“Seril talks to me, sometimes.”
“The gods.” Tara steepled her fingers, and in that gesture she recalled Ms. Kevarian, Tara’s teacher, mentor—and Denovo, too, the monster whose student Tara had been. “They aren’t part of time and space like we are. They’re second-order effects of humanity. We feel them. When we pray, or take the field against them, we … bind them into time. But they don’t do small talk. In general, only saints can hear their voices.”
“So I’m talking to myself.”
“I doubt it. We’ve changed. Take you, for example: you were a bit rudderless a year ago.”
“Hey,” she said, but didn’t mean it.
“And now you’re tied to a being who’s nothing but direction. Maybe that makes the difference. And Seril’s a smaller god, not spread between as many worshippers. So each one means more to her. Or maybe she thinks you’re a saint.” Tara shrugged. “I kill gods and guard them, and raise them from the dead when they die. I don’t pray.”
“But you’re hearing voices, too,” Cat said.
Tara drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. The wall clock ticked. She nodded, once.
“At least I’m not going mad alone.”
Tara stood. “Meeting’s at seven, at the Temple of Kos. Can you come? Please?”
“We sail at eight.”
“It won’t take long.”
“Why do you want me? This whole thing’s above my pay grade.”
“We saved the city,” Tara said. “We’re responsible for it now.”
“I wish someone had told me before I decided to save it.”
Tara laughed without sound. Then she shook Cat’s hand and left.
8
The Paupers’ Quarter market closed at one, and afterward, as ever in time of crisis, Matt Adorne and the other market elders met for lunch at Cadfael’s Bar and Grill.
“It’s a travesty,” whitebeard Corbin Rafferty raged, punctuating his tirade with a long swig of dark beer. “We sacrifice to God and we pay dues to Justice. And in return they let godsdamn Stone Men,” his voice shaking, “Stone Men haunt our streets. Bloodthirsty.” He stuffed his mouth with burger, bit down hard, and gnashed. “We have to do something.”
“They don’t sound bloodthirsty.” Matt lowered his own voice in hope Corbin would match him. Why shout? The rooftop was empty as usual; hells, the whole place was empty this early in the day, with all the office drones at the paper shifting they called work. Every man and woman gathered around the table, Matt and Ray Capistano and Ray’s boy and Sandy Sforza and her girl and Corbin and his three daughters, had put in a fuller day than the suited kids who’d taken to renting Quarter rooms in the last few years, the alchemists’ assistants and junior accountants, payroll associates and lesser Craftsmen and other sacrificial lambs of the Central Business District, could conceive. A market man’s life was hard: rise at three thirty, truck out hours before sunup to meet the farmers and load the wagons. Two hundred pounds of eggs weighed as much as two hundred pounds of anything. Truck back into town in time to meet restaurant buyers and then stand a solid seven hours offering goods for sale. Some men worked harder, sure. Once the construction boys and dockhands clocked out at sunset, dust-caked and sweaty, they’d have earned their beers, but in the meantime Matt and his comrades were emperors of the roof.
And empresses, Sandy would add.
But Corbin raged on. “You don’t know from Stone Men, Matt. My dad fought ’em when they went mad back in the Wars. Lost an arm. They’ll snap you in half if you blink wrong. And you heard the godsdamn Crier.” Corbin washed down his burger with more beer. His daughters sat beside him, tight, silent. Claire, the oldest at seventeen, carved her chicken into squares and speared the squares with her fork; for her, food was a battle you fought so you could fight other battles later. Ellen, middle child, ate quickly and carefully as a bird, and kept her head down; Hannah, youngest, faked the same attitude, the same downturn, but when her father wasn’t looking, her gaze slipped up and left to rest on Ray’s son’s mouth. Matt wondered often about their lives—Rafferty was a man for drinks and a bar fight in time of need, not one you trusted with your home address. “They’re fouling our rooftops. Chasing through our alleys. Flouting laws.”
“And since when have you,” Sandy said as she grabbed a chicken wing, “given a dog’s cock for laws flouted or otherwise, Corbin Rafferty? I’ve heard you say at this very table”—knocking with her fingers on the wood—“that it’s this city’s laws that ruin us.”
“Once I say a thing, you’ll stalk me with it to my grave, Sforza.”
“And stab you through the heart with it to make sure you’re dead, and good riddance to the world.” She laughed; Rafferty’s girls didn’t, and Rafferty himself laughed too loud.