Kos was awake once more, strong, and angry.
Seril vanished. Tara heard a great grinding of stone and looked up. The statue of Justice opened the pits of its eyes, and they blazed green.
Denovo hunched into a fighting crouch, knife out, nostrils flaring. The Guardians lurched out of striking range, but David was not so fast, and Denovo’s knife slashed, sharp as thought.
Tara was faster. She reached David in a step, thrust him out of the way, and intercepted Denovo’s knife with her own. The two blades met in arcs of light. Denovo’s broke.
The Blacksuits moved.
Fifty fell upon Denovo, but Cat beat them all, grasping his neck as her colleagues wrapped arms of iron about his limbs and body. Craft struck him, too: the Craft of Elayne Kevarian.
His eyes rolled white, and he fell limp.
Tara stepped back.
Breath came heavy in her throat.
She turned from the unconscious professor to her boss. Ms. Kevarian was covered in cuts and bruises, fingers bloody and clothing charred.
At her feet sat Novice Technician Abelard, rubbing his forehead. An extinguished cigarette dangled from his lips.
EPILOGUE
Sunset cast shadows of Alt Coulumb onto the soft waves of the turning tide. Along the docks, ropes creaked and boots tromped over wet planks; women swore and men strained against the weight of their burdens as the merchant fleet prepared to face the deep. Lookouts climbed webs of sheet and sail to nest in the rigging, and harpooners manned their posts warily, barbed and poisoned spears in hand. Serpents waited beyond the coastal shelf, and every sailor had sat vigil at least once for friends dragged screaming into the deep.
Raz Pelham emerged from his cabin onto the deck of the Kell’s Bounty. The lingering sun burned his tanned skin. He had never felt more ready to sail. Twice he had visited this city at the bidding of Craftsmen, twice been brought to the edge of death and beyond. Affairs had fallen out better this time than forty years ago, but still he yearned for the water. Land lied to the feet, and to the soul. You stand, it whispered, upon unchanging ground. You build upon certainty, and your foundations will never crumble.
Ms. Kevarian had told him, on her first visit to Alt Coulumb four decades past, that beneath its solid shell the world was an ocean of molten rock and metal. Captain Pelham preferred the sea, which misled but seldom lied. The world flowed, the world changed, and many-mouthed terrors lurked beneath its surface.
According to the Church and the Crier’s Guild, the city had reclaimed its usual equilibrium in the three weeks since Denovo’s arrest. The College of Cardinals pronounced Kos’s resurrection a miracle passing understanding, and Gustave a martyr to his Lord. This rhetoric did not persuade Alt Coulumb’s people, who sensed the near passage of disaster and moved in its wake like sailors after a bitter storm. They did the work the world asked of them—bargained hard, loaded and unloaded cargo, paid their debts, and drank their wine—but beneath routine and ritual, Raz sensed a growing apprehension.
More had changed than they imagined. Pieces of the truth would surface in the coming months. Already moonlight shone mingled with fire in their dreams. Waves moved over and through Alt Coulumb, scouring its heart and tearing new channels in its soil.
The boatswain called to him from the hold. The last of their cargo loaded, the Bounty stood ready to depart on the evening tide for Iskar, bearing a cargo of luxury goods, textiles, and books. Harpooners stood ready, the windweaver sat cross-legged at the bow, and scarred and tattooed deckhands went about their disparate business.
Raz bared his fangs to the world as the sun fell below the horizon.
His smile faltered when he heard someone call his name from shore. Reluctantly, he approached the gangplank.
On the dock, dressed in loose slacks, a blue shirt, and a battered leather jacket, stood Catherine Elle. Her skin looked ruddier than he remembered from their last meeting, weeks before.
“Captain,” she called out when he did not speak. “I wanted to drop by before you left.” A pair of dockhands walked between them, wheeling a wagon piled with bales of wheat. “To apologize.”
“For what?”
“For hitting you while your back was turned.”
“Hit?” He shook his head. “You broke my neck.”
“You got better.” She bit down as if to catch the sentence’s tail before it escaped her teeth. “And I wanted to apologize for what happened in the hospital.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Not entirely.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t think even Tara knew her suggestion would take me that far. I think I have a long road ahead of me.”
She didn’t say the next words, so he did. “But you’re starting.”
“I’m starting.”
“I accept your apology.”
A brief, bright smile crossed her face, but she stilled it. “Will you come back this way?”
“Sometime next month, I think.”
“Maybe we’ll see each other again.”
“Maybe.” Twenty feet down the dock, some ship’s steward sprinted cursing through the crowd after a fleeing urchin who clutched a fat purse to his chest. “You have time? I can show you the Bounty.”
“No, thanks,” she replied. “I have work.”
“See you around.”
She nodded. “See you around.” She turned from him and stepped back into the milling crowd. Two paces, three, he followed her retreating back before a spark of deep gray gleamed at her neck and flowed upward, out, over her clothes. She became a statue of quicksilver. Broad wings rose from her back, and spread. In a streak, she was gone.
He watched her go.
It was time to leave.
*
Tara found Ms. Kevarian packing at eight o’clock that evening. Her black valise stood open on her office desk, and as Tara watched, she placed into it five folded suits, six shirts, a black robe, ten thick tomes of theoretical Craft, a writing stand, three vials of ink (one silver, one red, one black), two cheap novels, seven pens (three for contracting, one for cancellation, two more for professional work, and one used exclusively in personal discourse), a silver bowl, a bell of cast iron, a box of bone chalk, and five blood candles.
“Only the essentials, boss?”
“Only the essentials, Ms. Abernathy,” she said without turning. “But one must never be caught unprepared.”
“Leaving already.” Tara glanced around the room. The bed was made, its corners sharp and its covers turned down just as her own had been when they arrived in Alt Coulumb three weeks before. Not a speck of dust adhered to the bolsters, nor to the slick surface of her boss’s desk.
“For the Archipelago. An infestation of sea-spirits has”—she searched for the appropriate word—“decimated a fishing Concern. They have need of our services.”
Tara noted her use of the plural. “You’ve heard from Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, then? I’m not to be cast into the outer darkness?”
“Confirmation of your continued employment arrived two days ago. It did not seem worth mentioning. You know as well as I do that your performance has been exemplary. Though the particulars of the Church’s case are not public, rumor does not always respect client confidentiality. The great firms know your name, and the quality of your work. Your escapades at the Hidden Schools will not be forgotten, but neither will your success here. Management would be fools to let you go, and though they may be risk-averse, they are not foolish.”
Fighting an urge to smile, Tara ran her hand over the pristine surface of Ms. Kevarian’s desk. “Sea-serpents, though. Seems simple, after everything we’ve been through in the last few weeks.”