Four Roads Cross (34 page)

There has to be some way the Blacksuits can help.

Against what? What laws have our enemies broken?

I'll think of something, Cat said. And: If I offered myself to you—as, you know, a priest—would that change anything?

Are you?

Cat unframed her mind from prayer, and ran alone over rooftops, threaded through with crime and ice.

 

43

Matt, half-dead on his feet by noon, back sore from long hours standing and selling, almost missed the Craftswoman when she passed his stand. Generally the sixth hour after opening was when his shoulders sagged and thoughts of cold beer filled his mind with the self-sustaining fixedness of a fetish. Claire was likewise drained, and Hannah. Even Ellen had come to the Rafferty booth today, cheerful if quiet as she tended the shrine.

So he almost missed the Craftswoman. When he said, “Ms. Abernathy,” though, she stopped and turned.

“Mr. Adorne.” She shook her head as if to clear cobwebs from it. “No eggs today. I have to pack for a trip.”

“I have a business question I hope you can answer.”

“I need to go. I'm so sorry.” But she did not. “What's your question?”

“It's not for me,” he said. “Could you meet us on Cadfael's rooftop in half an hour? Just a small issue. Won't take a few minutes of your time. I can pay.”

“Are you in trouble, Matt?”

“I'm not,” he said. “They might be.” He nodded to the girls—to Hannah taking inventory, to Claire frowning at the ledger, to Ellen.

“I have to leave at one,” the Craftswoman said.

“Plenty of time.”

*   *   *

Matt did not remember the last time he closed his stall early. Claire had left the Rafferty booth in Hannah's and Ellen's care—Rafferty and Adorne both closing early might have caused the sky to fall, the seas run red with blood, or locusts boil from the earth. Far as he could tell from his corner seat on the empty roof of Cadfael's, the sky hadn't cracked yet. Shame: a crack might have let the heat escape. Condensation collected on his glass. He hadn't yet drunk.

“She won't come,” Claire said.

“She will.”

“Even if she does, what can she do?”

“Give answers,” he said.

Tara arrived on the thirtieth minute by his watch. She stepped blinking into sunlight, escorted by a waiter who indicated with outstretched hand a path through empty tables to Matt and Claire. Tara limped. As she lowered herself to her seat, she kept one hand pressed against her side.

“You're hurt.”

“Rough night.”

“I know the feeling,” Matt said.

“I doubt it.” But she looked more amused than offended, and ordered a beer. “Busy day, too,” she said by way of justification, though he'd asked for none. When the waiter disappeared: “What do you want?”

“You know Claire Rafferty.”

“Not by name.” She held out her hand. Claire hesitated, then clasped it.

The waiter brought beer. Matt ordered a sandwich, Claire a sandwich, and Tara nothing. “I'm just passing through.” When the waiter left: “What's the problem, Matt?”

When Matt tried to speak, he found his throat dry and his words all twisted. Tara's expression wasn't fearsome, exactly, but behind it ground the gears of a great machine.

“Matt wants you to help me take the business from my father,” Claire said.

“Tell me more,” Tara said.

“You know about the argument in the market a few days back. The gargoyles. That was us. My sister dealt with them before, and my father wanted her to show people for—some reason. He got violent.” She held her water glass in both hands. “I do most of the work in the stand already. And he needs help, which he won't get on his own so long as he works.”

Tara drew a dry circle on the tabletop with her middle finger. “And he leads the family Concern.”

“Yes.”

“If he really has been negligent, you can press him out.” Tara set her beer down on top of the circle she'd been drawing. “One afternoon at the Court of Craft and you'd be done. But the Craft is serious.” She laid her hand on the table, fingers softly curled. The sun dimmed and knelt. A chill wind blew from nowhere. A flame leapt from Tara's palm to her fingers and danced from tip to tip—but flame was not the right word. Matt didn't know a word for it, or the not quite glow it cast. “A bond through the Craft is as like, and unlike, a real relationship as this light is like a fire. This burns, but there's no heat, and it has edges that cut, which a real fire does not. If I do what you ask, it will burn your relationship with your father and replace it with a Craftwork bond. It's an option.” She closed her fist around the flame. Almost-light ran in rivulets up her arm along tracks like tattoos Matt hadn't seen before. “But there are others.”

“Like what?”

“Mediation,” she said. “Which requires talking to him—with a Craftswoman present, to ensure your bargains take. It's hard, but offers more chance of healing. If you care. Either way, the choice is yours.”

Neither Claire nor Tara had looked at Matt. He folded his hands. Sunlight kneaded warmth into his skin.

“I'll be out of town for a few days. When I'm back, if you still want to go to court, I'll help.” She looked as if she wanted to say something other than what she said next: “Think it over. Either way, I won't charge.”

“Thank you,” Claire said.

“For what? I only offered you a hard choice.”

“At least I have one.”

Tara pondered her remaining beer. “I have to go. Flying out of Alt Coulumb this evening. Lots to do before then.”

“You seem worried,” Matt said.

“I am.” She stood. “But I can't talk about it now. Take care of yourselves in the next few days, okay?”

“We will.”

“Good luck.”

After she left, the waiter brought the sandwiches.

 

44

Tara caught a cab at sundown and settled in to read and ponder fate.

The near crash shocked her awake. The horse reared, hooves pawing. The carriage rocked and landed hard on bad shocks.

Tara dove out the door, blade drawn, shadow-clad, expecting cutpurses, demons, treachery, some machination of Madeline Ramp's. She found Shale in the center of the road dodging hooves, hands raised. A black leather valise rested at his feet.

Tara released her knife and banished her shadows. “What the hells are you doing here?”

Shale snatched his bag and darted past hooves toward her. “Coming with you.”

“No.” She touched the beast's flank, and it steadied, though its ears slicked back.

“You needed me to translate. You might need me again.”

“Aev put you up to this.”

“She would be angry if she knew I was here,” he said. “I already bought a ticket.” A white hologram-stamped card protruded from a side pocket of his valise. “I will follow you.”

“I could stop you.”

“You are fighting for my people. I endangered us all two nights ago. Let me help.”

The horse snorted and scraped a spark off the cobblestones.

“Fine,” she said. “Get in before I change my mind.”

He carried the valise as if it weighed very little—not that Tara's luggage was much larger—but a blink told Tara the bag lacked any magical capabilities, folded space, or hidden compartments. “That's all you brought?”

“Books,” he said. He pulled the door shut, and they rolled west into the night.

“No toothbrush? Clothes?”

“This flesh doesn't work the same as yours. Close enough for imitation only. I do not need to eat in this form. My sweat's pure water unless I wish it otherwise. Conserves salts.”

Tara pushed back the velvet curtain. They rode past a broad dark space walled with brick: a park or a graveyard. Shale would know which. Wind shifted leaves like clouds above the wall. If there were graves, she could not see them.

Leaving a city was like peeling off a sticky bandage: no matter how fast you tried to go, a few grimy traces still lingered on your skin. Even after buildings gave way to open fields, Tara still didn't feel as though they'd left Alt Coulumb. The skeleton of a burned house stood watch over swaying wheat.

“The moon roads would be faster,” Shale said. “All places are one where Seril's moon shines.”

“The red-eye will get us to DL by sunrise, and I don't want to take any more of Seril's power than I have to. If we need her roads later, we'll use them.”

They crested the western ridge and took a right turn through a spur of the Geistwood. Stars shone clear in the dark. Tara tasted their light. In Alt Coulumb, where human fires blunted the stars, wielding Craft felt like doing surgery wearing wool mittens. Out here, the mittens fell away, and her scalpel was sharp as ever.

“Was that really why you refused?” Shale asked.

“What, you think I'm unnerved by the thought of Seril carrying me through the god-realm? Conventional air travel's safer, more comfortable, and almost as fast.”

The trees failed and the cab descended a long shallow slope to the airfield. Crystal fangs surrounded a blacktop paved with some distant volcano's ash.

A dragon crouched on the runway.

Even at this distance, its scale beggared thought. The road passing beneath the dragon's left wing to the embarkation hall seemed no thicker than a hair at this distance. Word problems: Based on that proportion, estimate the size of the creature on the tarmac. Determine the width of those black shining scales, the curvature of those teeth.

Trick question. No number could match the beast. Math did not follow the mind down such dark roads.

The dragon faced west. The tail gave an earthquake twitch. Broad chains crisscrossed its back, supporting the gondola. The observation deck across its shoulders perched on hydraulics to keep level as the wings beat. Vast slitted eyes cast spotlight circles on the ground.

“Safer,” Shale said, doubtful.

A bus rattled past them, bound cityward and uphill, carrying only an old woman in dark glasses, her hands crossed over a carpetbag.

*   *   *

Gavriel Jones ducked under the police line and entered the topless tower in the Ash where she had almost died the night before.

She picked her way across ground-floor rubble. At the entrance to the long, dark, winding stair she hesitated, though she would never have admitted any reason for the pause beyond a wish to finish her last cigarette.

The climb was easier than she remembered. Moonlight leaked through chinks in the tower's mortar, but did not relieve the darkness.

A long time later she emerged onto the tower roof.

Last night she'd found a troop of gargoyles waiting here. Troop probably wasn't the correct noun. An intimidation of gargoyles? And a throne, and a Lady atop the throne. The interview of a lifetime, half-finished.

The troop was gone. The throne lay broken, one great horn snapped off at the base. Demonglass had melted like dew, leaving scores on stone to mark last night's battle.

“You shouldn't be here.”

She did not, to her credit, jump. Her Hot Town alley savior emerged from behind the broken throne: broad-shouldered and tiger-faced Aev. Curled beneath her wings, she'd blended with the rubble. Clawscratch mapped her skin.

Gabby remembered Aev wrestling with demons last night, remembered the moonlight that wept from her wounds.

“The rooftop is not safe.” Aev rounded the dais. Dust shivered at her footsteps. “We drained this stone too much for you to trust it.”

“You're still here.”

“We have spent much of our faith here,” she said. “We made this space holy, thin and timeless. Someone must guard it, though the stone here is no longer strong enough to heal us.” She touched the scars across her chest. “I remain. The others sought holes in the soil, deep shadows in the water, abandoned warehouses where they can recover.”

“Will they?”

“One has passed,” Aev said. “Karst. You did not know him.”

“I'm sorry.”

“We will carve another in his honor,” she said. “If we live so long.”

“You don't—die—often.”

“We do not age in your manner. Few accidents harm us. We fall in battle, or never. But that is not so rare as you may think.”

“This is my fault,” she said.

“Did you let demons into Alt Coulumb?”

“If I hadn't reported on you, none of this would have happened.”

“Or it would have happened later.” Aev sat on the dais and laid one hand on a fallen horn of stone. “You might as well call this my fault for saving you, when you entered the Hot Town. My child rebuked me for that. We are both creatures of obligation, Ms. Jones: I was built to serve. You haven't walked the path of a cause until you molded yourself to its form.”

“Why did you save me? You knew what I was.”

“They were hurting you.”

Gabby kept quiet for a while. “Seril isn't here.”

“She is everywhere. But She is not here as She was last night.”

“I wanted to finish our interview.” The words sounded foolish even to her. She brandished her notebook.

“The time for interviews and revelations has passed. We live under threat of attack. Soon Alt Coulumb will face a fire fiercer than its god.”

Beyond the tower's rim, the city burned.

“I heard,” Gabby said. “That's my job. And that's why you need this interview. People don't know who you are, why you're here. I can tell Seril's story. Or yours.”

“Mine?”

“Why not? You're at least as scary, in most people's minds, as your goddess.”

“We are imposing by nature.”

“It's not helping you.” Gabby approached the dais, leaving footprints in dust, and sat beside Aev. She flipped to a blank page in her notebook, took pencil and knife from her pocket, and cut the pencil sharp. “Just say what comes naturally.”