Three Parts Dead

7

Shale floated in a pit of night, encircled by cords of lightning. He sought within himself for the fire of rage and found nothing, sought too for the quickened shivering breath of fear and was no more successful. It was as if he had reached down to the fork of his legs and felt there undifferentiated flesh, smooth and polished as a wood floor.

Of course, he had no hands with which to reach down, no legs, nor anything at their fork. The girl had taken all that from him and left him in this prison, where a thousand blankets piled atop his mind and every thought came with slow deliberation or not at all.

Tara claimed she was on his side, and indeed she had pulled him from the jaws of death. The Blacksuits, blasphemers, wasted no love on Seril’s children. She did not seem perturbed by his suffering, though, or eager to return him to his body. She needed his information, and who knew what black arts she could practice on him to force compliance? Could she bend him to betray his Flight?

Shale could not break Tara’s hold over him, but one act of protest remained to him that not even sorcery could bar.

He had no mouth to open, nor throat through which to draw breath; neither lungs to hold that breath nor diaphragm to propel it out. Yet he howled.

A gargoyle’s howl is only in part a sound carried on air like other sounds. A gargoyle’s howl, like a poet’s, resounds from spirit to spirit within the walls of a city.

Shale’s howl shook the darkness beyond his prison.

He let the blankets press him down, and he began to wait.

*

“Let me get this straight,” Abelard said as he chased Tara down the Sanctum’s spiral staircase. “You can buy a sheet of paper that tells you what’s happening on the other side of the world?”

“Yes,” Tara replied, focusing on her steps rather than the conversation. Why weren’t these stairwells better lit?

“How does it know?”

“Every evening, reporters in the Old World write down what happened that day, and tell the Concerns that print the paper.”

“How can they get the information across the ocean so fast?”

“It’s like a semaphore, with Craft instead of a flag, and the message moves through nightmares instead of air.”

“What?”

“Look,” she shouted over the clattering of their feet, “it works. Trust me.”

“Then they print the news on paper, and make so many copies that anyone who wants can read one?”

“Exactly.”

“Where do they get the paper?”

“The same way you get it for your archives, I imagine.”

“The Church makes its own paper,” Abelard said, panting with the speed of their descent, “and it’s very expensive. We couldn’t sell paper for what people could afford to pay.”

“Which is why it’s so expensive.”

“What?”

“If you bought the paper from other Concerns instead of making it yourself, you could have them compete against one another for your business. Each Concern would try to make paper better and cheaper than its competitors, and you’d pay less.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Concerns try to sell paper cheaper than one another? That hurts them all in the end.”

Exasperated, she dropped that line of discussion. She would have time to explain the problems of a command economy to Abelard after Kos’s return. “How do you get news in this city, if you don’t have newspapers?”

“The Crier’s Guild. Their news about the Old World lags a week or two. Dispatches come on the big, slow ships, because the fast ones are too expensive.”

Tara fell silent. As they clattered down endless winding stairs she thought about ships—about Kos’s contract with the Iskari Defense Ministry’s Naval Division, and about the damage to the Kell’s Bounty’s hull, long and narrow wounds as if someone had raked the ship with claws of flame. Two days ago, Raz Pelham said, we had a bit of nasty business south of Iskar. Running toward trouble, not away.

Pelham’s crew had been closemouthed when she pressed them. Unlikely that they’d warm to her now. Pelham himself, on the other hand, had seemed less reticent, and more knowledgeable.

“Abelard.” She paused on the steps and turned back to face him. “Where would a vampire go for a drink in this city?”

He smiled. This worried her.

*

As night sunk its claws into the world, Cardinal Gustave reached a caesura in his paperwork. He handed a stack of documents to his assistant, returned his pen to his desk drawer, stood, and, gathering his crimson robes about him and leaning on his staff, descended to walk the grounds of the Holy Precinct.

Dark thoughts prowled his mind as he searched the empty evening sky. The lights of Alt Coulumb rendered the stars dim and faint, but usually the strongest burned through. Their light invited quiet remembrance of things past, and contemplation of the future. Tonight, though, the heavens were a blank slate.

He wandered, wondering.

His steps took him down the long roads that bisected and trisected the Holy Precinct, along this paved arc section, that curving path. The tip of his staff dug pits in the white gravel as he walked. Occasionally he stopped and stood swaying, and his lips moved without sound. Long fingers gripped the staff as if it were a living thing that might betray him. His face in those moments was made from slabs of rock.

During one such pause, he looked up from his prayer to see a pale figure in a deep lavender dress approaching on the narrow path that led from the Sanctum. Elayne Kevarian. No one else would advance on the Technical Cardinal with such determination as he prayed. He did not want to speak with the Craftswoman, but neither could he avoid her.

She stopped a few paces from him, short-nailed fingers tapping at her slender hips. “Praying, Cardinal?”

“As is my custom,” he admitted with a nod. “Not every night, but as many nights as I can manage, I walk the grounds. Pray the prayers. See to the wards.”

“I wondered about that,” she said. With her toe she carved a small trench in the gravel before her. “I understand the basic protective circles, the purifying patterns, but containment … Wards to keep Kos in? Doesn’t seem very respectful.”

“They were built years ago, in the depths of the God Wars. Seril’s death hit this city hard.”

“I arrived shortly afterward to work on Justice. I remember.”

He shuddered, and searched the empty sky for words. “Some of the Church fathers worried Kos would try to leave his people, run to the front and perish with his lover at the hands of the Deathless Kings.”

She said nothing.

“They made this circle in vainglorious hope of keeping him here, safe, with us. All were punished for their presumption, but the circle remains to remind us of the cost of hubris.”

Ms. Kevarian looked back at the tower, rising black and thin above the precinct. “War,” she said. “It sounds so normal, doesn’t it? So pretty.” That last word blighted the air as it left her throat. “A few bodies impaled on a few swords, some bright young boys skewered by arrows, and done. What we did, what was done to us, was not war. The sky opened and the earth rose. Water burned and fire flowed. The dead became weapons. The weapons came alive.” A gleam appeared at the Sanctum’s pinnacle as a novice set lanterns for the evening. Their light reflected off Ms. Kevarian’s flat eyes. “Had Kos joined Seril at the front, she might not have died. We might not have won. If you can call anything that happened in that … war … winning.”

It took effort to find his voice. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” she said, quietly, “whatever you think of me and my kind, whatever you blame us for, know this: Kos was a good Lord. I will not let the same thing that happened to his lover happen to him.”

Gustave let out a harsh bark that could not have been called a laugh. “Was that what you told Seril’s priests before you blinded their goddess and made her crawl? Before you blackened their silver and tarnished their faith?”

The distant lights of Alt Coulumb cast a thousand shadows at their feet.

“I was a junior partner last time,” she replied after a long silence. “I did not have much control over the case. This will be different.”

A tide of anger swelled within the Cardinal, and he mastered the urge to snap back: I hope so, for your sake and mine. I have fought to defend my Church and my God, and I will fight for them again, until the seas boil and the stars fall. He took a slow breath, and rode that tide until it subsided. This woman was his ally, or so she claimed. She deserved a chance. He turned his face studiously downward.

“If you say so, Lady.”

*

The two left wheels of Tara and Abelard’s carriage lurched off the ground as the driver swung them into the narrow gap between a large driverless wagon and a mounted courier. Tara scrambled to the elevated side of the passenger cabin, eyes wide, and shot an angry look at Abelard when he chortled.

The airborne wheels returned to the cobblestones with a bone-jarring thud. Tara’s teeth clapped together so hard her jaw ached. “Is our driver insane?”

He brought one finger to his lips. “Don’t let him hear you. Cabbies in Alt Coulumb are touchy, with reason. The Guild has zero tolerance for accidents.”

“They fire you if you have a wreck?”

“It involves fire, yes. Trust me, there’s no safer place on the road in Alt Coulumb than in a cab.”

“Especially when there are cabs on the road,” she noted as they cut off a one-horse hatchback, which careened out of control into a delivery wagon.

On the carriage floor lay a canvas sack Abelard had retrieved from his cell. From within, he produced a shiny black mass that unfolded into a pair of leather trousers. Kicking off his sandals, he slid the trousers on beneath his robe. When he saw her curious expression, he said, “Everyone keeps a few personal items. For special occasions, nights off, you know.”

“Those look pretty tight.” This wasn’t because Abelard had extra fat on his bones. His legs were rails, and the leather accentuated their meagerness. She watched him lever the pants into place with some concern for what would happen to his anatomy when they were ultimately fastened.

“What did your boss have to say?” He pulled a shirt from his bag.

“Nothing.”

“She knows what we’re doing?”

“I told her we were going to find Raz, the captain who brought us here.”

“The vampire.”

“Right. I told her some Iskari naval claims will influence how we proceed, and, judging from the condition of Raz’s ship, I thought he might have inside information. I gave her your notebook.”

“You didn’t say anything about the Iskari contracts and Kos’s death?”

“No.” The carriage lurched, and she gripped the inner railing to steady herself. Abelard had unlaced the front of his robe, and was unfolding a white muslin shirt with narrow sleeves.

“Isn’t it worth mentioning?” As he lifted the robe over his head, he passed her his cigarette. It was lighter than she expected, and warm to the touch. She had smoked before, but something about the way he handled his cigarettes made them look heavier than normal.

“Of course it is.” She studied the glowing orange ember. “You were right, back in the archives. This is my first big assignment, and I don’t want to run to Ms. Kevarian whenever something important comes up. I want to have a complete story for her when she asks about the Iskari contract.” I can’t risk looking weak, she thought but did not say. There are people waiting to see me fail.

The ember faded as she watched, starved for air. No sense letting it die. As she lifted the cigarette to her mouth, though, she heard a rustle of fabric; her fingers stung and were suddenly empty, and Abelard had his cigarette again. He stuck it into his mouth with a possessive glare, took a long drag, and exhaled smoke. “Which means we need to track down a vampire in the middle of the Pleasure Quarters at night.”

He had extricated himself from his brown robes, and the change was shocking. Where a novice once sat, young, eager, earnest, now rested a young man of Alt Coulumb, slick and polished in a rake’s tight clothes. The tonsure spoiled the effect so adroitly that Tara had to suppress a laugh before she spoke. “You said you knew someone who could help.”

“I’ve been studying for the priesthood since I was a boy, but I have a friend who spends a lot of time in low places. She knows the undercity.” His gaze trailed out the small window into the gathering night. “The question is whether she’ll be in any shape to help us.”

*

Catherine Elle arched her back and let out a scream of iridescent pleasure. Her world was bright colors and ecstasy, an explosion of light that shattered the shadows of the bar and broke the pounding music’s rhythm. Each second was beautiful and forever, a torrent of lava in her blood, melting her then cooling and compressing, tightening.

Until it was over. Then, the music seemed only repetitive, high strings slicing out a basic melody over punctilious bass. The room was small and dark, clogged with smoke and the sour stench of stale sweat. The strobing dance-hall lights cut her into slices bereft of movement, picture after picture of a small woman in a private booth in a disgusting bar.

The vampire raised his face from her wrist. Blood ran down his chin in rivulets. His eyes were wide in shock or fear, and the wound in her wrist was already closing.

“What the hell,” she said. “What the hell.”

Awareness returned slowly as the whiplash subsided. She knew where she was: a little booth off the Undercroft’s main dance floor, one of the myriad nooks Walsh set aside for clients who needed a little privacy. A translucent damask curtain separated the booth from the gyrating bodies on the dance floor, a smoky meld of flesh tones and black leather.

She rounded on the vampire. “You let go. You dropped me right when it was getting good.”

“Cat.” His fangs hadn’t retracted all the way, and there was still blood on his lips, so he spit a little as he tried to say her name. “You were way gone, you were great, I didn’t want to hurt you, that’s all.”

“Didn’t want to hurt me.” He reached for her arm again but she pulled away and he stumbled off the couch, colliding with the far wall. “You think I’m a damn cup? You drink up and put me down?”

Falling, the vampire cut his forehead on the corner of a picture frame—some pale-skinned human chick, mostly naked and wrapped in roses and thorns. The artist thought blood was the same color as roses, but neither the roses nor the blood in his painting was the same color as the blood—Cat’s blood—drying on the leech’s chin and shirt.

His excuses sickened her. She reached for the curtain.

“I took you as far down as you could go,” the leech stammered. At least he could talk now without spitting everywhere. “Farther than I’ve ever taken anyone. No human could have survived so much.”

“You saying I’m not human?” Her voice went low, menacing.

“You should be lying on the floor! You should be limp. You should be…” He stopped. Knew what was good for him.

For a moment she felt a little soft. “When did you get to the city, kid?”

“I’m fifty years old.”

“When?”

He snarled, and looked into her with a gaze that drunk life. He met something in her eyes that fell on him like a wall, and he flinched and recoiled.

“When?”

“A month back,” he said after a while.

“Living rough?”

He staggered under her question. “I heard the city was a good place to find work.”

“Last month. Hell. You’ve spent fifty years jumping farmers’ daughters and scaring livestock.” She wore a belt of braided black chain around her tight black skirt, with twenty gold coins woven into it. She worked two free, sunk a fraction of her soul into each, and tossed them on the booth seat. “There. Buy yourself someone who’s not looking for pleasure out of the deal. But for the love of Kos, don’t go around claiming you’ll be able to take a girl somewhere she’s never been before.”

He leapt for her, teeth bared and sharp, hands clutched into claws.

She dodged his grasping arms and brought her elbow down hard on his neck as he sailed past. He dropped to the floor and lay there.

“What are you,” he said, panting. “A Stone Woman?”

“A Stone Woman?” She spat on him. “A woman wants more than you have and she’s a godsdamn abomination. I was going to let you go easy.” She put the toe of her boot into the small of his back and pressed.

He screamed.

Before she did anything more, the curtain ripped back to reveal a man so large he eclipsed the dance floor entirely: Walsh, the bar’s owner and minder.

“Ms. Elle,” he said. “Is there a problem?”

She shook her head, and the world shook with her. Somewhere behind the mass of Walsh, the party continued. “He called me a Stone Woman, Walsh.” She heard the plaintive, angry whine in her voice and hated herself for it. “Can’t hold his blood, and he attacks me and calls me a Stone Woman.”

The vampire writhed on the floor. She had removed her boot from his back when Walsh arrived.

“This woman hurting you, buddy?”

The vampire muttered something in the negative, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees. It took him a moment to stand.

“Don’t forget your tip,” Cat said, not breaking eye contact with Walsh. The vampire cursed her in what sounded like Kathic and scuttled out. He took the coins.

“You can’t keep doing this.” Walsh’s voice was so deep it competed with the bass. “I run a clean place.”

“Guy was a cheat. A hungry cheat.”

“Being hungry’s not a crime.”

“Used to be good vamps in this city, Walsh. One sip and I was gone. What happened?” The bad comedown was getting to her, haze clouding the edges of her vision like spectators at a crime scene. She staggered forward, put out a hand, leaned on him for support. He hesitated before resting one ham-hock arm around her shoulders.

“You ever think the problem isn’t the vamps?”

“Whatchyou mean,” she murmured into his chest as he guided her out of the booth.

“I mean you’re in here every night, here or Claude’s or one of a half-dozen other places. You started with the kiddie leeches, and you’ve been moving up. Before too long, it’ll be you and the real old ones, and they can drain you in seconds. You won’t be able to give them lip or beat them up if they mess with you, either.”

“I c’n beat up anyone.”

“Sure you can, Ms. Elle.”

They made their way back to the bar, skirting the edge of the crowd. Somewhere in that dancing mass a young kid was getting her first taste. A quick bite and she’d be flying.

The bar was sparsely peopled. Walsh pulled a glass and a bottle of gin from the middle shelf and poured the glass half full for her. “Look, Ms. Elle. Do me a favor. Drink this, go somewhere, clean yourself up. Read a book or something. Don’t hurt any more of my customers.”

She downed half the gin with her first pull, the other half with her second. “You shouldn’t let that trash in anyway. Gives you a bad name.”

“Will you go? Please? One night, clean and mostly sober, no sticking anything into any veins?”

She looked at him incredulously. “You’re kicking me out.”

“Better to drink and run away and live to drink another day, kiddo.” He motioned to one of the bouncers, a tall, square-shouldered chick with bright orange hair and a blouse cut off at the sleeves to expose daunting musculature. She escorted Cat to the front door, pushed her outside, and shut the door behind her.

The dark alley stank of stagnant water. Two gas lamps shed pale light on the cobblestones, and a large metal dumpster a few yards away swelled with trash. Halfhearted graffiti overlaid deep old scars left by the talons of Stone Men.

A score of back doors led into this alley, but only the Undercroft had an entrance here.

Bums and hobos lay against bare brick walls, hats out to catch change from the passing night scum and the Northtown nobs who drifted east to the Pleasure Quarters after nightfall for their fun. The beggars kept their hands to themselves. If they chased away custom, Walsh would have them cleared out overnight.

Cat staggered upstream against the intermittent current of customers, ignoring the outstretched hands and needy faces and the smiles of the pushers near the corner. She’d tried their drugs before, their Old World poppy milk and their pills stuffed with ground herbs from the Shining Kingdom. A vampire’s fang made them all seem frail, flabby jokes. She had less patience for the pimps, and promised herself she would return some night soon when she was on duty.

The alley opened onto a broad and crowded street lit by ghostlight. You could tell the priests from the other reprobates by the hooded cloaks they wore to hide their tonsures.

The world grayed out and her veins ached for something sharp to spread poison through them. Her sweat was cold. Her legs twitched under her and her back hit the brick wall. She slid down until she was sitting on her heels, shoulders bowed forward and hands resting on the sharp toes of her boots. Some Blacksuit would be along soon, to sweep her off the main street and set her on her way home.

It was barely nine o’clock. It had been an early morning at work, with the murder and all. She was okay. Right?

Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t look up, because the light hurts your eyes.

A pair of black-clad legs trespassed on the upper edge of her field of vision. That hadn’t taken long. She prepared herself for the Blacksuit’s words to rake across her mind.

They never came.

Instead, a voice she hadn’t heard in far too long said, “Cat, is that you?” It wasn’t the most gallant one-liner with which to re-enter her life, but Abelard had never been a gallant type.

“Abe!” She reached out and grabbed his legs, using his body as a prop with which to lever herself, slowly, to her feet. “What the hell, man! What are you doing here?”

He was wearing a black felt hat, she noticed when she climbed her way to his shoulders. The hat covered the tonsure, which was about all you could say for it.

There was a woman with him. Age hard to place; smooth tea-and-milk skin dusted with brown freckles, and her snake-hazel eyes were smooth as well, the way eyes got when they saw too much. She was dressed oddly for a night out, in a black skirt and a blouse with a neckline that barely showed the hollow of her collarbones. Too simple for eveningwear and too severe to be casual.

“Abe, are you working?” Cat put all the scorn she could muster into that word.

His eyes searched the graffiti on the wall behind her for an answer, and in his pause the woman extended her hand. “I’m Tara Abernathy. Abe”—she said it with an amused glance at Abelard—“said you might be able to help us.”

“Sure,” Cat replied. Her head spun from gin and blood loss. “Soon as I finish being sick. Excuse me.”