“I wish I could believe that.” She displayed her empty hands: a gesture evolved by tool-using apes back in the mists of time to show they bore no weapons. It didn’t work well for a Craftswoman, whose weapons were invisible. “Unless you show me a binding document forbidding mutual support, my clients will not accept the absence of such a guarantee. We move a lot of power through Kos’s church. We’re not here to play the bad guys, Tara. We just want to protect ourselves.”
“What’s the point of a superfluous document?” she asked. “Kos has issued the party in question two start-up grants of soulstuff while she develops her own operation. Plenty of gods offer short-term dispensations of grace. He hasn’t guaranteed loans for this party, or offered regular assistance, as a review of our books will show.” She did not say: and if he has, you can’t prove otherwise. Nor did she say: and I hope he’s listening. “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
Ms. Ramp had a wide smile. “Not for nothing.”
Tara risked a quick blink to survey the conference room with a Craftswoman’s eyes. Standard darkness and lightning lines, distorted by the warmth of Kos’s presence within his temple. Ramp was many armed and wetly glistening; beside her, shadow-wrapped clockwork wireframe, sat Daphne.
Daphne’s hand lay palm up on her lap. Lines of spiderweb silk glimmered there: letters. LUNCH?
She almost laughed, but managed to keep her composure. Daphne watched Ramp, and Tara, and the Cardinals and Abelard, with the determination of the perfect young associate.
“I,” Ms. Ramp said, “will review Kos’s recent records myself this afternoon. I hope what I find confirms your story, and sets my clients at ease.”
“Of course,” Tara replied, to both.
27
Captain Maura Varg drummed a syncopated rhythm on the interview room table in the Temple of Justice. A column of light drifted through the high window.
Cat sat across from her, with Lee to the left, composed and silent. “We’re here whenever you’re ready to talk, Maura.”
“Don’t like the beat?” Varg accelerated, drumrolled. “Keeping a different pattern with each hand’s the hard part. And I want a Craftsman in the room before I talk to you.”
“Stop drumming.”
She did, leaned back in her chair, and planted her boots on the table.
“Boots down.”
Varg returned her feet to the floor. “I could do jumping jacks.”
“Cut the shit.”
“Bring me a Craftsman.”
“What possible out do you think you have in this situation?”
“I know my rights.”
“We caught you in a dreamglass factory. You ran, resisted arrest, assaulted a civilian.”
“Civilian? You mean Raz?” She laughed. “Tackled me first. I grabbed him in self-defense.”
“You cut his throat. I don’t think those wings will fly you far.”
“He pushed into the knife. Which he wouldn’t have done if he thought there was a chance it would harm him.”
“Not necessarily true.”
“You know him better than I do? After what, Officer Elle, a few weeks all told on portside visits?” She shook her head. “He’s a mystery to you. You suckered me in here, fine. You seized my ship. You want to play the do-gooder by strangling legitimate commerce, that’s your damage. But you got what you got on false grounds, and I’ll drag you and Justice into court to prove it.”
“False grounds? You brought enough soul into that house to buy a full dreamglass shipment.”
“An agent hired me to make a trade. She told me where to go and when to get there and what to do once I was there. I’d just realized what was happening—I was about to leave before you jumped in.”
“You set your briefcase on the table and picked up theirs.”
“They looked similar. Either way, this stinks. I do business in Alt Coulumb. If I was buying dreamglass, why would I buy from a local supplier? I can just weigh anchor and sail somewhere it’s legal. You set me up, and I want a Craftsman.”
“You’ll get one, don’t worry,” Cat said. “And when you do, I’ll see you go down for a kidnapper, a smuggler, and a slaver.”
“All that just ’cause I cut the guy you want to ride.”
Cat stood. “What did you say?”
“He’s dropped by Alt Coulumb more in the last year than in the forty previous, but I didn’t expect he’d go through all that trouble for someone like you. He didn’t used to care for girls with habits. Maybe he’s slipping. They do, you know, when they’re long in the tooth.”
Cat had grown in the last year. There was a time, not long past, when she would have leaned across the table and broken Varg’s jaw. When she wouldn’t have stopped with the jaw.
Time was past. That was good, she told herself.
Still felt like hells that all she could do was say, “Fuck you,” and walk away.
*