Like water she flowed toward him. Her small blunt nose touched his, and her leather slacks pressed against the inside of his thighs. Her dried sweat smelled of salt and sea and flesh. She kissed him. Her lips were cool, the rest of her body warm.
He tossed inside her kiss like a splinter in a flood. Too soon. Too strong. A crashing kiss, a kiss with death at the bottom. He thought of his dark room upstairs, where there were no candles to light their bodies turning on fine cotton sheets. Drowning, he breathed her in, and she filled his lungs instead of air.
Their lips parted, and he saw himself reflected in her eyes.
“Well?” she said after a moment.
“No,” he replied. A knife lifted from his throat. The gates of heaven swung shut.
Her right eyebrow crept up, and her head tilted to the side—puzzled, not disappointed. “Why not? Because I kissed you before you kissed me? Because you don’t want this?”
His mouth was dry. Words formed slowly, heavy with regret. “Because I do. But if we go upstairs now, it will be over tonight. We’ll lie together, and you’ll disappear.”
He lived in her scent. He struggled to master himself, and at last stepped back.
He recognized her expression from countless card tables, from Craftsmen and snakelings and demons and human beings judging their cards and judging him.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked at last.
“It won’t be safe outside until morning. You can use my bed. I’ll sleep down here, on the couch.” He sidled toward the stairs, but did not take his eyes from her, so he tripped over the coffee table and scattered the house of cards. “I just need to go upstairs and get a few things, first.”
Cresting the stairs he found his bedroom door closed. He stepped inside, and pulled the door shut after him, blocking out the candlelight from below. The bedroom was not dark: a dim blue radiance shone within, the color of the Sansilva sky at night.
“Dad,” he said in High Quechal. “You need to leave.”
14
“You knew I was here.” His father’s voice rumbled like an avalanche. “How?”
“I don’t make card towers, Dad. My hands shake.”
Temoc lay on Caleb’s bed, reading a book on contract bridge. The bed was made, corners tucked in military fashion, though Caleb had left the sheets in disarray that morning. Temoc must have made it before lying down.
Caleb’s father was girded for battle, his skin black as empty space. Jagged patterns of moonlight gleamed from his forehead, his cheeks, his chest and arms and stomach.
“Don’t you ever wear a shirt?” Caleb asked as he approached the bed.
Temoc dog-eared his page in the book, closed it, and sat up. “I was waiting for you.”
“Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it.”
“I can see you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry,” he snapped. His father shrugged. “I’m not. Do you have any idea how many people you killed tonight? I was almost one of them.”
Temoc stood. Shadows melted into his skin. Mazes of silver light dimmed and died, leaving a network of scars across his body and face.
Caleb’s father had fought for sixty years. Stone and lightning and time could not defeat him. His was a losing war, against knowledge and truth and undead hordes, but he refused to die or surrender. Songs were sung of his exploits in the God Wars and down the decades since, bloody violent odes chanted by drunken hoodlums in the Skittersill.
“I didn’t do it,” Temoc said.
“Someone tried to break the city tonight, using a god for a weapon. Who might that have been, do you think? Mom? The Wardens? The godsdamn King in Red?”
“Believe what you will. Speak to me in whatever tone you think yourself entitled to use. I did not cause this blackout. I would swear this to you on the gods, if you believed in them.”
Caleb shook his head.
“I do not lie.”
“Who else could have convinced a god to do something like that?”
“Goddess,” Temoc said, and stopped, and closed his eyes. Caleb waited, and soon his father found words again: “The figure burning in the sky was Ili of the White Sails. She is no more.”
Caleb wanted to put a hand on his father’s shoulder, and throw him out the window. “Fine. Feel sorry for a goddess, not for any of the people killed tonight in the blackout, in the hospitals. In the riots. Every True Quechal dope who throws a beer bottle at a Warden this evening and has his arms broken for the privilege is on your conscience, whether you admit it or not. Either way, find somewhere else to hide. I need this room.”
Glass broke two streets away, shattering the bedroom silence. “I did nothing,” Temoc said. “My people did nothing. The Wardens attacked my hiding place soon after the blackout. I fought my way free, lost my pursuers, came here. Call me murderer, terrorist, call me whatever they’ve taught you to call those of us who keep the faith, but I had no part in tonight’s attack. I am innocent of this attack, and of the death of Ili of the White Sails.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“I’m your father.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I have to go. The Wardens will be here soon.”
Caleb scanned the sky outside his window for Couatl, and listened for the beat of their wings. He saw nothing, and heard only the distant riot.
“We have a few minutes left before they catch my trail.”
Was that patch of darkness a cloud, or a Warden’s mount? “The blackout won’t last.”
“Of course not. One power station was destroyed, a single link in the chains that bind our city. Lights will return within the hour. Breaking your master’s grip would require more than a single explosion.”
“Which of course you know, because you’ve spent seventeen years planning this kind of attack.”
Temoc did not answer.
“You claim you’re innocent of the whole thing?”
“I do.”
“Why did you come here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
Caleb closed the drapes, but did not turn around. “Liar.”
“They’ll be hunting me now, more hungrily than they have for years. I won’t be able to visit as often. They might come for you.”
“I won’t tell them you were here.”
“No. Tell them. They’ll know if you lie, and you’ll be in more trouble than I’ve made for you already.”
“If you say so.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“She’s, you know.” Caleb laughed bitterly. “I never told you there was a girl.”
“I heard the two of you downstairs.”
“She’s … wild.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You need more wildness in your life.”
Staring into the drapes, Caleb thought back seventeen years to the Skittersill Rising. Poor men and women had clutched their charnel gods like beggars wrapping themselves in threadbare cloaks. The protest revolved around Temoc. He was the movement’s sun, its shining center. Ten years old, Caleb had watched his father in awe: the last true priest, the paladin of fallen temples.
Temoc swelled with his people’s need, and his family crumbled around him.
At last, the great man made his choice. Caleb woke to screams and blood. His mother cradled him and
