Their buggy rattled along, and the basalt tower grew ever larger before them. Tara watched the buildings that flanked their taxi. The closer they drew to the Holy Precinct, the more grooved scars she saw in the towers’ stone, always several stories above street level. “What about those marks on the buildings? Did the priests take up decorating, too?”
Harness jangled and leather creaked. When the driver spoke again his voice was low and strained. “Ah. Those.”
“I’m sorry. If it’s a sensitive subject, I can…”
“No trouble, miss. They’re war scars, is all.”
“I thought Alt Coulumb wasn’t damaged in the God Wars.”
He snorted. “Weren’t any Craftsmen, but it was damaged all the same.”
Tara was confused, but her driver seemed uneasy with the subject. She chose her next words with care. “Shouldn’t someone have fixed them by now? It’s been fifty years.”
“Can’t be fixed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Stone Men made ’em, didn’t they?” He spit onto the street. “Can’t cover up their claw marks. The building remembers. Put in new stones and a minute later they’re scarred again.”
Tara’s breath caught, but she tried to keep her tone conversational. “Stone Men. You mean gargoyles?”
He didn’t respond, but it was an affirmative silence.
“Some of the … scars … look like writing.”
“Some are. Marking territory. Blasphemous prayers written by mad beasts. The rest are battle scars.”
“Are the gargoyles still around?”
The man glanced back at her and she saw that his face had closed like a door. “No Stone Men here.” He said those words as if they were a curse. “Not since my father’s time.”
“What happened?”
“They left.”
He turned the cab down a broad road leading into the temple compound. Seen from above, the path they traced over white gravel would follow the outer curves of a massive binding circle, large as the Holy Precinct. Tara wondered if the design served a purpose beyond decoration. Without an army of Craftsmen to manage it, not even a circle this size could contain a god as strong as Kos.
“Why’d they leave? Religious differences?”
He didn’t answer, and Tara didn’t ask for further clarification. Arguing war-era politics with a fanatic in a god-benighted city could be trouble. She wasn’t concerned for her own safety, but arriving on her client’s doorstep in a burning taxi with an injured driver would make a horrible first impression.
They approached the black tower of the Sanctum of Kos, tall and polished, an abstract vision of flame trapped in dark and unscarred stone. The same echoed warmth she had felt while falling washed over her again. Was it always like this here? And if the divine radiance was this strong when Kos was dead, what must it have been like when he was alive?
Their road dead-ended in a broad semicircle of white gravel where a double handful of other vehicles lingered, awaiting their masters: a couple ordinary taxis like Tara’s own, five or six fancier models, and even a few driverless carriages.
A young man in brown and orange robes sat at the base of the steps leading into the Sanctum. He was tonsured, smoking a cigarette, and represented the only non-carriage-related life in the vicinity.
“That’s funny,” her driver said.
“There’s usually a crowd?”
“Place is generally packed with folks, you know, come to pray for this or that or the other thing. Monsters from Northtown come when they’ve got business. If you dream about fire, you visit to pay your respects.” The cabbie frowned. “Fewer than usual today.”
She slid from the cab to the ground, fished a small metal disc out of her purse, and passed it to the driver. A piece of Tara’s soul flowed from her to him through the token. The soulstuff mattered, not the token; metals were just an easy focus. Soon after she paid him, all traces of her would fade from the payment, and only raw power remain, for the driver to trade with others in exchange for food or shelter, goods or services, or pleasure. If he were a Craftsman, and gained enough of this power from others, from the stars, or from the earth, he could use it to resurrect the dead and rain doom upon a nation. If the power remained in Alt Coulumb, on the other hand, some faithful citizen would inevitably sacrifice it to Kos, who kept the city protected and commerce secure and the whole damn system functioning.
Until, that is, a few days ago.
“Be well,” she said to the cabbie, but his frown deepened. With a flick of the reins and a swipe of the crop he goaded his horse into a sloppy canter and left Tara alone in the shadow of the fire god’s tower.
The Sanctum of Kos was a surprisingly modern building, she thought as she approached the broad, black steps. A few architectural peculiarities marked it as a product of a prior era: unnecessary columns around the base, and structurally superfluous buttresses added no doubt by nervous designers when the Sanctum was first conceived, back when twenty-story buildings had been the precinct of the ambitious, and eighty-story plans the product of fevered imaginations.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
The speaker’s voice cracked and wavered, and he drew in a ragged breath as he paused for the comma. Tara looked down from the staggering heights and saw the same young acolyte who had been waiting on the stairs when she pulled into the lot. He was seated, bent forward over his knees. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. Voluminous robes hung from his thin body, and his upturned eyes were set deep in a pale face.
“It is,” she acknowledged.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
She arched an eyebrow at him.
The young man plucked the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled a long, narrow stream of smoke. “Or, I know what you were thinking.”
“Try me.”
“You were thinking that the columns, the buttresses, are unnecessary. That we added them for show, or out of fear.”
Her eyes widened a tick, and she nodded. “How did you know?”
“You’re sharp enough to get fooled.” His attempt at a laugh crumbled into a hacking cough.
“Are you all right?” She reached for him, but he waved her off hastily. The coughing fit persisted, long and ugly and wet. The fingers of his extended hand curled slowly into a fist, and he struck himself in the chest, hard. The cough stopped with a low rattle and he kept talking as though nothing had happened.
“See how the columns are broader than they should be? Same with the buttresses?”
She nodded, though she didn’t, in fact, see.
“Not structural. A disguise. Building the Sanctum, they thought, no sense having big fat steam pipes coming off the central tower. Too ugly, too vulnerable. Hide ’em. Every other building has columns, so we might as well use these.”
“Good idea.”
“Stupid idea,” the young man said, pointing. “Fancy stonework makes it hard to access the pipe joints there, and there. Whenever anything goes wrong, we need to redo all the masonry, and at night, too, to keep people from seeing.”
“Do you tell this to everyone who stops by?”
He drew in another breath. “Only if they’re wearing a suit.” His ragged smile looked out of place, too broad and sincere for his tonsure and his robes and his slender frame.
“Well, I hope you never get attacked by someone in a suit.”
“Hasn’t happened yet.” He returned the cigarette to his mouth and lurched forward. Tara was afraid he would fall on his face, but he recovered his balance and stood, unsteadily. “You’re Tara Abernathy.” He stuck out a thin hand, which trembled in hers as she shook it. Beneath the smile and the rambling mode of speech, he was afraid. “I’m Novice Technician Abelard. They told me to wait for you. Outside.”