Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(134)

What answer could Daphne give, or the machine outside her? The court itself acknowledged Seril’s rights to the sky. Easier to move the world without a lever than fight the court from within.

Tara had won.

But Daphne heard slow applause and recognized Ramp’s voice.

“Neatly done, Ms. Abernathy. But would you please refrain from declaring premature victory? It’s a bad habit.”

The machine in Daphne moved again.

*

Tara was caught by surprise. So was the Judge. The monster with Daphne’s face pointed, and lightning leapt from her to the paper that bore Tara’s seal, and Altemoc’s.

The document smoked—the bond of ownership unraveling as Daphne attacked the contract, the ownership trail of Seril’s sky. After decades of Craftwork wrangling, how could Kos renounce his claim?

Tara blocked, reinforcing the deal with Kos’s own testimony, with moonlit records in city stone, with the organic glyphs of Alt Coulumb’s streets: the God’s claim assumed His Lady’s death, but She was very much alive. His certainty stood as a wall against Daphne’s spears.

The spears became vines, became water, became worms that wriggled into Tara’s mind. Perhaps the spirit who called herself Seril was not the same as the Goddess who died?

But Tara fought back. Seril’s children testified, with their crystal teeth and their claws and their long memories. And Kos Himself offered surety in flame. One by one, with spiderlong fingers, Tara plucked up the argument-worms and burned them as they screamed.

The machine burned faster. Daphne cut through Tara’s argument: the goddess who fought in the Wars has changed to the point of death. She fought Craftswomen, and now employs them. She ruled, and now she hides. Her body was remade. Her mortal worshippers are gone, or long since converted to other faiths. She was a ghost surviving in a few monsters’ dreams. The being who emerges, reborn, is not the lady who fell at the King in Red’s hands, her blood smoking on his claws.

Blades of Craft pierced beneath the skin of reality, speared Seril Herself, and pried apart the seconds and ages of Her life. All Daphne’s might, all the court’s power, wedged present Seril from Her past.

Tara slipped beneath those blades, blunted them and redirected. Seril has changed, as I have changed, as you have changed, bitwise, slantwise, like the philosopher’s ship. But Her faithful call Her by the same name, and so does Her lover, and so do Her children. And so, by rights, She is.

Tara’s web closed around the blades, and hardened.

But still the machine in Daphne fought.

Seril now is Seril who was before, but Seril who was before is not Seril who is now. Seril is Seril and is not Seril. Tara is Tara and is not Tara. Daphne is Daphne and is not Daphne.

Webs of Craft reflected themselves, distorted.

Tara saw the discontinuity too late.

Craftwork logic, spun against itself, made a hole in the wielder’s mind.

And a demon stepped through.

Reflections bubbled in Daphne’s eyes, and the eyes themselves faceted, serrated, grew polygonal and inflated round again. Daphne became a cutout superimposed on the world. Much of her skin was gone, or shredded, but the thaumaturgical implements inside her now frayed, or turned on invisible axes to become writhing glass, devouring their complexity as the world tore.

Daphne’s lips peeled back, and back, and back. The corners of her mouth split to show fangs. In those fangs Tara thought she saw Daphne’s face, or her own, or both their faces melded and forever screaming. A choir sang music no human throats could make.

Tara tried to catch the demon’s edges, see its bindings. There were none. Ill-defined it passed through the portal of Daphne’s broken logic—limitless and hungry.

Cat leapt for it, wings spread. The demon pierced her and she fell. Demonglass caught Tara, skinned the moonlight from her, grew inward. She blunted its assault, defining the claws by their pressure on her skin and so destroying them—but space twisted as the demon overflowed itself, reshaping Daphne’s body to fit its expanded being, so fast it made itself faster.

The gargoyles fought, and Justice. Unreal blades cut down.

The demon grew so fast it seemed to be exploding: glass pierced Alt Coulumb pavement into bedrock, and more glass spread from the wound. A tendril darted left, impaled a nearby skyspire and began to suck. Crystal broke, and flight Craft failed, as the demon asserted new reality. It belonged here. Here belonged to it. Flyspeck Craftsmen fell screaming toward the city. Crystal shards rained down.

Bleeding, burned, caught in thorns, Tara imposed shapes and rules on the demon, but they slipped—it moved too fast for her to trap. Her shields broke. She made new ones. Her skin ripped.

Within her she felt Seril, and with her Kos, the silver light and the deep flame, and both were afraid.

The city began to die.

Time ran slow, because there was not much left.

Many thoughts dovetailed in Tara’s head at once.

The demon that came through Daphne’s mind was not protected by the Court of Craft. It crushed court wards and burst the guardian circle. Kos could engage it directly, now, and Seril, but unbound demons moved faster than faith. They might last mere seconds in real time, but in those seconds they could rewrite the world from underneath the gods. As the demon grew it would kill and convert, and as their faithful died or were swallowed by the glass, Kos and Seril would falter, weaken, change to demon-things themselves.