corpse and into the labyrinth.
There was less damage here, probably because there had been less to destroy. The station used little Craft around the divine body: even unconscious, gods bent structures and systems around them, like taproots growing through cracks in concrete.
He ran down the long hall. Cave-paintings watched him go.
He soon reached the island’s heart. The walkway around the vast pit was empty. Caleb stood alone in the dull amber silence of dying ghostlights.
The silence told him everything he feared, but he walked to the edge of the pit anyway, and forced himself to look.
Qet Sea-Lord floated still upon the water. His eyes stared at the ceiling, open and blind and so large Caleb would have been a mote had he stood upon them. Pain had twisted the god’s features into a grimace; emergency lights painted his teeth orange.
Qet did not breathe. The silver bonds that sustained him were gone, sunk beneath black water. His chest had been sliced open from the continental shelf of his ribs to the mountain range of his collarbone: folds of crystal skin peeled away, ropes of glassy muscle slick with rainbow blood, the rocky breastbone split, ribs pulled back. Tumulose lungs swelled in the god’s open chest cavity.
His heart was gone.
On the cave’s far wall, someone had painted the hundred-foot-tall silhouette of an eagle, wings spread, in blood: the sigil of the Eagle Knights. His father’s sign.
Caleb staggered to the cave wall and threw up, bowed and shivering. The sight of the dead god let him collapse. Arms the size of hills, limp. Vast eyes stared, open, black. You could swim in those eyes, or drown.
He sobbed sour breath.
The pumps did not pump. The pipes were still.
He backed away from his refuse.
The god was dead. Bay Station could no longer strip salt from the ocean. Someone must have noticed. Where were the Wardens? The King in Red should be here. What was going on?
Leaning on the passage wall, he climbed back to the surface.
Rising, he let his mind race. He would be blamed for this somehow. No. Even the King in Red would not leap to that conclusion. The night before, Caleb would have laid his soul that no army could break Bay Station—not Deathless Kings or gods, certainly not a kid with no Craft to his name. Kopil would see that.
Was this Temoc’s doing? Other groups used the sign of the Eagle Knights these days, True Quechal terrorists mostly. Caleb’s father was on the run. An attack so brutal, so destructive, so successful, took time to plan and resources to execute. Temoc might have found a hole in the island’s defenses, though, and passed word to others.
But this wasn’t his style. Liberate Qet, yes. Free him from bondage, deliver him to his few remaining worshippers. Return him to health, and power. Temoc would never kill a god.
Bodies sprawled on the beach amid rubble and surf-tossed debris. Searching the sky, Caleb saw no Wardens flying westward from the city. He heard no wingbeats.
Where was everyone?
Where was Mal?
Safe. She had folded his clothes, a sign of care: she hadn’t left in a hurry. What if she was about to leave when the attack began? She would have gone to fight. Woken him, surely. Unless not: unless she’d seen the attack, and decided to let him sleep.
She wouldn’t have done it. Couldn’t have left him. And anyway he hadn’t seen her corpse.
Not that there were many corpses left.
No. She was alive. Back in the city, sleeping, safe. If safe had any meaning, now.
At the eastern edge of the ocean path, he held out his hand and called for an opteran. None came.
Some fliers always waited over Bay Station, kept by contract with RKC. If they were gone, something must have so shaken the firm that its routine contracts failed. Even Qet’s death should not have done that much damage.
Or else the god’s murderer had killed the fliers, too.
He walked back to the island, and paced along the coast. Gulls cried and waves spent themselves on sand. In a small artificial bay, he found a pier. A few coracles and a supply barge rocked in the water. Had the attackers been so shortsighted as to leave the boats seaworthy? Then again, why torch them if no survivors remained to sail home?
Caleb had never felt comfortable on the water. The ocean was a terrible thing, domain of creatures greater than man. Brave souls plied its surface, geniuses and madmen driven by the promise of foreign wealth. There were few Quechal fishermen anymore—with Qet gone, the ocean grew restless, and not even the King in Red could tame all the creatures of the deep.
Caleb stepped into a coracle, untied it from the dock, and dipped the oar into the water.
Glyphs on the coracle’s hull glowed silver, and the oar grew heavy in his hand. When he paddled, a swell rose behind the tiny boat to bear it up and forward.
Caleb’s first stroke carried him ten feet from the dock, his second ten feet farther. Paddle by paddle, spray on his face and fear in his heart, he guided his craft into the open harbor and rowed toward the city, leaving island and ruined tower behind.
He rowed east, on the breast of the tide, and tried not to think about Mal.
37
When he neared the docks, he heard nothing. Eclipse or no, by six in the morning the city should have twitched into grudging motion: horses neighing, optera buzzing, airbuses wallowing through the sky. Seventeen million inhabitants of the urban sprawl should be murmuring, cursing, muttering good morning over coffee.
Waves broke against the beach.
Smoke rose from the Skittersill, and Wardens swarmed in the smoke, more than Caleb remembered ever seeing in flight at once. The sky belonged to them. No optera, or airbuses, or commuter drakes flew this morning. Skyspires glimmered silent, and watched.
Caleb quickened his stroke, and soon approached the shore north of the shops and Ferris wheels of Monicola Pier. Revelers littered the beach, unconscious mostly, wrapped in surf and their own hangovers. Couples slept tangled under blankets, arms and legs and ropes of black hair trailing out from under cloth. Kegs of corn beer squatted on the sand beside smoldering barbecue pits.
Not everyone was asleep. A few dark heads peeked up to stare at the smoke rising from Bay Station and the city.
His coracle stuck in wet sand ten feet from shore. No flailing with the oar would drive the vessel nearer to solid ground. Caleb untied his shoes, removed his pants, folded the one around the other, and barefoot, clad in boxers, shirt, and jacket, stepped into the knee-deep water. On one shoulder he held his bundled clothes, and over the other shoulder he carried the oar. A weapon might be useful. Or not.
Wardens turned in the sky. Was Four up there, with her squad?
The water chilled his legs. A jagged shell—he hoped it was a shell—scraped the bottom of his left foot. The few inebriates and revelers awake gaped at him as he walked out of the water. He wondered why they stared, then realized that the scars on his legs were glowing. Why, he didn’t know.
The onlookers kept their distance as Caleb dried his legs on a discarded towel and donned slacks, belt, socks, shoes again. He slung the oar over his shoulder, and waded through sleepers to the road.
“What’s going on?” asked a woman covering herself with a red blanket.
“I have no idea,” he said, and walked past her into the city.
