droughts within the city.”
Kopil shifted in his chair. Hidden snakes rubbed scales against scales in the darkness around the table. “There will be riots, if we institute a drought.”
“There will be riots anyway.” That was Chihuac. “Sansilva and downtown may be more easily cowed than the Skittersill, but the limits of the people’s patience have been tested. Rolling droughts will manage social unrest.”
“Exactly,” Caleb said. “We can’t afford to appear weak, especially if we are: a lack of confidence will make it even harder to borrow the soulstuff we need to survive this.”
“Why not use the Serpents?”
An opening door shed light into the dark conference room, and Mal stood on its threshold. Caleb’s first impulse was to run toward her, but he suppressed the urge, and watched.
Mal’s words rippled through the room. Ostrakov swore in a language Caleb did not recognize. Chihuac and Mazetchul turned to the King in Red, either for reassurance or to watch his reaction. Tollan grimaced.
Kopil spoke, his voice heavy with death and time. “I summoned Ms. Kekapania to this meeting. I am glad she has chosen to attend. If Heartstone has exposed us, Heartstone should stand to account.”
The door closed behind Mal. “Sorry I’m late. The crowd’s grown outside.” Her footsteps approached through the dark. Stripes of lamplight revealed and concealed her by turns as she circled the table. “I’ll do better than stand to account. I can fix this.”
“Explain.”
“The Serpents have all the power we need. You’ve wanted an excuse to draw on them for months.”
Caleb glanced down at his notes, turned a few pages, and found the figure he sought. “We’d have to spend more power keeping them asleep than we can draw from them.”
“Much more,” Mal said. “But over a longer time. The Serpents grant you a reprieve. Think of it as a loan to yourself, with interest.”
“That doesn’t make sense. We can’t loan soulstuff to ourselves.” He expected others to join in, but no one spoke. All eyes had turned to Kopil.
The King in Red‘s eyes burned in shadow. “Your people have caused this chaos. Why should we trust you to fix it?”
Before the dread lord of RKC, Mal looked smaller than he remembered.
“Because I can imagine what you’ll do to us if we fail,” she said.
“Can you.”
“I have a powerful imagination.”
“It will be worse than you imagine. For you not least of all.”
“Give me a chance. Use the Serpents to preserve the illusion of your strength. In three days, I can fix Seven Leaf Lake.” She held so still the world seemed to spin around her. “If all the demons from all the hells stand in my way, I will break them.”
In the ensuing silence Caleb heard the breaths of the four people in the room who still breathed: Tollan, Chihuac, Mal, and himself. Most of RKC’s executive board had discarded lungs and blood on the thorn-paved path to their current positions.
“So let it be,” Kopil said. “We will send Caleb with you.”
The number of breaths reduced by one. Stunned to strangulation, Caleb looked up at his boss. Bony hands rested on the table beside Kopil’s mug of cold coffee.
Mal bore the King in Red’s gaze, and Caleb’s, and the board’s, as if they were the stares of frightened rabbits.
“Alone?” Caleb asked.
“Of course not.” The King in Red struck his teeth together, and Caleb heard laughter echo up from a deep well. “You’ll travel with an escort of Wardens, on our fastest Couatl. Leaving tomorrow morning, you should reach Seven Leaf early the following day. Assess the situation and determine what aid you require. Fix the problem within three days; if you cannot do so, whisper my name thrice before a mirror in darkness, and I will send aid.”
“I understand,” Mal said.
The conference room stretched cavernous about them. Mal turned from Kopil to Caleb, and smiled a cliff runner’s smile.
“This should be fun.”
22
Mal excused herself to prepare. Caleb wanted to follow her, but he could not snub the Directors in their power. They wrung information from him: captives in a hot, dry cell, fighting for a drink from the same mangled sponge.
“How much water can we cut back from manufacturing and agriculture in the next week without damaging crops?” asked Alana Mazetchul, who had little love for RKC’s industrial business. Ostrakov, whose department served farmers, makers, and builders of things, cut in before Caleb could answer Mazetchul: “How many souls are lost every minute our manufacturing plants stand dead?” More questions followed that, each one pointed, though Caleb could not see the purpose of every barb. He answered in raw figures with no commentary. He could not allow himself to be torn between these fanged eminences. He had problems enough already.
For thirty minutes they grilled him, and as each minute passed he felt Mal retreat further into the night.
The King in Red listened, and made occasional notes on his yellow notepad with a quill pen. He did not speak.
At last, Caleb exhausted the pool of questions. The meeting adjourned with a solemn incantation: “We wait, and we rise; we move, and the earth trembles.” They stood as one and left the room severally—somber, disturbed, and determined not to betray their exhaustion as they retreated into shadows. Sixty years ago, these men and women broke the heavens, and made the gods weep. They had spent the time since learning how hard it was to run a world.
Tollan joined Caleb at the front of the room. “Well done,” she said, with a ghost of a smile. “Don’t die up there.”
“I’ll try not to.”
She left.
Two others remained in the conference room. Chihuac waited by Kopil’s throne; in the crook of one arm she carried a scroll as long as a sword. The King in Red leaned on the table and levered himself to his feet. The sparks of his eyes dimmed, and Caleb heard something like a cough rattle where his esophagus once had been.
“Sir?” Forgetting his notes, he moved to the King in Red. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” the skeleton said. “Thousands cry out to me that they thirst, that they are wounded; thousands more will join them soon. Their need tears at my soul. I could die, satisfying them, and if I die, so will they. Yet if I do not satisfy them, they will also die, and the city will die, and I will die at last. I am, in short, a perfect image of health. Someone will carve me on a monument.”
“I’ve drawn up figures,” said Chihuac, “for increased Warden deployment over the next week.”
“We will discuss them in my office in ten minutes. I must speak with Caleb. Alone.”
She withdrew. Her shoes were soft-soled, her step light. She walked into shadow and disappeared. He heard no door open or close in her wake.
“What’s your plan?” Caleb said when they were alone.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you sending me north? I won’t be able to help.”
“Your mere presence will suffice.” Kopil lifted his coffee and his notepad and walked into the unbroken black. Caleb followed.
