Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(122)

He drew closer to Umar.

On the third floor each cage held a single item, and he did not look at these.

The fourth floor held no cages, only doors: three on either side. Ghostlights glowed green above the lintels. Umar walked to the last door on the left, stood in front of it, and placed one hand above the latch.

Corbin felt cold. Sweat drops studded Umar’s face. His lips curled open, a skeleton’s grin. Shadows deepened in the hollows of his cheeks. Flared nostrils expelled steam. Corbin had seen Umar move through men like wheat, but turning his hand a few degrees clockwise seemed to break him.

The latch clicked open. The light above the door went red.

Umar sagged.

Frost covered the doors and walls. Corbin shivered, not just from the cold. “Open,” Umar told him.

He should not. Whatever was inside this room, it was bigger than Corbin Rafferty. But he’d come this far when he should have turned back at every step. And he knew no other way to hurt Her.

He opened the door.

Inside was more a closet than a room. A single table occupied most of the space, surrounded by a glowing silver circle on the concrete floor. A folded jacket and slacks lay on the table, and worn brown leather shoes. Red suspenders coiled like snakes atop the clothes. Beside them stood a steel box.

Corbin pointed, mutely, to the circle.

“It will not hurt you,” Umar said.

Corbin stepped across, as if diving into the ocean on a winter day. He did not die. He felt nothing, in fact.

“Bring me the box.”

“What’s inside?”

“Bring it to me.”

Corbin touched the box, found it cool. Lifted the latch. Packing immaterial swathed the inside, viscous and opaque. He reached into the immaterial and felt a pitted surface like dried, bleached wood. His fingertips traced a dome larger than two big fists pressed together, and ridged at the front, with two large holes and a third triangular gap beneath them. Many-voiced incoherent whispers filled his ears.

Wind whistled through bare grass on a stony moor. Sirens wailed.

He lifted the skull from the box.

Silver lines crossed and recrossed the bone, and cut his eyes like knives. They moved as he watched. Turned. Danced.

The skull weighed nothing in his hand. It grew, filling the closet cell though somehow it still fit in Corbin’s hand. Bone bowed out the concrete walls. Corbin stared into the gulf of its eye socket. At that bottomless pit’s bottom, he saw a glint of fire. He could fall into the skull, burning like priests said rocks burned as they fell from space, to become the fire there himself.

“Return the skull to the box,” Umar said. “And close the box. Bring both to me.”

Given the choice between nameless dread and simple obedience, Corbin’s body chose the latter.

He dropped the skull, or tried. It stuck to his hand. He must have been too afraid to let it go. That had to be the reason. But at last the skull slipped from his palm into the packing shadows, and the box snapped shut. Corbin must have closed it. The evidence locker sub-basement felt too still, too quiet.

He cradled the box to his chest, carried it back across the circle, and offered it to Umar. “Take the thing.” Cold spread from the metal into his arms.

“Not now,” Umar said. “Follow.”

He ran. So did Corbin.

The sub-basement blurred around them, lockers and cages and unconscious guard, bare-piped basement and concrete steps. Then they were out in the yard, running under a coal-black sky tangled with ropes of green-purple light like sailors said they saw far north. But those were supposed to be soft lights, while these were hard like thorns, and rainbow blood flowed where they stuck. Umar climbed the fence first, held out his hands. Corbin tossed the box to him and followed. Chain links rattled beneath his weight like they hadn’t under Umar’s.

As he crested the fence, he heard a nightmare voice.

Stop.

Shit.

He fell hard. His ankle twisted. He felt no pain, from his ankle or from his torn soles—he was too scared for pain. Umar sprinted for the alley. Corbin’s legs wouldn’t do as he asked. A Blacksuit chased them. Only one, the rest on patrol or doing gods knew what, but one was enough.

Corbin ran into the alley, into Umar. Who had stopped.

“We cannot outrun it,” Umar said, and set the box down.

Light quaked monochrome again, leaving serrated patches of light and dark. Umar’s face looked like saws f*cking.

Corbin tried to speak but made no sound.

Experience broke to key frames robbed of movement, like woodcuts in a children’s book. Umar looking up. Corbin turning. The Blacksuit frozen in midleap (it was a woman, under the Suit). Umar, dodging to strike the Suit’s face with his fist. The Suit fell, recovered. Hit Umar in the gut. Knocked him into the wall. Umar hit the Suit in the jaw with the heel of his hand. No effect. Suited fingers reached for his neck. Umar’s mouth snapped open. Glass wires flicked from between his teeth and caught the Suit, and pierced and peeled. The Suit staggered. She fell beside the box, silver pooling reflective from her skin to leave her human.

Motion returned, and color, the loud bark of those silent seconds’ sound released at once. Umar panted. Cuts around his mouth bled black. Corbin stared at the fallen Blacksuit. She lay still, but breathing.

Umar lifted the box. “Come.” His voice sounded less human now.

Corbin hobbled after him. With every turn and every block he expected Blacksuits to descend. Maybe Justice was distracted? Maybe whatever Umar did, or whatever the thing inside Umar did, broke the Suit’s tie to its Lady? But to think such a thing—to attack Justice herself, to fight her messengers and win—was to frame a world gone mad.