almost tugged him from the basket. He looked over the edge, and laughed in relief. Mal dangled from his arm. Her coat whipped and snapped with the speed of their passage. Sharp joy gleamed in her eyes.
“See?” she said, unperturbed by the open sky and the mile’s drop. She shouted to be heard over the rush of wind. “Don’t you feel alive?”
“I feel terrified,” he shouted back. “And angry.”
“Your heart’s beating, you’re breathing deep, you’re desperate. Have you ever felt that way in Dresediel Lex, except when you were running after me?”
“What would you have done if I didn’t catch you?”
“It’s a long way down. I would have thought of something.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You’re not the first to say it.”
He pulled her back into the gondola. When his arm trembled and his grip almost failed, she grabbed a rope and pulled herself the rest of the way aboard.
“All things considered,” he said when they were both safely reclining once more, “I think I prefer the cotton-padded life.”
She shrugged. He remembered chasing her across rooftops, and the chill in his heart as he flew.
After a silence, he said: “What do you think went wrong at Seven Leaf?”
She didn’t answer at first, but he refused to change the subject again, and she relented. “Animals, maybe, or a raid from the Scorpionkind, though there aren’t many of them in the mountains and it’d take a larger clutch than I’ve ever seen to hurt Seven Leaf Station. Could be a spirit rebellion, but we bound all the local ghosts and gods in the lake before we started pumping.”
“Treachery?”
“Possible. From within, or without.”
“So what’s our plan?”
“Fly north. See what awaits us. Deal with it.” She leaned back and let her eyes drift shut. “No sense worrying about the game before we see the cards.”
Caleb didn’t agree, but neither did he argue. Mal’s breath settled, and she slept. He sat a few feet away from her, and tried to think as the world passed below.
25
An hour before nightfall, the Wardens guided their mounts down to survey a broad forest clearing. A brook bordered the clearing to the east, and the forty-foot-wide stump of a magisterium tree towered in the clearing’s center. The Couatls’ approach set resting deer and small birds to flight. The Wardens saw no danger, and made camp in the fork of a spreading root, between stump and water.
Magisterium grew in deep mountains, at glacial speeds. The living wood was strong, and stronger after death—its sticky sap set fast, and dried smooth and hard as stone. Only lightning and Craft could topple such trees, breaking them before the sap stiffened. Felled magisterium was valuable: carpenters could shape the wood into the bones and masts of ships, lighter than metal, tougher, and resistant to most Craft. Prospectors combed the mountains every year after winter storms, seeking fallen wood to sell.
Too old and weathered for the most desperate prospector, the stump by which the RKC team camped was well into its third century of wind and rain and insects’ futile attempts at tunneling. The Couatl nested on the stump’s flat top, and rubbed their hides against splinters sharp as steel nails.
Caleb built a fire, which Mal lit with a glare, and they cooked and ate a simple, hearty meal, tortillas and cheese and dried meat heated over the flame. They did not talk much. No local beast or bird dared return to the clearing—afraid of the campers, or more likely of the Couatl. Caleb swatted a couple mosquitos at sunset, but even those made only a halfhearted effort.
After they ate, Caleb leaned back, patted his stomach, produced a coin and walked it up and down his fingers. “I’m bored.”
“I’m sorry,” Mal said, “that our covert mission isn’t exciting enough for you.”
“Oh, I’m paralyzed with fear. But I don’t like paralysis.” He produced a deck of cards from his jacket pocket. “What do you say to a game?”
“A game?”
“Poker.”
“With only the two of us?”
“What about you guys?” He called to the Wardens across the campfire. Their quicksilver masks warped and reflected the flames, transforming blank features into the gates of hell. He raised the cards. “A game?”
The leader of the Warden band, a blocky young woman whose badge numbered 3324, was the first to speak: “We’re on duty, sir.”
“You aren’t all planning to stand watch at the same time, are you? A few can play while the others guard.”
“We have to remain on duty in the field.” She raised one gloved hand and tapped the spot on her mask where her cheek would have been. Her glove disappeared into the silver. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I don’t need to see your faces to take your souls,” he said as he slid the cards from the pack. “And don’t call me sir.” The rattlesnake shuffle of card against card sounded small and alien in the clearing.
3324 acquiesced without further prodding. Three of her squad mates joined, for a table of six, while two slept and two more stood guard. All the Wardens bore the same initial numbers on their badge.
“Does that mean something? The thirty-three?”
“We’re an extraterritorial unit,” said 3324.
“Arrest authority, but no responsibility to arrest,” added the Warden beside her.
“Soldiers,” Mal said, with a sour voice.
“No,” she replied. “We’re Wardens who don’t always have the luxury of bringing our suspects home to trial.”
“A fine distinction. I’m sure your victims respect it.”
If 3324 reacted, her mask gave no sign. “Sometimes we have ugly assignments. Sometimes the world is ugly. I’d be overjoyed if all I had to do was direct traffic.”
“I doubt it.”
She shrugged. “Doubt what you like. But until that day, we’re stuck with jobs like this—in the forest, riding to confront an unknown threat, probably outgunned, with two civilians in tow. No disrespect.”
“You chose this life,” Mal said. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you when you say you’d be happy to give it up.”
“I chose to serve. Turns out this is what I’m good for. What we’re good for.” She motioned to her men, who sat statue-still and did not acknowledge the statement. “We wanted to serve our city, and we have talents for last-ditch action, and violence. The jobs that no one wants to do, but must be done. So here we are. Serving.”
Mal opened her mouth, and Caleb almost interrupted her, afraid of what she might say. But he did not, and she settled for: “So you serve.” And, “Let’s play cards.”
“Let’s.”
“We can’t keep calling you all by numbers,” Caleb said, relieved at the opportunity to change the subject. “Thirty-three twenty-four is a mouthful.”
“You may call me Four. Within our team, the final number is enough.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” Caleb removed a folded silk cloth from his jacket pocket, and spread it over a flat span of earth. He dealt the cards first into eight piles, one for each of the eight directions, then stacked the piles atop one another and shuffled the deck eight times. His heart stilled, and he forgot that he sat in the middle of the Drakspine, hundreds of miles from the city of his birth. He set aside Mal’s argument with the Warden, and his own fear. The cards carried a world with them. “Three-faced goddess, we call you to us.” The formula burned his tongue; the cards stung his fingers as they ripped pieces from his soul. Quechal designs covered the cards’ backs:
