Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(88)

“She is everywhere. But She is not here as She was last night.”

“I wanted to finish our interview.” The words sounded foolish even to her. She brandished her notebook.

“The time for interviews and revelations has passed. We live under threat of attack. Soon Alt Coulumb will face a fire fiercer than its god.”

Beyond the tower’s rim, the city burned.

“I heard,” Gabby said. “That’s my job. And that’s why you need this interview. People don’t know who you are, why you’re here. I can tell Seril’s story. Or yours.”

“Mine?”

“Why not? You’re at least as scary, in most people’s minds, as your goddess.”

“We are imposing by nature.”

“It’s not helping you.” Gabby approached the dais, leaving footprints in dust, and sat beside Aev. She flipped to a blank page in her notebook, took pencil and knife from her pocket, and cut the pencil sharp. “Just say what comes naturally.”

“Where should I begin?”

She looked out, and down. “Start with the city.”

*

“You should leave,” Cat told Raz that night by the Bounty’s wheel, while skeletons and snakelings and the rest of his shadowy nighttime crew busied themselves on deck.

“Leave?”

“Leave Alt Coulumb. Get to sea. There’s bad stuff coming.”

She’d found him working through a ledger on a low table by starlight. No lanterns. He didn’t need them. The book creaked as he closed its spine. “Tough day?”

“You have no idea.” She leaned against the wheel. “You know how long Justice’s regulations are?”

“Few hundred pages?”

“Try a few thousand, all dense Craftspeak, little shades from act to act. Ninety different kinds of fraud. Seven classes of assault, each with seven subclasses. Why seven, don’t ask me.”

“You’re not the type to spend her off hours reading rules.”

“No. But we’ll be under attack in a few days, so I figured it might help.”

“Attack.”

“Craftsmen coming for Seril, or Kos, or both of them. Kos can handle himself; Seril can’t—the part of Her that’s Herself, I mean, the conscious bit. She doesn’t have enough power. I wanted to make the Blacksuits help. It’s not easy. Turns out Justice wasn’t built to interfere with Craftwork. This will get bad. You should go.”

He capped his pen. “To save myself.”

“Fighting these bastards is my job. I don’t want you doing hero stuff on my part. Leave. Get safe.” It hurt to say. “Come back when it’s over.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You couldn’t fight the demons last night,” she said. “And you can’t fight what’s coming, either.”

“Worse than demons?”

“Bigger,” she said. “Craftsmen riding engines of war.”

“I’ll help.”

“You can’t swashbuckle this problem away. Unless you have some crazy secret vampire pirate god you haven’t told me about.”

He ran his nails over the leather cover of his book. “Tell me the problem.”

“Seril needs allies. No one will stick their neck out to help her. What’s it to you, anyway? You don’t care for gods or Craftsmen. Look out for yourself and keep clear of land, isn’t that the way you play it?”

“Usually.”

The deck between her feet had gone through more cycles of scuff and swab and polish and scuff than she cared to guess. “So what’s stopping you from leaving?”

“You,” he said.

She couldn’t answer that. Her face felt hot.

“If Seril dies,” he said, “and Justice remains, she’ll go back to the way she was before. You’ll lose yourself in the Suit. It’ll get you high again.”

“What’s your point?”

“Seril’s been good for this city. And for you.” He stared out over the water. “I know people who might help. I don’t like talking to them, but they’ll listen to me. And there will be a price.”

The ship’s sinews hung limp in the still night. “If you get hurt on my account, I’ll kill you.”

“Someone beat you to it.”

*

Airfield security was the usual pain: prick of the finger to draw blood, and a winding passage through three layers of wards all of which could be subverted in minutes by any half-blind idiot with a shred of determination. After security, at least the decor improved. Crystal chandeliers hung from high arches, and clockwork songbirds flitted from perch to perch while chrome raptors circled. Brass orchids grew amid hedges of real plants. Restaurants and coffee shops dotted the concourse, mostly caged shut; the ten fifteen to Dresediel Lex was the evening’s last flight and boarding now, as indicated by the glowworm sign upon which three of the fake songbirds perched. Tara led Shale up the marble stair to the gantry level.

Birdsong broke into squawking panic. She glanced back: two birds had flown from the sign, their resting place usurped by a raptor. Of the third clockwork songbird there was no trace.

Shale frowned at the metal birds. The raptor preened and puffed the razor feathers of her breast. An organ tritone down the hall signaled preboarding. “Come on,” she said. “We’re late.”