She pointed down.
The rooftops swarmed with silver. Hundreds of figures waited there, tensing to jump.
They whistled like arrows through the sky.
Then the cop hit Daphne in the face.
*
There we go, the Goddess said. Back on track. Are you still— I’m fine, Tara prayed. Just bring the road.
The moon filled from its crescent, and the sky darkened as lesser stars failed. The mountain, too, faded, and the camp below, and the forest, and the Drakspine ridge—everything but the rock on which Tara sat cross-legged with her briefcase.
“What’s happening here?” she said, out loud, to the moon. “I mean, really happening.”
Does it matter?
“Yes.”
We are all patterns after a fashion, though of different orders. I can usher you from your order into mine, and sustain you as you travel. Distance is one, here—the moon is the same everywhere.
“You’re wrapping me inside yourself.”
For a while.
“My briefcase, too?”
Do you always question miracles this much?
“Yes.”
Your belongings will remain intact.
“And my soul?”
If you wish, though it’s a bit bent. I could help you, long as you’re up here. Ease out some of the sharp turns and snarls.
“I’d rather walk.”
I care for my own.
“I am not yours,” Tara said. “Let’s get that clear. I crossed a continent to save you. I challenged gods and Deathless Kings and I left friends behind. I did all that for my own reasons—none of which were, because you told me to.”
The Goddess laughed, but her laughter hitched in the middle, as if She was in pain.
“You have priests and priestesses, and you use them. That’s not my path. I won’t command you, but I won’t be your servant either.”
What, then?
“Your partner. If you’ll have me.”
I love you, she said, strange as you are.
“Do we have a deal?”
Partners. Now, for Spider’s sake, Tara, get on the damn road. Cat won’t last much longer.
“There’s no road,” she started to say, but there was.
She stood. She took up her briefcase, and stepped onto the moonlit path.
67
Corbin Rafferty wandered through the shadows of his mind, down empty streets beneath the bloody blasted sky. He walked the road’s centerline, following moonsong.
Umar trailed him. He was shadow, presence, weight. Corbin did not need to look back anymore. He knew his role.
Near sunset he found himself home, at the apartment he shared with the girls. Lacking a key, he climbed the fire escape outside and pounded on the living room window—would have broken in, but the place was empty. The apartment looked as he left it the night he fell, the night the moon overwhelmed him. The girls had been gone for a long time.
Where?
The song bore him south to Market Square. He had expected the market to stand empty as the rest of the city, and was surprised to find a crowd. The stalls were closed, more than closed, they’d been cleared, pushed back to make room for an audience, hundreds of them, a thousand, even, on blankets and towels, on the filthy cobblestones Ray Capistano had wet with blood each morning for twenty years.
This was wrong. They should not be here. Something had broken his market. He knew its smells of trade and need. No one should sit rapt in this square. Who had done this? Who had stolen his place from him?
He knew. He heard. He smelled the stench of silver.
She was here.
She had convinced all these fools, seduced them with false comfort. But desperation tainted the silver stench. She needed these people to believe her lies. He could show them. This was his revenge.
He ran into the square and followed the gaze of these assembled sheep to the Crier’s dais, where, haloed with moonlight, his daughter stood.
“Ellen!” he roared, and ran to her.
*
Raz watched the war in heaven from his rooftop.
He saw more than a human could; he sensed the forces that warped the world above. But he ignored them and watched Cat fight.
She was more than fast: she was the only Blacksuit comfortable in the air. Some of the others spread wings, but none could stay aloft for long. They leapt, instead, and bounced off shields, or caught in webs of light. Their Suits turned against them. Broad-winged skeletal bats flew from the Craftswoman’s briefcase to tangle Blacksuits in thickets of bone.
Cat wrestled a creature made from broken glass. When the Craftswoman hit her, she bled silver.
Raz walked the blood jade down his fingers, and up again. There was a song inside it. He felt its hunger, bigger, older, deeper than his own.
He wanted it. He watched her.
When?
*
Tara walked the moon road.