Three Parts Dead

17

A thousand ebon statues scattered across the city turned toward a single spot on the waterfront. At first slowly, then faster, like a drummer intoxicated with a new and rapid beat, they began to run.

*

Tara rode the surf of a silver ocean in moonlight. Or perhaps she was the surf, floating atop the water and one with it at once. When she lay with a lover and woke slowly the next morning, not knowing of or caring for the world beyond her skin, or time beyond her joyous heart’s slow beat, she felt like this, but now her skin was the endless ocean, and her heart beat in measured rhythm against unknown sands. No thought of gargoyles or Craft or murder could command her. She lay free and glowing on the waters.

Cool light bathed her. She opened eyes she had not known were closed, looked up, and saw herself, arched in the sky above as she lay curved upon the sea. Up there, she was full and round, glowing with love and serenity. The night was her flesh. Stars clustered in the hollows of her hips and at the base of her neck.

She felt as a tiger cub must feel looking at her mother, who gives her milk, licks her clean with a rough tongue, and nuzzles her when she tries and fails to walk, her mother who stretches three sinewy meters from nose to tail tip, her mother whose piercing claws and beating engine of a heart no Craftsman would have dared to shape.

Was that truly her, in the sky? She blinked, and saw Ma Abernathy, smiling. Again, and it seemed to be Ms. Kevarian. Again, and she saw all of them, and none of them, and more, a power her mind desperately sought to fix in a familiar shape though it overflowed them all.

She was looking at a Goddess. Not a fragmentary divine spirit like the ones she had dissected at school, nor a corpse bereft of life, but a Goddess old as history, Seril Green-Eyed, Seril Undying of Alt Coulumb, Great Lady of Green and Silver.

Her eyes were open, huge as moons. Reflected in them, Tara saw an endless ocean where Seril lay as fully one with the water as she was with the sky. There was no difference between Seril of the water and Seril of the night.

Tara was not looking at a Goddess.

She was one with a Goddess.

She drew a ragged breath of cool air.

*

In the darkness of the Xiltanda, Alexander Denovo laid down his fork. Wood raked across polished tile as he pushed his chair back from the table.

“What is it?” Ms. Kevarian asked.

“Your assistant is in trouble.”

“Indeed?” She felt strangely calm as she ate another forkful of salmon. “How do you know that?”

“I remain in contact with Justice,” he said at last, and, when she did not react, “You’re not surprised?”

“On the contrary, I am quite concerned with Ms. Abernathy’s fate. I wonder what you intend to accomplish by rushing out in the middle of dinner.”

“The Stone Men are inside Alt Coulumb,” he said, as if this were something she did not know.

“Justice is searching for them.”

“Tara found them, and Justice discovered her in their company. She’ll be held as an accessory to Cabot’s murder.”

Ms. Kevarian set down her fork as well.

“Come with me to the Temple of Justice,” he said. “We’ll sort this out. Get Tara back.”

She stood, the consternation on her features unseen in the darkness. “Yes,” she echoed, her voice soft. “We must sort this out.”

As they moved through the dark room to the stairs, she knew, somehow, that Alexander Denovo was smiling.

*

Cat, who was also Justice, waited as hundreds of her brothers and sisters descended on the warehouse. The Stone Men’s ceremony continued below, silver waves receding to break again on Tara’s body. Justice’s vast thoughts still debated the facts, but Cat had her own theory: Tara saved the Stone Men’s assassin in exchange for their performance of this ritual, which flooded her precise soul with pleasure. Tara was as much an addict as Cat herself.

On the floor, the vampire twisted in pain as his regenerative system struggled to repair his spine. His mouth worked, his eyes stared, and little mewling noises escaped his ruined throat. He lacked the motor control to turn them into words.

She raised her foot over his back. Perhaps he was innocent, but she could not let him warn Tara. He would heal.

Her foot struck his neck above the flare of the latissimus. Bones splintered.

The noise was louder than she expected. Below, the chanting ceased. At the same time, she heard a chorus of dull collisions above as more of her brethren landed on the roof. Louder than landings or breaking bone, though, was the rust scream of the door behind her opening.

Who would be so stupid as to open the closed door into an abandoned warehouse when its mate lay unhinged on the floor beside it?

She turned and saw Abelard.

He looked from her, to the vampire on the floor, and back. Few could recognize a man or woman covered by the Blacksuit, but Abelard saw through the layer of her office to the person beneath, and was stunned or foolish enough to call out her name. “Cat!”

The trapdoor behind her exploded. Fortunately, the Blacksuits chose that exact moment to abandon subtlety and burst in through the roof.

*

Lost beyond herself, Tara heard a voice, her mother’s voice almost but deeper. In her left ear it whispered: “Something is wrong.” In her right: “Permit me—”

The world cracked open, and Seril’s voice dissolved into a mess of sea-foam sound. Tara felt as if she had been torn from her body, then realized she was actually being forced back into it. Her flesh felt tight about her soul, like a dress shrunken in the wash.

The Guardians would not have interrupted the ceremony. They must have been disturbed.

Attacked.

Tara needed to help them. To help Her.

She realized with a tremor of fear that she was thinking of Seril in capital letters.

*

As the rosary guided Abelard to the waterfront, he had noticed that every Blacksuit in the city was going his way. They flitted from shadow to shadow down side streets, or leapt across the rooftops, featherlight footfalls filling the night with a sound like rapid beating wings.

When his carriage arrived at the broken warehouse, Blacksuits writhing on its roof like maggots upon old meat, he swallowed hard, threw the horse its pay, and ran toward the abandoned loading dock. He expected imminent arrest, but either Justice’s attention was elsewhere or the Blacksuits deemed his arrival part of a larger plan. Great birds of shadow bristling the buildings above, they watched him stumble and fall, panting, through the warehouse’s one standing door, just as Cat broke Captain Pelham’s neck.

Unthinking, Abelard cried out her name, but his voice was lost amid the crack of shattered stone as gargoyles erupted from the floor.

Talons out and wings flared, the great beasts leapt for Cat, but Blacksuits rained through the ceiling to repulse them. Battle was joined. Within it Cat darted and struck, locked in combat with a giant tiger-headed gargoyle who wore a torque of glimmering silver.

Abelard’s tracking rosary pointed straight ahead. Fear quickened in his stomach and caught in his lungs, or perhaps that was cigarette smoke.

He could hide, watch, and wait for this to pass. The Blacksuits would take care of everything. That was their purpose: to protect and defend. But in the last two days, he had spent too long hiding, watching, and waiting.

He remembered the dry, wooden snap of Raz Pelham’s breaking, spine and a strange thought rose from the chaos of his mind: who were the Blacksuits protecting, and from what?

Tara was somewhere inside that maelstrom.

He ran in after her.

*

Pressure and confinement ushered Tara back to consciousness. She found herself in the warehouse basement, cradled in a male Blacksuit’s unyielding arms. Before she could object, he bent his legs and leapt twenty feet into the air.

She struggled in his iron grip as they reached the apex of their flight. About her and below the Guardians were locked in battle, gray blurs afflicted with parasites of black. Seril’s children were losing. Blacksuits grabbed their wings, locked their arms, and pulled them to the slab floor.

Tara was weak, denied starlight by this damned cloud cover, but she had tricks at her disposal, especially against enemies like these who seldom fought a Craftswoman. As her captor prepared to land, she twisted her right arm around, and grazed with her palm the sculpted precision of his external obliques. The Blacksuit was divine in origin, thus too tightly woven to easily dismantle, but divine Craft was still Craft. She drank it in.

She could draw only a miniscule amount of power, but that was enough. The Blacksuit’s enhanced leg muscles went slack. Instead of landing he collapsed, and Tara pitched from his arms, falling unceremoniously on her face.

As she rose to a crouch a flailing gargoyle shook a Blacksuit off his arm, hurtling the servant of Justice toward her. Dodging, she careened into a downed Guardian who bucked and clawed as six Blacksuits bent a thick, flexible band of iron around his wings. She scrabbled away on hands and feet like a crab, breathing hard. Near the battle’s edge, her fingers touched something soft and cold behind her, wrapped in cloth. A human body.

Turning, she saw Captain Pelham, splintered bone protruding from the skin of his neck. His mouth worked without sound, but his red eyes recognized her.

“Shit,” she said, her first word since wakening. Glancing about, ready to duck or dodge, Tara squatted over Raz’s shoulders, worked her left hand beneath his throat, and peeled free the skin wedged between the flagstones. She placed her right hand over his broken spine, then pressed down with her full weight and pulled up at the same time. Raz’s body flopped like a landed fish, but she heard the cheerful pop of bone settling, more or less, into its proper position. Close enough for his own formidable powers to heal the rest.

A hand fell on her shoulder. Swinging around she saw first the Blacksuit, then the woman within. Cat, wrapped in Justice’s embrace.

Tara’s second word after awakening was the same as her first.

You will surrender, the suit said in a voice scarcely like Cat’s own. You are accused of collaboration and conspiracy to commit murder. Around them gargoyles fell, wrestled to the ground by superior numbers. Iron bonds were fitted and locked around wings and arms and legs. Tight clamps held fanged mouths closed. Tara smelled burnt flesh and stone.

“They’re innocent!” She pulled ineffectually against Cat’s grip. “They haven’t committed any crime but hiding from you.”

The Stone Men are accused of conspiracy to commit murder. They will be tried. Cat leaned close to Tara’s face. As will you.

Tara called upon the Craft and prepared to fight, to free herself whatever the consequences, but the opportunity never came.

Abelard crashed into Cat from behind in a flare of orange and brown robes, ripping her hand from Tara’s arm. Tara saw him frozen in time, eyes wide, cigarette clenched between his bared teeth. A tracking rosary dangled from his fist.

A Blacksuit tackled him. Tara leapt to his defense, blind with fury and adrenaline, her knife out and her power drawn about her.

Cat’s fist struck her in the cheek.

The force of impact lifted Tara off the floor. A host of fireflies obscured her vision, and scattered when she hit the ground shoulders first.

Breath left her in a rush. Cat settled like a sack of wet sand on her chest, threading an iron band around Tara’s arms and beneath her back as she thrashed, a netted wild thing. She heard a click and the metal tightened, pressing against her skin until her bones creaked.

Tara saw the last of the gargoyles fall. Blacksuits wrestled Aev and David to the floor bare feet from one another, and bound them. Groans of pain and the muffled expletive aftermath of combat mingled with the Blacksuits’ calm, scraping voices as they recounted to each captive the crimes of which they were accused.

Cat gathered Tara in her arms and stood. Other Blacksuits lifted Abelard, squirming and likewise restrained, and Captain Pelham, who hung limp though his neck was mostly healed.

“Where are you taking us?” Tara asked.

To judgment.

*

“My Lord.” Cardinal Gustave’s assistant hesitated, uncertain whether to continue. “We have news from Justice.”

The Cardinal sat regarding a page of scripture, his flame-red hood drawn back. “Indeed.”

“The Blacksuits have apprehended a small coven of Stone Men within the city, and believe them guilty of Alphonse Cabot’s murder. You asked to be informed if progress was made on the case.”

“Yes.” Cardinal Gustave closed his book. “Thank you, Theofric.”

“Sir.”

The Cardinal raised one eyebrow at his assistant’s hesitation. “There’s more?”

“Sir, Justice has also arrested Novice Technician Abelard, and Ms. Abernathy, Lady Kevarian’s assistant. I understand Lady Kevarian and her opposing counsel, Professor Denovo, are aware of this development, and are on their way to Justice’s Temple. Justice believes they will object to the arrest.” Theofric waited for a reaction, but saw none. The Cardinal hefted the scripture, weighing the prayers and admonitions within. At last he set the book atop a short stack of papers.

“My Lord?”

Gustave stood, leaning too much on his desk. Moving with heavy steps, he retrieved his staff of office from where it rested against the wall. “Inform Justice that I may attend the hearing, though I am feeling unwell.”

“The faithful are still outside our front door, sir. They are no longer chanting, but their numbers have grown, and they could become dangerous. Should I summon an escort for your carriage?”

“No, Theofric.” He strode to the door. “I must contemplate the throne of our Lord. Find me there if you have need.”

*

Alexander Denovo led Ms. Kevarian through the dancing mass; she followed as if through a fog. It was hard to concentrate. Tara had found the gargoyles. Good. But Justice had found Tara, too. Less good.

They reached the street and raised their arms to call for a cab at the same time. He opened the door, and she stepped in. The carriage shuddered them on their way, the clatter of wheels and hooves over cobblestones rhythmic, hypnotizing.

She folded her hands on the lap of her skirt.

“This is fun, isn’t it,” Alexander said with a manic grin. “You and me? Off once more, on a mad mission to save everything we hold dear? We make a good team, don’t we?”

“We’re not teammates. I told you forty years ago.” She wanted to put more rancor into her words, but she felt so tired. “I want nothing more to do with you. You manipulate. You abuse. You’re not trustworthy.”

There should have been more punch in that last sentence. Instead, it hung lame on the air between them, too insubstantial to resist when Alexander leaned forward and kissed her.

At first, she thought she pulled away, slapped him, called upon her Craft and burned him to ash. Then she realized she had done none of these things.

Her stomach turned. His beard prickled and scratched at the flesh of her cheeks and chin. His lips were cold, passionless. Mocking.

She could not bite him, could not strike him, could not stab him or burn him or crucify him with lightning. Only one option was left: she exhaled Craft and shadow into his open mouth along with air. He fell back, stunned, wearing an impish smile.

“What was that?” he said, rubbing his lips. “You shouldn’t be able to do anything at all. You’re incredibly resourceful.”

“What have you done to me?” She tried to scream but it came out as a dull question.

“Elayne,” he said with gentle reproof, “if you know you’re dealing with a man who can twist your own will against you, perhaps you should be careful how much you let him talk?”

*

The Blacksuits carried Tara, Abelard, and the other captives to black wagons waiting on the street outside. Tara and Abelard were only bound about their arms, while the gargoyles were swaddled in iron. Some tried to shift into human form and escape, but the bonds adjusted to fit the prisoner, immobilizing no matter what perversion of human or animal shape Seril’s children assumed.

Tara and Abelard were placed alone in the second wagon with David, who had been knocked unconscious during the fight. Blacksuits latched the three captives’ bonds into bolts in the wagon walls. Cat frisked them herself. She left Abelard’s priestly work belt untouched, but she wrested a crystal dagger from his pocket despite his protests.

After the wagon doors were closed, Abelard examined their restraints, but had no leverage to free himself or the others.

“Abelard,” Tara said. She still couldn’t believe his presence here, much less his attack on Cat. Was he some kind of hallucination?

“Hi.” His sheepish smile dispelled her doubts. No figment of her imagination could have seemed so earnest. “How have you been keeping yourself?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I saw Cat kill Captain Pelham,” he said. “She’d never do something like that. Nor would Justice. There has to be something wrong with them.”

“I don’t mean why did you try to save me. Why were you at the warehouse at all? Aren’t you supposed to be with Ms. Kevarian?”

“Ms. Kevarian went to dinner with Professor Denovo. She sent me to find you. She wants you to know what we’ve learned.”

A chill ran up Tara’s arms and the backs of her legs. “Tell me everything.”

David groaned, head lolling from side to side as the wagon jerked along. A purpling bruise discolored his mouth and jaw, and a strand of blood stained his pale cheek beneath the new-growth forest of stubble.

Abelard started to talk.

*

Cardinal Gustave stood before the pale metal Altar of the Defiant, upon which bloomed the gold wire cage where his God once sat, judge and friend to the people of Alt Coulumb. Wooden bas relief carvings lined the Sanctum walls around him, readouts disguised as decorations. The position of the sun over that ancient battlefield indicated steam pressure levels in the primary valves, while the racing elephants on the opposite wall displayed the power output of various turbines. Though Kos was gone, all readouts remained nominal. God’s covenant with his people would last until the death of the moon.

Provided nothing untoward happened.

Provided.

“I won’t let what happened to Seril happen to Kos,” Elayne Kevarian had said. Cardinal Gustave would not let such a disaster come to pass either.

“Lord,” he said, praying to a God no longer there to hear, “my life’s work has been to glorify You.” Lantern light cast his face in shadow and flickering flame. “I will set matters right.”

He walked from the altar to the floor-to-ceiling window. As he passed the bas-relief carvings, he tapped a carved monkey’s head on the ear, twisted a soaring falcon twenty degrees counterclockwise, raised a trio of frolicking fish a few inches within their wooden pond, and pulled a lever disguised as a lamp stand. Gears clanked behind metal walls and the window rose, jerkily at first, from its moorings. A rush of wind caught the Cardinal’s thin hair in a silver tangle.

The air rising off the Holy Precinct smelled of fresh-cut grass and urban excess. Far below, the gathered crowd with their lit candles watched the Sanctum and waited for their God to present Himself. They sang old hymns half-remembered from childhood, but even in youth their faith had been weak, and they only remembered traces of the holy words. When the songs could not sustain them they turned to chanting, and occasionally to curses shouted at the black tower. They wanted guidance, and He would guide them, later. At the moment, more important matters commanded His attention.

Northward, an elevated train wound serpentine through the crystal towers of the Deathless Kings. Amid those pinnacles, the Cardinal saw the black pyramid of the Third Court of Craft, and beside it, an edifice of white marble. The Temple of Justice.

Kos might be dead, but His power lived on.

Cardinal Gustave breathed in deep and stepped out of the open window.

Wind buoyed him up, whipping the red robes of his office about his frail form. Divine power sang in his aged veins. A wish could whirl him to far continents, a whim could raise him to the stars and a fancy sink him to the depths of the earth. He laughed, and Kos’s majesty bore him north, away from the Holy Precinct and the desperate crowd.

The window closed behind him. A half hour later, when Theofric sought his Cardinal in the Sanctum Sanctorum, he found only an empty room.