Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(48)

“I fell.”

Her touch on Cat’s arm was firm and light. She used the pads of her fingers, not her talons. “It’s hard to fly,” she said. “But you can learn.”

*

On the Alt Coulumb docks, in the hold of a ship, a hundred bodies waited, and other minds waited within.





24

No pig wants to start the morning trussed.

This one woke on its back in a forest clearing. Nearby, past screening shrubs and evergreens, large wagons rolled down a highway. The pig did not know highway or wagons, but it knew the sound. Rough, heavy cord bound its trotters. It squirmed and surged and wriggled. The coils on its left foreleg began to slip.

A knife flashed in the cold, too bright for pain. The pain came later. Then—nothing.

Two women stood in the clearing. The pig bled on bare earth. The blood from its opened throat traced drunken spider trails along the soil toward a circle of burned pine needles around the corpse. When the blood reached the circle’s edge, it pooled as if it had run against glass.

The younger woman sheathed her work knife. Her hands were clean. She pondered the blood patterns within the circle.

“Camlaan First Credit and HBSE are on board, Ms. Ramp,” she said after a long silence of mental calculation. “Shipping arrangements have been settled.” She pushed back her hood. The face revealed was smooth, and smiling. “Looks like we’re ready.”

The second woman said, “Well done, Ms. Mains.” She reviewed the blood herself. “Competently read. Though your knots are loose. He almost slipped free.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll review my knot work today.”

When the older woman withdrew from the circle she brushed the fingers of her gloves together as if rubbing off a stain, though she had not crossed the circle herself or approached the blood. “Onward, then.”

Ms. Mains removed her work robe and packed it inside a valise that was larger inside than out. She made sharp folds and dangerous corners. “Alt Coulumb, ma’am?”

“In haste. The church needs time to ponder our proposal.” She produced a coin from her sleeve, examined its head and tail, and closed it in her fist.

“It’s so nice to take country walks,” said Ms. Mains brightly as she lifted the valise. “I think someday I’ll move out here. Get a nice house. Settle down. Raise chickens in the backyard. Even pigs.” She drew her fist to her mouth as if to catch the laugh that escaped. “After I retire from the firm, of course.”

The older woman opened her fingers. The coin was not there. “Leave all this? You’d be bored blind in a week.”

Ms. Mains considered asking which”this” she meant. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that Madeline Ramp did not quite live in the same world she, Ms. Mains, occupied. For Ms. Mains, the sky was pale blue some pansies fade to, and beyond the clearing’s edge brown earth rolled southeast through pine forests to a low brook that might contain a few trout. For Ms. Ramp, there was a dead pig in the center of the clearing, some quantity of useless information in front of her, and behind her, the road to work.

Ms. Ramp turned to go, then turned back to the pig and moved her finger in a sharp cutting motion. Skin peeled from its belly and invisible knives carved out a square of flesh eight inches on a side and an inch thick, muscle marbled with fat. Ms. Ramp muttered beneath her breath and the flesh shrank, dried, colored. The sky deepened (Daphne Mains thought) to the violet of a pansy’s core. Ramp spread her fingers, and the flesh sectioned into narrow strips. The scent of seared meat filled the clearing. When she was done, still gloved, she plucked a piece of bacon from the air and ate it. Grease glistened on her gloved fingertips. “Would you like some, Ms. Mains?”

“I ate at the airport, ma’am.”

“Not even a light snack?”

“No, thank you.”

“Your loss,” she said, and left the clearing, crunching. Ms. Mains followed with the valise.

As they left, the spider-tracery of blood clotted. The first flies landed to drink, and died. Later, crows landed to gnaw the spoiling flesh.

They died, too.

*

Tara was three coffees into the morning by the time she reached the Alt Coulumb docks and the Dream moored there under Blacksuit guard.

Cat met her on the pier. She looked, charitably, horrible: Tara associated the kind of circles under her eyes with fistfights more than restless sleep, and her skin was worryingly pale. But she clutched her coffee firmly, and her expression seemed set. Tara decided to keep this professional. She and Cat could be combative enough under the best circumstances.

“Late night?” Cat said, when she was close enough.

Oh, fine. “Looks like I’m not the only one.”

Cat pointed with her coffee toward the Dream. “The operation was a success.” Which wasn’t the whole story, to judge from her tone of voice, but it was a start. “I think by right of salvage this belongs to me. What do people do with boats, anyway?”

“Sail them,” Tara said, climbing the gangplank. “And it’s not yours. You found it occupied. If you took it, you’re engaged either in piracy or law enforcement.”

“Bit of both, in this case. Law enforcement with pirates.”

“Is there more coffee?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it coffee exactly,” Cat said. “More like coffee-adjacent.”