“Where’s Mal?” he asked. He tried to look away from Allesandre, but his eyes remained fixed on her.
“You have no power here,” she said.
He ignored her, and focused instead on the feeling in his right hand. Skin, yes, but too hard and calloused for a throat, bones too thin for a spine. He recognized the meat of a palm, and slender strong fingers wrapped around his own.
“Mal,” he said, louder this time.
“No one can help you. We two are alone, the only human beings for miles. Face me and fight, or I will destroy you as you look away.”
Look away. His nerves locked against him. Air froze in his chest. Waves of blood beat on the shore of his body. His scars ran cold.
The foundation of the world shook, or he did, or both. Cords bound his mind. He gripped them, and they fell loose.
Mal stood beside him, holding his right hand, her gaze fixed on Allesandre. Glyphs burned from the open collar of her shirt. “You presume to dictate terms to me?” Her voice was sharp and fearsome. “He was no part of this. I will end you for killing him.”
She thought he was dead. Overhead he heard a rustle of motion, smelled ozone as claws of Craft ripped through empty space. He recognized the Wardens by their speed. They darted between pipes and wires; one leapt at Allesandre only to be swept aside by an invisible force. Their attacks were out of joint, uncoordinated. A pair struck at once and a single wave of fire threw them back. A tangle of black arms snared Seven, who fought free, and the same trap caught Three seconds later.
They fought with courage and desperation. They fought as if each one, alone, was the last bulwark between Dresediel Lex and doom.
Caleb closed his eyes, and saw the barbs of Craft sunk into the Wardens’ minds, and Mal’s.
Mal stepped forward and became inhuman, tall and lean and sharp, an eidolon of smooth spiked bone. Her fingers almost slipped from his grasp.
Almost.
He pulled against her with his scars. Allesandre’s illusion bent. Mal fought him, her hand a knife’s blade that cut his palm, a flame caged in his grip, but he pressed harder. The pain grew. He cried out, but before he could let go, the illusion broke.
Mal froze. Blood dripped from the cuts in Caleb’s hand. A drop at the curve of his smallest finger welled, swelled, fell.
She turned to him. Her eyes had been open, but now she saw.
“Caleb,” she whispered, and the bone and crystal melted from her. Her look of surprise changed first to joy, then to predatory confidence. Her skin chilled to his touch. She closed her eyes, and turned on Allesandre.
“Allie,” she said, “that was clever. But not clever enough.”
She advanced, and Caleb followed her.
A hissing serpent of frozen flames encircled them, but it shattered at a wave of Mal’s hand. Sweat and condensation gleamed on her forehead. Her slow and shallow breath turned the air to fog. They walked into the jaws of a shark with jagged crystal teeth the size of men. Mal frowned, and, closing, the teeth melted to raindrops and splashed cool on his face.
Skewering thorns blossomed into roses, which fell upon them heavy and suffocating only to take wing and rise as butterflies, which became a swarm of bees swept away in a rush of wind.
The world ran taut as a violin string.
Lightning-haloed Allesandre blazed with hidden fire.
The night before, Caleb sat in Mal’s tent naked to the waist. Her brush tickled the back of his neck.
“Duels of the Craft,” she said, “are fought on many levels. Mind and soul are two battlefields, the body another, time a fourth, and most of the others make little sense if you’re not a Craftsman. The world is an argument, and like any argument there are many ways to win or lose. You can force your opponent to contradict herself. You can point out her fallacies, her false dichotomies, her exaggerations and distortions of reality. Our authority from the King in Red threatens Allie’s control over the station. She’ll attack the bond between Seven Leaf and RKC, claiming independence. The contracts between the station and RKC are strong, though. I can turn them against her.”
“And once you do that, you win.”
“Ordinarily.” Her brush slid silver along his neck. “If this were a case before a judge, in a Court of Craft, supported by precedent and dread command. Out here…” She trailed off, and drew a spiral at the base of his spine. “There’s an easy way to win any argument, no matter the quality of your position—you kill the person with whom you disagree. When she sees I’m about to win, she’ll strike with every thaum of her power. I won’t be able to stop her. I’ll have fought my way to exhaustion already. A simple, blunt attack will go through me like an arrow through a paper wall.” Her brush spun in place to articulate a dot. The ink dried cool on his skin, and in his soul. Closing his eyes, he saw the night inside his skull painted with her diagrams. “That’s where you come in.”
Allesandre swelled with rage. Wires twisted like octopus arms around her, and her mouth shaped words in demonic tongues. She reared, serpentine.
Lightning poured down upon them like water from a height.
The lightning slammed into Mal’s protective wards, and would have burned through if its power had nowhere else to go.
Lines of silver paint flared on Caleb’s skin, and the scars on his chest and back and arms flared too.
Thunder riveted his mind. Power battered the cords of his being. His heart stopped.
Caleb held Allesandre’s might as a rider holds reins.
He knelt, and touched the lightning to the metal deck of Seven Leaf Station.
The bottom dropped out of his soul, and he fell into the station, into the water, into and through Allesandre’s defenses. She threw her head back. Her skeleton sparked through her skin; she screamed, long and high-pitched, until her own throat strangled her and the world collapsed in rushing water.
The dome, built to withstand storm and earthquake and divine wrath, gave way. Thousands of gallons of water fell on Caleb and Mal, on the Wardens, on Allesandre in her wire web.
Caleb collapsed to the deck. Time disappeared in the roar and rush. Gravity failed, and he grabbed for anything firm. His hands closed around a hot water pipe, scalding but stationary, and he held his breath through coursing dark.
The universe righted itself in noon brilliance. Caleb doubled over on the deck, coughing up sweet water. The sky spread blue above. He blinked at the fierce sun.
For months he knelt, years, gathering the pieces of his mind into a working whole. When he looked up, he saw the knotted pipes and wires in tangled disarray, Allesandre limp at their heart. Wire circled her head like a crown, and her neck like a collar. It was difficult to tell where she ended and the machines began—metal slipped smoothly beneath her skin.
Corpses lay on the floor, flood-tossed against consoles and raised altars. Two Wardens had fallen overboard, and Four and Eight were lowering ropes to rescue them.
The torrent had not moved Mal, who crossed her arms and canted her head to one side like a governess regarding a troublesome child. She walked forward. Her legs trembled with each determined step.
Allesandre looked up. Her face was Quechal dark, Caleb’s own color, and her hair streaked red. Ruined, she resembled the woman she had been months ago, the woman who ushered him into the burning foundations of the world. Her chest heaved. Her mouth was slack and her eyes set, exhausted and defiant.
“Mal,” she said so soft that Caleb barely heard: desperate, despairing. “What now?”
Mal did not answer. One hand rose to the hollow above her heart, and twisted. The sun dimmed, and above the wind and the waves’ soft roll, Caleb heard a sound like cloth being torn. Mal drew her hand from her breast, and she held a sliver of nightmare in the shape of a knife. She raised the blade.