wards.”
“Most of those don’t swim close to shore. I thought I was safe. The water was cool, the ocean dark. I’ve never felt such wonderful solitude.”
“What happened?”
“A riptide.”
“Oh.”
“I looked back and realized I was farther from our island than I thought, and no matter how I tried to swim back, the current bore me out. Panic took over. I forgot everything I knew and tried to swim against the tide, splashing and pulling and kicking, but it didn’t work. I tried to call for help, but I was too far away.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “It’s strange. You talk about something like that and the moment rushes back.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I was about to die. I remembered that riptides are strongest near the surface, and don’t extend far from side to side. I dove down and tried to swim parallel to the island’s shore, but I was tired. Then the gallowglass struck.”
“Qet and Isil,” he said, not realizing that he had sworn to gods.
“The water around me glowed green, and I was caught in a tangle of burning wires. Even with my wards, some of the poison made it through. For weeks afterward I looked like I had been flogged from head to foot with a barbed whip. I screamed, I’m not ashamed to admit, and the winding wires drew me up to the surface, toward the beast’s mouth. Which was lucky, in a way.”
“I think we have different definitions of lucky.”
“I was tired. If it hadn’t reeled me close to what passed for its brain, I couldn’t have struck it with the Craft. I drank the creature’s life, and used the strength I stole to guide me back to the island. My classmates found me the next morning, lying on the beach, passed out and wound with the stinging tendrils I hadn’t been strong enough to tear away. They launched a flare, and a nearby settlement soon sent help. I spent the rest of the vacation in bed. I don’t go to the ocean much anymore. I like the land. You can see what’s creeping up on you most of the time.”
Sand crunched beneath Caleb’s shoe, and he realized that they stood on the eastern beach of Bay Station, in the black tower’s shadow. As always on this journey, he had missed the moment of transition, when the island ceased to be a distant goal and appeared beneath and before him.
Watchmen waited atop a grassy bank overlooking the beach—burly, armed, the air around them thick with Craft and threat.
“Friends of yours?” Mal asked.
“No,” he said. “I’ll handle this.” Raising his hands, he strode forth to meet them.
35
Caleb and Mal descended into the island, paced by silent guards. The stair was long and winding, and pristine, like everything else in Bay Station. Every light was sun-bright, each corner swept.
“They keep house well,” Mal said.
“Dust can hide things,” Caleb whispered. The wide halls and open spaces made him nervous. “One of my father’s associates once tried to sneak a goddess in here, lodged in the dirt of his boot. She nearly took over the station before the King in Red stopped her.”
“I see.”
Their descent continued. Down side corridors, Caleb glimpsed the other station staff: academic Craftsmen in white laboratory robes, junior initiates arguing about thaumaturgical theory or professional sports, gray-shirted janitors living and undead, mopping floors and polishing windows.
On Caleb’s previous visits Bay Station had resembled the inside of an anthill, but tonight it was almost deserted. Everyone who could request time off for the eclipse had done so. The unlucky remainder would gather tonight in the observation tower to watch the fireworks and miss their families.
The staircase ended in a broad landing and a thick double door of cold iron, so wrought with wards and contracts that Caleb’s eyes refused to rest on its surface. The guards stood on opposite sides of the door, and placed their hands on the featureless white wall. Their wrists twisted at a particular angle, and silver-blue light shone around their fingers.
A glyph in the center of the doors blinked three times, and the world dissolved in darkness. Out of the darkness flashed a brilliant claw that pierced Caleb’s body and soul. The night broke, and the door ground open.
Beyond, white walls gave way to unfinished rock. Crude, primal symbols marked their path through the stone labyrinth.
“How old is this place?” Mal’s voice sounded small in the winding, echoing tunnels.
“There were Quechal colonists here before the city was founded. Since they lived so close to the Pax, they worshipped ocean-gods, predator-gods, rain-gods. Qet Sea-Lord was the center of the pantheon. After the Cataclysm, when so many Quechal moved up here, their heresy became dogma. We built new temples on land, Serpent-temples, sun-temples, but the old sacred caves remained out here.”
A rhythm resounded in his chest: a twinned concussion, two building-sized hammers beating against granite. Rocks shifted on the floor of their rough-hewn path.
“There’s still a god here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“We can go back. You don’t need to show me this.”
“I do. For my sake.”
The rhythm drew nearer. Caleb heard a rush of breaking surf.
The tunnel widened into a cavern. Stalactites hung like rotten teeth from the arching roof. Dark rock glittered wetly in the ghostlight.
The path split to circle an enormous pit. The percussion and the rolling ocean swell emanated from within.
“Is that what I think it is?” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her.
“Yes.”
She stopped, mouth half open, tense as a scared cat. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, mastering herself. Chin high, she strode past him to the pit’s edge, and looked down.
Caleb waited. He examined the thick pipes that lined the cave walls, the glyphs ancient and modern carved into stone. Too soon, he ran out of objects for his attention, and approached Mal, walking heavily so as not to startle her.
She stood straight, and still. He touched her arm and felt tension beneath the envelope of her skin. Her nostrils flared.
A god lay in the pit. No statue, no graven idol could compare to this imperial thing. Spread-eagled, suspended in dark water, he was the size of a mountain. His massive lips, softly parted, bared teeth as large as carriages. His eyes were sails, his chest broad as a pyramid. Legs and arms thick and long as magisterium trees hung limp in the dark water that lapped at his sides.
Unconscious, his silence was the silence of the sea. His slow indrawn breaths were the rolling tide, the sleeping twitch of his hand a hurricane. Eons past, in deep time, the first Quechal had looked out over the ocean, seen chaos, and given it form, and name, and life.
Qet Sea-Lord was not dead, but not alive, either. His closed eyes did not move like the eyes of a dreaming man. Thick metal pipes protruded from his arms, his chest, his neck, his corded thighs, to join the hive of plumbing below the surface of the water. Silver bands circled his chest. Before each breath, the bands glowed with unearthly light, and after each breath the light faded.
Caleb said the god’s name gently, knowing Mal would hear.
She recoiled from the pit. Her eyes flashed white, and shadow cohered about her skin. Her teeth grew long, pointed like fangs and gleaming. She towered above him. Ghostlights flickered and shattered on the walls;
