“I don’t know.”
“Oh. Seven hells.”
“She said we had to do something. I said, yes, hide, and wait. She called me all the things you call someone who says a thing like that at a time like this. Coward, and the rest.” She laughed like a razor scraped over piano wire. “My girl loves a riot. She’ll be in the thick of the mob, next to all the other fools.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Screw you. There’s a woman out there killing herself for no reason, in the middle of a city killing itself for no reason.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“So I repeat: what in the hells is going on?”
“The water’s bad.”
“I noticed, thanks. And if that’s all you knew, you’d say so, rather than trying to dodge the question.”
“Qet Sea-Lord is dead.”
She sat down. Her face went blank. “Oh.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t, I mean.” She ran her hand through her hair, gripping strands that slipped between her fingers. “What happened?”
“Mal happened.”
“Mal? Your Mal?”
“Not my Mal. Nobody’s Mal but her own. She’s been behind it from the beginning. Her, Alaxic, her friends and coconspirators.”
“Behind what?”
“Everything. From Bright Mirror to North Station to Seven Leaf, to this. They poisoned Bright Mirror and blew up North Station to speed RKC’s merger with Heartstone. They turned Seven Leaf against us. And this morning, Mal attacked Bay Station, broke in, and killed Qet Sea-Lord.”
“She would have been slaughtered. She’s, what, mid-thirties? No way she could have taken Bay Station on her own. Armies couldn’t do it.”
“She’s using the Serpents somehow. They feed her power.”
“No.”
“She shattered Bay Station, Teo. I’ve never seen anything like it. Killed the guards, broke the tower, ripped Qet’s heart out of his chest.”
“Caleb.” She shifted her chair back from the table, back from him. “How do you know all this?”
Meaning: you’re crazy. Or worse: are you on their side? Is that terror or eagerness I hear in your voice?
He told the tale from the beginning, as far as he knew it, from the Skittersill Rising when Mal’s parents died to Alaxic’s discovery of her, his tutelage, and her decision, on that naked swim in the Fangs, to strangle life rather than be overcome. He outlined her plot.
Teo interrupted when he mentioned Seven Leaf Lake, Mal cutting Allesandre’s throat—“Because she would have talked. If she survived I mean. The King in Red would have pulled the truth from her somehow.” Caleb did not answer. He finished with his fall from Andrej’s pyramid, and turned to her for solace, for comfort.
“What the hells, Caleb?”
This was not the reaction he expected. “What?”
“You came to me with this? Out of all the people in this city? Not to a Warden, or the King in Red, or any of the board members.”
“The pyramid’s locked in a Canter’s Shell, and I have no idea how to reach the board. Ostrakov, Mazetchul, the rest of them, they’re probably as bad off as the King—comatose, or close to it. They’re as tied to the system as he is. Even if some of them are still moving, they’re probably low on power, and in danger—fighting Tzimet, trying to fix the water, save their own skins. I had to hide and catch my breath. Decide what to do next. Maybe that is looking for the board. I don’t know.”
“You could have died on the way over.”
“Or as I wandered through Monicola on foot with Tzimet loose. Or when I tried to steal the heart from Mal. Or when I jumped off the pyramid. My life isn’t the point now.”
Teo stood and paced. She thought best in motion. “How could we have missed this?”
“You never knew her. Nobody did. She was careful. I got closest, and I was in love. Or thought I was.” The past tense hurt.
“What’s her plan?”
“Take over the city, it sounded like. In the short term.”
“We need more detail. She wants to wake the Serpents up. Use them to chase the Craftsmen out, set up a new government, hail the glorious revolution, whatever. But the Serpents wake up on the eclipse. She’ll have ultimate power for, what, half an hour, maybe less, until the Craftsmen move back in.”
“The eclipse wakes the Serpents up, I think. The sacrifice is supposed to send them back to sleep. Maybe they’d normally sleep once the eclipse ended, but Mal’s used a lot of their power. I bet they’re ravenous. Have you ever tried to sleep with an empty stomach and food in the next room?”
“So we feed them.”
“We’d need a sacrifice.”
“So we find a sacrifice.”
“No.”
“I’m only saying, if we can—”
“We are not going to sacrifice anyone. To anything.”
“Even if it would stop Mal? Fix all this?”
“Hells.”
“I’m just saying.”
“No.”
“Okay. Fine.” She cradled her forehead between her hands. “Why did she let you go?”
“She didn’t let me. I jumped, remember? Off a building?” He indicated his wounds and his ripped clothing with an angry wave.
“She grabbed the heart. I’m sure she could have caught you, if she wanted.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she wanted to let me go. Maybe she still has feelings for me.”
“Feelings.” Teo strangled a laugh. “Sorry. This situation is absurd.”
“It’s serious.”
“Absurd and serious. The worst kind of joke.” She tapped her lower lip with a curled finger. “RKC’s out of commission because it has to spend all this soulstuff keeping the Serpents asleep. That’s the problem. If we could get into the Sansilva pyramid, maybe we could break the contract binding RKC and Heartstone.”
“Won’t work. Craft is more than words on a page.”
“But words on a page are important. Without a contract, without a signature, RKC could weasel out of the deal. We might have a chance.”
“A deal’s a deal, though. Can we really just cancel the contract without Heartstone’s consent?”
“Cancel, no. But weaken, sure, enough for someone as strong as the King in Red to ignore it for a while. If Heartstone had Craftsmen and Courts on their side, nothing we do would matter, but I imagine their Craftsmen are all busy right now, and none of the Courts are open.”
“Fair point.”
“But if that’s so, you’re the only one alive who knows what’s going on, and how to stop it. If I were Mal, love you or not, I’d hunt you down and make sure you didn’t tell anyone.”
“Good thing she doesn’t think the way you do.”
“Maybe she hasn’t caught up with you yet.”
There was a knock on the door.
He and Teo exchanged a brief, deep glance. She picked up her blast rod.
There was a second knock, like the beat of a funeral drum.
Is that her, Teo mouthed. He did not answer, but tiptoed to her kitchen and returned bearing a long, sharp chef’s knife.
The third knock, the fourth: thick, solid sounds.
Teo edged down the hall, blast rod leveled at the door. Her hands shook. He followed her. “Sam?”
She received no answer.
“I’m angry, and I’m armed. Tell me who you are or get away from my—”
The latch snapped and the door burst from its frame. Black, sharp-edged shadow boiled through. Teo’s blast rod flared twice. A clawed hand grabbed her wrist and twisted. The wand fell from her limp fingers; the shadow figure spun her around and pinned her against the wall.
Caleb stabbed the shadow, and felt a dull thud as if his knife had struck solid wood. Before he could react, something hit him in the stomach. He sunk to his knees, swallowing air.