“You miss our gods?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“They’re soaked in blood.”
“So am I. So are you. So’s this city. You seem to think it’s different if we kill for gods or for water; either way the victim dies at the end.”
“Why not find another pantheon? Iskar still has gods, and they get along fine. Orgies and existentialism, the occasional burnt aurochs, once in a while a tentacle or two. Seems better.”
“Iskar’s gods aren’t ours, though.”
“Oh, I see, we need to preserve our heritage. Will you burn the pale skins out of Stonewood next?” Barges shifted on the water, pulled by broad-backed sea turtles forty feet across: firework ships moving into position for the eclipse. Their burning arrows would frighten hungry stars away from the wounded sun.
She laughed. “Our economy would collapse. Every tie to the rest of the world would be cut. We must be cosmopolitan, without sacrificing our identity. Walk our own path.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?”
“How many of the Craftsmen and Craftswomen in this city are Quechal, do you think? Twenty percent? Thirty, at most?”
“Something like that.”
“In a city that’s eighty percent Quechal.”
“I don’t see your point.”
“We’re occupied. We don’t talk about it that way, but we are.”
“We’re not occupied. We’re a world city. There’s a difference.”
“Are you sure?”
A cold breeze off the ocean shivered her, and he placed an arm around her shoulder. From the sidewalk an observer might have thought them man and wife, or lovers. Caleb didn’t know what they were. No words seemed to fit. Children ran down the beach, volleying a ball back and forth. “You loved your parents. You value the things they valued. But our gods killed people. They’re gone, and I don’t miss them.”
Mal stopped shivering, but she did not remove his arm. “You don’t get to choose your parents. Why should your gods be any different?”
“What do you suggest? We should bring back the altar and the knife? People will fight you if that’s what you want, and I’ll lead them. We can’t do those things anymore.”
“Of course not,” she said. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“Think about your father. You don’t live the way he lives.”
“No. I have a roof over my head, and I don’t have three quarters of the city out to kill me.”
Waves lapped the thick pylons of the pier. Caleb watched the barges and thought about sharks moving underwater.
“But you have something of him in you, anyway.”
“Scars.”
“Those, yes. But that’s not what I meant. You have his determination. You know a few things in your marrow, and you will never compromise on them. You took parts of your father into yourself and reinvented them. Your mother’s in there, too: contemplative, independent, solitary, strong. You made yourself out of what they gave you.”
“What does this have to do with sacrifice?”
“We used to know that everything ends, and it is better to give one’s death than accept it. The first corn sprang from a dead man’s body. Qet’s blood makes the rain. Beasts give themselves to the hunter; kings give themselves to their people. Sacrifice was the center of our world. We defended that world from Iskari invaders four hundred years ago, but then the Craftsmen came, and here we are.”
“Here we are: better fed, better protected, more justly policed than ever in history.”
“I don’t think the Wardens are just.”
“I know.”
“We’re better fed, I’ll grant, but so what? Cows on a farm are fed. As for ’protected,’ Dresediel Lex only ever fell to one adversary: the one who rules us now. My problem isn’t that we no longer sacrifice, it’s that we’re no longer conscious of the sacrifices we make. That’s what gods are for.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We should bring them back, on our terms. We form a society with sacrifice, but without death.”
“Sacrificing what? Shreds of cotton, clods of earth? A bit of wine, stale bread? Gods are hungry, thirsty creatures.”
“I don’t know what they would accept. But we need them.”
“People don’t miss the gods.”
“They do. You do.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been chasing me for months. Half the things you’ve done should have killed you.”
He laid his hand over the back of hers, on the railing. A ridge of scar tissue ran below her knuckles.
She looked at him through the black sway of her hair. “You didn’t know me. You saw something in me you thought was worth your blood.” His expression must have changed, because she frowned, and shook her head. “You saw something you could chase, something for which you could bleed. You wanted to sacrifice yourself, and you’ve never been given the chance. I know the feeling. Desperate for duty. For purpose. Direction. It’s why I saved you, when North Station fell.” She handed the tooth back to him. “I’m sorry I can’t say more. Allie was a friend, and I think I understand her—but I can’t help you with this.”
He took the tooth from her, and slipped it back into his jacket. His grip on her hand was so tight that his forearm trembled. Mal raised an eyebrow. He released her hand, and chose his next words carefully. “We do sacrifice. We pay bits of soul every time we use a faucet.”
“It’s not the same. Those are payments, not sacraments. What, really, do we sacrifice to live the way we live?”
Children sprinted along the waterline. Rising tidewater dulled their footprints, filled them with eddies and sand. By the fourth wave, the footprints vanished as if they had never been.
The last child paused every few strides to lift a shell from the beach and throw it into the Pax. She mouthed a prayer with each throw, an offering to Qet Sea-Lord in payment for her passage along the shore. Caleb’s mother had taught him the words to that prayer, when he was young. After the Skittersill Rising she never mentioned it again.
Caleb followed the arc of a thrown shell, imagined it drawn out past the barges and their harnessed sea monsters, through the deep toward Bay Station.
“I know what we sacrifice,” he said. “But I don’t have the words to tell you.”
“What, then?”
“I can show you, if you’ll let me. Do you have plans for the night before the eclipse?”
Calculating eyes watched him. “I do. What do you have in mind?”
“Come with me to Bay Station.”
“I can’t.”
“It won’t take all night. We’ll be ashore in plenty of time for fireworks.”
Her weight shifted from left leg to right. One hand slid down her dress to rest against her thigh.
“Where should I meet you?” she asked.
“There.” He pointed to the little girl, still throwing seashells. A battered lifeguard chair stood beside her, covered in peeling paint and weathered Quechal glyphs.
“Ominous.”
“We’ll be safe.”
“Fine,” she said. “It’s a date.”
She cupped his chin in one hand, guided him to her, and kissed him. Her mouth was cooler than the twilight. Her kiss danced like a spark down his neck and through his limbs. It quickened in his scars. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her closer. The vibration inside him built to shiver them both apart.
