The sun’s last splinter passed beneath the horizon. The moon hung full.
In the ensuing pause, Daphne beneath her shells noticed how still the city seemed. They were not far up: there should have been noise, rumbles of traffic and murmurs of distant conversation. Instead she heard only a cathedral silence.
*
Cat and Raz crouched on a Business District rooftop, looking up. The court’s wheel hung naked in the sky. No lightning lanced from it, no shadow spread to devour the newly risen stars.
“You’re okay?” He touched a bruise on her arm.
“It’s fine,” she said, but did not draw her arm back. “Dockside trouble this afternoon. Big fight among the foreign sailors.”
“Rioting?”
“Not as much as you’d expect. Small disasters kept us busy. Fires. A bit of looting down by the university, kids being kids.”
“Looks like it’s time,” he said, with a nod to the sky. “That was Tara’s cue.”
“I know.”
“No word from her?”
“Not since the last nightmare two days back.” She ran her fingers through rooftop gravel. “Seril says she’ll be here, if we can hold the line.”
“How long?”
This was the part she didn’t like. No, strike that. Made it sound like there was only one part she didn’t like. “Three hours.”
“Gods.”
She didn’t give the obvious reply.
“You see why I try to have as little to do with the mainland as possible.”
“If you wanted me to believe the ocean was any better, you never should have shown me what goes on beneath.”
“I have a whole thing,” he said, “a speech, really, about how the ocean doesn’t lie to you.”
“That’s nice.”
“What if Tara doesn’t show?”
She touched the goddess statue on its chain around her neck. “Then we’ll fight.”
*
Shadows globed the circle. The Judge frowned. “Ms. Abernathy is not in evidence, Counselor.”
Wakefield nodded. “I apologize. I was not informed of her delay.”
“Will you stand for Seril, then?”
“Beyond my remit, I’m afraid.”
“In which case we’ll have to continue without counsel for the defense.”
Ramp’s smile might have been a toothpaste ad. “Our pleasure. Ms. Mains?”
Daphne opened her claws, called upon her power—and stopped.
Spotlights burned her, blinding, so many colors they blended into white. Stone wingbeats filled the sky. The night moved—not with Craft, but with gargoyles.
She’d seen them before, though never all at once, never so near, never with wings spread and gem eyes burning. From a distance they were admirable weapons. Up close— Some part of Daphne Mains was always screaming. But her innermost core, which felt nothing at all, still wondered at their form and strength.
A gargoyle hovered outside the circle, wings spread, fangs bare. A silver circlet shone from her brow. Enormous meathooks and machines of Craft pierced the Judge and grafted power to her. Authority radiated from the gargoyle, because of who she was.
The world held powers older than the Craft, Daphne thought.
None greater, though.
“I am Aev,” the gargoyle said. “Leader of Seril’s children. We have come to defend our Mother.”
Wakefield looked nonplussed. Even the Judge shifted uncertainly on her throne.
Daphne smiled razors, raised her hands, and called upon dark powers.
And then the night was claws and teeth and wings.
64
The square fell silent when Ellen climbed the Crier’s dais.
Gabby watched her from the blanket she shared with Mandy the university janitor and Xiaofan who worked in data entry for an uptown Craft firm and a Hot Town beggar girl who didn’t tell Gabby her name when she asked. The rest of the crowd watched, too.
Ellen was not used to public speaking. No matter how you prepared there was no way to know how you would feel the first time you spoke and a few hundred people listened. Mercenaries talked the same way about battle: there are those who grow accustomed, those trained to it, and those born. No one learned they were the last until they shed blood.
Ellen had worked a miracle the last two days, by assembling so many people, and performed actual miracles as well, but she had a small voice and swayed under the crowd’s attention.
“Seril needs us,” Ellen said. “The battle takes all Her strength. Aid will come, but She has to build a bridge to bring it here.”
She pressed her hands together.
“We’re different people,” she said. “We all have different visions of Her, but She is the same. Help us, if you can. If She’s meant anything to you, let Her draw upon you now. Please.”
I’m just going to watch, Jones told herself.
That’s all. Watch, and listen.