Two Serpents Rise (13 page)

The King in Red pitched that line as a joke, and was rewarded by a few uneasy chuckles. Shedding the confines of the flesh had not improved Kopil’s sense of humor, but people laughed anyway. Vast power made even bad jokes funny.

Caleb squeezed past a young woman with blue skin and a zombie carrying a brain in a bubbling jar.

“We decided that together we would be greater than either of us apart. Red King Consolidated, of which we are all limbs”—the young woman with blue skin touched her forehead, throat, and heart, as did others scattered through the crowd—“began the dance of union with Heartstone Holdings. Today, we achieve our goal. The contract is signed, the last sigil graven into stone. Red King Consolidated and Heartstone will be one.”

A round of applause began, perhaps spontaneously or perhaps a junior executive’s attempt to curry favor. Either way, it spread from the front rows through the auditorium. The King in Red was watching. No one wanted to be the only person not to clap.

“I present Alaxic, Chairman of Heartstone, and his Chief Craftswoman Ms. Kekapania, to seal the pact between our firms.”

Caleb shouldered at last to the front of the standing crowd, stopped, and stared. Teo tripped and fell into his back, but he did not notice.

Three hundred feet away, the King in Red commanded center stage, his robe bloody, his arms outstretched. Crimson sparks burned from his eye sockets. Shadow cloaked Alaxic beside him.

Mal stood between them.

She wore a charcoal suit, not a cliff runner’s leathers, but the cant of her chin and the defiance in her gaze had not changed. Her short hair swept up and back from her head in frozen waves. She looked upon Red King Consolidated, and smiled.

“Mal,” Caleb said, and realized that he had spoken out loud, in the silent auditorium. Kopil paused, and searched the audience for the speaker. Mal’s smile widened. Had she heard? Did she recognize his voice?

“Malina Kekapania,” said the King in Red, “has been my primary liaison with Alaxic throughout this process.”

The old man raised his head and moved papery lips. His voice passed over the audience like crumbling windblown leaves. “My blood is shed upon the contract, and signing it, I am quit of Heartstone Holdings.” He bared long white teeth in a ghastly grimace of what Caleb hoped was pleasure. “Ms. Kekapania will seal the bargain in my stead.” He clutched his hands behind his back, retreated a step, and watched the stage with glittering black eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Teo whispered.

“That’s her.”

“Her who?”

“Mal.”

“Some of you,” Mal said, to Caleb and to the crowd, “may be surprised to see us here.”

No kidding, Caleb thought.

“This deal,” she continued, “has hung for months on technicalities and minor disagreements, but its end was never in doubt. Heartstone prides herself on knowing what she wants. The question we’ve had through these negotiations has always been: what can we do together?” Her eyes scoured the room. “Now we’re here. What’s next is up to us.”

“Yes,” Kopil said. Caleb’s mouth formed the same word.

The light faded, and Caleb’s mind opened to the universe. He fell a hundred stories and did not smash or splatter when he hit bottom, but spread like a drop of water through thin cloth.

A silver-blue gossamer net connected the audience. Caleb breathed, and two thousand pairs of lungs breathed with him. Two thousand hearts beat in two thousand breasts.

He sank into the ocean of Red King Consolidated. Blood rushed in his veins and water rushed in pipes under the desert. Lightning danced down his nerves, crackled along glyph lines across the city. Octopus arms of Craft wove through sea and stone, binding RKC to Deathless Kings and giant Concerns in cities across continents and oceans: to Alt Coulumb, to Shikaw and Regis, to the metropolitan sprawls of the Shining Empire, the mines of Koschei, the gear-bound desert cities of King Clock.

The King in Red shone crimson. A million contracts wove through the iron bars of his spirit, and bound him. Caleb could not see where his soul ended and RKC began.

Mal stood transfigured, a figure of adamant edged with razor blades. Space bent with her breath.

In the dark behind them both, Alaxic lurked half-visible, avuncular ghost to their glory.

The world doubled: Caleb saw the King in Red on stage, doll-sized by distance, a puppet of the cords that bound him, and saw himself also through the King in Red’s eyes, caught in webs of silver. They were all at once themselves and not themselves, human and Deathless King, mortal and immortal, bound by dread pact and mystic pledge.

The King in Red turned to Mal, the blazing anchor of the world.

“I stand embodied representative for Red King Consolidated, as majority owner of my soul and Chief Executive of this Concern.” Caleb’s lips did not open, but his mind echoed the words. The King in Red spoke for him, for all of them. “I accept the terms of our contract and the privileges and responsibilities stipulated there.”

Mal, or rather Heartstone Holdings overshadowing her, stared into Kopil’s burning eyes and said through dagger teeth: “I stand embodied in this my servant; as Heartstone, I accept the terms and conditions of our pact, and the responsibilities and privileges therein. What we forge today never will be sundered.”

“What we forge today never will be sundered,” Kopil repeated and the audience with him.

Mal drew close, walking six inches above the stage as if the air was solid ground. The King in Red embraced her, and she returned his embrace with arms of fire; their worlds tilted toward each other, and they kissed.

It was not the kiss Caleb remembered from the night of the blackout. That had been soft and harsh and strong, but a human softness, a human harshness and a human strength. This was a god-kiss, skeletal teeth touching lips cool and strong as marble, two colossal powers driven by a need that was not desire, an eagerness that was not passion. One was the shadow cast by the other, but which was which?

Or was each the shadow cast, and neither one the caster?

Thorns pierced the King in Red and Heartstone-in-Mal, and spread, weaving through Kopil’s bones and coursing in Mal’s blood. Barbs curled out of Kopil’s eye sockets and burst Mal’s eyes from the inside, flowered between his teeth and ripped her throat and tongue as they tied, and tangled, and became one.

Seventy-thousand-page contracts sitting in the RKC archives erupted with unearthly light. Blood signatures burned into reality; silver glyphs appeared on stone circles and obelisks throughout Dresediel Lex and in cities around the world, as if etched in an instant by giants with diamond chisels. The pacts built by hundreds of Craftsmen over thousands of billable hours were loose strands of rope, and the kiss one pull tightening them to a knot.

Seconds passed, grains of sand falling down a well deep as forever. Through ticks of agony Caleb wondered how Mal could bear the pain.

The deed was done. The thorns joined. Heartstone Holdings was itself no longer, subsumed into RKC; Red King Consolidated was itself no longer, transformed by consuming Heartstone.

Mal’s lips clung briefly to Kopil’s teeth, so gently did he pull away. Before she fell, she clutched him tight, leaned in until her cheek brushed the side of his skull, and whispered into his earwell: “Still interested?”

She sank to the stage. The lightning frame of Heartstone left her and wound about the King in Red, a separate form at first, then a swelling within the firestorm of his being, then merged entirely and gone.

Caleb collapsed into his own skin. Others glanced about in confusion, wondering at the significance of Mal’s last words. Some code between her and the King in Red, a joke or dare: speculation whispered through the awed hush.

Caleb did not wonder. He turned to Teo.

“I have to go,” he said, and fought toward the door.

18

Caleb sprinted through twisting halls and passages, all alike. By intuition and dumb luck he soon found an iron door fitted with latches resembling eagle’s claws—a former fasting chamber that served visiting speakers as a green room. Mal would be there now, resting. Caleb touched the door, the latches gave, and he tumbled into a small room hung with yellow-and-black tapestries. Ghostlight danced in iron braziers on the walls.

Mal, Alaxic, and the King in Red sipped sparkling wine around a stone basin in the room’s center.

She would be resting, yes. Or else celebrating the deal with two of the city’s most powerful Craftsmen.

“Mister Altemoc?” The King in Red sounded shocked, even amused. Caleb backed toward the door.

“Hi,” he said. “Sir,” and “Sir,” again to shrunken Alaxic, who regarded him with narrowed eyes and a thin, warped smile. “Excuse me. I should, um. Go.”

Don’t say anything, he begged Mal with his eyes.

“Caleb! What a surprise!”

“Ms. Kekapania.” Kopil’s skull revolved from Caleb to the woman beside him. “Are you and Mr. Altemoc acquainted?”

She raised her glass to Caleb first, then to the Deathless King and Alaxic. She drank. “We’re dating, actually.”

“Dating?”

Caleb and his boss spoke at the same time. They looked at each other, then back at Mal. She shrugged. “I wasn’t convinced at first, either, but he’s persistent.”

The blood red sparks of Kopil’s eyes winked out, and returned. Caleb had never seen the King in Red blink before.

“I didn’t know she worked for Heartstone when I met her,” he said.

Mal raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have come after me if you knew who I was?”

“It would have changed the way I approached you. Yes.”

She raised her glass in a salute and downed its contents.

Kopil’s shoulders shook. A noise like grinding gravel issued from somewhere below the hinge of his jaw.

The King in Red was laughing.

“I’ll leave,” Caleb said, and reached behind him to open the door. He did not want to take his eyes off the three Craftsmen. “I’m so sorry I burst in. I didn’t expect anyone would be here.”

“Sure, sure, sure.” Kopil nodded three times. “Take the day off.” He spun his finger bones in a circle above the basin. Water droplets took the shape of miniature nymphs, who skidded over the surface like skaters over ice. “Let us all celebrate Alaxic’s retirement.”

“The pleasure is mine. I leave you to inherit the rising salaries and health-care costs of my employees, my tempestuous engineering department, and my other bureaucratic diseases. I, meanwhile, will retire and find a hobby. Gardening, perhaps.”

“Lord Kopil,” Mal said, “may I escort Caleb out?”

“Of course. Go. Get out of our hair. Metaphorical hair, in my case. Try not to kill him. Hard to replace good people these days.”

“Lord Kopil, Lord Alaxic.” Mal said as she bowed to each. “It’s been a pleasure. Let’s do this again soon.” She grabbed the sleeve of Caleb’s jacket, and pulled him into the hall after her. Behind them, the water nymphs began to scream. Their high-pitched cries pursued Caleb and Mal through the maze of passages.

“What is going on here,” Caleb said when he thought they were safely out of earshot. She turned on him with a finger to her lips, and said nothing more until they reached the front door of the pyramid and stepped out into sunshine.

“How’s this?”

“Not far enough. Why don’t you buy me a drink?”

Mal raised her hand. A four-foot-long dragonfly fell from the sky with a whir like a thick book’s pages being fanned, and landed on Mal’s outstretched arm. Translucent wings split sunlight into a rainbow haze. Another dragonfly landed on Caleb’s shoulder, bowl-sized eye inches from his face. He flinched, and resisted the urge to brush the insect away.

Mal laughed at his shock, and stroked her opteran’s thorax. Broad wings twitched in anticipation. “You don’t take fliers often?”

“Isn’t the airbus good enough for you? These things,” he said with a flick at his opteran’s exoskeleton, “are expensive.”

“They are expensive,” she allowed. “And your Concern just closed the largest deal in its history. Celebrate.”

Her teeth gleamed in the sunlight. The creature perched on her forearm regarded him with many-faceted eyes, each facet quizzical.

Optera were descended from smaller bugs the gods and priests had used to ferry packages across the city. After Liberation, Craftsmen swelled the creatures’ size, gave them unnatural strength, and changed their diet. Instead of other bugs, fliers fed on the souls of those they bore aloft. “There are stories,” he said, contemplating its feathery proboscis, “of young Craftswomen riding these things drunk.”

“I’ve heard them.”

“They get so caught up in the flight that they forget to land. The opteran brings a husk back, or nothing at all.”

“Some girls don’t know when to quit,” Mal said. “Same for boys.”

“Where to?”

“You choose. Last time I made you follow me. I don’t want to seem unfair.”

“Emphasis on the ‘seem.’ You’re happy
being
unfair.”

She lifted the opteran to her shoulder. Joints clicked as it crawled over her. Two long limbs latched under her arms. Two circled her waist, and two her thighs. Translucent wings spread from her back. She wore the creature as a mantle, its monstrous head rising above her own.

“See if you can catch me,” he said, moved the opteran to his own back, and flew.

19

They landed on one of the balconies that bloomed like flower petals from Andrej’s penthouse bar. The optera buzzed off, leaving Caleb and Mal alone with sky and city and declining sun. An airbus drifted past between them and the light.

“What do you think?” With one sweep of his arm Caleb took in the view.

“It is wonderful,” she said. “You could watch the world end from here and be happy for it.”

“I don’t often come to Andrej’s when the sun’s up. The games start late.”

“You gamble,” she said.

“I play cards. Poker, mostly.”

“What else?”

“Bridge, when I was a kid. Not so often these days.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“I lost my partner.”

Wind and surf filled the silence between them. She turned from the city and leaned against the railing, arms crossed, head lowered, waiting for the question Caleb did not know how to ask.