Caleb halted two feet above the gray balloon. Pain jolted his eyes open. Mal lay beneath him as if on a pillowed mattress.
“You made it,” she said, shocked.
“Couldn’t think of a better line on the way down?”
“You’re an interesting man.”
He was about to say something inane about living in interesting times, when a thousand suns exploded over Dresediel Lex.
His shadow fell across Mal. Light bellowed through his body.
A woman a thousand feet tall, four-armed and six-winged, emerged from North Station like a swimmer from a shallow pool. She opened many mouths and roared.
Flame and figure both vanished in a heartbeat. The city’s million lights went dark. Night closed around Caleb like a warm fist.
The canvas struck him in a rush. Blinking galaxies from his eyes, he scrambled on the slick fabric, found no grip, and started to slide.
The more he fought, the more he slipped. He heard Mal call for him; he reached for her and slid farther. Fingers brushed his grasping outstretched hand and she was gone, and the balloon was gone. He tumbled into the sky. Dresediel Lex wheeled below, above him, and he saw North Station’s towers fallen. Fire clung to broken rock.
He fell for hours, or seconds, until something struck him hard in the chest. Darkness rushed in, writhing with terrible dreams.
13
When Caleb woke, he was staggering through a familiar hell. Ixaqualtil Seven Eagle ruled a realm of darkness where fire shed no light and no stars shone, a vast vacant universe that resounded with the cries of dying and damned, with demonsong, with the crackle of flame and the slither of invisible blades on invisible whetstones. Within that cacophony Ixaqualtil crouched before the Sun’s empty throne, feasting on all who dared approach his master’s perilous seat.
The Sun-God was dead, slain by the King in Red during Liberation, but His servant yet awaited the unwary, two hundred fifty six dagger-teeth bared in a hungry smile.
In Ixaqualtil’s hell one did not move for fear of stumbling into a hidden pit, a black fire, a beast’s waiting mouth, yet Caleb was moving. Walking. Each step poured sharp pain down his side. He tried to stop, but could not. His left arm was wrapped around a woman’s shoulder, her arm around his back. When his feet faltered, she pulled him along.
Caleb saw only suggestions of shape within the velvet dark, but he knew Mal walked beside him.
“You shouldn’t be in hell,” he said.
She started at the sound of his voice. So did he: cracked, hoarse. “You don’t know me well enough to say that. I’m not, though, yet.”
“What happened?” He struggled to place one foot in front of the other. Clouds of noise and flame obscured his mind.
“You fell. I caught you.”
“Caught me how? You were lying”—he remembered—“on top of the airbus.”
“It would have been bad manners to let you fall.” In the distance, he heard the subsonic roars of Couatl. Wardens, hunting. Still alive, then. Probably. No doubt there were Wardens in hell. The Couatl roared again; Mal flinched beside him, and spoke, as if to block them out: “I don’t know why I saved you. If I thought about it, I might not have. I rolled off the balloon, caught the airbus’s rudder, and grabbed you with some Craft.”
“You’re a Craftswoman?”
“A bit of one.”
Caleb remembered a rush of wind, and a winged, sun-bright woman. When he closed his eyes he saw her in negative.
“I remember a woman of light.”
“You faced the blast,” she said. “I saw its reflection, and the darkness after. At first I thought the light had blinded me. Then I realized the power was off.”
He blinked, and saw their hell with clear eyes. Darkness grew texture and depth; hints of black and red and violet adhered to brick, to glass and pitted pavement, pipe and cobblestone and palm tree. They staggered down an avenue walled with stores and small restaurants: Salamanter’s Deli, Cusko & Sons, a Muerte Coffee franchise. Shards of broken shop windows covered sidewalk and street; they should have caught streetlamp light like diamonds on a jeweler’s cloth, but there were no streetlamps. No lights in the shops, either, or the upstairs apartments. Neither stars nor moon relieved the darkness.
Caleb saw by firelight reflected off the belly of the clouds. The city was burning.
“We’re in the Vale,” he said. “My home isn’t far.”
“I know. I found your address in your wallet.”
“I have no secrets from you now.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You saved my life.”
“It does look that way.”
He tried to laugh, but his ribs hurt. “The other runners, who ran into the station after us…”
“I don’t know.” He thought at first she might say no more, but she continued: “We won’t learn anything tonight.”
“I hope they escaped.” He imagined Balam’s reaction to his students’ death. The ground will break you, he had said.
“So do I.”
Terror passed overhead on beating wings. A roar below human hearing shivered him. The Warden swooped away toward the fire, and Caleb could move again.
“Gods.”
“Watch your language,” she cautioned.
“What else could it be? An explosion that powerful, with blackout and riots just after. Gods,” he repeated, less a curse than an expression of wonder, “and their faithful. They hit North Station. One of the True Quechal must have smuggled a god inside somehow. Or a goddess.”
His foot slipped on a stone. Her grip tightened around his waist, and pain flowered in his ribs. He recovered his balance, and they walked on.
“This is me,” he said when they reached Three Cane Road, and they turned onto it together. Caleb barely noticed the road’s gentle slope on his morning commute, but it was a mountain path tonight.
Fresh black paint disfigured the houses here. Some gang of fervent amateurs had scrawled scenes of scripture and sacrifice on the pale adobe walls: Aquel and Achal devouring the Hero Twins; Qet Sea-Lord giving his body to the deep.
After ten minutes’ agonizing climb they reached Caleb’s squat two-story. A small gang gathered on his lawn, three men and two women bearing paints and brushes and knives. The tallest man had defaced Caleb’s front wall with a crude, violent cartoon of Aquel chasing demons from the earth.
“Hey!”
The painters turned. In darkness Caleb could not see their faces. They might have been his neighbors. Paint glistened like blood on the wall.
“Get the hell away from my house,” Caleb said.
The tall man set down his brush. His shoulders were broad, his steps heavy.
Caleb twisted free of Mal to meet the man’s advance.
“We have a right to be here,” the man said in High Quechal, his vowels round and broad, consonants knife-sharp. He spoke as if each word were a boulder he had to lift and let fall. He’d learned the tongue from
