cried hot, fierce tears. His father was gone.
“Thanks, Dad,” Caleb said.
A gust of wind answered him.
When Caleb turned, he saw an empty room. His bedroom’s second window stood ajar. Night breeze brushed the curtains.
Temoc could have closed the window behind him, and vanished without leaving any sign. This was his form of courtesy, the nearest he could come to saying good-bye.
Caleb placed the book about contract bridge on his nightstand, and left the page dog-eared. He straightened the comforter, patted the mattress to remove all trace of Temoc, and went downstairs to guide Mal up to bed.
15
Caleb woke to an empty house. The bed upstairs where Mal had slept was carefully made. A bowl and mug rested drying beside the kitchen sink. When he returned to the living room he saw a cream-hued envelope atop the piled books and playing cards on the coffee table. The envelope bore his name in a sharp, angular hand. Within, he found a note:
He showered briefly, keeping his tender left side away from the pounding water. He dressed in loose slacks, and winced when he raised his arms to don a thick cotton shirt. He’d visit a doctor in the afternoon. Clinics would be crowded all morning with every hypochondriac working stiff who bumped his head in the blackout.
For now, he needed a meal and twenty or so cups of coffee.
He shrugged into a tan corduroy jacket, slumped downstairs, opened his front door, and collided with a silver statue wearing a black uniform.
“Caleb Altemoc,” the Warden said in a voice with its serial numbers filed off.
Like all Wardens, the man before Caleb was literally expressionless. A quicksilver pall encased his head and neck. Dark blots on the metal suggested a brow, two eyes, nose, mouth, features that blurred when Caleb tried to focus on them. An enamel badge glinted from the left breast of the Warden’s jacket: an ebon skull with the number “5723” in crimson on its forehead. “What?”
“You are Caleb Altemoc,” the Warden repeated.
Caleb memorized the number. It was the only name he would ever know for this Warden. Upon joining the force, each recruit had a number etched into her bones, scored into her soul. A Warden’s mask could not be worn without a badge, and each badge reported its wearer’s number; a Warden who abused her power could be identified by that number and cast out.
At least, in theory.
“That’s me,” he said.
A scalloped shadow passed over them both. Caleb looked up. A beast half serpent and half bird crouched on his roof, wings flared. The Couatl had a snake’s face, a crest of red and yellow and green feathers, and a vulture’s all-encompassing black eyes. Another Warden sat in a saddle on the creature’s sinewy neck.
A second Couatl, no doubt belonging to the Warden at his door, coiled and preened on Caleb’s front lawn.
“Please come with us,” the Warden said. “We have questions.”
“Are you arresting me?”
Smooth silver darkened where the Warden’s brow should have been. “You’re not in any trouble, sir. You will answer our questions, and be free to go.”
“I have a right to know why I’m being taken,” Caleb said, though he knew, or at least suspected, the answer, “and where,” which he did not know and about which he knew better than to guess.
“I can’t tell you.” Perhaps the Warden did not know, yet. That quicksilver mask was a means of communication as well as a disguise. Orders passed through it, and commands. “Will you come?”
Caleb had little say in the matter: Craft augmented Wardens’ speed and strength, and their mounts were swift and hungry. Even if he could escape, he had nowhere to run.
He closed the door behind him, locked it, and tugged on the lapels of his jacket. “Well. Can we travel by carriage, at least? I hurt my ribs in the blackout last night.”
“You’ll ride with me,” the Warden said. “My mount flies steady.”
Caleb was not reassured, but he followed anyway.
This was not his first interview with the Wardens. They sought him out after Temoc’s attacks—the ambush in the 700 block, the attempted sabotage of Bay Station a few years back, all the rest. So accustomed were the Wardens to debriefing Caleb that they’d questioned him after the zombie revolt two years ago, though Temoc played no part in that.
They only came for him once the action was over. Temoc must have eluded his pursuers.
How long had this Warden waited outside Caleb’s door? How long had his partner’s mount coiled on the roof? Had they seen Mal leave? Did they let her go?
No sense worrying. She could take care of herself. Nothing incriminating about a woman spending the night at a single man’s house. He hoped.
The serpent’s emerald neck was as tall as Caleb’s waist. The Warden mounted his saddle and motioned for Caleb to climb on behind.
As he settled against the warm scales, invisible cords lashed his arms to his sides and his legs to the beast’s back. He relaxed into the spectral bonds. The more he struggled, the tighter they would grow.
“I thought I wasn’t under arrest?”
“Not arrest,” the Warden said. “Protection.”
“Feels similar.”
The Couatl’s muscles surged, and in a thrashing, horrible instant the creature rose into the air. Two massive wingbeats bore them past the housetops. The Warden on Caleb’s roof goaded her own mount to flight, and together they wheeled south, toward the bustling cancer of downtown Dresediel Lex.
When they crested the mountains, Caleb saw the damage from above. Skittersill had born the brunt of the riots. Shattered windows, burnt-out shops, and broken bricks marred the streets—as if giant children had played there, careless of the lives they crushed.
Set beside the Skittersill, the wealthier districts’ scars seemed affectations. Repairman teemed Sansilva, replacing windows in boutiques and jewelry shops. Even the finest looted gems would not be lost for long: Sansilva stores cursed their wares pre-sale. Over the next week the thieves and fences of Dresediel Lex would suffer insanity, depression, catatonia, and violent disfigurement until the stolen merchandise returned to its owners. Grocery stores lost more from riots and looting than did fashion houses: few grocers could afford curses or insurance, and their stock was perishable.
Couatl circled the crater where North Station used to be, keeping watch, a funeral guard over a goddess’s corpse. Couatl had once been sacred birds, before Craftsmen claimed and changed them. Caleb wondered if the Wardens’ mounts remembered their old masters.
The Couatl that bore Caleb turned from the crater and flew west, toward the black pyramid at 667 Sansilva.
Caleb swallowed. Powers lurked inside that pyramid, powers that could turn a man inside out, or trap a woman in agony until the sun burnt to a cinder and the planet fell to dust—powers ancient and implacable. He knew those powers. They paid his salary.
The Couatl descended toward the pyramid’s peak, a black glass slab carved in concentric spirals: ancient Quechal versions of the circles modern Craftsmen used. Here, in ages past, high priests worked miracles. The
