The voice stopped.
“Come back,” she told the Blacksuit. “I’m ready.”
*
She nestled the skull in a lead-lined box filled with packing immaterial and followed the Blacksuit to the lowest levels of the Temple of Justice’s evidence locker, past impounded drugs and weapons and grails and tools and artifacts too strange to describe with a single word. She placed the skull box beside his personal effects and warded them thrice with shadow and silver to prevent Craft from leaking in or out. When she closed the door, the light above clicked from red to green.
She woke that night, on her bed in her coffin-sized bedroom, to moonlight through the window. A goddess sang.
Tara’s heart beat fast. She lay in her own sweat and waited for dawn.
*
The day after Tara moved into her new office, once she unpacked her books, installed the nightmare telegraph, set up the astrolabe, and routed out the spy in the lobby, she laid a piece of cream-white paper on her desk and wrote, in large ruby letters at the top: “In Case the Survival of the Moon Goddess Seril or the Presence of Her Gargoyles in Alt Coulumb Should Become Public Knowledge Before She Regains Sufficient Power to Defend Herself.”
This did not leave much room on the paper. Fortunately or, rather, unfortunately, she did not know what to write next.
She stared at the paper. She clutched the pen barrel between her teeth. She threw a tennis ball against the wall and caught it until her neighboring tenant asked her to stop. That consumed roughly two hours, during which no further words appeared on the paper. She walked Alt Coulumb’s streets. She immersed herself in its libraries. She consulted the stars and the scholars of Craft, though in the latter case she kept the details of her query general. She spoke with gibbering horrors from beyond the edges of time, and erected elaborate palaces of possibility, networked and interlaced contingencies, none of which satisfied.
After all this, she returned the paper to her desk and wrote, in small letters beneath the overlong heading: “We are probably screwed.”
Then she burned the paper, because it was a stupid document to leave lying around, even in an office secured by the finest geases and traps she, a graduate of the Hidden Schools, could Craft.
Tara scattered the ashes in Alt Coulumb’s harbor on three separate days. Then she devoted herself to Establishing a Sufficient Worshipper Base for Seril, and to the other, more public duties of the in-house counsel for Alt Coulumb’s other, more public God—and in this manner she passed a nervous year, until Gabby Jones spoiled everything.
2
Stone wings shook Alt Coulumb’s nights, and godsilver shone from its shadows.
Gavriel Jones fled through garbage juice puddles down a narrow alley, panting tainted humid air. Dirty water stained the cuffs of her slacks and the hem of her long coat; behind, she heard the muggers’ running feet.
They did not shout after her. No breath was wasted now. She ran and they pursued.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, was the mantra her mind made from the rhythm of her run. She’d broken the oldest rules of city life. Don’t walk through the Hot Town alone after midnight. Don’t mix white wine with red meat, look both ways before you cross, never step on cracks. And always, always give them your purse when they ask.
She ran deeper into the Hot Town, beneath high shuttered windows and blank brick walls scarred by age and claw. She cried out, her voice already ragged. A window slammed.
Above, a full moon watched the chase. Ahead, the alley opened onto a broad, empty street. Beneath the sour-sweet stink of rot, she smelled spiced lamb. Someone was selling skewers on the corner. They might help her.
She glanced back. Two men. Three had approached her when she ducked into the alley for a cigarette. Where was the third?
She slammed into a wall of meat. Thick arms pulled her against a coat that smelled of tobacco spit and sweat. She kneed him in the groin; he pulled his crotch out of reach, hissed, threw her. Gabby slammed to the ground and splashed in a scummy puddle.
She kicked at his knee, hard but too low: the steel toe of her boot slammed into his shin but didn’t break his kneecap. He fell onto her, hands tangled in her clothes, her hair. She hit his nose with the crown of her head, heard a crunch. He was too far gone on whatever dust propelled him to feel pain. He bled onto her face; she jerked her head aside and pressed her lips closed, don’t get any in your mouth don’t get any in your mouth—
The others caught up.
Strong hands tore the purse from her, and she felt her soul go with it. They tossed her life between them. The boot came next, its first hit almost delicate, a concertmistress drawing a fresh-strung bow across clean strings. Still hurt, though. She doubled around the leather, and gasped for air that didn’t reach her lungs.