Four Roads Cross (32 page)

“How do we protect Seril, then?” Abelard asked. “Evangelism?”

“Seril draws faith from her new following in the Paupers' Quarter. Jones's interview will help, but it's not enough. The church has to come clean.” Cardinals shifted uncertainly around the room. “Tell the truth about everything that happened last year, about Cardinal Gustave's death, even.” She challenged each Cardinal with her gaze. “Support her.”

*   *   *

“What if the church pivots to support Seril?” asked a voice made from the screams of children.

“Doctrine,” Ramp said, “does not corner well. Which brings us to the church's second, more profound weakness.”

“Which is?”

“Ms. Abernathy.”

“We have heard good report of her,” the crimson elephant said.

“She is a good Craftswoman, but she's young. The church will retain other help for the battle itself—Kelethres Albrecht, most likely—but Ms. Abernathy's decisions today will determine much, and she's an optimist. She'll believe the church can woo a city to supporting Seril—which will not happen in time.”

“You're basing a great deal on your estimation of her character.”

“My assistant”—she pointed to Daphne, who waved—“knows her well. And I have inside knowledge. Besides, Abernathy will remain our principal adversary in the Seril matter. Craft firms can't defend Seril, since she has made no formal peace with them. Which brings us to the best part.”

*   *   *

“You expect us to undo forty years of religious education in three days.”

“Of course not,” Tara said. “Hope springs eternal, but the spring constant's not infinite.” Blank stares. “This is the part you won't like.”

Bede crossed his arms.

“I have a plan to save Seril.”

Silence.

“When She died in the God Wars, Her killers carved her to pieces. Denovo remade what was left into Justice, but Seril's butchers took large sections of her portfolio for themselves. If I get those back, or compensation for their theft, Seril will be able to defend herself against Ramp. She can rise in glory through the night, rule from her high tower, all that good stuff.”

“Why would we not like that?” Bede asked.

“There's a big catch. I have to leave the city, today, for Dresediel Lex.”

“You can't.” Abelard rose halfway from his chair. “We need you.”

“You need a team to defend Kos. I'll build one. But no Craft firm will touch Seril with a lightning rod, and if we don't find her missing portfolio, she dies. If I go, we have a chance. If I stay, it's to fight a losing battle.” She spread her hands. “If anyone at the table has a better idea, feel free to speak up.”

*   *   *

“Tara Abernathy can't defend Seril. She faces a long grinding battle with defeat at the end. And nothing is more alien to Tara Abernathy. She is brilliant, talented, and fierce. She came from a podunk farm town near the Badlands and worked caravans studying with hedge witches for seven years before she reached the Hidden Schools. The schools kicked her out a thousand feet in the air above the Crack in the World, and she crawled home across a desert surviving on cactus flesh and vulture blood. This is not a woman who knows her limits. Back her into a corner, and she will seek a long-shot solution—or invent one. It's a big world. Plenty of long-shot solutions out there. Deals with old slumbering powers. Pacts with the Golden Horde. Demon mortgages. Lost grails and hidden powers in all their forms. Brilliance can't bear the prospect of futile struggle. So she'll go for an edge play.”

“And fail,” the thunder said.

“Quests take time she doesn't have. And when she fails, Alt Coulumb will be ours.” She clasped her hands and shook them as if preparing to cast a die. “Either way, gentlemen, I look forward to the next few days.”

The storm tolled satisfaction, and high dark clouds laughed, grim and vicious and proud, though not so grim nor so vicious nor so proud as Madeline Ramp.

*   *   *

“Okay,” Tara said. “Let's get to work.”

 

41

“Thanks for coming,” Tara told Abelard as they rode north to the Alt Coulumb offices of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao.

“You really think this will work?”

“Maybe.” A pothole jarred them. “If the Cardinals hadn't played so close to the vest since Seril came back, we wouldn't be scrambling now.”

“Churches don't change overnight,” he said.

“We've had a year.”

“A year is overnight for a church.” He leaned back into velvet cushions and crossed his arms, smiling around his cigarette.

“Why so smug?”

“You said ‘we.'”

The carriage let them off at the base of a forty-story glass thorn unmarked by gargoyle prayers and veined with elevator shafts. The building had no door, but one opened anyway when Tara approached.

Black marble and chrome walled the lobby. There were no security guards visible, visible being the operative word. Tara noticed, while they waited for the elevator, that striations in the marble moved when she wasn't looking.

“That one looks like a mouth,” Abelard said. “So does that one.”

She said nothing. The elevator dinged.

On the ride up, she said, “The next few days will be hard for you.”

He lit a second cigarette with the ember of the first. “I'll do what I can. Trust in the Lord and His work. I wish I could go with you.”

There was something swollen in her throat. Lousy time to come down with a cold. “I'll be fine. We both will. This will work.” He didn't ask how she knew, for which she was grateful.

With a ding, the doors rolled back, and they emerged into a glass maze.

Anywhere else, Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao's local office would reside in a skyspire floating over the city. Craftsmen drew strength from starlight and needed buildings that could rise above cloud cover and clinging smog. Alt Coulumb's flight interdict made such crystal palaces impossible, so the firm's interior designers adopted an aesthetic echoing the heavens they were denied.

Glass walled the foyer, and glass hallways led to glass conference rooms and offices. Some panes were smoked translucent, others matte black; employees could adjust opacity as needed. The receptionist (a suited man with thin dark hair and the thick frame of an athlete who had abandoned his sport) sat at a translucent glass desk; his lower body was a textured black blur.

Tara's skin felt so tight she feared it might split. What was she afraid of? This was just an immensely powerful firm she'd snubbed by quitting.

“Tara Abernathy,” she said to the receptionist, “and Technician Abelard of the Church of Kos Everburning, for Elayne Kevarian.”

The receptionist rifled through a book whose writing tangled and rearranged as the pages turned. “She's not in the office. And she's dreaming.”

“It's urgent. Any way you could slot us in?”

“Your name, again?”

“Abernathy.”

He flipped to the rear of the book, consulted an index, changed back, frowned, scribbled a note on a slip of paper, and slid it into a pneumatic tube.

Far beneath the wooden floor, in a chamber walled with concrete, silver, polycarbonate steel, and sound-deadening foam, rows of dreamers lay chained to tables, gagged and blindfolded. The gags muffled their screams and kept them from gnawing off their tongues. An attendant took the receptionist's note from the pneumatic tube, bent beside a dreamer, removed the muff from her ear, and whispered the message there. The woman went rigid, twitched, and with the quill pen bound to her free hand scribbled a response on a roll of paper that spooled beneath her pen nib. The attendant razored the response free, returned to the vacuum tube, and—

Tara knew the process—she'd never been much of a nightmare jockey, but one did familiarize oneself with the basic tools of one's profession—but she was glad she didn't have to watch. Blood and piss didn't mesh with professional attire. But that, as the Iskari said, was war. No arguing with efficiency: in under a minute, the pneumatic tube vomited her answer. “A technician will join you shortly.” A complex Craftwork sigil occupied the center of his desk, all correspondence runes and irreproducible angles. He traced a glyph-line sequence, and green fire trailed his fingertip. “Have a seat.”

“Maybe we could leave a message?” Abelard whispered.

“We can still talk to her. We have to jump a few hurdles first, is all.”

“What kind of hurdles?”

“Don't worry,” she said. “We'll be fine.”

The tech escorted them down a smoked-glass hall to a chamber of tables with tops molded to fit the usual human extremities. “Lie here,” she said, with a slight Camlaander lilt, “side by side, if you please.”

Tara kicked off her shoes and lay back. The table adjusted to her body's contours. Abelard drilled his finger into the tabletop, then watched the wood flow to fill the pit he'd made. “Come on,” Tara said. “We don't want to keep her waiting.”

Abelard reclined.

“Do you sleepwalk?” the tech asked.

“I don't think so.”

Tara shook her head.

“Good.” She adjusted a few levers and turned a few wheels beneath the bed. “Any preexisting medical conditions? No smoking, please.”

Abelard set the cigarette, still burning, on the table.

“Thank you.” From a drawer in the wall the tech produced two paper-wrapped wreaths and slit the paper with a knife. “Completely sterile. Hold still.” The circlets were stainless steel and hinged. Sharp prongs jutted inward.

Abelard squirmed as the needles settled against his skin. “Is this necessary?”

“Yes,” said Tara and the tech at once.

She'd done this before, but still she drew her breath when the tech bent over her. The circlet crimped her hair as it closed. Stupid design—probably built by balding Technicians to balding spec. The circlet's spikes needled her skin.

“Very good,” the tech said. Had they chosen her for her accent? It should have soothed, but nothing set Tara so on edge as the sense she was being soothed. The tech's fingers pressed firm, soft, and cool against her wrist. The woman was paid to touch people, and did so with as much routine disregard as one would expect. Tara wondered—not a prurient interest, just abstract curiosity—whether the tech had to set all that aside when she lay with a lover, the way Craftswomen learned to discard habits of boardroom argument at home. Were this woman's hands always her instruments?

Abelard laughed when she took his pulse.

“Hold still,” the tech said. “You'll feel a tickling sensation.”

Then the needles went in, and the pain started.

*   *   *

Fangmouthswallowinggroundingoutgearsanddigestedtopulpbyathicketofthorncurledshapes

to wake from the dark dream of herself in a well-appointed office where, told to sit, she sat

Walkforwardtosomethingyouthinkisfreedomdownahalllinedwithrazorsangledin

and with every step the razors near, halfway down the hall and they press against your skin, dimpling flesh, and you can't turn back because the light beyond the door at the end of the hall is so beautiful you could fall into it forever, at last, happy—there's a monster behind you but you're not afraid of monsters, even ones like this sculpted from childhood centipede fears, hooked legs too large for that enormous body and moving fast, a primal terror that barely makes sense because when save in the farthest mouse-shadows of history did your ancestors have to fear spiders? No, monsters do not scare you. But to face them, to defend yourself, would be to turn from the light at the end of the razor hall, which you cannot do. Your life waits there for you. Light washes you like water, like the tears you weep, like—
Mom
—rare as a father's approving smile, it's there and only your own skin is stopping you so you

step

into

the

razors

and

the

razors

bite

and you scream, you bleed, they're inside you, cold lines rasping bone, but you've done this to yourself and having come so far what's another

step

or

scream?

As Tara struck the deep and primal unifying terror, unseen machines channeled her through that fear, tore her to a gurgle of white noise like grinding glass and seashore rush and trills on a sharped violin.

And she was through.

Panting. Crouched. Naked.

She made herself clothes: the cream-colored suit Shale bought her. Arranged her hair. Looked down through glass into a city.

She crouched under Rampart Boulevard in Alt Coulumb's Central Business District. Skyscrapers plummeted to a vanishing point beneath her. Men and women and golems and snakelings and skeletons strolled below, their feet inches from hers, separated by a translucent pane of crystal perfectly flat on Tara's side. They did not realize they walked upside down. Robes, slacks, and dresses draped in the usual way. Braids did not fall up. A carriage rolled past. She heard nothing.

Stomach and world turned somersaults together. She looked up in hope of relief.

Bad idea.

She stood on what seemed a crystal plane, beneath which Alt Coulumb jutted down into blue sky. But the plane was in fact a shallow bowl rising in slow swell on all sides, here slashed with ocean froth, there scraped with green, the crystal curve at vision's edge so tall it would shame the tallest mountain Tara had ever seen—no, not the bottom of a bowl at all. She craned her neck back and back, and far above the walls arched and joined to a domed roof, and up there she saw stars that were streetlights and stars that were also stars.

She stood in the empty inside of the globe.

She felt the architecture of this dream. She could scream into the void. She could pound the glass with enough force to crack planets and burn stars. It would never break. The world's hollow heart was her empire and her tomb.