Kos might be dead, but His power lived on.
Cardinal Gustave breathed in deep and stepped out of the open window.
Wind buoyed him up, whipping the red robes of his office about his frail form. Divine power sang in his aged veins. A wish could whirl him to far continents, a whim could raise him to the stars and a fancy sink him to the depths of the earth. He laughed, and Kos’s majesty bore him north, away from the Holy Precinct and the desperate crowd.
The window closed behind him. A half hour later, when Theofric sought his Cardinal in the Sanctum Sanctorum, he found only an empty room.
18
As night deepened, the Business District died. Its workers bled out in a dual current, west to the residential neighborhoods and east to the Pleasure Quarters. Their beds received them, or else the welcoming embrace of pub doors and back-alley dancers; they rested their heads on pillows or the flesh of lovers or the slick countertops of mostly clean, almost well-lighted diners that never closed, even when the night-shift waitress drowsed off at two in the morning and left the patrons to serve themselves from the pot of bitter, bad coffee warming on the slow burner.
Those who sought solace in the city that night found it wanting. Uncertainty took root and flourished even in minds and hearts ignorant of Kos’s death. When tired people sought their lovers or clients, their usual hungry and desperate companions, they found them unable to reassure, cherish, or comfort. They whispered broken sentences to one another, or fought and slept angrily apart, or drank and laughed in the dark, or wandered to the Holy Precinct and joined the candlelit crowd.
A few stragglers remained in their skyscraper offices near the Temple of Justice, sludging toward an illusory finish line. Work weighed them down and tied them to their desks. None rose to look out their windows, so none saw the line of black wagons pull up to the curb beneath the blind, accusatory gaze of the statue of Justice with her sword and scales.
They labored on in ignorance, while around them the world began to change.
Some Blacksuits jogged beside the wagons as they rolled through the vacant streets, while others rode atop them, guarding against escape or rescue. Arriving at their destination, Justice’s servants cordoned off the street, creating a gauntlet that led up the broad white steps and into the Temple’s inner chambers.
A Blacksuit detachment escorted the prisoners from the wagons. Most of the gargoyles went limp from protest, forcing Justice’s servants to carry their thousand pounds of weight. Tara and Abelard gave their captors no trouble, and were allowed to walk under their own power.
Tara looked at the imposing white marble Temple, fronted with columns and statuary, but did not see it. Her mind raced, reviewing all Abelard had told her on the ride over, about Denovo’s desire to work on this case and his consultation with Cardinal Gustave; about the shadow creature, about the circle of Craft inside the Sanctum, about a crystal dagger with a drop of blood at its heart—the same dagger Cat had taken from him. As Tara weighed these facts against the gargoyles’ story, she felt like a mosaic artist with a box of colored tiles and no plan.
“You can get us out of this, right?” Abelard said around his cigarette.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s encouraging.”
She shook her head. “I can show the gargoyles are innocent, but that tips my hand to Professor Denovo. He’ll have time to prepare a response, and that will hurt the Church’s case.”
“Will a strong case do us any good if we’re in prison?”
“Ms. Kevarian can bail us out.”
“If Justice lets her.”
“I know.” She forced the words out through her clenched teeth. “I’m trying to think.”
They crested the stairs and passed around Justice’s statue, Abelard to the right and Tara to the left. Together, they continued down the gauntlet of Blacksuits through the open Temple doors into shadow.
The main corridor was long and straight. Lanterns hung unlit from iron mounts on polished marble walls. Every few feet stood iron tripods upon which iron braziers rested, their incense fires ebbed to embers. Thin strings of fragrant smoke rose from the piles of ash. The hall ended in a large wooden door, open to reveal a broad chamber and a gigantic statue within. Tara did not deviate from her path or slow, and soon she and Abelard entered the Inner Sanctum of Justice.
She closed her eyes and saw.
Justice was a goddess remade in the image of man. Craft wound through her Sanctum, a great silver web of mind connecting thousands of Blacksuits across Alt Coulumb, but the web was not Justice. She swelled within it unseen, a colossal distortion at the heart of coarse human Craft. Tara saw her in outline, a face pressed against, or trapped beneath, a shroud of silk. She was immense, she was beautiful, and she had no eyes.
Tara opened her own eyes and looked upon the chamber as Abelard did. A glass dome arched forty feet above the unfinished marble floor. At the hall’s far end stood a polished obsidian statue whose head nearly touched that glass; Justice, robed as outside the Temple gates, with her blindfold removed. Her empty eye sockets were pits of broken, glittering stone.
Tiered steps were carved into the chamber’s sloping walls, and on each tier a row of Blacksuits stood single file, heads thrown back to contemplate the statue of their maimed Lady. The enormity of the scene pressed against Tara’s skin, against her soul. Great and terrible work had been accomplished here. She imagined Professor Denovo climbing that statue, chisel in hand, to pry the goddess’s eyes from her face. Her stomach turned, and she tried not to vomit.
When the Guardians saw the statue, they surged against their bonds, raging. Blacksuits struck them and forced them to their knees. Aev fell last.
The doors swung shut behind Tara.
The statue spoke.
*
“I will destroy you,” Elayne Kevarian said.
“Not in the near future, obviously,” Alexander replied, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “You know they don’t let you smoke indoors at the schools these days? I had to quit. Wish I had a cigarette now.”
“You’ve been trying to kill us all along.”
“Have not.”
“Liar.” His grip on her mind blocked the course of her fiercest emotions, and denied her the mental clarity required to work Craft, but she could speak, if she remained civil. He had not made a move against her body after that first kiss, intended as a mere demonstration of his control. This did not make her comfortable with the situation. “You wanted me out of the way.”
“Hardly.”
He peeked out of the coach’s curtains, and Elayne seized on his momentary distraction to test the limits of his control. What she found did not please her. Denovo’s technique had grown subtle down the decades. She could adjust her posture, even gesture in conversation, but dramatic movements were denied her. Standing up, striking him, throwing herself from the carriage, all felt pointless, tiring. Why fight? Her heartbeat quickened.
“Elayne, if I wanted to kill you, you would be dead already.”
She inclined her head, neither agreeing with nor denying his assertion.
“I have not moved against you or your assistant. You simply had the misfortune to wander into my experiment.”
“Your experiment.” She found she could still express scorn. “What is its object, pray tell?”
“What else?” Denovo asked rhetorically. “Immortality, and the benefits customarily thought to accrue to it. Feel this.” Leaning forward, he cupped her cheek in his hand. His fingers were deathly cold, as was proper for a Craftsman of his age. She knew her face felt the same, two statues of ice touching. With a shake of his head he released her and drew back. “Was this what Gerhardt wanted, do you think, when he published Das Thaumas? To stretch into eternity, until life becomes nothing but the search for more life? Or did he dream of something greater?”