Two Serpents Rise (18 page)

He realized what she was about to do an instant before she released the cable and tumbled off the side of the gondola.

With a wordless cry he leapt for her; his stomach wrenched and his hand shot out. He reached, grasping, desperate, into the clouds.

Too slow, he knew in his bones, too slow, even as a firm grip clamped around his wrist. The sudden weight almost tugged him from the basket. He looked over the edge, and laughed in relief. Mal dangled from his arm. Her coat whipped and snapped with the speed of their passage. Sharp joy gleamed in her eyes.

“See?” she said, unperturbed by the open sky and the mile’s drop. She shouted to be heard over the rush of wind. “Don’t you feel alive?”

“I feel terrified,” he shouted back. “And angry.”

“Your heart’s beating, you’re breathing deep, you’re desperate. Have you ever felt that way in Dresediel Lex, except when you were running after me?”

“What would you have done if I didn’t catch you?”

“It’s a long way down. I would have thought of something.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You’re not the first to say it.”

He pulled her back into the gondola. When his arm trembled and his grip almost failed, she grabbed a rope and pulled herself the rest of the way aboard.

“All things considered,” he said when they were both safely reclining once more, “I think I prefer the cotton-padded life.”

She shrugged. He remembered chasing her across rooftops, and the chill in his heart as he flew.

After a silence, he said: “What do you think went wrong at Seven Leaf?”

She didn’t answer at first, but he refused to change the subject again, and she relented. “Animals, maybe, or a raid from the Scorpionkind, though there aren’t many of them in the mountains and it’d take a larger clutch than I’ve ever seen to hurt Seven Leaf Station. Could be a spirit rebellion, but we bound all the local ghosts and gods in the lake before we started pumping.”

“Treachery?”

“Possible. From within, or without.”

“So what’s our plan?”

“Fly north. See what awaits us. Deal with it.” She leaned back and let her eyes drift shut. “No sense worrying about the game before we see the cards.”

Caleb didn’t agree, but neither did he argue. Mal’s breath settled, and she slept. He sat a few feet away from her, and tried to think as the world passed below.

25

An hour before nightfall, the Wardens guided their mounts down to survey a broad forest clearing. A brook bordered the clearing to the east, and the forty-foot-wide stump of a magisterium tree towered in the clearing’s center. The Couatls’ approach set resting deer and small birds to flight. The Wardens saw no danger, and made camp in the fork of a spreading root, between stump and water.

Magisterium grew in deep mountains, at glacial speeds. The living wood was strong, and stronger after death—its sticky sap set fast, and dried smooth and hard as stone. Only lightning and Craft could topple such trees, breaking them before the sap stiffened. Felled magisterium was valuable: carpenters could shape the wood into the bones and masts of ships, lighter than metal, tougher, and resistant to most Craft. Prospectors combed the mountains every year after winter storms, seeking fallen wood to sell.

Too old and weathered for the most desperate prospector, the stump by which the RKC team camped was well into its third century of wind and rain and insects’ futile attempts at tunneling. The Couatl nested on the stump’s flat top, and rubbed their hides against splinters sharp as steel nails.

Caleb built a fire, which Mal lit with a glare, and they cooked and ate a simple, hearty meal, tortillas and cheese and dried meat heated over the flame. They did not talk much. No local beast or bird dared return to the clearing—afraid of the campers, or more likely of the Couatl. Caleb swatted a couple mosquitos at sunset, but even those made only a halfhearted effort.

After they ate, Caleb leaned back, patted his stomach, produced a coin and walked it up and down his fingers. “I’m bored.”

“I’m sorry,” Mal said, “that our covert mission isn’t exciting enough for you.”

“Oh, I’m paralyzed with fear. But I don’t like paralysis.” He produced a deck of cards from his jacket pocket. “What do you say to a game?”

“A game?”

“Poker.”

“With only the two of us?”

“What about you guys?” He called to the Wardens across the campfire. Their quicksilver masks warped and reflected the flames, transforming blank features into the gates of hell. He raised the cards. “A game?”

The leader of the Warden band, a blocky young woman whose badge numbered 3324, was the first to speak: “We’re on duty, sir.”

“You aren’t all planning to stand watch at the same time, are you? A few can play while the others guard.”

“We have to remain on duty in the field.” She raised one gloved hand and tapped the spot on her mask where her cheek would have been. Her glove disappeared into the silver. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

“I don’t need to see your faces to take your souls,” he said as he slid the cards from the pack. “And don’t call me sir.” The rattlesnake shuffle of card against card sounded small and alien in the clearing.

3324 acquiesced without further prodding. Three of her squad mates joined, for a table of six, while two slept and two more stood guard. All the Wardens bore the same initial numbers on their badge.

“Does that mean something? The thirty-three?”

“We’re an extraterritorial unit,” said 3324.

“Arrest authority, but no responsibility to arrest,” added the Warden beside her.

“Soldiers,” Mal said, with a sour voice.

“No,” she replied. “We’re Wardens who don’t always have the luxury of bringing our suspects home to trial.”

“A fine distinction. I’m sure your victims respect it.”

If 3324 reacted, her mask gave no sign. “Sometimes we have ugly assignments. Sometimes the world is ugly. I’d be overjoyed if all I had to do was direct traffic.”

“I doubt it.”

She shrugged. “Doubt what you like. But until that day, we’re stuck with jobs like this—in the forest, riding to confront an unknown threat, probably outgunned, with two civilians in tow. No disrespect.”

“You chose this life,” Mal said. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you when you say you’d be happy to give it up.”

“I chose to serve. Turns out this is what I’m good for. What we’re good for.” She motioned to her men, who sat statue-still and did not acknowledge the statement. “We wanted to serve our city, and we have talents for last-ditch action, and violence. The jobs that no one wants to do, but must be done. So here we are. Serving.”

Mal opened her mouth, and Caleb almost interrupted her, afraid of what she might say. But he did not, and she settled for: “So you serve.” And, “Let’s play cards.”

“Let’s.”

“We can’t keep calling you all by numbers,” Caleb said, relieved at the opportunity to change the subject. “Thirty-three twenty-four is a mouthful.”

“You may call me Four. Within our team, the final number is enough.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” Caleb removed a folded silk cloth from his jacket pocket, and spread it over a flat span of earth. He dealt the cards first into eight piles, one for each of the eight directions, then stacked the piles atop one another and shuffled the deck eight times. His heart stilled, and he forgot that he sat in the middle of the Drakspine, hundreds of miles from the city of his birth. He set aside Mal’s argument with the Warden, and his own fear. The cards carried a world with them. “Three-faced goddess, we call you to us.” The formula burned his tongue; the cards stung his fingers as they ripped pieces from his soul. Quechal designs covered the cards’ backs: the Twin Serpents twining a woman with a threefold face, a goddess without a name. As he shuffled, the designs began to glow.

He laid the deck in the center of the silk, and Four touched it with the first finger of her right hand; the Warden beside her followed, and after him another, and then Mal. With each touch, the designs brightened. The players gave shreds of themselves, their hearts, minds, lives, loves, patches of the dust and lightning that formed them.

The light detached from the deck, and, rising, assumed a woman’s form, half-turned away: a tempting and inviting figure, a face that would be beautiful if Caleb could see it fully. The goddess sprinted beyond her worshippers’ reach, teasing them with gifts withdrawn at their moment of greatest need.

She hovered over the makeshift table in the wilderness, small and perfect as a porcelain doll. At Andrej’s late in the evening, where kingdoms were won or lost at hazard, she towered, glorious, a green light at the end of a long pier that he might pursue and embrace to drown.

Caleb dealt the first two cards to each player, and waited as the betting began with Four. He glanced at his cards—two of swords and eight of wands. Just as well. A bad hand was a fine way to open the evening. Ease in.

The goddess assumed their features as they bet: Mal’s taunting smile, the square solidity of Four’s shoulders, one Warden’s back, another’s delicate wrist, a third’s laugh. Caleb folded, and watched.

Four won the first hand, with twos full of jacks. Mal had a nine and a seven, and grinned as the power left her. Had she meant to lose the hand, to make the Wardens bold?

He shuffled and dealt again.

Time stopped for them, though the blue sky darkened to black and a jeweler’s dusting of stars emerged. The goddess grew, all things in turn to her worshippers, demanding, cajoling, reprimanding. The fire burned so low Caleb had to squint to see his cards.

Play was a simple matter of calculating odds and finding tells: Four touched her chin when a card turned to her advantage. Eight, jovial and immense, flexed his cards between his fingers when he held a strong hand. Mal was hard to read. She played with reckless abandon, yet seemed to win important hands and lose meaningless ones.

Once he crossed with her, riding king-queen in swords, and she followed him in a rising spiral of raises. They pressed against each other with the game as a thin cotton sheet between them, disguising nothing though it covered all.

He won, with a straight to her two pair. She laughed savagely as the goddess ripped her from herself.

They all had won and lost enough for one night. The game broke, and with a sigh the goddess dissolved, relinquishing the scraps of her divinity to the players.

Caleb closed his eyes as she entered him. Lightning danced through his blood, burned through his nerves. He would live forever, deeds resounding through legend.

He opened his eyes as if for the first time in years, so fresh did the world seem, and so raw.

The cards lay like inert slips of stiff paper on wrinkled silk.

Silence echoed in the mountain heights—not an absence of noise, but a presence in itself, a medium that endured human intrusion as the sea endures the passage of a ship. Before the ship came, there was the sea; as the ship passes, the sea rolls against the hull. When the ship is gone the sea remains. Without the sea, there could be no ships. Without the ships, there could be no sea, Caleb thought, not knowing what that might mean.

He listened to the silence above the Drakspine in the dark, beside the dwindling fire.

The players wandered off. The Wardens relieved the watch or took their rest, and Mal faded into the night while Caleb stowed and purified the cards.

Searching the campsite after his rituals were done, at first he could not find her. The Wardens stood guard or slept; those who acknowledged him did so with curt, quiet nods. He thought about Four, by the fireside, and about duty.

He was about to call Mal’s name, when he looked up.

She sat on the edge of the magisterium stump, her profile lit by campfire and stars. She watched the sky.

She must have heard him climb the tree’s gnarled roots. But when he stood beside her, hands scraped and arms aching with exertion, she did not look away from the stars and mountains. Couatl slept behind them in a coiled heap, wings furled over winding bodies. Long crocodile-toothed heads rested against cold, pliant scales.

“I never took you for a religious man,” she said, lost and faint as if she wandered beyond the horizon of a dream.

“I’m not.” He waited for her to turn, but she did not. “My father’s the last of the Eagle Knights, a priest of the old gods, and I work for the man who kicked his gods to the curb. More religion is the last thing I need in my life.”

“Yet you follow a goddess.”

He laughed, but she did not, so he stopped. “I wouldn’t call that a religion.”

“What would you call it?”

“The Lady of the Cards,” and he heard the capitals and wished he could unsay them, “lives between the players of a game. She’s their souls mingled, and has no power save over the game. The game ends, and she leaves. Not much of a goddess.”

“Yet you worship her.”

“Not really.”

“You observe her rites and rules in the dealing of a hand or the shuffling of cards. You worship her, sure as a ballplayer sixty years ago worshipped the Twins or Ili of the Bright Sails or Qet Sea-Lord or Exchitli. For you, at least, the card game never ends. You’re an occasional priest—pledged to a goddess who only exists occasionally.”

“You’re philosophical tonight.”

“Maybe I am.”

She faced north, toward a palpable darkness on the horizon, where the curtain of stars faded and failed.

“Looks like Craftwork,” he said.

“That’s Seven Leaf Lake. We’ll reach it before noon tomorrow.” She spoke with a measured tone that could have been excitement or fear or anger masquerading as control.

“Good.” Starshine was a potent source of power for Craft, rawest of all raw materials: starshine filtered through human mind became the stuff of souls, and Craftswomen could use it to accomplish wonders and great blasphemies. Whatever force had seized Seven Leaf, it would be less powerful at noon, with the stars hidden, than at any other time of day.

“That blot must be miles across. Is Seven Leaf supposed to pull down so much light?”

“No. The station’s drawing more power than it was designed to use. That narrows the possibilities. Narrows them down to one, actually: someone is inside, working against us.”