounded the top edge.
It was nearly time for court.
He fished a silver coin from his jacket pocket, crossed the road, and dropped it in the bowl at the Crier’s feet. The young man bowed his head in thanks and continued to sing. When he looked up, Denovo was gone.
*
“So the Iskari murdered Kos,” Cat said as she led Tara and Abelard down the halls of the infirmary, walking backward.
Abelard shook his head. “This isn’t a criminal investigation.”
“Isn’t it? Someone’s dead.”
He looked at her as though she had suggested an obscenity.
“You said the Iskari could access Kos’s power at a very basic level. He didn’t have a choice about whether he gave it to them or not, right? Even if the Iskari didn’t murder him themselves, someone could have planned that attack on the treasure fleet to kill him.”
Abelard looked to Tara for support, and she hesitated. Tara barely trusted Cat, and didn’t trust Justice at all, whatever protestations it made of its impartiality. Cat was here in part to protect her, of this Tara had no doubt, but also to watch and report back. Anything she said here, she said to Justice. Then again, the more Tara shared, the less Justice would suspect she was hiding. “It’s an interesting idea,” she said at last, “but the treasure fleet is a rich target, and this might be a case of simple bad timing. Anyone who wanted to use the pact as a weapon had to know about it first. The Church holds its archives sacred, and the Iskari Defense Ministry is a blood-mad cult that doesn’t share knowledge with outsiders. Also, the Iskari contract only hurt Kos because he was low on power already, which not even the Church seems to have known. If this was a murder, our murderer is absurdly well informed.”
Abelard, who had grown more agitated as the conversation progressed, stopped and threw up his hands. “Could we please not talk about God as if He were a corpse on the floor?”
Both women fixed him with curious expressions. He lowered his arms, but remained defiant.
“There has to be a connection,” Cat continued.
Tara frowned. “There are too many pieces to this puzzle. We’ve got a murder, an attempted assassination, a divine death, and a case of piracy that may or may not be linked to any of the above.”
“Assassination?” Cat asked.
Tara cursed herself silently for letting that slip. “Someone tried to kill my boss and me as we flew toward Alt Coulumb yesterday. Outside of the city’s jurisdiction.”
“You should have reported it.”
“I’ve been busy. My point is, there are so many puzzles it’s hard to keep them straight.”
“Don’t forget the Guardians,” Abelard interrupted, petulant.
“The Stone Men. Shit.” Cat looked as though she were about to spit in disgust. “They’re crows before the storm. They don’t need an excuse to go where they’re not wanted.”
“Hard for me to believe they aren’t tied in somehow,” Tara said, “considering that they showed up for the first time in forty years in the thick of this mess.”
“They’re drawn to doom.”
They reached a juncture in the branching hallway, and Tara stopped short. “Wait. Where are we going?”
Abelard glanced from one hall to the next. “I thought you knew.”
She rolled her eyes. “I need to get to court. Does anyone know how to reach the street?”
*
The carriage they hailed was a tiny, driverless two-seater. Cat knew a quick route to the courthouse, and sat up front to direct the horse, which left Abelard in the back with Tara.
This was not an accident. The first carriage that tried to pick them up had been large enough for four, but its right wheel locked on the axle and the two-seater beat it to the curb. Tara felt bad for the first cab’s owner, but she wanted to talk with Abelard i
n private and this was the easiest way to arrange it.
“Do you think Cat’s right?” he asked as she glanced back to undo the Craft with which she had bound the first carriage’s wheel.
“About what?”
He watched the pedestrians outside their window, garbed in business blacks and blues and grays save for the occasional burst of a Crier’s orange. “She thinks God was murdered.”
“Cat’s a policewoman. She knows one thing, and she knows it well. There are problems with the murder theory, as I said.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Yes,” she admitted, rather than lying.
He fell into silent contemplation. She framed a question in her mind, but before she opened her mouth, he spoke again. “What got you into this business?”
“What do you mean by that?”
He looked hurt, and she relented.
“Sorry. I’m tired. I shouldn’t have snapped.” The risen sun hung invisible behind low clouds. Skyscrapers converged into the haze.
“I was thinking about what you said to the v— to Captain Pelham.”
“Vampire,” she corrected. “You can say it.”
“Back there. About your choices. I can’t imagine being happy in the life you lead.”
“It’s not normally this hectic.” Which wasn’t an answer. Their carriage proceeded slowly through traffic. She remembered long stretches of empty dirt road winding through Edgemont fields. “I come from the country. My folks were teachers, my friends farmers. I wanted more.” It was a question she’d asked and answered a hundred times at the Hidden Schools: Who are you, and why are you here? None of the answers she had given then seemed right now. “And here I am.”
“It’s a weird kind of more. Necromancy. Black arts.”
“That was part of why I chose to study the Craft. It was different from anything I knew. I thought, whatever I get out of this life, it won’t be what I would have had in Edgemont.”
At age six, Tara had first recognized the divide between her family, refugees who fled west during the Wars, and the native clans of Edgemont with their deep roots in the land. She remembered feeling, as a child, a need to prove something to her classmates. What right had they to look down on her family for hailing from beyond their postage-stamp town? But that memory was likely false. Six years old, she probably felt only confusion: Why don’t their parents like mine? Why don’t they like me?
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