Four Roads Cross (53 page)

Daphne's lips peeled back, and back, and back. The corners of her mouth split to show fangs. In those fangs Tara thought she saw Daphne's face, or her own, or both their faces melded and forever screaming. A choir sang music no human throats could make.

Tara tried to catch the demon's edges, see its bindings. There were none. Ill-defined it passed through the portal of Daphne's broken logic—limitless and hungry.

Cat leapt for it, wings spread. The demon pierced her and she fell. Demonglass caught Tara, skinned the moonlight from her, grew inward. She blunted its assault, defining the claws by their pressure on her skin and so destroying them—but space twisted as the demon overflowed itself, reshaping Daphne's body to fit its expanded being, so fast it made itself faster.

The gargoyles fought, and Justice. Unreal blades cut down.

The demon grew so fast it seemed to be exploding: glass pierced Alt Coulumb pavement into bedrock, and more glass spread from the wound. A tendril darted left, impaled a nearby skyspire and began to suck. Crystal broke, and flight Craft failed, as the demon asserted new reality. It belonged here. Here belonged to it. Flyspeck Craftsmen fell screaming toward the city. Crystal shards rained down.

Bleeding, burned, caught in thorns, Tara imposed shapes and rules on the demon, but they slipped—it moved too fast for her to trap. Her shields broke. She made new ones. Her skin ripped.

Within her she felt Seril, and with her Kos, the silver light and the deep flame, and both were afraid.

The city began to die.

Time ran slow, because there was not much left.

Many thoughts dovetailed in Tara's head at once.

The demon that came through Daphne's mind was not protected by the Court of Craft. It crushed court wards and burst the guardian circle. Kos could engage it directly, now, and Seril, but unbound demons moved faster than faith. They might last mere seconds in real time, but in those seconds they could rewrite the world from underneath the gods. As the demon grew it would kill and convert, and as their faithful died or were swallowed by the glass, Kos and Seril would falter, weaken, change to demon-things themselves.

Glass closed her around, reflected her against herself, remade.

Tara remembered the Keeper in the mountain, her fear, her triumph in torment. She could do the same. Give this demon something to eat instead of Alt Coulumb and its gods, instead of Abelard and Cat and Aev and Raz and Bede. Something still mostly human. Something that could die.

Something like her.

She'd walked within the Keeper, seen her heart. She thought she knew the trick of it.

A cage of her hair. A lake of her blood. A mountain of her bone. A maze of her mind.

Invite the demon into the terror palace of her dreams, and, before it could break free—fall.

There were wards around a Craftswoman's dreams, glyph walls to prevent intrusion, subroutines to scrub parasites away. She turned them off. She opened her gates.

The demon swelled above her, a spider taller than buildings.

A chain around your neck,
a skull's imagined voice whispered in her ear.
I was right.

No.

“Come on,” Tara said, and bared her teeth, and let the demon in.

*   *   *

Raz saw Cat fall. Her wings caught air, slowed her, but she crashed onto a neighboring rooftop. He smelled her blood through silver.

Above him a demon blossomed. He'd seen these before, or things like them. City smashers. Undefined, indefinable. Craftsmen had used them as weapons when the Wars turned bad.

Cat lay still.

Raz put the blood jade between his teeth, bit, and drank.

It tasted sharp.

All of a sudden even the demon in the sky seemed slow.

He put his hands into his pockets. This wasn't what he'd imagined at all, but it made a kind of sense.

He walked up into the air, humming softly to himself.

*   *   *

Tara offered—

*   *   *

Demonglass scythed toward Raz, slow as an opening flower.

He ran his hand along the blade's edge. It felt rough. When he drew his fingers away, he saw the edge had dimpled his skin.

He flicked the glass, which broke.

The demon had an outer skin, which he stepped through. Inside, he found its angles mostly wrong, so he righted them.

In the demon's center hung the remnants of a woman. He walked toward her.

*   *   *

—herself, and the demon—

*   *   *

Daphne saw the man approach, humming tunelessly.

The demon tore her, demanded her, but she was its door, and consuming her it would consume itself.

So she remained.

The man approached. The demon roared.

He cocked his head to one side, listening.

“I'm no good at this sort of thing,” he said. “Want an explanation, you'd be better off asking Tara, or Lady K.”

He was very close to her now.

“You're dangerous because you're undefined, because the world doesn't know what limits to place on you. Now, the thing to which I just joined myself—it's very old. Older than gods. Nothing lasts this long unless it's quite simple.”

He sounded sad.

“You know the joke, that there are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who think there are two kinds of people and the ones who don't? This is the former. As far as it's concerned the whole world's made of things it's eaten, and things it hasn't yet.” He bared his teeth. “As far as it's concerned, you're not undefined at all. It knows just what to do with you.”

His fangs went in. Glass cracked around her.

We can choke him, the demon said, and Daphne realized it was talking to her. He can eat us, but he does not know if we can die. You're the only part of us that can. Endure, and we can clog him with ourselves, we can sate even this hunger. Stay strong. Work with me, and we'll have glory you cannot imagine. And the pain will stop.

Daphne's broken memories held a man in suspenders with a pleasant smile, who cupped her cheek and said the same words to her in a voice so sweet and steady she could not help but listen.

This time, she turned away.

*   *   *

—Died.

Tara waited for the crack in the world she knew was coming. It didn't.

She gasped. She hovered, empty, in air. Alive. Free.

Demonglass cooled and hardened. Weaker pieces shattered—boiled off to unreality and tumbled to the pavement as drops of wet confusion. A three-legged arch remained, towering above Alt Coulumb. It caught the moon, and shone rainbows on the earth.

Gargoyles and Blacksuits flew; the Judge let her diamond shield dissolve. Ramp was gone.

At its apex, the glass arch held a single flaw. Tara could not look on it directly—the light it shed hit her eyes wrong. She thought it was a woman's silhouette.

*   *   *

Jones felt the change in Market Square—they all did. The world was dying, but then it wasn't, and a glass arch bloomed to the north. Jones had never seen anything like it, which in her experience meant her next step should be run to a safe distance and take notes.

She stayed.

Then they heard the cheers—from the sky, from the surrounding buildings, and at last from their own throats, cheering before they knew why, tumbling over one another, rolling and laughing and pointing at the arch and the moon at once smiling and impossibly full. Onstage, the Rafferty girls embraced. Jones saluted Aev and her people, up there in the sky. Then someone tackled her from the side and kissed her, and to her surprise (she wasn't a casual girl, ask anyone) she kissed back.

*   *   *

Abelard collapsed, laughing and weeping, when he felt the demon break. Cardinals and Technicians rejoiced, overcome by awe.

Then Abelard noticed the moon through the sanctum window, and felt the Everburning Flame warm against his neck, and heard—thought he heard—the clearing of an enormous throat.

“My masters and teachers,” he said. “Our Lord would appreciate a bit of, um. Privacy.”

In five minutes the sanctum was empty for the first time in Abelard's memory. He was the last to leave.

That's two I owe you now,
the fire said to him.

Don't mention it,
he replied.
What are friends for?

*   *   *

Cat was mostly conscious when the vampire crashed to the roof beside her.

She lay in the ruins of her own skin—the Suit ablated to break her fall. She had some broken ribs, one leg didn't work, and she'd stuffed her fist against the hole in her side to keep the blood contained.

The vampire, fallen, made a crater in the roof. She crawled toward him, dragging her useless leg. He was very still. Then he coughed, rolled onto his side, and vomited a glassy fluid that evaporated as it left his lips.

“Sexy.”

He turned to her, his face a horror mask. She caught his wrist before he could pull out of reach, and held it.

“I'll—Cat, I am so hungry. It wants to eat and eat and eat. I have to go.”

“Don't.” She felt as weak as he looked.

“I can't hold on, dammit. Your blood's right there, I'll—” Teeth, out, pointed, dripping. The eyes were Raz's, and not. A new emptiness at their pits made their colors turn, like ruddy whirlpools. He seemed to be drawing inward toward a point not present in any physical geometry.

“I get it.” She winced. “Eternal hunger. Call of the deep. Here.” She reached for her medallion.

“Your Suit won't help.”

“Shut up for one minute.” Took a second to work the thing out one-handed. The holy symbol swung between them: the blind woman enrobed.

One last chance.

Okay, Lady,
Cat prayed.
You win.

The blind woman looked up at Cat and smiled.

Cat was stone, was sky, was an insect beneath an enormous entomologist's gaze. The Seril who addressed her in the shower, and on the city's rooftops, had been smaller, conceivable almost as a kind of invisible person, who saw the world as mortals did. Not so this Being. Yet She had not changed, only grown more Herself.

That made what she was about to do better, and worse.

I offer myself to you,
she prayed.
Save him.

The light waited.

You called me priestess, before.

But Cat had denied it.

I fought for you. I saved you. I learned from you. I was pierced for you. I almost died for you. I was scared of the word, that's all. Just keep him here, before he goes away forever. Please.

Nothing changed.

She would lose him.

Raz looked different. He was lit, she realized, by trebled moonlight: from above, and from her own eyes.

She set her hand on his forehead.

“I offer you asylum,” she said, not knowing how the words or gesture came to her, “under the protection of Seril Undying. The Lady will answer any liens against your soul. I give you back yourself.”

“You can't,” he croaked. “They want me. They'll take me.”

“They helped us, and you fed them in turn. The Lady will pay whatever more they feel they're owed.”

“They won't—” He broke off, coughing. “They won't accept that. They want me. Father of a line. They'll come for me, on land or sea. And for you.”

“And when that happens, we'll be ready. Together. You can live here—at least some of the time. Seril's protection's strongest in Alt Coulumb. If you're worried about the rent, I have a nice couch. And I could get better curtains.”

“I hate this city.”

“But not the people in it.”

“No,” he said.

He was silent for what felt like a long time, and so was she.

“You said you wouldn't stop me from doing something stupid to save you.”

“I did.” She nodded. “But I never said I wouldn't do something stupid to save you back.”

“I accept.”

His teeth receded. The whirl in his eyes stilled.

Far away, something ancient screamed.

He exhaled, and some of the animal left him, and some of a man she'd not yet come to know returned. “They'll be after you, too, now.”

“Worth it,” she said.

Lights bloomed in the sky. Silver and red nets and circles, twining—like fireworks but not.

“Now come on.” She tried to sit up, and failed. “Drag me to the hospital. I'd like to beat the rush.”

*   *   *

Tara flew over the city. Over her city. Free.

Stone wings beat, and Aev approached her. “Shale?”

She turned from the flaw in the demonglass arch. “He's trapped,” she said. “Out west. He—threw himself into a monster's mouth to save us. I'll get him back. Bring him home.” She heard the weakness in her voice and didn't hate herself for it.

That's new, she thought.

Aev touched her arm. Then, before Tara could push her away, the gargoyle hugged her. Her stone was cold and warm at once.

“Thanks,” Tara said when they were done.

“We are wounded,” Aev said. “We are tired. We will heal, and go back for him. For now, let us celebrate like free women.”

“And Abelard. We should pick him up. He needs a break.”

“Do you think he can keep up?”

Tara grinned. “I'd like to watch him try.”

 

69

The gray tower stood at a cliff's edge over a cold ocean where waves frothed amid sharp rocks. The tower's windows were blind eyes against the sea, save at the summit, where one light shone.

Madeline Ramp turned from the ocean to her chamber. She required few homely comforts, which was why she carried all she needed with her: a cauldron, a well-stocked icebox, a good bed, several bookcases. In one corner, a cello swayed through an Old World sonata.

A package rested on her oaken clawfoot coffee table. The postman dropped it off “between 2:00 and 6:00
P.M.
Seconday” to one of the addresses on which her front door opened. In fact the package had not arrived 'til well past seven, but under the circumstances she would not complain. She had not yet opened the box. Best to savor anticipation, the man himself had said. Like unwrapping a peasant.