The man thanked her with a wave of a soot-caked hand as she swept past. Strings of curses ran together inside her skull. Streetlights cast bright puddles on the pavement.
Brighter than usual, in fact, and of a different color too, as of molten silver. Far off, a giant struck a mountain with a hammer in heartbeat time. She stumbled. Eyes closed, she searched the lightning-lit world of Craft for the source of her sudden weakness, but saw nothing—and beneath the nothing, a tide. Her knees buckled, and she fell beyond herself into a sea of churning light whose waves sang a chord no choir could have matched. And she saw— The market square, unfamiliar faces. Matthew Adorne, bleeding. The fierce man from the produce stall wept beneath a moon that was also a face she knew—mother and tiger at once. And Shale stood before them both, Shale overshadowed by his Goddess, Shale the clawed vector for a Lady who refused to hide.
Something soft struck her whole body at once, as if she’d fallen onto a featherbed from a height.
Rough fingers touched her cheek. Her vision focused and refocused until it carved the beggar from the moonlight haze. The lines of his face mapped a territory of confusion and concern. “Miss?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and realized she was lying on the sidewalk, staring up at the moon. When she tried to stand, the world spun sideways.
“You fell.” His breath smelled harsh and there was liquor in it.
She took quick inventory: skirt and stocking torn by impact, jacket dusted with road, a scrape on her cheek. Unsteady sitting, and more unsteady rising. Her soul, that was the problem: her soul ebbed out, a few hundred thaums gone, like leaves into a fire. “Did you feel that?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Thank you.” She pushed a few more thaums into his hand, but he forced them back.
“You need help.”
“Which way to Market Square?”
“Left at Bleeker,” he said, “but the stalls are closed.”
She could not run, but after she killed the pain receptors in her ankle, she forced herself to a brisk walk.
By the time she reached the market, there was little left to see—only a crowd around the Crier’s dais, and there, interviewing a young dark-skinned couple whose body language screamed “traumatized onlookers,” Gavriel Jones.
“Excuse me,” Tara said to the couple, politely as she could manage, then grabbed Jones’s trench coat and pulled her aside. “We need a moment.”
“Ms. Abernathy. Care to comment on tonight’s events?”
“What did you do?”
“I don’t do.” Jones raised her hands. She still held her notebook. “I came for a color piece, reactions to this morning’s story. Are you okay?”
“Let me see that.” She tried to grab the notebook, but Jones hid it behind her back.
“You’ll hear everything in the dawn edition.”
“Give me a preview. Please.”
“Another gargoyle in the open, and a genuine miracle. I’ve never seen a better prompt for poetry.”
“Don’t sing this,” she said. “It’s not what it looks like.”
Jones looked at Tara as if she’d grown a second head.
“You don’t know the full story.”
“Are you implying, on the record, that there is a full story for me to know?”
“Do not test me, Jones. I might bring you back to life just to kill you again.”
“You use that line on all the girls?” Jones straightened her coat and stuck her pencil behind her ear. “We have gargoyles on the rooftops and a goddess in our sky. A goddess who’s supposed to be dead. What right do I have to keep this secret?”
“There’s more at risk than you know.”
“Fill me in.”
“I can’t.”
“Typical Craftswoman,” she said. “Force a few dead gods to dance for you, all of a sudden you think you know what’s best for everyone. No trust in people.”
Trust, the moon whispered in her ear.
“Don’t give me that,” Tara said. “You say you care about people, but you don’t help. You just watch them fall and write about it.”
“That’s my job. I saw a fight, I saw a gargoyle, I saw a miracle. You want me to help? Where were you? Where were the Blacksuits?”
“You choose what to watch.” She reined her voice before it rose to a shout. “You choose what to say.”
“And you choose what to show me. You know exactly what’s going on here. You’ve known since the beginning. When the church hides, I go digging. And this is the second time you’ve tried to shut down my story.” The couple whose interview Tara interrupted shifted behind Jones, on the verge of leaving. Jones held a hand up to Tara and turned back to them with an easy smile. “Just a sec, sorry.” The couple didn’t seem happy, but they didn’t leave either. “We’re done, Ms. Abernathy. Unless you have something you want to tell me.”
Tara had summoned dead things to walk, ridden lightning; she knew the seventy-seven names of Professor Halcyon. There were ways to deal with this damn Crier, full of smug certainty. She could seize Jones’s mind. Wouldn’t be that hard—tell a story to bring the woman in, lower her defenses so Tara’s Craft could take hold. She’d done it before.
As it had been done to her.