These things were all true, yet when he said them the crowd beyond the cordon of Blacksuits did not scream their assent. Silence infected them, spread by those who stood near enough to feel firsthand the weight of the Cardinal’s presence.
“Children of Alt Coulumb, ask yourself: what burns even now within your hearts? What fire dances through the pathways of your mind? When you look at me, do you feel the hot flame of righteous wrath that devours brush and brambles and soon gives way to soot and dust? Do you feel the sickly greenwood fire of treason or the slow coal-burn of contempt?”
The crowd was silent, yes, but their silence was dangerous. Cardinal Gustave had placed a shell of words around their anger, and their anger bucked and surged against it.
“Children of Alt Coulumb, that fire is your God!”
Cries rose from the audience, disbelief and half-formed epithets.
“You claim to know the mind of God, you claim to know His nature and His shape, His truth and His power. You claim He is dead when you yourselves are the proof of His glory. What citizens of any other nation would hear such news and come before me, to protest in the shadow of God’s own temple?
“Children of Alt Coulumb, a fire burns within my voice. Within my mind. Within my heart. It is the fire of incense: a fire cultivated and refined through contemplation, strengthened through long practice and given proper fuel.
“That fire is Lord Kos’s breath within me. It burns quietly, and its burning is a pleasure to the wise. Children of Alt Coulumb, that fire is gentle. But do not mistake me,” he roared over a tide of angry voices. “Do not mistake me, it still burns!”
Before him he thrust his staff. His brow furrowed, and he drew in a measured breath.
A curtain of flame erupted from the staff’s tip, red and orange and yellow, and rose into the evening sky. It was the color of leaves in autumn, but it was not autumn leaves. It was hot like the sun, but it was not the sun. It was the fire of divinity. It eclipsed the world, rippled over the reflective skin of immobile Blacksuits, and cast the shadows of the mob upon the ground.
The frontmost protesters fell automatically to their knees, from awe and to avoid the searing heat. Some near the back scrambled to escape.
Quickly as it came, the fire dissipated. The Cardinal lowered his staff. Its copper-shod tip settled with a clearly audible tap against the Sanctum’s basalt steps. His body swayed, but within him, a thing that knew no age or weakness stood indomitable.
“Children of Alt Coulumb, your God slumbers within you. In days to come, He will rise once more. Only your faith is weak.”
The crowd remained bowed. Some, at the edges, slunk away.
Cardinal Gustave withdrew into the Sanctum shadows, and closed the door behind him.
*
A Blacksuit guarded the door to the faceless witness’s room, and only let Cat and Captain Pelham pass when she flashed the badge of Justice that hung around her neck. They found the room a mess of broken and burned furniture. Tara’s shoulder bag lay open on the floor, the silver and crystal apparatus it once contained spilled out among splintered wood and shredded fabric.
“What happened here?” the Captain asked.
She had listened to Justice’s mind on the walk over, gripping her badge to hear as if through a layer of cotton the stream of deductions and observations that resounded clear and bright within her skull when she wore the Blacksuit. “A Stone Man burst in, abducted Tara and the witness, and fled.”
“Talon marks on the floor,” Captain Pelham observed. “On the wall, here, and around the bed.”
“The Blacksuits heard a scream, came running, found this.” She paced. “Godsdammit.”
“What? It makes sense, doesn’t it? You saved Tara from the gargoyles last night, and this guy”—he pointed to the broken bed where the faceless man had lain—“witnessed their crime. They came to clean up.”
“Tara invaded my mind to send me away. She must have had a reason.”
“Maybe the gargoyle interrupted her while she was doing whatever it was.”
“How?”
“Through the window.” Captain Pelham pointed to the shattered casement.
“If so, where’s the glass on the inside?” She knelt and swept her hand over the broken tiles, but discovered none. “See how these are bent?” She pointed to the bars. “Someone ripped the whole assembly out of the wall from this side.”
“If you can see that, can’t the other Blacksuits?”
“Not necessarily. They ran through, saw the Stone Man, and pursued. The examiners won’t arrive for another quarter-hour at least.” Her heartbeat quickened. If she found something Justice missed, she could use that to buy off her failure. She needed strong evidence, though. No mere guesswork would satisfy. “There was a Stone Man in this room. He didn’t come in through the window, but he left that way. Could the witness have been a Stone Man all along? Pretending to be faceless?”
“Hard to pretend that, I think. Someone pretty much has to steal your face.”
“Is there a way to break free of Craft that keeps you faceless, then?”
“Search me.” Captain Pelham examined the bent bars, the shards of glass, the splintered windowsill. Dusk washed the outside world in weak shades of gray. “The Craft pays well, but I try to keep my distance. On the first job I took from a Craftswoman, I ended up with a hunger for blood and a bad sunlight allergy.”
“Tara could have been in league with the Stone Men.” Cat clutched her temples with one hand. She was missing something. The world blurred, shifted, solidified. Everything would be fine if she donned her suit. All the pieces would fall into place.
No. Not yet. She needed a real solution.
“If Tara was working with them,” Captain Pelham asked, “why did they try to kill her last night?”
“I don’t know!”
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you could ask her.”
“What?”
He raised a finger to his lips and pointed out the window and down. She joined him at the sill and saw Tara in the alley below, brushing dirt off her sleeves and straightening her ripped skirt and checking her collar as she walked toward the street. Her clothes were a mess, as if she had just been in a fight.
Silent, they watched Tara reach the curb and summon a driverless carriage. “We need to follow her,” Cat said.
“Follow her?”
Halfway out the window already, she paused, and swore.
“What?”
“She’ll be gone before we can get down if I don’t put on the Blacksuit, but if I do, Justice will know she controlled my mind and take me off the case.”
“I’ll catch you,” Captain Pelham said.
She tried to stop him, but he flowed past her like mist and fell to the cobblestones below; the force of his landing barely bent his knees. He looked up to her in the gathering night and held out his arms.
Captain Pelham was a stranger, an outsider, a vampire. He didn’t like her, and he had a rapport with Tara. If he dropped her, no one would ever know.
But he seemed like a good person, and if she didn’t trust him, Tara would get away.
Cursing herself for a fool, she jumped. Her fall seemed to take longer than his.
He caught her, light as a bag of down.
Being held was nice, and being this close to his teeth was a terrible temptation. So strong. Old, too, and what mattered more, original. He had been made a vampire by Craft, firsthand, not by catching the condition from another.
In Cat’s distraction she failed to notice Tara’s carriage pull away from the curb, but Pelham’s attention did not slip. He ran, the world blurring around them, and as her thoughts raced to catch up, he leapt.
Whipping wind, fluttering cloth, the street a surge of colors, and they landed—or rather he landed, with her still in his arms—stiff-legged atop the passenger compartment of an empty driverless carriage four cars behind Tara’s. The horse reared and voiced a whinny of outrage, but when Pelham said, “Follow that cab and we’ll pay you double,” it gave no further complaint.