“And you’re being disgusting.”
“Disgusting.” He laughed. “You are comfortable when violence is done by others on your behalf—when gods are imprisoned, when men are slain or reduced to slavery, you do not blink. But faced with the need to dirty your own hands, you shudder.”
“That’s not what bothers me.” He pointed to the battle-scape above Teo’s couch. Jewel drops of blood rained from an infernal sky. “People fought a war to keep us from doing this sort of thing. If we sacrifice someone to stop Mal, she’s won.”
“Sophistry. If we sacrifice someone to defeat her, she has lost. This city holds seventeen million people— surely one of them can assuage your wounded conscience in the aftermath.”
“You refuse to even try to think of a better way.”
“Do you not think that if a better way existed, we would have found it somewhere in three thousand years of history?”
“I could say the same about, oh, dentistry. Anasthesia.”
Teo leaned against the back of an empty chair. “Caleb, you’re not helping. Your father knows the Serpents better than we do. If he says this is our only choice, shouldn’t we believe him?”
Caleb’s bruised ribs and burned hand radiated pain.
“The Serpents,” Temoc said, “feed on the souls of our people. The human heart is a focus—the nobler, and more innocent the heart, the better, hence the preference for altar maids and altar men, who are pure in their own bodies. The ritual binds the soul into meat and blood. Death focuses the spirit, heightens its awareness.”
Caleb did not listen.
He stared at the painting of the battle.
Gods fought and died over the pyramid at 667 Sansilva. Temoc and Kopil wrestled in midair, figures wreathed in flame. The flayed body of Qet Sea-Lord sprawled upon a black glass altar stained red with blood.
“Dad,” he said.
“Without that moment of death, without the moment of transcendence, we cannot—”
“Dad.”
Temoc stopped.
“I have an idea.” He pointed to the pyramid at the painting’s center. “This is 667 Sansilva, right?”
“It is Quechaltan. Yes.”
“And this is the altar on top of it. Stained with blood. Three or four drops from every person who’s died there.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve seen it. The whole block’s red-black.”
“What is your point?”
“Thousands of people were sacrificed on that stone. They’ve left their blood behind—their souls, their deaths. Let’s feed them to the Serpents again. Let’s feed Aquel and Achal so much death they’ll sleep for five hundred years. Let’s feed them the altar.”
Teo straightened. “Would that work?”
“It is mad,” Temoc said, “this thing you suggest.”
“Thousands of sacrifices. There has to be some way we can use that. If the altar itself won’t work, pull the souls out and feed them to the Serpents directly.”
“Impossible.”
“Impossible,” Teo said, “or just difficult? Why don’t we try it and find out?”
Temoc shook his head. “Even if we were to attempt this madness, you would not accompany us.”
“I’m not staying behind.”
“You are not—”
“Don’t talk down to me!” She struck the table with the palm of her hand. Glasses rattled on glass. “My girlfriend’s out there, in danger. I won’t cower here if there’s a chance I can help her.”
“Girlfriend?” Temoc said.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” he replied. “You would risk your own death to save the city.”
“Of course.”
Temoc turned to Caleb. “But you will not permit me one sacrifice.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
He did not answer.
“Perhaps you think no one else would volunteer themselves?”
“I think,” Caleb said, “there’s a small chance we might survive.”
“There is.”
“So, death isn’t certain.”
“Nothing is ever certain.” Temoc cracked his knuckles, and his neck. “It may be possible to do what you say—the altar atop Quechaltan, 667 Sansilva, whatever name you give the building, is old, and well-seasoned with death. There are ways, rituals, to extract spirits bound to a place. But I cannot guarantee this method will succeed. Do you understand?”
Caleb blinked. “You’re serious? You think this might work?”
“If we fail, there will be no time to try again. The city will be destroyed. The danger will be great.”
“Never mind the danger,” Caleb said, though he minded it plenty.
“Can we even get to the altar, though?” Teo asked. “There’s a Canter’s Shell in the way. The grounds are crawling with security demons. The altar’s in Kopil’s private office, and gods alone know what kind of wards he has.”
Temoc glanced out the window. “Canter’s Shell. That is what you call the Curtain of Endless Span?”
“I think so.” Her hands described a sphere in the air. “Translucent blue ball, lots of reflections. Looks wrong in space. Walk through it and you turn to dust.”
“It poses no obstacle.”
“Since when is turning to dust not an obstacle?”
“The gods will shroud us.”
“I thought a shell was supposed to keep gods’ servants out.”
“There are servants,” said Temoc, “and then there are servants. A priest ridden by a god is immortal in most senses of the word.”
“I’m not a priest. I’m not even related to one.”
“A god may ride you nonetheless.”
“I don’t like that image.”
“It is the only way through the shell. The feeling is of ecstasy, not violation.”
“That depends on how you feel about gods.”
Temoc shrugged.
“Well,” she said, “if we can get past the demons, I can take us up, as far as the thirty-second story. I have clearance to reach my office, even during a lockdown.”
“If I bring us through the curtain, and you grant us access to the building, can we then reach the altar?”
Silence.
“Teo can take us to the conference room on the twenty-ninth floor.” Caleb spoke slowly, uncertain what he was about to say until the words left his mouth. “I think there’s a back door, a sort of tunnel, into Kopil’s apartment. He brought me there during the Seven Leaf thing—he was on his way to meet an aide in his office. So there’s probably another path from his apartment to the top of the pyramid.”
Temoc bowed his head, and raised it again. Some religious sign, Caleb thought at first, before he realized his father was nodding.
“We can do this.” Caleb heard the wonder in his own voice. He had almost believed Temoc, almost given in.
“We can.” Teo smoothed the front of her shirt. She walked to the coat rack beside the door, and donned a
