In the crimson flat, Kopil watched the darkness recede from his closet.
“Interesting,” he said. If he had eyes, they would have narrowed. After exhausting the few seconds he could spare to puzzle irrelevant mysteries, he snapped his fingers and one of his kitchen walls swung open. Chihuac waited in his office with stacks of paperwork. The night was, unfortunately, still young.
23
Caleb could not sleep in his soulless room. RKC kept emergency quarters at 667 Sansilva for visitors and workers too busy to travel home: efficiencies with all the comfort and warmth of a grain thresher. He tumbled on the hard bed for an hour before he gave up, dressed, and rode the lift down to the street.
Stars menaced the silent city. Even the protesters were mostly asleep, coats bundled to serve as pillows: bow-backed men and broad-shouldered women, young and old, poor and middle-class. Children slept in a clutch on the sidewalk. Ancient men huddled near a flickering portable fire.
Zombies in burlap jumpsuits shambled among the sleepers. They swept the street with broad stiff brooms and speared garbage with rakes and pikes. RKC contracted with a minor Concern to keep the local streets clean, and the revenants came every evening, rain or sleet, protest or riot, earthquake or conflagration, to do their duty.
Sea wind bore the scent of fish and salt off the shark-infested Pax. A few blocks in from shore, the stench of crowds, pavement, and livestock mugged the wind in a dark alley and took its place.
The Wardens guarding RKC’s perimeter shifted to let Caleb pass. He stepped over an unconscious child and turned left toward Muerte Coffee.
The shop’s windows were beacons in the bruised night. Caleb bought a cup of spiced chocolate from a clerk no livelier than the street sweepers, and retreated into grave-cool darkness. He sat on a sidewalk bench and watched dead men move among the sleeping. Chocolate sank a plumb line to his core.
Fifty years ago, at the God Wars’ height, Craftsmen had used a terrible weapon to bring the Shining Empire to its knees. Skies shattered, sand turned to glass, men and women and trees burned so quickly not even their shadows could escape. Those shadows lived still, travelers whispered—pinned to the ruined city by day and wandering at night, wailing after their lost flesh.
He felt like one of those shades, nailed to the city walls, the bench slats, the stone beneath his feet, the cup warm in his hand.
“Hello,” said Temoc beside him.
Caleb let out a strangled squawk and spilled chocolate over his hands onto the sidewalk. Temoc passed him a handkerchief. He dried himself off, returned the sodden cloth, and took another sip before he faced his father.
Temoc sat like a statue on the bench. A coat the size of a tent swallowed his massive body, and a long scarf concealed the bottom half of his face. In the last few weeks he had even let his hair grow, to cover the ritual scars on his scalp. A passing Warden would see only a large, amiable derelict seeking conversation in the small morning hours.
“What are you doing here?”
Temoc sighed and leaned back. The bench sagged with his weight. “Why shouldn’t a man visit his son?”
“Dad.”
“You know, from time to time, see how he’s getting on.”
“Dad.”
“How else am I supposed to brag about you to my friends in the old freedom fighters’ home?”
“Dad.”
Temoc stopped. The corners of his eyes smiled.
“This is a huge risk, coming here,” Caleb said. “Even in disguise.”
“What disguise? This is how I look now. I wander from safe house to safe house, avenging wrongs and fighting the State. It’s not a bad life.”
“You’re a bum, is what you’re saying.”
“A fool, perhaps. In the old days we had holy fools. Madness claimed a few of those who saw the Serpents, and their madness made them sacred. Now the fools are all that’s holy.” He patted his chest. “My life could be worse.”
“Meaning, you could be me, I suppose.”
“What are you talking about? You’re my son. I love you. You work for godless sorcerers who I’d happily gut on the altar of that pyramid”—he pointed to 667 Sansilva—“and you are part of a system that will one day destroy our city and our planet, but I still love you.”
“Thanks, I suppose,” Caleb said. “You realize that if you actually killed the King in Red, this place would be a desert in days. Water isn’t free.”
“It used to rain here more often.”
“Because you sacrificed people to the rain gods.”
“Your system kills, too. You’ve not eliminated sacrifices, you’ve democratized them—everyone dies a little every day, and the poor and desperate are the worst injured.” He pointed at one of the street cleaners. “Your bosses grind them to nothing, until they have no choice but to mortgage their souls and sell their bodies as cheap labor. We honored our sacrifices in the old days. You sneer at them.”
“Yeah? If being sacrificed was such an honor, tell me: how many priests died on the altar?”
They retraced their old arguments without rancor, knife fighters circling one another out of habit, armed only with blunt sticks.
Revenants shambled down the street, sweeping though no dust remained to clean. Silver studs on their wrists glinted in the streetlamps’ light.
“How did the Tzimet get into the water?” Temoc asked.
“Like you don’t know.”
“I’ve spent all night fighting small demons. Saving lives. Do you think so little of me as to imagine I’d do this?”
“It has your signature in foot-high yellow paint. Yours, or one of your friends’.”
Temoc chuckled.
“I missed the part where this was funny.”
“The King in Red’s unholy systems have let demons into the world, and you blame me.”
“Is that why you’re here? To send another message to the King in Red? He almost killed me last time you tried.”
“I knew you would be safe. Besides, if Kopil tries anything, you can defend yourself.”
“Dad,” Caleb began, but he could think of nothing more to say that he wouldn’t have to scream. He stared into the dregs of chocolate at the bottom of his mug. “I couldn’t defend myself against him.”
“You don’t know the strength in your scars. Kopil and I fought each other for days at a time, in the God Wars.”
“He’s grown stronger. He almost crushed me without meaning to.”
Temoc shrugged.
“Why are you here, Dad?”
“To wish you luck.”
“How do you know what I’m about to do?”
“You sleep like a stone most nights. But now you’re fretting over a mug of chocolate. You’re worried about something big. You have a task ahead, and you don’t know whether you’ll be good enough, strong enough, smart enough.”
“You came, defying Wardens and Deathless Kings, to tell me everything will be all right?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
