“The treasure fleet escaped in the flames,” Raz explained. “We seized what we could from the wreckage of the ships we burned, and made for Ashmere.”
“Was that,” she said, like a girl taken in by a fantastical bedtime tale, “before or after you delivered the package in Iskar?”
The question brought Raz up short. “What?”
“Did you deliver the package before or after the battle?”
“Package…” He shook his head. “What package?”
“The one the old Craftsman asked you to deliver. Did you deliver it and then have this battle, or have the battle and then deliver it?”
“What battle? We dropped off the chest and went straight from Iskar to Ashmere. That’s it.” Raz’s words hung in the air. He heard them, and understood them, and his expression grew dark. “I…” His eyes were wide and red. He looked the way Tara herself must have the morning before, drowning until he threw her the line.
She sat on the edge of the bed and laid her hand on his bare arm. His skin was cold, of course. “You’re not crazy. You made a stupid deal with what sounds like a desperate man, or maybe a desperate woman, but you’re not crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I found you at the Xiltanda, someone was trying to burn out your mind. That kind of thing is incredibly hard to do, even standing right next to a person. To do it from a distance, he must have had your permission.” She waited for him to respond, but he said nothing. “You met a Craftsman who needed your expertise and wanted anonymity. He proposed a trade. A large share of the treasure, for your memories of the event. The attack failed, but last night he took his part of the bargain anyway. He tried to burn out your mind, and I don’t think he intended to stop with your memories of the attack.”
His tongue shot out to wet lips that did not need to be moistened with saliva he no longer possessed. Another tic. Tara wondered how many little human mannerisms survived in him. “I don’t remember a deal.”
“That would have been the first thing burned out. I’m sorry.”
“I remember the wizard with the skullcap. The magesterium wood box.”
“Raz,” she said slowly, and she hoped kindly. “Memories are stories the mind tells itself, based on what it believes happened. Can you think of a Craftsman you know who’d wear skullcaps and robes? Might as well expect me to flounce about in a skull bikini. The secret mission with the mystery box is straight out of a DeGassant adventure serial. When those memories were burned out of you, your mind tried to bridge the gaps with half-remembered snatches of story. Cliché mystery-play villains. Plots that have bored a thousand readers. Be glad I stepped in when I did. The mind’s awfully inventive. A few more minutes and it would have been impossible to convince you there was a difference between your story and the truth.”
Raz slumped back into the pillow. “Will these memories go away?”
Lying would be too easy. “No.”
“Ah.”
“If you’re careful, and honest with yourself, you’ll be able to reconstruct what you did in those days. You won’t forget the other story, with the wooden box. Your memories will lead you back there once in a while, and you’ll catch yourself recalling things you know aren’t real.”
Beyond the drawn blinds, the first errant rays of sunlight peeked through the deep urban canyons of Alt Coulumb. “This city,” he said. “Nothing here ever quite works out for me.”
“You’re a strong guy. You can handle it.” She gave him a moment before asking her last question. “Do you remember anything about the person who really hired you?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Captain Pelham.”
She began to rise, but his hand settled around her arm like an iron cuff. His nails, sharp and hard as diamonds, dug into her skin. If he squeezed a little her flesh would tear.
She counted the length of her breath.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. This is not something people often say if they are not about to hurt you, but Tara believed him.
“I know.”
“You seem like a good kid, Tara.”
“Thanks.”
“Is this what you want?”
She wanted her arm back. “What do you mean?”
“Working for a big firm. Ripping my brain open on a rooftop at midnight. Is this what you want?”
There were a lot of answers to that question, but only one came to mind. “Yes.”
His grip slackened. Her arm slid free.
“Can you close the curtains the rest of the way before you leave?”
“Sure.”
10
A young man with a hollow face stood on a street corner Northside, overshadowed by steel towers and the tracks of an elevated train. He wore a jacket of rough orange cloth and cradled a lute in his thin arms. One by one he plucked its strings, tuning each to match notes that reverberated in his mind.
Pedestrians ignored him, the rich in their cloth-of-gold robes or sleek jackets, the idle ladies in layered confections of lace and cotton and silk, the workers dressed stark and severe. His fingers hovered fearfully above the lute’s fretboard, then descended.
He strummed and sang of a four-carriage pileup on Sandesky Street, Northside, sang of a critical low in the three-week barley reserves, sang of the slaughter by knife of a family of three in a Westside tenement, of the killer at large and Justice on the hunt. He sang a rumor leaked by off-duty Blacksuits too much in their cups and too loose in their tongues: the Stone Men had returned to the city. Once more their talons marked the innocent buildings of Alt Coulumb. Justice suspected them of one murder already, and citizens were warned to be watchful, lest this outbreak spell the end of forty years of freedom from heretical fanaticism. Stone Men could be anywhere, disguised as anyone.
This last point wasn’t precisely true, but it attracted attention and earned the young Crier tips. The protestations of his professional honor were overcome by the hunger pangs of his not-entirely-professional stomach.
Across Alt Coulumb, men and women of the Crier’s Guild sang this dawn song, the morning edition, until sweat slicked their faces and deep impressions of lute strings marred their calloused fingers.
A drop of sweat rolled into the young Crier’s eye, and he blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the world looked much as before.
Had he been more attentive, he would have noticed a new arrival, a man watching him from across the street through the shifting maze of pedestrians and carts and carriages. A mane of dark hair and a bushy brown beard framed his face; his shoulders were wide and his eyes round. He wore a tweed jacket, and his hands were thrust firmly in the pockets of his pleated wool slacks. His angular mouth had trapped an approving smile and did not relinquish it no matter how it struggled.
The man in the tweed jacket listened to the song. The Crier did not mention Kos, nor the death of Gods. A smart analyst could parse the endless thaumaturgy section (“For Alphan Holdings riseth in price / Two and a quarter to four and six tenths, / And Lester McLuhan and Sons doth decrease…”) and note a twitch in the energy market, but Church security held. The salient facts of Kos’s death remained unknown.
Good. Once that news leaked, chaos would burn through the city, and chaos was bad for business.
Alexander Denovo pulled out his pocket watch. It gleamed silver against the hard, cracked skin of his blunt-fingered hand. His family owned many watches, but he had built this one himself early in his study of the Craft, laboring for long hours with delicate tools, reveling in the exquisite predictability of its clockwork motion. Gears turned within its slender shell, and its face bore many dials, some marked with the usual numbers, some with mystic sigils, some with phases of the moon. One bore every letter of the alphabet. Little knobs and buttons rounded the top edge.