Last First Snow (7 page)

“I add more black to it,” he said. “Temoc is the last priest of the old gods. His fathers killed thousands. His hands are not clean.”

“You kept news of Chakal Square under wraps, put our work and your city at risk, because you didn't want to deal with him. And then you tried to start a riot, so your Wardens could arrest him for disturbing the peace.”

“Really, Elayne. You can't believe a radical's accusations.”

“This morning they caught a man trying to poison the camp. You mean to tell me Tan Batac came up with that idea all on his own?”

“He did,” Kopil said at last. “But I didn't stop him.”

“He almost poisoned hundreds of people.”

“Food poisoning,” he said. “Unpleasant, but hardly dangerous.”

“If you're in good health, which I can't say for everyone in Chakal Square. That was low.”

“Temoc and I have unfinished business.”

“I've made deals with actual demons, with a lot less at stake. So have you.”

“This feels different,” Kopil said. He leaned against the black-red glass of his desk. Bony fingers settled on a silver picture frame. She did not need to look to know what image it contained. Kopil, younger, with his arms around a man she'd never seen alive.

“I know it's hard,” she said. “They cut Timas open on that altar. But you've had your revenge. You broke their world and built a better one in its place.”

“It's not enough.”

She couldn't argue the point. She'd loved, and lost, but her loves and losses had never been so deep, so sudden, or so bloody. “Would he want you to set all you've built at risk for the sake of a grudge?”

Skyspires turned slowly above them. The falling sun lit the smog a million shades of green and yellow and red. “This was easier before,” he said.

“In the Wars, you mean.”

“Gods try to smite you, and you smite them first. Armies of light against armies of darkness. Craftsmen advancing the cause of knowledge and freedom and humanity against ignorance and oppression.”

“Humanity?”

“Or whatever you want to call us,” he allowed. “But times have changed. My people turn back to old and bloody gods.”

“That's freedom for you.”

He bowed his head. Shadows lingered in the folds of his robes and the depressions of his skull. “Everything was clear in the old days. You walked the lines like the queen of Death.”

“I was seventeen,” she said. “More seems clear at seventeen than is. You were forty, still fleshy, still human, which imparts a likewise palsied perspective.”

“What do you want from me, Elayne?”

Once those pits in his skull held eyes, and skin covered his high cheekbones. A long time had passed since then. “An apology. For keeping secrets when you said you wouldn't, for treating me like just another minion. We've known each other too long for that.”

“I am sorry,” he said, and she thought he meant it.

“Call back your agents. Quit the skullduggery. Work with the Chakal Square crowd. Temoc will gather leaders from the camp. We'll meet, and compromise, and deal. Be wise for once, as well as strong.”

She wondered how many people in Kopil's life could bear his gaze without flinching.

“Very well,” he said. “But Tan Batac won't understand.”

 

9

Temoc celebrated the sunset sacrifice in Chakal Square. As he chanted he saw Chel near the mats with another man beside her, a broken-nosed dockhand who tensed when Temoc raised his blade.

Hungry gods pleaded, promised: give us blood this time, and joy, and new power. A heart might even wake the old ones, and woken they will dance with you the great gavotte of war.

No, he told them, and himself.

Not all the frustration he felt belonged to the gods.

The knife fell, pommel first, and the echo of sacrifice yielded an echo of bliss. For the gathered faithful on the mats, even an echo was more than they had known. It was enough. New light kindled in the broken-nosed guard's eyes.

After the ceremony, Temoc walked among milling parishioners. Chel seemed ready to lead her companion off, but she stopped when Temoc raised his hand.

“Sir,” she said as he approached. And then, an awkward afterthought: “This is my partner, Tay.”

Temoc bowed his head to each of them in turn. “Welcome.”

“Thanks,” Tay said. “I've never been to one of these before. It's one hell of a thing. Excuse me. I don't know what to say.”

“The sacrament is strange. It occasions prayer and reflection, and sometimes sacrilege.” Temoc wished he felt as sure as he made himself sound. “Are you busy tonight? I would appreciate your company at a meeting.”

“Of course,” Chel said.

“I—” Tay buried his hand in his pocket, and gripped something there. Not a weapon, Temoc's old training reported. Cigarettes. “It's my shift. I should go.”

Chel touched the man's arm. “I'll catch you back at the tents.”

“Sure,” Tay said, then stuck out a hand. Temoc clasped with him, and felt his calluses, patterned wrong for a warrior. Tay broke the handshake and walked away. After five steps he lit a cigarette. Smoke trailed him through the camp.

“How can I help, sir?”

“There is no need for ‘sir,'” he said. “My name is enough.”

She waited.

“The King in Red and Tan Batac want to negotiate. I must convince the leaders of our group to speak with them.”

“You don't need an escort to talk with the Kemals over at Food Com,” she said. “Or with Red Bel or Xotoc. Might even hurt with Bel, if she thinks you're trying to intimidate her.”

“All those you mention will listen to reason,” he replied. “We will start with the man who won't.”

*   *   *

The Major's troops drilled by firelight to the beat of deep drums.

Temoc counted one hundred men and women dressed in street clothes and patchwork armor, fighting mock wars two by two. When the drums beat four-four time, those to the north attacked with fists and knives. When the beat shifted to five-six, the south mounted their assault in turn. Flesh and metal struck metal and flesh. Groans and meat percussion mixed with drummers' blows on taut hide.

The Major's jagged metal edges reflected his army and the flame. He kept time with one hand. No—Temoc saw the beat he kept shift before the drummers' did. He did not keep time. He called it.

“Hello,” Temoc said. Chel stood by his arm, playing silent attach
é
. He was grateful for her presence: the Major came from the docks. Perhaps he would listen more to voices from his homestead.

“Come to join us, Temoc?” The Major's mask warped his voice into a chorus of wheels and gears and twanging banjo strings. “To teach us ancient arts of war?”

“The King in Red has sued for peace,” Temoc said.

The Major's hand faltered. The beat tripped, and the ordered clash dissolved to a chaos more reminiscent of the battles Temoc knew. The Major passed the conductor's role to an aide, and turned to Temoc. “A trap.”

“I don't think so.”

“You know Craftsmen better than anyone. Their ‘due process' is all deadfalls. During the dockworkers' strike they called us to parlay, and those who went emerged from that meeting room speaking competition and market forces like fresh graduates from the Hidden Schools. These people turned the Siege of Alt Selene into a massacre, and torched the jungles of Southern Kath. The only way to break their smug self-sufficiency is to refuse to deal with them.”

“Which,” Temoc replied, “only makes them angry.”

“Good. Then they will show their true faces.”

“Most of these people do not want war.” He kept his voice low and level.

“War comes whether or not it's wanted,” the Major said. “The Craftsmen are too sure of their own righteousness to compromise. There can be no change without revolution.”

This was why Temoc rarely visited the Major, though many of the man's soldiers came to service. Rhetoric ran circles in the Major's mind. War was its own end. Temoc, gods help him, understood the appeal. “But are you ready? Are they?”

“History decides the moment for transition.”

“I have fought Craftsmen. Your troops are impressive.” A sop to the Major's pride: their ferocity had merit, even if their technique fell short. “But they can't beat sorcery. The Craft will scour us from the soil and let our ashes testify that none can beat the Deathless Kings. If you refuse to deal, the others will, and their deal will be more a surrender for your absence. Chakal Square will be the dockworkers' strike repeated. Bide your time. Build your strength. But for now, join us at the table.”

The Major's aide broke the rhythm of the measure, and again the drill tangled. Flames danced on steel as the Major pondered the vanguard of his revolution.

“I will come,” he said at last.

“Thank you.”

Temoc left, and did not let himself sag until he was certain no one but Chel was watching.

*   *   *

Temoc walked the camp in glory. One night was not enough to change the world, but it was enough to start, if one walked fast, and with the gods.

Stars wheeled overhead, and fire in his mind. He mended broken bones. Soothed fears. A woman came to him shaking of withdrawal from a drug he did not know, a drug that, when he looked upon it with eyes of faith, curled as a centipede around her spine. Its jaws he broke, and the legs too, one by one. Screams rose to the clouds. He could not tell the difference between the woman's screams and the drug's.

In the end, the centipede died and the woman lived. She could barely stand on her own, and when she lay down she fell asleep in moments.

He spoke with Red Bel. He wheedled Xotoc. The Kemals at Food Com acquiesced: Bill was eager, Kapania not so much.

Temoc worked until his scars' light faded to the faintest emerald glow.

Chel walked him out. The press of bodies and the furnace cackle of song, debate, and prayer warmed him. The rest of the city, and the Wardens, stood cold and sharp beyond the square. “Do you really think we can deal with the King in Red?” she asked.

“What would you want from such a deal?”

“For him and Tan Batac to stay out of the Skittersill.”

“And I want them to let us praise the old gods. The Kemals want housing for God Wars refugees. The Major will settle for nothing less than peace on earth and goodwill toward men, even if he has to kill everyone on the planet to achieve it.”

“So, no.”

“Compromise is possible. But possibility is a vast empire, and likelihood its smallest province. Still, the province is rich, and so we work to seize it.”

He felt her gaze as a weight, this woman he could lift one-handed, in her early twenties perhaps, work-hardened but innocent of war. Temoc had been born and raised in Dresediel Lex. But Chel could say the same and yet she had never seen the Serpents dance before Quechaltan, never known the glory of a true sacrifice or the deep surf-rhythm of a city's voices raised in prayer, never fought the butchery dark sorcerers called Liberation beneath shattered skies and down alleys slick with blood and melted snow. Temoc had not left his city. His city left him, replaced by another. He'd been born scant miles from this spot, yet felt a half a world away from everything he knew.

“My family waits,” he said.

“We'll be here in the morning.”

“I know.” He set his palm on her forehead, felt its warmth and the curve of bone beneath, and sent the remains of his sunset power into her. Green light danced in the blacks of her eyes, and faded. When he withdrew his hand, she did not stagger, but neither was she still. She seemed to grow in all directions at once. “Watch, in my absence.”

*   *   *

He hailed a cab two blocks from Chakal Square and rode home past lit windows in tenement houses, rectangles of yellow light cut with human silhouettes. Old men drank in a bar while a Shining Empire poet played the zither under a spotlight that made his silk gown shine. In an open-air park, a crowd danced to a brass band. Three college kids gathered around a fourth vomiting in a rose bush. Red lights transformed half-naked men and women writhing in massage parlor windows into Old World devils. Foreign music, foreign poems, foreign lust. Never such perversion under the old gods: bodies and their deeds were celebrated in song and story, and sex itself was worship.

The lights of his courtyard gate were lit, but the yard was dim. Furniture protruded from vines and bushes and cactus swells. By the reflected glow off the belly of the clouds he found his door, unlocked it, and entered the dining room. Mina had stacked her books on the buffet table, bookmarks tonguing at odd angles from pressed pages.

Something shifted beneath his foot and he stumbled. Lifted the offending object: a small rubber bouncing ball, translucent with fools'-gold flecks inside. He shook his head and pocketed the ball.

No lights in the hallway, either, and darker here without windows. Lamp flame flickered in the gap between Caleb's closed door and the jamb. He heard giggles, groans, and shouts in High Quechal: “Mine!” “No!” “Unfair.” The language of the priests, the language of his youth, spoken nowhere now but in this house.

He knocked once on the door, and opened without waiting for an answer. “Hello?”

Two lamps lit his son's narrow room and its furnishings: a small bed with a cotton sheet, a table, a bookcase. Mina insisted Caleb learn to own, and care for, books. Sponge-printed multicolored lizards climbed the walls. They'd done that as a family, when Caleb passed through a brief but intense lizard fixation at age five. The boy printed the ones nearer the baseboards himself, blurred and blotted. Temoc and Mina took turns hoisting Caleb on their shoulders to do the ceiling. Drops of paint dried in their hair, and Mina'd cut hers short to get the clumps out.