Elayne Kevarian followed the beacon of Alexander Denovo’s pain through thick fog back into her body. Opening her eyes, she found herself prone on the unfinished marble floor of the Great Hall of Justice, beneath the gaze of a blind statue and surrounded by a thousand Blacksuits. She was wounded—deep gashes from fallen glass, myriad scrapes and bruises. And she was on fire.
Perfect.
She breathed in, and became cold. The flames caught on her suit flickered, flared, died. Ms. Kevarian felt their death, and their power flowed into her skin like warm sunlight on a summer morning.
A sword-slash smile played on her lips.
*
The Cardinal’s features twisted in confusion as the fire he threw against Tara struck Denovo instead. The Craftsman’s defenses did not break under this doubled assault. If anything, Denovo seemed less pressed than before. His shoulders squared, his arms steadied, and the stress cracks in his shield disappeared. Though Gustave was nearly blinded by God’s brilliant flame, he saw Denovo shake his head.
“Tara,” Denovo said, “you should have joined with me. It would have been more pleasant for us both.”
Denovo shifted his defenses to his left arm, and reached out with his right, fingers clawed as if to grasp Gustave’s throat. The claw tightened, and though Gustave was ignorant of all but the most fundamental tricks of Denovo’s heathen Craft, he recognized breaking power in that gesture. He twitched in an involuntary spasm of fear.
But he felt nothing.
*
Tara saw victory on Denovo’s face as he closed his hand. That gesture was a trigger, invoking a contract with a shred of nightmare, a rat in the walls of reality—the shadow creature in Gustave’s Craft circle. Denovo must have planted the shadow when he made the circle, as insurance against the Cardinal’s betrayal. He commanded it now to destroy the dagger through which Gustave drew his power. But Abelard had released the shadow creature hours ago, and Cat held the dagger.
When Denovo closed his hand, he expected the flame to die, and the old man to fall. Instead, Gustave redoubled his assault, and Denovo fell to his knees, betrayed by his own frustrated anticipation of success. Veins in his forehead bulged as he fought to regain control. Tara would have crowed in triumph, but a dozen new lances of flame descended on her from all directions as the Cardinal screamed, “Heretics! Blasphemers!”
*
“Help us.”
It was the plea of a drowning man.
Cat knew what those sounded like. She had spent her entire life drowning.
Abelard needed her.
The world was a weight on her shoulders, so she let it bow her to the ground. Kneeling, she turned her wrist, as if it were the wrist of a marionette. Her arm was heavy. She aimed the point of the crystal dagger at the stone floor.
Her arm fell, and she leaned into it, exercising every scrap of her control over the Blacksuit. The dagger’s point struck stone.
The crystal blade held. She sagged in despair.
It snapped.
*
There are as many different kinds of silence as of darkness. Some are so fragile a single breath will shatter them, but others are not so weak. The strongest silences deafen.
The flames of Kos died, and Cardinal Gustave fell screaming. He landed with a sound like a bundle of snapped twigs and lay gasping on the floor, red robes billowed out around him.
A small noise escaped Abelard, as though a mouse was being strangled in his throat. It was not a lament or a protest. It was too confused to be any of these things.
The nerves of limbs and stomach and heart moved him forward, though his brain remained transfixed by the sight of the Cardinal’s twisted body. The ground shook as he approached the pool of red cloth and blood in which the old man lay.
Behind him, the world moved on. He heard raised voices—Tara’s, the Professor’s, sounds with no more meaning than the glass that broke like new spring ice beneath his boots. Even the heavy acid taste of smoke in his mouth felt distant. The gold-thread hem of the Cardinal’s robe surrounded him like a mystic circle. Abelard crossed it, and fell to his knees.
The Cardinal still breathed. It was worse, almost, this way. Thin parched lips peeled back to reveal rows of bright teeth set in gums more scarlet than his robe. Air rattled in the cave of the old man’s mouth, fast and shallow. His eyes were open. They sought Abelard’s automatically, and the mouse in Abelard’s throat cried out again.
Fifteen years ago, Abelard arrived at the Temple of Kos, eager to learn. Of all the priests and priestesses who taught him to glorify the Lord, this man had been, not the kindest, but the most worthy of admiration.
Fire, the Church taught, was life, energy’s ever-changing dance upon a stage of decaying matter. Every priest and priestess, every citizen, had one duty before all else to their Lord: to recognize the glory of that transformation.
Abelard looked into the Cardinal’s dying eyes, and saw within them no fire but that which consumes.
He inhaled. The tip of his cigarette flared orange.
Dying, Cardinal Gustave smiled.
*
Tara’s senses were numb with exaltation at her survival, but there was no time to rejoice. Alexander Denovo staggered toward her, toward the bound gargoyles, toward the orange sphere that hovered above Shale’s slumped form.
“I know what you’re doing,” she said, and blocked his path. Her legs threatened to collapse beneath her, but she steadied herself by main force of will.
“Do you indeed.” Wisps of smoke rose from the brown curls of his hair, and scorch marks covered his clothes.
“You made that Craft circle. You gave Gustave power.”
“He asked me for a weapon against heretics.”
“And you gave him one.”
“I sold him one, at a hefty price.” Denovo shrugged. “You would have done the same. If you wouldn’t, perhaps you should re-evaluate your line of work. The Craft isn’t a charitable pursuit.”
“If all you did was give him a weapon, then why did he try to kill you?”
“Because I was about to expose him. Honestly, Tara, what is the point of this?”
“Cardinal Gustave didn’t attack because he was afraid for himself. He attacked because you were about to acquire something you should not have.”
Denovo chuckled. “Gustave was mad. A murderer. He confessed as much.”
“He confessed to killing Judge Cabot. He thought you were guilty of a greater crime.”
He tried to skirt around her, but she stepped in front of him again.
“Four months ago, Gustave asked you to help him learn why Justice was losing power. You traced the dreams Kos sent into the forest, to Seril’s children. You discovered that Kos was working with Cabot, and to what end.”
Denovo shrugged, every bit the tired scholar.
“Was it you or the Cardinal, I wonder, who proposed killing the Judge?”
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“For someone with your skills, persuading the Cardinal was easy. Cabot was a heretic, consorting with rebels and traitors. He deserved to die. You gave Gustave the means. You taught him how to bind Cabot’s soul. You even told him which contracts to deface in the Third Court of Craft, and how to do it without being detected.”
“Conjecture and foolishness.”
“Cabot suspected you were onto him. That’s why he installed security wards that could detect Craft. This isn’t the West. The community of Craftsmen here is small and insular. The Judge had no enemies there. Hell, the locks on his apartment building wouldn’t keep out a novice.”
Denovo drew a step closer. Tara took a step back.
“You left Alt Coulumb several months ago, secretly as you had come, but you intended to return. You knew from court records when Cabot would pass the Concern to Seril. You had months to plan your attack.”
“Here we go,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “Accuse me.”