Then it began to crack.
Caleb closed his eyes to the billowing dark, and saw. The King in Red wore midnight like a halo. Temoc’s skin bled light. Around them, between them, space twisted and gave birth to fever dreams, knives and hooks, grasping claws, chains and webs of iron, barbed tentacles and hideous geometries.
“You will not stop me,” Temoc said. “The Gods lived before you, and when you die they will endure.”
“I died eighty years ago.” Kopil’s voice held no trace of humor. “Your gods and I have that much in common.”
A blade swung out of darkness toward Temoc’s throat, but blunted and burst to steam.
Wings spread from Temoc’s back. The hooks and chains glowed with his faith. White light spiraled through space between them.
“Interesting.” The King in Red cocked his head to one side. “You are not dead.”
“This pyramid was ours for a thousand years.” Chains wrapped Kopil’s robes. “You have perverted it, but it still answers to me.” Spears swung down to pierce the Craftsman, claws to tear and teeth to rend.
The King in Red snapped his fingers.
Spears and claws and teeth stopped. Time’s depths hummed.
Kopil stepped forward, feet tapping triple time on glass. Fire burned in his eye sockets. The hum deepened in volume and pitch.
Sweat shone alabaster on Temoc’s brow.
“This pyramid was yours,” Kopil said. “Now it’s mine.”
White spirals flickered, flared, and burned red in the night.
Darkness opened three thousand eyes. A fanged mouth gaped beneath their feet. The mouth had always been there, gnawing the world’s marrow, unseen. They were standing on its teeth.
Caleb’s eyes snapped open, and he fell, blind, shivering.
A cry of frustration split the shadows, and a cold corpse-wind rushed past his face.
Light returned, and the dome was empty save for Caleb, the King in Red, and Teo collapsed on the altar.
Caleb ran to her. Her chest rose and fell, rapid, shallow. Eyes darted behind closed lids. He tore off his jacket, pressed it against the cut in her arm. Blood everywhere. Blood on the altar, blood on the ground where she had reached for the contract.
If he hadn’t cut her free, the cuff would have kept pressure on the vein. If he hadn’t cut her free, she would have died at his father’s hand.
“Caleb.”
The King in Red’s voice.
He whirled. “Fix her.”
Red stars stared from a blank skull. “I can’t.”
“You can. She saved you. Do something.”
“She’s too weak. She has lost much blood. If I touch her with Craft, it will drain her.”
“Then heal me.”
“What?”
“Try to fix me. Do to me what you’d do to her.”
“You are not injured.”
“No time to explain. Do it.”
Shadows flowed from the King in Red, and plunged through Caleb’s skin. His heart slowed, his hands froze. Kopil’s Craft worked within him. His cuts and bruises and broken bones ached for healing, but he denied them. Pressure built, until his scars felt ready to burst from flesh.
He lifted his jacket from Teo’s arm, and touched her wound.
His light flowed into her, and her pain into him. Her wounds closed, faded, and vanished. Her breath deepened, her eyes fluttered, and she woke.
“Hi,” he said, and sagged against the stone.
“Hi,” she replied. “We have to stop seeing each other like this.”
Oven heat pressed Balam down. The road around him hovered silver as a mirage. The Serpents were so close now, rearing less than a stadium’s length behind the statue. Their coils slagged asphalt and concrete.
Sansilva was not yet empty. Much of the crowd had escaped, but those that remained were frantic and impassable. Knots of men and women clogged the sidewalks and open spaces, tumbling and brawling in their terror. Still, he saw the beginnings of a path through them, a road over broken glass to the safety of a bank pyramid. Uncertain, and shifting, but a path nonetheless. If they waited, another might present itself. Then again, maybe not.
Sam waited in a sprinter’s crouch. She remained, he thought, due more to concern for him than to belief he could actually judge the proper time to leave.
No sense straining her patience. Balam stood, and as one they ran.
Caleb could not stand on his own, but Teo and the King in Red helped him.
“What,” Kopil said, “is going on? Why has Heartstone turned against us? Why is Bay Station broken? Why is the city in tumult?” He produced a pipe from the pocket of his robe and lit it with the tip of his forefinger.
“Is my father—”
“Fled. He used some trick, some hidden means of escape built here when this place was still a temple.” Kopil took a long drag of tobacco and exhaled smoke. “He has spent the last thirty years running and hiding. He is skilled in that regard. Now. No delays. Tell me what has happened.”
“You remember Malina Kekapania?”
“From Heartstone. Your girlfriend.”
“Yes.” Of all the things to remember. “She attacked Bay Station, killed Qet, and she has awoken Aquel and Achal. She wants to chase Craftsmen out of Dresediel Lex. Alaxic planned it from the beginning.”
Kopil took a drag on his pipe and exhaled smoke. The red lights in his eye sockets blinked off, and on again. “I will tear satisfaction from his soul.”
“Too late. He’s dead. I think.”
“In which case I will content myself with his disciple.”
“Who has Aquel and Achal at her back. Can you defeat them?”
Kopil shook his head. “Our plan was to preserve their slumber.”
“You’ve killed gods.”
“You,” he said coldly, “do not understand the Serpents. The more they hunger, the more they burn. Any Craft I use against them will take from them, and increase their hunger. Only sacrifice can assuage them, but I will not give them sacrifice.”
Kopil’s eyes blazed. The dome overhead wavered and grew transparent. Angry orange cracks split the blue curve of the Canter’s Shell above and around the pyramid; to the south and east, along Sansilva Boulevard, rose two distorted columns of light taller than skyspires.
A ring of sun burned around the moon’s shadow. Beneath, the city lay broken. Small human shapes ran for cover.
Kopil drew on his pipe.
Nothing could stop the Serpents except a sacrifice. Caleb could have let Temoc do it: feign unconsciousness until the blade descended.
Teo gripped his hand, and he felt sick.
The cracks in the Canter’s Shell widened, and the surface of the sun leaked through.
“So that’s it?” Teo asked. “She wins?”
“No,” Kopil said. Wind rose atop the pyramid, bearing the dry scent of a thousand years of dead sand. The King in Red reared to his full height. The surface of his skull shone. One hand held a curving knife of lightning, and the other crackled with black flame. “Ms. Kekapania holds the Twin Serpents in thrall. If she dies, they will lack direction, and perhaps they can be contained.”
