“He’s a jerk.”
“And a murderer. And he just saved our lives, which, I know, doesn’t excuse the rest of it.” He leaned against the door, fighting exhaustion.
“Are you okay?”
Kopil’s empty unmade bed looked more comfortable than any he had seen in years. He wanted to lie there and vanish. “I’m tired. And I keep thinking about Mal.”
Teo sank into the red armchair. Neither of them spoke. She wove her fingers together, unwove them. “If she comes, and tries to stop us, what will you do?”
“I … I’ll fight her,” he said. “And I’ll die. She’s stronger than you can imagine. She’ll kill me.”
“What if she doesn’t, though? What if you win?”
He looked away.
She walked to him. In her eyes he saw himself reflected, a cutout shade, barely human.
In the kitchen, wood splintered, china broke, cutlery clattered on stone. Temoc appeared at the threshold, dignified and calm. “I have found the entrance to his office.”
The moon rose, and rising lost its light. Black sphere in a dusky sky, it stalked the sun.
Mal sat cross-legged above the city. Her mind moved with the serpents, turning in uneasy slumber. They whispered to her in High Quechal and tongues older still, brutal cries from the birth pangs of the world. Their dreams surrounded her like gallowglass tendrils, and they burned.
Where was Caleb? Somewhere safe, she hoped, and doubted. He was not the type to hide.
At Andrej’s on the day of the Heartstone acquisition, the day Kopil betrayed himself with a kiss, she had danced with Caleb on an empty floor. They danced without touching: she wrapped him in Craft and he grabbed her by those same ties. They were dancing now. How he thought to stop her, she could not imagine, but he would try.
She hoped she was wrong—hoped he would hide and wait, and she could find him later, when the battle was won, and explain herself, and all would be well.
And she hoped she was right. She hoped he was marshaling forces against her even now.
She felt the familiar lightning thrill of touching knifepoint to skin, before the small sharp movement of the wrist that let blood flow free.
Craft threaded through the Serpents’ diamond brains, through their pulsing hearts of molten rock. By itself, each of Heartstone’s systems served a purpose: channeling the Serpents’ hunger, dulling the edge of their sleeping minds, drawing them to the surface of the lava to be tamed.
Together, those strands wove the reins of the world.
With a small sharp movement of her wrist, she called the Serpents to her.
The stairs from Kopil’s kitchen were long, straight, and rough-hewn, so narrow Temoc had to climb them sideways.
“That apartment,” he said as they rose, “was once a vestry room. Priests prepared there for the ceremony. Divining stones were cast, chants sung, days named. They shed their own blood and prepared to shed the blood of others.”
“And that,” Teo said, “is why you broke the King in Red’s cabinets?”
“There used to be beautiful murals on those walls, depicting the triumph of the Twins, the sacrifice of Ili. Gone now. Replaced by porcelain and cutlery.”
The gray sliver at the top of the stair grew, and through it Caleb saw the curve of Kopil’s office dome.
They emerged through a thin opening that vanished behind them. The office had changed little since his first visit: carpet, plants, low bookshelves and chairs, and of course the altar-desk. The hospital bed was gone.
Kopil lay sprawled atop the desk, a mug of spilled coffee by his hand. His skull rested on a thick sheaf of papers.
Caleb ran to him, Teo close behind.
The King in Red did not move as they approached. Caleb knelt and lifted the skeleton’s hand. Somehow his bones clung together, as if bound by invisible rubber strings. Hand and arm were lighter than he expected, and clattered as he set them down.
“He’s gone,” Teo said, wondering.
“Can’t be. He’d have taken most of the pyramid with him. Deathless Kings go out in flames.” He rolled up the red robe’s sleeve. Glyphs glowed blue and silver against bone. “He’s alive, or whatever they call it. Unalive. Must be sleeping.”
“More like comatose.” Teo slid the papers out from under the King in Red’s head. His skull struck glass with a dull, dark sound. She fanned the pages, and froze. “Caleb. This is the Heartstone contract.”
“What? The original? The one that’s seventy thousand pages long and carved into stones from here to Alt Coulumb and back?”
“This is the signature page. The keystone. See, here. That’s his signature, and Alaxic’s, and the witnesses’. If this is destroyed, the contract starts to unravel.”
The King in Red must have woken early that morning, if he ever slept. Sipping his coffee, he felt Qet Sea- Lord die, felt the Serpents suck the marrow from his bones.
“He knew what was happening. And he tried to stop it.” Caleb laid Kopil on the floor beside the altar, arms crossed over his chest.
“This changes nothing,” Temoc said. He circled around the altar toward them. “We have no time. We must begin.”
“It changes everything. If we break this contract, the King in Red might wake up. RKC could break free of Heartstone. The board—”
“Their heathen Craft will be useless against the Serpents, as would your master’s if he wakes. Besides, he would see me, and try to kill me. We have no common cause.”
“You do now.” Caleb took the signature page from Teo, and held it up so his father could read the scrawled ink. “If he wakes up, he’ll see that you’re not part of Mal’s plot, that you’ve risked your life to stop her. You have a chance to make peace with him—to keep him from blaming this madness on every religious Quechal in the city.”
“What I have done today will change nothing in his eyes. We are old enemies, he and I.”
The picture in the silver frame stood on the desk, two men smiling, their eyes sepia-black. Caleb remembered Kopil’s voice: everyone thinks they’re on their own side, until the time comes to declare war.
“He might not like you, but he’ll fight beside you.” Caleb searched the desk, and found a letter opener, three pens, a coffee mug long since dry. Nothing that looked like it could dissolve contracts. “Teo, do you know how to break one of these things?”
“There’s usually a mess of protective Craft, but it looks like Kopil got rid of that already. Rip it. If that doesn’t work, try fire. Here, let me…”
“No,” Temoc said.
Teo’s shoes scraped against the floor, and Caleb looked up to see if she had tripped.
Temoc stood behind her, squeezing her throat in the crook of his elbow. Her eyes screamed. She clawed at his father’s arms, his hands, his face. Her mouth gaped for air. Her hat fell to the floor. She jerked her head back, but Temoc tightened his grip.
Her eyes rolled white, and drifted closed. Her body hung limp in his father’s arms.
Caleb leapt at Temoc.
His father turned faster than Caleb’s eye could follow. One fist swept around in a blurred half circle.
Darkness consumed the world.
46
