“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“The suit plays hell with clothes.” With a shaking hand she indicated her rumpled linen shirt and loose cotton pants. “Wrinkles them beyond all reason, and if you’re wearing anything with a bit of slink the blackness rips right through it.”
Tara bent close to the first scroll, squinting to read the scribe’s cramped calligraphy. “I wasn’t talking about your clothes. You’re paler than usual, and shivering. Your eyes are bloodshot.”
“Nah. I mean, it’s part of the job.” She gripped her upper arm, which Tara supposed was lean and well-muscled, not that she cared. “The suit gets you kind of high when you use it, and the comedown hurts. That’s all.”
“That,” Tara observed, “doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
“Not a judgment-impairing high. An I can do anything, nothing can hurt me kind of high.” Cat’s fingernails dug into her arm, so deep that Tara was surprised they did not draw blood.
“How does that not impair your judgment?”
Cat let out a dry laugh. “With the suit on, you can do pretty much anything, and nothing can hurt you. Most folks see a sword coming at their face, they duck or flinch. The sword would bounce off the suit. I wouldn’t even feel it. Justice makes sure I know that, so I can do my job.”
“What if you meet something the suit can’t handle?”
“It changes the high, makes me cautious.”
“And there are no ill effects?” Tara studiously avoided looking at Cat’s white-knuckled grip on her own arm, or at the scars on her neck. “No withdrawal?”
“We handle it.” Her tone sharpened to an arrow point.
“I see.” Tara fell silent, and turned her attention from Cat to the parchment. The tension between them subsided into silence. After a while, Tara frowned, and tapped a line of figures with the feather of her pen. “That’s funny.”
“More sealed files?”
“Not quite.” She translated from the abbreviations: “These contracts give another party joint control of Newland Acquisitions and Coulumb Securities, the two Concerns Judge Cabot purchased.”
“Who’s the other party?”
“Kos Everburning. The god himself, not his Church.”
Cat blinked.
“Cabot purchased these two failing Concerns. Then”—she pointed to one of the contract scrolls—“he gave Kos part control of them. Didn’t take any payment. That way, the Church couldn’t detect the deal, since no power left Kos at first.” Back to the ledger with Kos’s redacted records. “Kos combined the two Concerns to make a single, larger one, and filled that one with his power. Lots of power, and the Church didn’t know anything about it. This could be the reason Kos was so much weaker than the Archives show.”
“If he was still in control of this Concern, why did he die?”
“Soulstuff inside a Concern isn’t your own anymore, even if you technically control it. Maybe Kos didn’t have time to reclaim his power before he died.”
“This shell game was a stupid idea, then.”
“It didn’t work out well for him,” Tara admitted.
“So why would Kos want to give so much power to the Judge?”
“I don’t think he did. Cabot withdrew a standard agent’s fee, then tried to transfer his stake in the Concern to someone else.”
“Who?”
“That’s the funny thing. Look here.” Beneath her finger, the last line of the ledger was barely legible after the date. Tara read the abbreviation “ToO” for “Transfer of Ownership,” and Cabot’s name, but beyond that the paper was burned black as if someone had painted over it with a fiery brush. “Here.” Another scroll, the same effect. “And here.” A third. “Cabot’s ledger, Newland’s, Coulumb Security’s, all have that mark. The burn is too controlled for a candle or a match. Someone found these scrolls and destroyed the last line in each one.”
“Kos could have done it, right? With fire? To cover his tracks? It’s not like you people need things written down for them to be real. You just wave your hands and speak some words, and they happen.”
“And when they happen, they happen in a sloppy, inefficient, and slipshod manner that’s open to attack from all fronts,” Tara replied. “For great Craftwork like this, the more precise and explicit your movements, the more secure you are. You want there to be a written contract on file so nobody can lie about it afterward. If the agreement is secret, fine, but it needs to be held somewhere safe and impartial. That’s why the court library exists: if there’s trouble, the court’s might enforces the agreement.” Her brow furrowed. “Destroying the receiving party’s name would wreck the purpose of reporting this deal in the first place. With the name burned off, the Concern is open to attack. But who could do something like this? A priest wouldn’t have been able to burn off the name without Kos knowing. Nor is it a Craftsman’s work: Craft would have decayed or yellowed the paper, but there’s no sign of either.”
“Why use fire, anyway?” Cat asked. “He could have blotted the entries with ink, or stolen the whole thing.”
“This isn’t a normal scroll. Blot it and the ink will shine through. As for stealing it, do you think the court would build a library without a way to keep people from walking off with their books?” She was talking to fill space, her thoughts rushed ahead of her words. Burned-out entries. Judge Cabot, lying disemboweled beside his azaleas, tea mixed with blood, his dead body untainted by Craft. Kos’s corpse, more decayed than it should have been after three days of death. Shale’s reply to her questions yesterday morning: he was a messenger, but didn’t know what message he was to have carried.
“We need,” she whispered, “to visit the infirmary.”
*
The lonely Sanctum tower rose above the crowd gathered in the white gravel parking lot. Word of Kos’s death had spread from the Third Court of Craft across the city like a ripple over a still pool, through scraps of overheard conversation and whispers in quiet rooms, rumors mixed with truth. Most of Alt Coulumb’s four million citizens remained ignorant. Some heard and disbelieved. Some heard and hid within their work or their homes or their false hopes. But a few heard, and grew angry, and came to the Holy Precinct, bearing with them frenzy and fear and crude signs made from paint and planks of rough wood. This fraction numbered in the thousands, and they cried out and pounded against Abelard and Lady Kevarian’s carriage as it shouldered toward the Sanctum.
Abelard stared out the window at the mass. “What are they doing?”
“They’re afraid,” Lady Kevarian said. “They want guidance.”
He sought in those wild faces the men and women of Alt Coulumb that he knew, their reason and their compassion, their faith. He found none of these things. He saw a thin ice-shell of anger, and beneath that, fear.
“What will they do?”
“If your Church does not respond to their complaints? Perhaps storm the Tower, though I doubt the Blacksuits will allow it.” Justice’s servants stood in a loose cordon between the crowd and the Sanctum steps. The crowd had not yet dared approach them. “Perhaps they will linger. Perhaps loot some stores or set a building or two in the Pleasure Quarters on fire before they are stopped.”
“They wouldn’t be so angry if Kos were here.” Of course they wouldn’t, Abelard thought. Foolish thing to say. “Are you going to do something?”
Ms. Kevarian shook her head. “I am a Craftswoman. Public relations are my client’s responsibility.”
They rolled through the Blacksuit cordon and stopped at the foot of the Sanctum steps. Ms. Kevarian paid the horse as Abelard stumbled out. The crowd’s cries intensified when they saw his robes. He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “We need to tell Cardinal Gustave,” he said.