Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(120)

“Out of the goodness of her heart?”

“I used to think that,” he said, “but that’s a village of potential customers. Hard to rule if your instrument of rule breaks the land it touches. Craftwork destroys the world, so it must learn to heal.”

She did not rise to the bait.

Only three hours lost. Somewhere in Alt Coulumb, the case began. There had to be some way to salvage this. For Shale, locked under a mountain in a goddess’s mind. For Seril. For Alt Coulumb, besieged. “How much do you remember?” she asked.

“Most of it. I was alive, inside her. Her will was mine, but not. Like I was part of something bigger.”

Tara knew the feeling. She did not shiver. “You know my name. You know why I’ve come.”

“You’re Tara Abernathy. And you need something from me. I have little enough to give.”

The ice in her glass melted. She tried to stand, and swayed, and settled back onto the cot. “Last year, the King in Red gave you some unreal estate—specifically, Alt Coulumb’s sky.”

“He did.”

“Do you know why he was so generous?”

Altemoc trapped the spinning frog between his fingers and spun it again. The movement was tight, practiced, obsessive. She remembered a friend from the Hidden Schools, Daphne’s ex, a sometime gambler; he kept a stack of poker chips on his desk to rifle as he read. “He likes our work.”

“He gave them up because they weren’t his to give. He took them from the corpse of Seril Undying, Lady of the Moon—he thought. Deathless Kings accept the right of salvage; the King in Red used his rights to Alt Coulumb airspace as collateral, even if he couldn’t exploit them directly due to Kos Everburning’s competing claim. Back in the Wars, when people thought all gods would be dead by the century’s end, those rights were worth millions of souls.”

Altemoc whistled.

“With those funds, the King in Red rebuilt Dresediel Lex and made himself a peer of the world. Without them he would have had to accept more outside investment in RKC, which would have reduced his control over your city. Ancient history. The King’s salvage rights depend on Seril’s death, but she wasn’t really dead. She returned last year. Her survival negates the King in Red’s claim. Theft is more optically uncomfortable than salvage. Modern banks do a lot of business with Old World sovereign churches, which don’t like reminders of the bad old days.”

Spin. Trap. Spin. Trap. “He gave us the sky.”

“I imagine he wrote it off as a tithe on his foreign income filings, since your Concern looks a lot like a clerical aid bureau.”

“He’s a donor,” Altemoc said, as if that explained everything.

Here’s the critical part, Ms. Abernathy. Take care. “Seril sent me to ask you to return Her sky.”

He stopped spinning the cane. Bad tell, that. “You’re offering a trade?”

“No. Seril is under attack. She’s too weak to defend Herself, let alone pay market value for something so enormous.”

“You’re talking about two years of operating budget. We could rebuild cities with that power. Heal people.”

“If the Goddess had anything to offer in trade, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I wish I could help you,” he said.

That was it. The flat no.

She heard gods die a long way off, and did not like the sound.

“Mr. Altemoc.”

“Caleb.” His voice was flat and a little sad, as if his first name were the greatest concession he could offer.

“Caleb. I studied your Concern on our trip here from Dresediel Lex. A bridge between gods and men, that’s your slogan.”

“Yes.”

“That’s Alt Coulumb. The city’s not perfect, but its gods are trying, and so’s the church. For forty years Kos ruled alone, complacent. With Seril back, He’s worked more to help His city. If She goes, He’ll collapse.”

“I have to care for my people.” She heard the thorn twisting in his voice. “What would I tell the board?”

“Tell them you spent their donations to save a city. To heal a wound made long ago, in the Wars.” She shifted forward on the bed and laced her fingers. “I’m not a hired gun. I have friends in Alt Coulumb. I left them to fight a losing battle on the chance you could help us. Shale, who took your place, he’s under that mountain wrestling a demon-goddess from the dawn of time so we can have this conversation. I am breaking every rule of negotiation: I have no leverage to exploit, and no alternative. You don’t know me well enough to know how hard that is. But here I am. What would you do, if these were your friends?”

He had an even, unreadable expression.

Gambler, for certain—and knowing that, she knew illegibility was a mask he wore to hide.

His eyes were darker than hers, but a gold halo surrounded the pupils, like a false-colored picture of a collapsing star.

“Save them,” he said.

She waited.

“The board will kill me.”

She wouldn’t fault them if they did, but she didn’t say that. Nor could she say any of the other preprogrammed words: you’ve made the right decision, or, pleasure doing businesses, or let’s talk details. She managed “thank you,” and hoped it was enough.