The last trace of light failed. Cloak and King were different textures of darkness. Caleb blinked, and with eyes closed he saw a hallway outlined about them in silver-blue fire, and the King in Red a lightning mosaic, a many-limbed spider with a thousand slavering mouths.
He opened his eyes, and saw nothing.
Liquid shadow welled about his legs. Viscous, palpable, it rose from his ankles, to his knees, to his waist. The tips of his fingers trailed over the surface of the shade. Shadows covered his chest, his neck. When they reached his mouth he expected to choke, yet when he inhaled they sat sweetly in his lungs. The dark enclosed him. He could not see the red of Kopil’s cloak. His body was ice. He closed his eyes.
His next step pressed him against a cobweb wall. His heart quickened, but he strode forward. The King in Red did not mean to kill him. Dead, he could not go on this mad mission to the north.
Except as a zombie, of course.
He wished he’d thought of that earlier.
The shadows parted, as if he were floating upward through a subterranean lake and suddenly breached the surface. He blinked cobweb from his eyes, and clutched at the retreating liquid dark. He caught a handful, black and quivering like mercury in his palm.
He glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see the conference room at the end of a long hall, but saw only a closet of red: crimson robes, scarlet suits and ties, shirts the color of blood both fresh and dried.
“Can I get you a drink?” asked the King in Red.
Caleb wheeled around. He stood in a bedroom, large, elegant and sparsely furnished, walled on two sides by smoked windows. Thin metal pillars supported a high, unfinished rock ceiling that glimmered with ghostlights. Bookcases lined the walls, stuffed with red and black leather volumes polished by age and use. The room’s opulence was almost obscured by mess: books piled on desk and floor and furniture, a stack of scrolls collapsed by the chair, a crimson duvet rumpled and askew on the king-sized bed. In an adjoining kitchenette, the King in Red poured reposado tequila into a lowball glass.
“Nothing for me, thanks.”
Kopil emerged from the kitchenette. He snapped his fingers twice and two cubes of ice fell into his tequila.
“You don’t live here,” Caleb said. As he watched, the duvet straightened, books floated to the shelves of their own accord, and piles of scrolls snapped to order. “You have a mansion at Worldsedge. I’ve seen pictures.”
“I have a mansion at Worldsedge,” Kopil acknowledged. “And one in the Skeld Reaches, and a penthouse in Alt Coulumb, and three extensive estates on this coast alone. Plus the occasional island. But do you have any idea how long it takes to commute from Worldsedge? Even flying, I’d waste an hour every day, and I have no interest in spending all morning lurching through a crowded sky. Not to mention the expense, which I assure you would be considerable. Easier to sleep where I work. This room isn’t large, but the whole building belongs to me, so I don’t feel cramped.”
“Not much good for work-life balance.”
“I haven’t been alive for more than seventy years.”
“I see.”
“It’s not so bad.” Kopil swirled tequila and ice. “RKC is a part of me, literally and figuratively. I built this Concern, and I have become a gear moving at its heart—a larger gear than many, but a gear nonetheless. When I sleep I see in my dreams the beast to which I have given birth. Thousands of miles of tunnel and pipe. Millions of people drink of us and live. Billions more spread throughout this mad world draw strength from Dresediel Lex. Men on the other side of the globe, in the southern Gleb, borrow our might to fight their wars. Ignorant children on six continents eat our grain and rejoice, though they do not know our name. So much depends on us. On me. Even at a time like this.”
He didn’t know how to respond, so he tried, “That must be stressful.”
“It’s no more than I asked for—than any of us asked for.” He sighed. “There is one thing you must understand about destroying gods, boy.”
“Only one?”
“You must be ready to take their place.”
“I was thinking something like that myself, at the end of the meeting.” Caleb glanced around the room, wondering how to change the subject without offending his boss. He blinked. “This room doesn’t have any doors.”
“Who needs them?”
“Most people.”
Kopil shrugged, and sipped tequila.
“Sir, why are you sending me north? Lives depend on this mission. But you’re sending a handful of Wardens, a Craftswoman, and a mid-level risk manager. Why not specialists? Why not an army?”
“If we send an army and we didn’t need one, we’ll have left Dresediel Lex weak for no reason, with an enemy loose inside our gates. If an army is needed, an army will be sent. The dead travel fast.”
“In that case why send Mal—I mean, Ms. Kekapania? I doubt she knows anything about pipelines and Tzimet that Ms. Mazetchul doesn’t. Or any of a hundred other Craftsmen and Craftswomen.”
“I’m sending her because I trust you.” The King in Red placed special weight on the last word in that sentence.
“You trust…” Caleb blinked. “Oh.”
“You see the outlines of my design.”
“You trust me. But you don’t trust her.”
Kopil could have been dead indeed for all the reaction he betrayed: a corpse arrayed in funeral red with a cup of sacrificial liquor in his hands. Beyond the windows, Wardens circled above Dresediel Lex.
“You’re sending her because you want to give her a chance to betray you. You think Heartstone sabotaged its own project, and you want to give Mal a chance to fail, or turn on us.”
“Those are two possibilities.”
“You know she and I are romantically involved.”
“I do.”
He saw the rest of it, and cursed himself. “It’s a long journey on to Seven Leaf by Couatl. Lots can happen on the way.”
Ruby stars glimmered in endless night.
“If Ms. Kekapania is a traitor, any observer you sent with her might not reach Seven Leaf Lake. Even their death would tell you nothing. Accidents happen. So you send an observer you think she likes, someone she would hesitate to destroy.”
“You are far too comfortable with conspiracies, Mr. Altemoc.”
“Comfortable isn’t the word I would choose.”
The skull shifted to one side, considering. “Say, in theory, that you have the following problem: the perfect woman for the job at hand was trained by an enemy so bitter that you devoured his Concern so he would no longer trouble you. Say he feels about you the way you feel about him, and say also that he is given to laying long plots and deep plans.”
“Do you really think Alaxic might be involved?”
“Al was always more of your father’s party than of mine.”
He thought of the old man’s face, cast lava red by the Serpents’ light. “Can I speak frankly, sir?”
Kopil waved him on.
“You’re playing long odds. Mal won’t betray the city.”
“If you trust her, why are you afraid to travel with her?”
Caleb had no answer. “I should sleep,” he said at last, turning away. “And prepare.”
There was no exit, so he walked toward the closet again.
“Let me get that for you,” the King in Red called after him.
Caleb did not stop. He tossed the liquid shadow cupped in his palm through the closet door. The shadow spread, like ink spilled in water, to obscure robes and suits and shoes. He stepped through; the black parted for him, and he was gone. Two steps, three, brought him out of the ink and into the boardroom.
