the Wardens, then—unless the Wardens used a different landing structure than the spire’s residents. But he had seen no such structure from the air. If they didn’t plan to hand him over or let him go, why move him from the cell?
Unless they had other uses for him. What powers ruled in a skyspire? The city’s law, or the law of the Craft, or no law at all? And what if the demon guards had not in fact reported his capture, and were only waiting until the rest of the spire would be too fast asleep to hear his screams?
Demons, he recalled, kept peculiar diets.
As they marched him up a winding stair, he searched for opportunities of escape. None suggested themselves.
When they turned onto the third floor, he began to look more intently. They brought him to Mal’s door, opened it, and thrust him in.
He stumbled, and caught his balance on a hardwood floor.
Shadow soaked the small bare room. Moonlight filtered through the large rear windows, illuminating gray carpet, a leather chair, a small coffee table, and a machine designed for either torture or home exercise.
The city burned below.
Something moved to Caleb’s right, and he turned, expecting to see Mal.
Instead, he saw snakes: a wall of them, writhing.
He swore, jumped back, and after a panting, panicked moment, he recognized
Demon laughs sounded like spider legs skittering across a steel floor.
“Give us a few minutes.” He recognized Mal’s voice, from the corner beside the exercise machine. He turned to her as the demons withdrew and closed the door behind them.
He pointed at the snakes. “I know the woman who made this. Girlfriend of a friend of mine. I’ll tell her you put it on display.”
Mal moved between him and the city, and pointed to the ceiling. Recessed ghostlights glowed, and details filled in the room. Closed doors led off the main chamber. A photograph, framed, hung on the wall opposite
“I thought they’d have cleaned up after they grabbed me.”
“Demons don’t clean. Another hour, and the maid would have come by, and who knows how long you’d have been stuck there.”
She looked much as he remembered her: hard and elegant. She wore a dark suit and a pencil skirt.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear a skirt.”
“Formal dinner. Dress to impress.”
“Looks nice.”
“I thought about leaving you in that cell, for the Wardens. I thought about throwing you off the top of this spire. Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
He opened his mouth, but no words emerged. His rehearsed, stolen speech would not fit through his throat.
Mal started to turn away.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She waited.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Still, she said nothing.
“I didn’t think. It’s hard to live in your parents’ shadow. Believe me, I know. I don’t want you to forget them. Even if I disagree with them. Even if I disagree with you.”
“What do you want?”
“You,” he said at last. “If you’ll have me.”
She turned away. “You don’t have the first idea of the trouble you make for yourself, wanting me. Go. I’ll persuade the building not to press charges.”
“No,” he said with more conviction than he felt. He walked to her, placed his hand on her arm. Her skin was tawny and soft. She did not pull away. Traffic surged through the streets and skies beneath them. “Without you, there’s no race. I’m just running, in the dark, alone. And so are you. Burdened, with no one to share the burden.”
“This won’t work.”
“I’ll take that risk, if you will.”
“I’ll destroy you.”
“Possible.”
“I destroy everything I touch.”
“I don’t care.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Do.”
Leaning in to her felt like leaning toward a cactus—every second swelling with the promise of pain. Her lips were round, and close, and still the pain did not come.
He kissed her, and did not die. He was so shocked by this that he pulled back, but she followed him, and kissed him in turn.
A minute passed, an eternity. A scythe-claw rapped on the door, and Caleb heard a muffled voice like the death of something beautiful. Mal replied in the same language, and stepped back. He shivered from her absence.
“I need you to leave,” she said. “I have documents to review, and work tomorrow.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“But—”
“Sorry.”
He tasted her lips on his lips. “See you next month, I guess?”
“We don’t have that long.” She hugged herself, looked down at the city, looked back. “I’ll wait for you in the foyer at RKC, tomorrow night, at five.”
“You’ll wait for me?”
“For you,” she said, “and no one else. Now go, or else the demons will eat your soul and I’ll have to take a husk to dinner.” She snapped her fingers, and the door opened.
He almost left without kissing her again.
Almost.
32
The next day Caleb worked like a man possessed. He tore through stacks of memos, processed claims and ran figures, outlined complex deals and hedges against failure. Her fire would devour him if he let it, so he buried his mind in news and risk reports.
The nightmares had not stopped after Seven Leaf. Madmen crowded hospitals, crying the Twin Serpents’ names. An itinerant philosopher in Stonewood immolated himself in a public square at noon, ranting about Aquel and Achal. When others rushed to douse him, he fought back with burning flesh, melting skin, crisping meat. A mother in the Vale nearly threw her two young children out of a second-story window, before her husband stopped her. She claimed to doctors and reporters that she had seen snakes of flame coiled inside her babies.
Somewhere, Temoc was laughing. Caleb felt sure of it.
Incidents of madness clustered near Heartstone installations. Caleb wrote a memo, a call to discontinue the
