Time ran short. They needed a new tactic.
“Let’s try down this way,” Cat said, pointing to a dark alley that led off the main street. “Shortcut.”
“Sure you aren’t luring me down here so you can force me to suck your blood?” He said the last bit with a heavy Old World accent, and a fanged leer that disappeared when he saw the anger on her face. “I was joking,” he said, lamely, as she strode past him.
“What kind of joke is that?”
“The kind where I make light of your nearly killing yourself.”
“I knew what I was doing.”
“So do most suicides.”
Cat’s mouth tightened. Her hands shook, and she stilled them. Not enough time in the suit today, which left her drawn and irritable. Pelham’s fangs, while glorious, were a poor substitute for Justice. She stalked down the alley, and he followed. “It’s not like this is the first time I’ve been bit.”
“You’re a practiced user, then. Which is so much better.”
“I’m not using you.”
“Of course you are.” He pointed to his mouth. “You need this. You use me, and people like me, to get it.”
Shadows clustered around the trash bins ahead, and a rank stench rose from the open midden to their right. She turned on her heel to face him. “You get something from the deal, too.”
“You think I need your blood? Shit, look, not every vampire is a wrinkled-leather leech like those kids you score off in the Pleasure Quarters. Some of us have good relationships with the people we drink from. Some hunt. Some retrain, or drink off animals. Don’t make assumptions to soothe your grungy little addict’s ego.”
Outrage widened her eyes, and words of rebuttal strangled one another in their rush to escape her throat. Fortunately for them both, the muggers Cat had noticed lurking in the alley before she left the main street chose that moment to attack. The first, a beefy young man with garlic on his breath, grasped Cat’s neck from behind with massive hands, and was quite surprised when she grabbed him by the groin and used his own momentum to throw him into the midden. His three comrades had already jumped forward, blades out, and had no chance to flee.
Ten seconds later, Cat held one mugger in a painful arm lock, while Captain Pelham stood between the remaining two unkempt men, immobilizing both with the pressure of his hands on the back of their necks. Their swiftest comrade lay moaning in the filthy pit.
Cat’s captive twisted in her grip until she cranked his arm, whereupon he let out a high-pitched whine and ceased struggling. She glanced him over: long, elf-locked hair, several days’ stubble, three earrings in his right ear and one in his left. He wore a brown wool shirt that, somewhere in the mists of history, had once been yellow, and a pair of leather breeches more breach than leather.
He had been ill used recently, not just by Cat. Stripes of burned flesh raked across his face and chest, beneath sharp tears in his shirt. No natural fire had caused such damage. This had struck swiftly as a whip, not lingering long enough to catch his clothes aflame. “Hello, boys,” she said. “We’re looking for the young lady who gave you those scars. Dark skin, five-seven, curly black hair, curvy, freckles. Last seen surrounded by a halo of flame?”
“We dinn’ see nuffink,” Cat’s captive gargled through the blood that gushed from his nose and mouth.
“Let’s try again.” Cat applied more torque to the mugger’s arm, and something in his shoulder crinkled like crushed foil. “Tell us where our friend went, and we’ll go away. Otherwise, we’ll stay right here.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. His eyes were wide, and scared.
She smiled. So did Raz.
*
As night deepened, the crowd beneath the Sanctum swelled. The original protesters were so diluted by the new arrivals that they vanished like drops of ink in a pool of clear water. Patient silence replaced the earlier fearful, angry cries. The Sanctum pointed like a confused compass needle into the clouds, and the people of Alt Coulumb stood or sat or knelt beyond the cordon of Blacksuits and watched the black tower’s pinnacle in hope.
Following Ms. Kevarian down the Sanctum’s front steps, Abelard recognized, or thought he recognized, a few faces within the crowd: a Crier they had passed that morning, a candy seller from his excursion into the Pleasure Quarters the previous night, a young woman from the Court of Craft. Even a few Northsiders had come in their suits and ties to watch, and wait. Before, the crowd was unified by anger. Now they stood as individuals, together.
He was mystified by their change, and when he realized this he felt ashamed. He should not have had so little faith in the city, or its people. They were passionate, yes, and powerful, but also wise.
Many in the crowd held candles, and the flickering flames cast their faces in shadow and light.
Ms. Kevarian’s boots crushed the white gravel of the Sanctum’s parking lot.
“There’s a traitor within the Church,” he said. After his rescue Abelard had breathlessly recounted his discoveries in the boiler room, but Ms. Kevarian only listened, and asked brief questions when his story was not clear. When he ran out of breath, she told him about her talk with the Cardinal, but did not comment on his tale. He tried again now to get some reaction from her, stating the problem as directly as he could. “A spy. A saboteur.”
With a raised hand Ms. Kevarian summoned one of the carriages loitering near the Sanctum gates. The horse regarded crowd and Blacksuits alike with suspicion as it approached. “Indeed.”
“They’ve been stealing power from Justice for months.”
“It is a wonder,” Ms. Kevarian replied, her voice dry.
“You expected this?”
As the carriage rolled toward them, she turned to Abelard. “It was a possibility. Your organization is large, and not especially secure. It would surprise me if the system had no leaks.”
“Will that hurt our case?”
“Ordinarily, it might, but there are special circumstances at work.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know enough to say. I need more information.”
“Is that why we’re in such a rush?”
The carriage pulled even with the foot of the stairs. Its rear doors opened, though no hand touched them. “We, dear Abelard, are in a rush for different reasons. You are in a rush because you need to find Ms. Abernathy.” She produced a string of beads from a jacket pocket, the last of which was crudely carved in the shape of a woman. “The tracking rosary will lead you to her. Tell her everything. The secret room, the dagger, the monster, all of it. Relate my conversation with the Cardinal exactly as I told it to you. Be clear, precise, and do not exaggerate.”
“What about you?”
She entered the carriage. “I go to a far worse fate. I have a date, my Novice, with a serpent who fears neither fire nor sword.” She grimaced at Abelard’s perplexed expression. “I have a business dinner. It would be impolitic for you to attend, which is just as well. Your search for Tara is more important. Do not fail to find her.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Take care.” She closed the door and the carriage pulled away.
He stood statue-still, abandoned before the crowd. They watched him. Reflected candle flames shimmered in their expectant eyes.
The tracking rosary dangled from his fingers. “What,” he said to it, “am I supposed to do with you?”
The string twitched, twirled in his grip, and came to rest extended taut in the direction of the waterfront.
Abelard looked about for another carriage.
*
Tara fell through shadow, slashing about with the flaring blade of her knife. By its glow she saw the basement floor moments before she hit. Ribs creaked and her head bounced off stone. The door through which she had fallen closed automatically above her, and she was trapped.
Trapped, and not alone. The click of talons and the rustle of stone wings echoed off nearby walls. The cellar smelled of dank earth and unfinished rock, of ne
w-forged steel and burned silver. Gargoyles, looming figures in the dark, watched her with expectant emerald eyes.
If they wanted her dead, she would be dead. If they wanted to capture her, torture her, they would have moved already, rather than let her recover her balance. She eased into a crouch and stood, testing her bones. No bad breaks. A rib cracked, at most. Good.
What were they waiting for?
With a twirl of her fingers she absorbed the cold lightning of her knife back into her system. A gesture. I come in peace.
She was alone in the black. No lies would avail her. Once again she stood before the tribunal of the Hidden Schools, but this time she wasn’t here for a fight.
“I want to help,” she said.
Soft light bloomed around her, and she saw. This basement room had once been a dry cellar, perhaps thirty feet to a side, roofed by a lattice of pipes and rafters and copper wire. The remnants of decades-old cargo barrels, lay piled in corners. Broken hoops, rusty and sharp as wasps’ stingers, jutted out from long-since rotted slats. A clean bedroll leaned against one wall, surrounded by bits of metal, religious effigies, and personal effects.
Tara stood in the center of the room. Gargoyles surrounded her, each one between eight and nine feet tall. Some were unearthly slender, some thickset, some heaped with muscle and others armored by protruding stomachs of hard rock. Strong stone arms hung from shoulders that could support the world. Hands terminated in hooked talons. Folded wings twitched. Five were male, five female, and all terrifying.
Least human were their faces, no two alike, features hideous and strangely noble, this one long-snouted and fanged like a wolf but with four eyes, that are bird-beaked and crested with a ridge of stone feathers, the next tusked like a boar and bearded like an aging scholar. Intelligence shone in their emerald eyes, sharp as a human’s but bent differently. These creatures rejoiced in the hunt, not in the scavenger’s heaven of boredom, satiety, and sleep.
Shale crouched against the wall, breathing hard. Charcoal blood leaked from a wound on his side. A young human man—or a gargoyle in human form—knelt next to him, keeping pressure on the wound with a dirty towel.
A great gray lady gargoyle stood before Tara, her countenance blunt and broad like a tiger’s. She alone among them wore any form of decoration: a torque of silver that gleamed on her brow.
“What help can you offer us?” Tara remembered her earthquake voice from the Xiltanda’s roof.
“I. Ah.” Tara’s mouth was dry. Ms. Kevarian’s mouth wouldn’t be dry if she were standing here. “I saved your messenger’s life.”
“By kidnapping him.” Tara heard no rancor in the woman’s words. Even, maybe, a touch of amusement. Tara hoped she was right. She remembered Abelard’s story about the battle at the God Wars’ end, and remembered too the scarred stones of Alt Coulumb. Have you ever seen a gargoyle enraged?
She needed this. The gargoyles could prove that the Church of Kos was not responsible for the fire-god’s weakness. With their evidence she would send Denovo running back to his lab. Her weapon was here, if she survived long enough to find it.
“Justice believes your messenger killed Judge Cabot. Your attack on me last night didn’t help your case.”
Some of the gargoyles bared their teeth as she spoke. She heard snarls behind her. The stone woman raised one hand, and silence reclaimed the hidden chamber. Clearly she was their leader. Shale had called her Aev.
“What do you think?” Aev asked.
“Shale didn’t kill the Judge. He lacks even the rudiments of Craft needed to bind Cabot’s soul. I couldn’t have stolen his face otherwise. Besides, why kill Cabot when he was working for you?” Tara met her own gaze reflected in the gargoyle’s gemlike eyes. “Or, working to help you on Kos’s behalf. Months ago, the fire-god asked him for help transferring an immense amount of soulstuff without the Church’s knowledge. Kos loves his Church. Why would he do such a thing? Unless he wished to help the Church’s sworn enemy, a group this city exiled more than four decades ago, but toward which he still feels indebted: the Guardians of Seril.”
No reply.
“I may be the only person in this city who believes you’re innocent, but I need your help to prove it. I need to know why you sent Shale to Judge Cabot’s penthouse yesterday morning.”
Aev cocked her head to one side. Tara prepared to fight, and, most likely, to die.
“The story,” Aev said at last, “is not all mine to tell.”
Tara tried not to look relieved. There would be ample chances tonight to get herself killed. “Whose is it?”
The young human had divided his attention between the conversation and Shale’s wound. Aev indicated him with a sweep of a massive arm. “Its beginning belongs to David Cabot, late-come to our Flight.”
David stood, shoulders slumped and expression apprehensive. His features, now that Tara saw them straight on, were a younger, less fleshy (and less bloodstained) imitation of his father’s. He waved sheepishly. “Hi.”
*
The coach let Ms. Kevarian off at the Xiltanda’s gates. A queue stretched down the block, rank upon rank of pleasant young flesh revealingly clad to excite the club members’ appetites for sex or blood or human spirit. These confections of leather and black lace and pale makeup knew their city’s God was dead, their way of life doomed: Ms. Kevarian saw it in their too-broad smiles and too-loud laughs, in the self-congratulatory way they touched and kissed and pressed their bodies against one another, in the speed with which silver flasks moved from mouth to mouth within small circles of desperate friends. They knew, and they smiled and laughed and tempted and seduced and drank to fortify themselves against the coming storm.
She paid the coach and advanced on the rope line. She had wasted no time changing or applying makeup, but as she walked she called a modicum of Craft to herself. Her colors and outlines sharpened; the black of her suit lost its worn, professional three-dimensionality and assumed a uniform emptiness, as if she had clothed herself in a hole in space.
When she reached the entrance, the bouncers drew back without daring to check her membership. The club recognized her, and welcomed her return.
Entering, she spared an instant to appreciate the marble columns, the glowing sprites imprisoned in their crystal globes, the checkerboard stone pattern of the floor, and the intricate Old World tapestries that hung from the walls. Soft strains of smooth music in swing time floated through the bead curtain, and she followed them to their source.
As she swished toward the spiral staircase, she cut a wake through demons and skeletal Craftsmen, vampires and priests and technomancers and a deep purple, multi-tentacled horror it took her a moment to place as a client from a decade back. Voices familiar and strange enfolded her.
“Lady K! It’s been an—”
“—thought I’d have been informed before you—”
“—this morning at the Court of Craft! I don’t think you—”
“—will pay for your betrayal of the Seventh Circuit of Zataroth!”
“And would you care to join us for bridge someday soon?”
She excused herself from the conversation with a nod. The assassination attempt she thwarted according to club regulations, which politely but firmly requested members not damage the premises in their business dealings. She left her assailant, a vaguely familiar face from a cult she last remembered encountering in the Loan Crisis of the early eighties, a smear on the checkerboard floor. And she accepted the bridge date from the tentacled horror, with the proviso that her schedule would be inflexible for the next several weeks.
Up the staircase she climbed, escaping the party and the smooth jazz at once. Up through the sturm und drang of the dance floor, up through the pained screams of the dungeon level, where Craftsmen relished for a brief half hour the torments they inflicted on others during the workweek, gaining release upon the rack from whatever niggling sense of karmic inequity troubled their souls. Up, and up, and up, each level of private hell segmented
neatly from the others. Nobody wanted to feel that his, or her, chosen medium of pleasure and punishment was anything less than a universal absolute.
At last she passed through a shell of darkness but did not emerge on the other side. She climbed through deep space, void of all light. Her suit fit right in.
Ten steps, she remembered, before the stairs drew even with the floor. Her mortal eyes were blind, but as she climbed she saw, with eyes of Craft, the clubgoers hovering in deprivation bubbles, and also the silver web that maintained the absolute darkness that settled around her as she stepped off the stairs onto a smooth tile floor.
She was not blind here, but close. This level had been designed for club members whose personal hell was the death of the senses. Since most clients were Craftsmen or Craftswomen, merely impeding mortal sight was insufficient. The club’s owners spent months designing a system to deaden the eyes of the Craft. It was not perfect, and cost the Xiltanda a great deal, but the effect was chilling. Ms. Kevarian had to hold her eyes closed for a solid minute to detect even the dim outlines of Craft through the artificial darkness.
Footsteps approached from her left, and a rustle of stiff cloth. A woman’s long fingers touched the sleeve of her coat. “Madam, your table has been set, and Professor Denovo is waiting.”
“Thank you,” she replied, and the hostess led Ms. Kevarian forward with a gentle grip about her upper arm. She heard nothing but her own breath and the breath of her guide, their intermingled footsteps and the tiny friction of fabric as they walked.
Twenty steps, twenty-five. The hostess stopped, and so did she. The pressure of fingertips left her upper arm and settled on her wrist, guiding her hand to the ridged back of a plush-cushioned chair. “Thank you,” Ms. Kevarian repeated. With her free hand, she located the chair’s padded velvet arms. It faced a table covered with smooth cotton. She sat, and leaned back into stiff, overstuffed cushions. “I’ll have a vodka tonic.”
Three Parts Dead Page 26
