Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(54)

“You cut his throat. I don’t think those wings will fly you far.”

“He pushed into the knife. Which he wouldn’t have done if he thought there was a chance it would harm him.”

“Not necessarily true.”

“You know him better than I do? After what, Officer Elle, a few weeks all told on portside visits?” She shook her head. “He’s a mystery to you. You suckered me in here, fine. You seized my ship. You want to play the do-gooder by strangling legitimate commerce, that’s your damage. But you got what you got on false grounds, and I’ll drag you and Justice into court to prove it.”

“False grounds? You brought enough soul into that house to buy a full dreamglass shipment.”

“An agent hired me to make a trade. She told me where to go and when to get there and what to do once I was there. I’d just realized what was happening—I was about to leave before you jumped in.”

“You set your briefcase on the table and picked up theirs.”

“They looked similar. Either way, this stinks. I do business in Alt Coulumb. If I was buying dreamglass, why would I buy from a local supplier? I can just weigh anchor and sail somewhere it’s legal. You set me up, and I want a Craftsman.”

“You’ll get one, don’t worry,” Cat said. “And when you do, I’ll see you go down for a kidnapper, a smuggler, and a slaver.”

“All that just ’cause I cut the guy you want to ride.”

Cat stood. “What did you say?”

“He’s dropped by Alt Coulumb more in the last year than in the forty previous, but I didn’t expect he’d go through all that trouble for someone like you. He didn’t used to care for girls with habits. Maybe he’s slipping. They do, you know, when they’re long in the tooth.”

Cat had grown in the last year. There was a time, not long past, when she would have leaned across the table and broken Varg’s jaw. When she wouldn’t have stopped with the jaw.

Time was past. That was good, she told herself.

Still felt like hells that all she could do was say, “Fuck you,” and walk away.

*

“I don’t know how you stand it here,” Daphne said to Tara as they walked down the stone paths of the Sacred Precinct, full from a Business District lunch for which Daphne’d paid. Which was only rational: Daphne was the one making a firm salary.

This wasn’t how Tara envisioned their reunion. They’d talked over lunch—salad, lobster ravioli in a butter sauce, a glass of wine for each—but the conversation stayed light. New books read. Old friends, roommates, rivals moved on to positions of influence. Val worked with Halcyon Vega at Varkath Nebuchadnezzar, which seemed an odd choice since everyone expected she’d go straight into necromancy. No surprise to anyone Chris Li talked his way into a Judicial clerkship, though both had their doubts about how a Xivai beach bum born and bred would adapt to a year in Tr?lheim. Tara lost herself so deep in the conversation she could almost ignore the ticking clock in the back of her mind, counting the time she should have been at work. By the time the check came, they had broken through the shell of their shared history to find the silence beneath.

So Tara led them to the Sacred Precinct, to stone-edged gravel paths. Around them, monks and priests strolled in hooded silence. Two old nuns laughed across the grass. A bearded man counted rosary beads on a bench.

“Daffy,” Tara said, changing the subject, and Daphne chuckled at the nickname. “What’s the last thing you remember from the Schools?”

“I don’t know.” She kicked the gravel hard enough to leave a trench; small rocks bounced off the toe of her shoe. Mess up the leather doing that, Tara thought. Daphne’s family had enough nice things she’d never learned to care for them. “It’s all muddled. My last clear memory’s junior year spring break. My junior year, not yours, when we went to the Fangs.”

“That’s clear for you? Blood and hells. I lost a day in that mess.”

“You, me, Julian, Chris, Val, Mike Ngabe. Playing soccer on the beach. You got mad at Mike for something—”

“I fell,” she said. “He laughed at me.”

“So you built an affinity between the ball and his sunglasses. Broke his nose.”

“I didn’t think it would hit him that hard. And I was drunk.”

“After that it’s muddy.” She picked up two rocks and juggled them as they walked: a trick, she’d told Tara many times before, of throwing the second when the first began its descent. Tara never mastered the timing of the fall. “I remember working in Professor Denovo’s lab. Really tremendous fascinating stuff, vivisecting gods, experimental faith dynamics.” Tara remembered that tone of voice: the drunkenness of discovery. The rocks Daphne juggled were small; Tara could not hear their impact on her skin. “He liked my work. I remember his smile.” Tara clenched her jaw to keep herself from saying something stupid. “And I remember cutting things open, peeling flesh like a kid opening a birthday present. Working ten hours at a stretch hunting a slice of new knowledge. Draining myself so far I didn’t feel I was moving so much as being moved, like a puppet with a hand inside me. I remember grays. I remember lots of gray, toward the end. Not recognizing my face in the mirror. Waking up in bed in a strange body.” She caught both the rocks and squeezed. Glyphs sparked on her fingers, and a fine dust rained onto the gravel.