*
The Godmountain’s peak was flat, as if long prepared for this purpose. A stone table and chairs grew from living rock.
They sat and waited.
Shale emerged from the mountain like a bather from a pool.
The Keeper spoke through him.
Ninety percent of Craftwork was talking, so they talked. The conversation lasted three days and three nights. Tara realized as the first day stretched on that she and Ms. Batan were the only people present who needed to eat or sleep. She ordered takeout. Delivery was expensive, so she expensed it.
Sleep, she did without. That was why the Glebland gods made coffee.
On the third day, they built the body. The King in Red forged bones of steel with tools he produced from the pockets of his robe. The Grimwalds spun a nerve lattice from gold and necromantic earth. Tara made rock clay-pliant to shape the mountain’s legs and belly, back and chest and arms and head, scribed all around with glyphs and grooves. She placed a small clock spring where the heart should go, then sealed the chest and stepped back.
Shale examined the body with clinical precision and some disdain. Then the Keeper kissed the form of stone, and poured out through his lips. Red crystal grew in the grooves Tara carved.
The Keeper staggered back, and looked up for the first time in several thousand years at the stars.
Shale collapsed. Tara ran to him, professionalism be damned.
His eyes were green again.
“I came back,” she said.
He held out his hand, and she helped him rise.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book felt like coming home—and homecomings take work. You have to hang crepe paper, bribe the band, roll out the carpets, sneak up on the fatted calf … Well, anyway. Profuse thanks to my editor, Marco Palmieri, and to Irene Gallo and Chris McGrath, for a cover I can make star eyes at (though I didn’t mind the Spock-riding-a-unicorn mock-up, either). Gratitude and praise also to the usual band of readers, friends, and rock stars, including but in no respects limited to Alana Abbott, Vladimir Barash, John Chu, Amy Eastment, and Stephanie Neely. And, as I brooded on the manuscript, Amal El-Mohtar swung in through a window like Robin Hood to suggest a critical last-minute fix. Totally worth the broken glass on the carpet.
Every time I think I have charted the full bestness of Steph, I find whole other unmapped continents of best. If this goes on, um, well, I’d be totally fine with that.
David Hartwell published Three Parts Dead, and read every one of my novels after, and offered advice on each of them—and on each publication day, I sent him a nice bottle of whiskey. This year I have one fewer friend to send whiskey. I feel the loss.