Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(110)

“It will be a hell up there,” he said. “The things these people do. You know how scary Tara gets, and she’s friendly by their standards.”

“You want me scared?” Something behind her eyes felt hot. “Okay, I’m scared. But I can help, and if I can help I have to, and I’m asking you not to stop me.”

They reached his family’s door: black wood in a red brick building three stories high. A candle quivered in the third-floor window. A long time ago she’d drawn chalk heroes on the sidewalk where they stood, saviors in pastel.

“Okay,” he said. “Just.”

“What?”

“Come up for tea. The folks would like to see you. So would I.”

“Okay,” she said, and they climbed the steps together.





55

Night claimed Alt Coulumb. Dockside, Blacksuits swept up remnants of the riot. Churches and chapels and street-corner confession booths crowded with the living and the dead in search of counsel. In the Pleasure Quarter revelers danced and spun in frenzy. Long braids described black circles as fire-eaters breathed light into the dark. “Tomorrow” was a word few tongues dared whisper. Criers sang the coming doom. There was faith: the city remembered the choir in the sky. But fear flourished in faith’s shadow.

So lovers loved, drunks drank, preachers preached, fathers fathered, mothers mothered, daughters daughtered, sons sonned, and reporters— Gavriel Jones remembered the Paupers’ Quarter market as an angry crowd and a swinging cane and stone wings beneath an impossible moon. The crowd tonight was softer and less dense. Rugs and carpets and chairs lay around the Crier’s dais, and people, mostly women, busied about assembling camp. A girl with short spiked hair dyed pink and half her face tattooed in the pattern of a skull lifted a rug from a cart.

“Expecting more people?” Jones asked the girl.

“Yeah.” She unrolled the rug with a snap of her strong arms. “Claire says. Grab those, put them down here, and here, in an arc.” Then she saw Jones for the first time and saw, more to the point, her orange waistcoat. “Shit.” The girl flowed up from her crouch, folded her arms, cocked her head up and back, a picture of the kind of punk Jones had been herself years ago, though she never let the needles near her face. “You aren’t here to help.”

“I might be,” Jones said.

“You’re a Crier. You want a story.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” she said. “What’s yours? Don’t often see a Hot Town kid setting up a sit-in.”

“What do you know about it?”

“More than you think. We could compare scars sometime.”

“Yeah?” Her curled lip and bared teeth skewed the skull-tat weird. “Maybe we could. Anyway, I’m not talking to you.”

“Current evidence to the contrary.”

“Fuck,” she said. “Lady’s got my back. I got hers. You forget that when you put on your fancy coat?”

“That why you’re here? Manners?”

“I’m here to unload carts. You want to help, then let’s go.” She pointed with her head, a lioness’s move, languid and slow. “Otherwise you talk to them.”

Jones recognized the three to whom she turned: the big man moving stiffly, and the girls. “Adorne?”

“Ellen,” she said. “Or Claire.”

“Thanks. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Gabby Jones.”

“I know,” she said, then: “Kim,” and turned back to the cart and the rugs and the work of unloading.

Claire—blonder of the two, hollow cheeks, sharp controlled movements—met Jones halfway, leaving Ellen to resolve a question of supplies. Gabby almost hadn’t recognized either girl: when she last saw them they’d stood hostage to their father. They’d grown in two days, or she had. “Ms. Jones,” Claire said. “What are you doing here?”

“I keep my ears open, and I hear things. What about you?”

“The Lady needs help.”

“You shouldn’t be here, kid. I’ve seen people side with gods against Craftsmen. That doesn’t end well.”

“Seril helped us,” Claire said. “We’ll help Her tomorrow.”

“You read much history, Claire?”

“Enough.”

“You don’t want to be out here when they bring the big guns.”

“If you won’t help us,” Claire said, “at least don’t get in our way. We have work to do.”

Damn kids, damn idealists. But to sit here and pray as the sky burned overhead—there was a stupid courage to that, even if Gabby knew how that sort of courage ended. Tomorrow Aev would fight in the skies. And Gabby would watch from the sidelines. That was her job. She’d told Tara as much in this very square, days ago.

“Ms. Jones.” Gabby jumped. Ellen’s approach had been soundless. She carried a sleeping bag under one arm. “Our Lady doesn’t stand much chance alone.”

She remembered Aev in the alleyway: moonlit talons and jewellike glittering eyes. And she remembered fire falling in Dresediel Lex, a long time gone. “No.”

“You came because you want to help, but don’t think you can. Stay. Tell our story.”