Four Roads Cross (3 page)

Adorne had no assistant. His children were too good for the trade, he said. School for them. So the stall was empty.

She wasn't tall enough to peer over the crowd, and here in Alt Coulumb she couldn't fly. A wooden crate lay abandoned by the girls' stall. Tara climbed the crate and, teetering, scanned the market.

At the crowd's edge she saw Adorne's broad shoulders, and tall, gaunt Capistano like an ill-made scarecrow. Other stall-keepers, too, watched—no, listened. Crier's orange flashed on the dais.

Adorne remained in place as Tara fought toward him. Not that this was unusual: the man was so big he needed more cause to move than other people. The world was something that happened to black-bearded Matthew Adorne, and when it was done happening, he remained.

But no one else had moved either.

“What's happened?” Tara asked Adorne. Even on tiptoe, she could barely see the Crier, a middle-aged, round-faced woman wearing an orange jacket and a brown hat, an orange press pass protruding from the band. Tara's words climbed the mounds of Adorne's arms and the swells of his shoulders until they reached his ears, which twitched. He peered down at her through layers of cheek and beard—raised one tree-branch finger to his lips.

“Encore's coming.”

Which shut Tara up fast. Criers sang the dawn song once for free, and a second time only if the first yielded sufficient tips. An encore meant big news.

The Crier was an alto with good carry, little vibrato, strong belt. One thing Tara had to say for the archaic process of Alt Coulumbite news delivery: in the last year she'd become a much better music critic.

Still, by now a newspaper would have given her a headline reason for the fuss.

The song of Gavriel Jones,
the Crier sang.

Tells of a New Presence in our Skies.

Oh, Tara thought.

Hot Town nights burn silver

And Stone Men soar in the sky

Pray to the moon, dreams say

And they'll spread their wings to fly.

A tale's but a tale 'til it's seen

And rumors do tend to spin

I saw them myself in the Hot Town last night

Though telling, I know I sin.

Tara listened with half an ear to the rest of the verse and watched the crowd. Heads shook. Lips turned down. Arms crossed. Matthew Adorne tapped his thick fingers against his thicker biceps.

Seril's children were playing vigilante. A Crier had seen them.

The song rolled on, to tell of gargoyles returned to Alt Coulumb not to raid, as they had many times since their Lady died in the God Wars, but to remain and rebuild the cult of their slain goddess, Seril of the moon, whom Alt Coulumb's people called traitor, murderer, thief.

Tara knew better: Seril never died. Her children were not traitors. They were soldiers, killers sometimes in self-defense and extremity, but never murderers or thieves. To the Crier's credit, she claimed none of these things, but neither did she correct popular misconceptions.

The city knew.

How would they respond?

There was no Craft to read minds without breaking them, no magic to hear another's thoughts without consent. Consciousness was a strange small structure, fragile as a rabbit's spine, and it broke if gripped too tightly. But there were more prosaic tricks to reading men and women—and the Hidden Schools that taught Tara to raise the dead and send them shambling to do her bidding, to stop her enemies' hearts and whisper through their nightmares, to fly and call lightning and steal a likely witness's face, to summon demons and execute contracts and bill in tenths of an hour, also taught her such prosaic tricks to complement true sorcery.

The crowd teetered between fear and rage. They whispered: the sound of rain, and of thunder far away.

“Bad,” Matthew Adorne said in as soft a voice as he could make his. “Stone Men in the city. You help the priests, don't you?”

Tara didn't remember the last time she heard Matthew Adorne ask a question.

“I do,” Tara said.

“They should do something.”

“I'll ask.”

“Could be one of yours,” he said, knowing enough to say “Craftsman” but not wanting, Tara thought, to admit that a woman he knew, a faithful customer, no less, belonged to that suspect class. “Scheming. Bringing dead things back.”

“I don't think so.”

“The Blacksuits will get them,” Adorne said. “And Justice, too.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Excuse me, Matt. I have work.”

So much for breakfast.

 

4

One does not need an expensive Hidden Schools degree to know the first step in crisis management: get ahead of the story. If that's impossible, at least draw even with it. Tara, who had an expensive Hidden Schools degree, hunted Gavriel Jones.

The Crier's Guild was more hive than office. Stringers, singers, and reporters buzzed like orange bees from desk to desk, alighting coffee mugs in hand to bother others working, or pollinate them with news.

“Late report by nightmare telegraph, lower trading on Shining Empire indices—”

“You hear the Suits busted Johnny Goodnight down by the docks, taking in a shipment?”

“No shit?”

“—Haven't found a second source for this yet, but Walkers looks set to knock down those PQ slums for her new shopping center—”

“Still missing your bets for the ullamal bracket, Grindel's about to close the door—”

“—Loan me a cigarette?”

“Do you really want it back?”

They didn't let people back here, exactly, but Tara wasn't people. She forced her papers into the receptionist's face—I'm Ms. Abernathy, Craftswoman to the Church of Kos Everburning, we're working on a case and want to check our facts, without pause for breath. Then she held the receptionist's gaze for the ten seconds needed for the word “Craftswoman” to suggest shambling corpses and disemboweled gods. Not that most gods had bowels.

Useful mental image, anyway.

The young man grew paler and directed her to Jones: third desk from the back, on the left, one row in.

They'd thrown desks like these out of the Hidden Schools in Tara's first year, chromed edges and fake wood tops that didn't take the masquerade seriously, green metal frames, rattling drawers and sharp corners. Thrown them, she remembered, straight into the Crack in the World. If you have a hole in reality, why not chuck your garbage there? At the time they'd also thrown out a number of ratty office chairs like the one in which Gavriel Jones herself reclined, one muddy shoe propped on the desk. The Crier held a pencil in her mouth and a plainsong page inverted in her hand. She straightened the foot that propped her, then relaxed it again, rocking her chair back and forth. Her free hand beat syncopation on her thigh. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray on her desk. Tara frowned at the ashtray and the smoke. She might work for Kos, but that didn't mean she had to approve of the weird worship the fire god demanded.

Or maybe the Crier was just an addict.

“Ms. Jones.”

Jones's hand paused. She stopped rocking and plucked the gnawed pencil from her teeth. “Ms. Abernathy. I took bets on when you would show up.”

“What was the spread?”

“You hit the sweet spot.”

“I'm getting predictable in my old age.”

“I won't pull the story,” Jones said.

“Too predictable.”

“At least you're not getting old. Not like the rest of us, anyway.” Jones pointed to the paper-strewn desktop. “Step into my office.”

Tara shifted a stack of blank staff paper and leaned against the desk. “You're starting trouble.”

“We keep people informed. Safety's the church's job. And the Blacksuits'.”

“You didn't see the Paupers' Quarter market this morning when they sang your feature.”

“I can imagine, if it's anything like the rubbernecking we had up north in the CBD.” She grinned. “Good tips today.”

“People are angry.”

“They have a right to be. Maybe you're an operational atheist, but most folks don't have the luxury. We've had problems with gargoyles before. If they're back, if their Lady is, that's news.” Jones had a way of looking up at Tara and seeming to look—not down, never down, but straight across, like a pin through Tara's eyeball. “We deserve to know how, and why, the city's changed beneath us.”

“Who are your sources?”

One of Jones's lower front teeth had been broken off and capped with silver. “Do you really think I'd answer that question? If people are worshipping Seril, a church rep is the last person I'd tell.”

“I don't need specifics,” Tara said.

“I met a girl in a bar who spun me a tale. She worked delivery, and some hoods jumped her and stole her satchel. Way the contract was written up, she was liable for everything inside. Small satchel, but you know Craftfolk. Whatever was in there, it was expensive—the debt would break her down to indentured zombiehood. She knew a story going around: if you're in trouble, shed your blood, say a prayer. Someone will come help. Someone did.”

“What kind of bar was this?”

That silver-capped tooth flashed again.

“So you write this on the strength of a pair of pretty blue eyes—”

“Gray.” She slid her hands into her pockets. “Her eyes were gray. And that's the last detail you get from me. But it got me asking around. Did you listen to the song?”

“I prefer to get my news straight from the source.”

“I did legwork, Ms. Abernathy. I have a folder of interviews you'll never see unless a Blacksuit brings me something stiffer than a polite request. Women in the PQ started dreaming a year ago: a cave, the prayer, the blood. And before you scoff, I tried it myself. I got in trouble, bled, prayed. A gargoyle came.” Her voice lost all diffidence.

“You saw them.”

“Yes.”

“So you know they're not a danger.”

“Can I get that on the record?”

Tara didn't blink. “Based on your own research, all they've done is help people. They saved you, and in return you've thrown them into the spotlight, in front of people who fear and hate them.”

Jones stood—so they could look at each other face-to-face, Tara thought at first. But then the reporter turned round and leaned back against her desk by Tara's side, arms crossed. They stared out together over the newsroom and its orange human-shaped bees. Typewriter keys rattled and carriage returns sang. Upstairs, a soprano practiced runs. “You don't know me, Ms. Abernathy.”

“Not well, Ms. Jones.”

“I came up in the
Times,
in Dresediel Lex, before I moved east.”

Tara said nothing.

“The Skittersill Rising was my first big story. I saw the protest go wrong. I saw gods and Craftsmen strangle one another over a city as people died under them. I know better than to trust either side, much less both at once. Priests and wizards break people when it suits you. Hells, you break them by accident. A gargoyle saved me last night. They're doing good work. But the city deserves the truth.”

“It's not ready for this truth.”

“I've heard that before, and it stinks. Truth's the only weapon folks like me—not Craftsmen or priests or Blacksuits, just payday drunks—have against folks like you. Trust me, it's flimsy enough. You'll be fine.”

“I'm on your side.”

“You think so. I don't have the luxury of trust.” She turned to Tara. “Unless you'd care to tell me why a Craftswoman working for the Church of Kos would take such an interest in crushing reports of the gargoyles' return?”

“If the gargoyles are back,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “they might raise new issues for the church. That makes them my responsibility.”

Jones looked down at the floor. “The dreams started about a year ago, after Kos died and rose again. There were gargoyles in the city when Kos died, too. Maybe they never left. It sounds like more than the gargoyles came back.”

Tara built walls of indifference around her panic. “That's an … audacious theory.”

“And you began to work for the church at about the same time. You sorted out Kos's resurrection, saved the city. Maybe when you brought him back, you brought something else, too. Or someone.”

Tara unclenched her hand. Murdering members of the press was generally frowned upon in polite society. “Do your editors know you make a habit of baseless accusations?”

“Don't treat us like children, Ms. Abernathy—not you, not Lord Kos, not the priests or the gargoyles or the Goddess Herself. If the world's changed, the people deserve to know.”

Time's one jewel with many facets. Tara leaned against the desk. A year ago she stood in a graveyard beneath a starry sky, and the people of her hometown approached her with pitchforks and knives and torches and murder in mind, all because she'd tried to show them the world was bigger than they thought.

Admittedly, there might have been a way to show them that didn't involve zombies.

“People don't like a changing world,” she said. “Change hurts.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

She left Gavriel Jones at her desk, alone among the bees.

 

5

Every city has forsaken places: dilapidated waterfront warehouses, midtown alleys where towers close out the sky, metropolitan outskirts where real estate's cheap and factories sprawl like bachelors in ill-tended houses, secure in the knowledge their smoke won't trouble the delicate nostrils of the great and the good.

Alt Coulumb's hardest harshest parts lay to its west and north, between the Paupers' Quarter and the glass towers of the ill-named Central Business District—a broken-down region called the Ash, where last-century developments left to crumble during the Wars never quite recovered, their land rights tied up in demoniacal battles. Twenty-story stone structures rose above narrow streets, small compared to the modern glass and steel needles north and east, but strong.