The Rising had been his father’s fault. When Temoc decided to walk a path, fools always followed in his footsteps. A peaceful demonstration, they claimed, and it was at first, but as weeks rolled on his control of the mob wavered. On the tenth day, some idiot threw a stone, a child died, and the Wardens moved in.
Battle lines were not drawn. There were no heroic struggles. Those who resisted, fell.
Caleb was ten. Mal could not have been more than twelve.
After the bodies cooled, the King in Red issued a public call for peace, and Temoc became an enemy of the state.
Caleb’s father had already gone, leaving his scars behind.
Caleb was also, in his way, an orphan of the Rising.
Mal’s parents lay burning in the streets in Skittersill. No amount of water could quench those flames, and their bodies would never fall to ash.
Mal, too, took power from her scars.
“I’m sorry,” he said as spots of black deeper than black swelled behind his eyes.
The weight lifted from his chest, and darkness drained away down the hole in Mal’s mind. He slumped, but though his legs felt like stretched and fraying rubber, he did not fall.
Mal stood between him and the gods, blanched and wan as a crescent moon. The draining dark had taken something from her.
“Sorry,” she said. “Yes.” And: “You should go.”
He reached blindly for the door, opened it, and backed out without looking away from her. He had to say something, but there was nothing to say.
She grew smaller as he withdrew. When he crossed the threshold of her room, she was the size of a statue. Three steps more, the size of an idol.
The door closed between them, and he turned away and ran.
INTERLUDE: DREAMS
Snow fell on Dresediel Lex for the first and last time, covering the bodies of men and gods that littered the streets. Where the snow fell in fire, it hissed and burst to steam. A falling god had cracked the face of a pyramid with one flailing hand, and rubble covered the broad avenue below. Rage and sorrow burned in the mottled sky.
Blood-slick, Alaxic stumbled through the city’s doom. Cold air stung his throat. Pain from the wounds in his chest, and arm, and leg, pierced and beggared thought. At dawn he had ridden into battle on a feathered serpent, bedecked with the blessing of the gods. The serpent lay dead two blocks away, and he was tired.
“Hello, Alaxic,” someone said behind him.
The voice was deep and familiar, but alien to this time, this place. He turned, fast as his wounds would let him.
A skeleton in a red suit stood in the road, between the burning corpses of two demigods. He bore no weapons save a cup of coffee.
The snow did not fall in the coffee, or accumulate on the skeleton’s robes.
“What are you doing in my dreams?” Alaxic asked.
“At the moment,” the skeleton replied, “I am pondering why of all the places and times you might choose to dream, you would select the Liberation of Dresediel Lex. This was not your finest hour.”
“It was a noble struggle.”
“You fought us and we crushed you.”
“You besieged and blockaded us. We had no choice.”
“Your people tore out my lover’s heart. What did you think would happen after that?”
“I had no part in that decision.”
“As the inquest found, or else we would have sunk you into solid bedrock, or trapped you in the corridors of your own mind, or tied you to a mountain somewhere with a regenerating liver and an eagle that likes foie gras.” A band of skirmishers ran past, bound to nowhere. “So, why do you come back here?”
“My friends died in this battle. And we do not all choose where we dream.”
“You are a strange person,” Kopil said. “You were a priest, but became a Craftsman. You do not control your own dreams. You refuse to leverage your soul, though it means you won’t survive the end of that slab of meat you call your body.”
“The Craft,” replied Alaxic, “is a tool. Not all of us let our tools rule our life.”
Kopil sipped his coffee. “Tell me about Seven Leaf Lake.”
“I heard there were problems.”
“One of your employees went mad. Killed everyone on the station.”
“Horrible,” Alaxic said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I were in your shoes. Makes me glad I’m retired.”
“Are you really?”
“Glad?”
“Retired.”
He exhaled fog into the cold. “You’ve watched me for the last few months, you and your spies. What do I do?”
“You drink tea, and you read.”
“I drink tea, and I read. I don’t plot, I don’t scheme. I don’t want the old world back any more than you do.”
A winged serpent flew overhead, and was transfixed by arrows of light. It shrieked, and fell in bloody pieces to the street around them.
“Yet you still dream of old battles.”
“And you haven’t forgiven me, in five decades, for surviving this one. You resented my success in the Hidden Schools. You opposed the Wardens’ decision to set me free after the Skittersill Rising. You plotted against me as I built Heartstone, and took it from me when you had the chance.”
“You were a rebel. An anarchist.”
“I am a populist.” He looked up to the sky, where Craftsmen clad in engines of war tore gods asunder. Heavenly blood fell, mixed with snow. “At least I only dream about old battles,” he said. “You’re still fighting them.”
A wave of night rolled over the world. When Alaxic looked again, the King in Red was gone.
Book Three
HEARTSTONE
29
Caleb left Seven Leaf Lake soon after dawn, with an escort of two Wardens. He told Four that the King in Red wanted a report on their success, that Mal would stay until reinforcements arrived. This was not, exactly, a lie. Mal could have stopped him, but she didn’t.
They took flight as the first rays of sun glanced off the long flat plane of the lake. Sleep had haunted him all night, ambushing from the darkest corners of his mood. Sharp-fingered devils charged his fitful dreams, demons with his own face devouring the flesh of screaming gods.
He shaded his eyes against the sunrise, leaned back into the gondola, and drowsed.
The Couatl carried him south. Lake gave way to waterfall and smooth-flowing river. Every few miles, stone circles protruded from the forest, their centers thick with shade. Silver glyphs glowed against gray granite. The standing stones bled Seven Leaf Lake south, to slake his city’s thirst. Soon the falls would cease to thunder, and the river shrink to a stream.
One hundred twenty eight million acre-feet of water. After a decade or so, the city’s growth would outpace the lake’s ability to refill itself. The forest would feel the effects long before then.
After three hours they stopped for lunch on a cliff overlooking a deep valley, and ate bread and cheese and drank stale canteen water and agave liquor.
The Wardens napped on the cliff after lunch. Caleb, restless, walked a hundred feet into the woods, found a sturdy birch tree, and struck it with his palms, with his feet and the sides of his hands, scaring away broad-winged birds that roosted in the canopy. He ripped his knuckles’ skin, and left a smear of blood on the white bark. He pushed against the trunk until his shoulders, arms, legs, belly all convulsed and he let out a long, low cry.
A roar answered from the valley, larger, deeper, a sound made by no human throat.
Shaken, he returned to the Wardens, who stood with weapons bared, roused by his cry or the valley’s answer. They packed quickly, and flew south.