Nothing?
Moonrise over Alt Coulumb seen from the ruined orrery. From the air, gargoyle-borne, the city’s rampant streets made sense the way some abstract paintings did, the ones mad drunks made by throwing cans of paint onto canvas. Dancers twirled at the Club Xiltanda. These were beautiful and broad, too large to hold in the mind. But she remembered Cat, and Abelard that night in the tower: I don’t trust God anymore. And, later, in the airport, an awkward embrace.
Nothing, no thing, was worth what she was about to do.
Maybe some people were.
She opened her mouth. “I—”
“I’ll do it.”
She turned, too shocked to speak.
Shale stood beside her, bleeding silver through his cracks. Carbon scores crisscrossed his chest. One arm had burned black to the elbow. Fire dripped from him. The elementals were gone. He must have beaten them back while she wasn’t looking.
Acceptable/vessel/
“No,” she said. “No, dammit.”
“It’s the right choice,” he said.
“It’s not any kind of choice. We are not doing this. I won’t let you.”
“We need you to finish the negotiation. To get back to the city.”
“If Seril loses you, She’ll—”
His laugh was shallow and sad. “Without me,” he said, “She may weaken. Without you, She will fall.”
“There has to be another way.”
“You were about to give yourself up. If there was another option, you would have taken it.”
She said nothing.
“I will stand in his place,” Shale said. “You will return, and save me.”
“If we win.”
“If we lose, I would have been dead anyway. And you will not lose.”
“It could take years to get you out. You’ll be in pain the whole time. You’ll barely even be you.”
He shrugged. His right arm hung at a wrong angle. “I have endured worse. My wounds will help: if the Keeper forces too much of herself through me, I will shatter and she will return to timelessness.”
“That is a stupid definition of ‘help.’ You’ll be in pain down here until—”
“Until you rescue me,” he said, and to the goddess: “What do you say, Lady?”
Yes/
“It’s the right choice, Tara.”
It was. That was the worst part.
You can’t outsmart everything.
There was a heat in her eyes she did not want to name. She looked from the goddess to the gargoyle, and back. “Shale,” she said, “is my,” and there was only the slightest pause before she said “friend. If you hurt him in any way, I will carve your bones into his monument. You have slept too long to know that you should fear me, but I am a Craftswoman of the Hidden Schools, and my people have slain the hosts of heaven and bound continents in iron chains. I will snap your spine and drink ichor from your skull, I will break you and the demon downstairs alike and send you wailing together to the stars as a feast for the beings that lurk there, if you give me cause. Do not fuck with me.”
Lightning quivered. Tara did not breathe. Neither did Shale, which was to be expected. He took her hand.
Understood/
Shale touched her shoulder. “Finish this,” he said.
“I will.”
He approached the lightning, and with a wingbeat rose level with Altemoc in the air. He leaned into the red and brought his muzzle to the other man’s lips.
He screamed. A tower fell.
The lightning took him by pieces, darting forks tonguing stone skin before they approved the taste and pierced. His head rocked, his wings draped, his teeth flashed. A hundred ropes or spears of light bound him to the chamber walls. The brilliant central column vibrated like a plucked string, a thunderous cascade that went on and on.
When the world stilled, Shale hung in the light, and Altemoc lay crumpled on the ground.
Tara ran to the man; he groaned. She slapped him on the cheek. No response. Twice, three times, leaving sharp white finger tracks on ocher skin. His eyes opened, neither fixed nor focused. She heard a deep groaning, cracking sound. The ground beneath them shook. So did the walls.
“Who—”
She slapped him again for good measure.
“Hey! Who the hells—where—”
“Introductions later. We need to get out of here.”
He groped for the fallen cane and struggled with its aid to his feet. His shoulders bent into a U. “My people.”
They were waking up, slowly. She scanned the chamber for a tool, and saw, shattered to pieces but still clattering for someone to fight, Oss. Still hers.