“We know your father was in your house last night. We traced him there, and lost his trail after.”
The serpent’s coils compressed his broken ribs. He gasped. “Temoc was in my house when I came home last night. He told me he didn’t plan the North Station raid. After that, he left.”
“A strange claim.”
“It’s not a claim. It’s a message.”
Kopil cocked his head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“The Wardens attacked Temoc last night. How did they find his hideout?”
“An anonymous tip.”
“An anonymous tip. Which they needed, because they haven’t been able to find him for twenty years. But they traced him to my house. Do you think he got sloppy while running for his life? He wanted you to talk to me, because I would tell you I think he’s innocent of the attack.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the last person who would believe his innocence.”
Kopil did not respond.
“People died on that altar,” Caleb said. “My father killed them, and his father, our whole line as far back as memory. Temoc took his first life when he was seven years old. If Craftsmen hadn’t freed Dresediel Lex, I would have done the same. I’d fight him until the sun burned black. So he came to me, and told me he was innocent, knowing I was the least friendly witness he could find.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know. He seemed sincere.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m no Craftsman, but I’m no terrorist, either.”
“Where do you stand, then?” asked Kopil.
“On my own side.”
“Your side hurts.”
“Yes,” Caleb said when he realized what the King in Red meant. “It does.”
Kopil crossed the red rug and stood before Caleb, six feet tall and slender in his crimson robe. He radiated cold power. His skin had rotted decades past, sinews and muscles crumbled, heart shriveled into dust. He endured. A cold wind blew between them.
“Let’s fix that,” Kopil said. Darkness rolled out from him to drown the world.
Caleb could not flinch or flee. Five arrows struck him in the chest—no, five fingers, and they did not pierce his skin but passed through it as if dipping into a pool of water, water that could feel, and think, and scream. He opened his mouth, and shadow crawled past his lips, over his teeth, wriggled down his throat to nest in his lungs. He could not breathe, but he did not die, and the King in Red began to work.
A second skeletal hand joined the first in Caleb’s chest, hot as hatred and cold as love. If not for the shadow filling his mouth, he would have ground his teeth to powder, bit through his tongue. His broken ribs were two arches of jagged glass. Kopil’s hands moved over that glass, smoothing and joining. Pain rose in a fugue, variations on a theme of agony.
The music stopped. Light returned. Kopil drew his hands from Caleb’s chest. Bits of tissue and spare red drops clung to his skeleton fingers. The mortal refuse smoked, boiled, and burned from the King’s pale bones.
Caleb could move again. He touched his side, and found it whole.
The King in Red shook his hands as if to dry them. “Lift your arm. Do you feel any pain?” Caleb did, and felt none. “Inhale.” Sweet air filled his lungs. His muscles trembled, and laughing he breathed again.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I just ran here all the way from Fisherman’s Vale. Tired in the bones. My stomach’s cold.”
“Eat well tonight. You almost killed yourself yesterday; I took as little power from you as I could for the healing, but you’re weak as if you haven’t eaten in days. Go to a restaurant tonight. Order enough for three men. Drink plenty of fluids.”
A wrenching, horrid screech erupted from the floor behind the King in Red. Black glass warped open to reveal a staircase that spiraled down into the pyramid.
“Go,” the skeleton said. Caleb attempted to walk, staggered, and caught the edge of the altar-desk. He steadied himself, tried another step, and made it halfway to the stairs before Kopil’s voice stopped him.
“I know what it’s like to be on no one’s side but your own.”
The King in Red had lifted the picture in the silver frame.
“Sir?”
Kopil opened his palm as if setting a bird free. The picture slid through the air. Caleb caught it, and looked for the first time at the image: an old-fashioned sepia miniature. Two men embraced at the foot of a black pyramid. They were young and smiling and obviously in love, both dark as magisterium wood, one shorter than Caleb, the other tall for a Quechal man, six feet at least and thin, with narrow sloping shoulders. His eyes were black, and his smile looked familiar.
Thin, Caleb thought, so thin he could almost see the bones of the tall man’s skull.
Kopil stood beside the desk, beside the altar, his finger bones spread on bloodstained glass. His shoulders were narrow and sloping, and his smile had not changed.
“Eighty years,” Caleb guessed.
“More than that.”
“What was his name?”
“Timas.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They took him for the sacrifice to the Hungry Serpents.” Kopil tapped the surface of the altar. “He’s still here. A piece of him, at least. Two or three drops.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“We all think we’re on our own side, until the time comes to declare war.”
Caleb released the picture. It flew back and settled on the desk beside the King in Red.
“Go,” Kopil said, and Caleb descended into the office building that was once a temple.
INTERLUDE: FLAME
The lake of fire coruscated red and blue and orange. Alaxic, lost in thought, traced the patterns and colors of heat.
Magma breathed sirocco in his face, dried his parchment skin. “I could remain here,” he said, “until lava cured me into dust. That would be better, I think.”
“You’ll like retirement,” said the woman at his side: Allesandre, his patient, loyal student; his sacrifice. “Or maybe you won’t, but it’s for the best. We’ll take everything from here. Don’t worry.”
“I have spent six decades worrying.” The old man lifted his hands from the railing and placed them into his pockets with care, as if his bones were porcelain. “Since the God Wars. Since the Skittersill Rising. My life lies down there.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, and gripped his shoulder. “We will finish what you started.”
Alaxic felt her strength, and wondered at time, distance, and the wheels of age that grind the great to powder.
Calm and quiet, he left the cave.
SEVEN LEAF LAKE
