scream?
As Tara struck the deep and primal unifying terror, unseen machines channeled her through that fear, tore her to a gurgle of white noise like grinding glass and seashore rush and trills on a sharped violin.
And she was through.
Panting. Crouched. Naked.
She made herself clothes: the cream-colored suit Shale bought her. Arranged her hair. Looked down through glass into a city.
She crouched under Rampart Boulevard in Alt Coulumb’s Central Business District. Skyscrapers plummeted to a vanishing point beneath her. Men and women and golems and snakelings and skeletons strolled below, their feet inches from hers, separated by a translucent pane of crystal perfectly flat on Tara’s side. They did not realize they walked upside down. Robes, slacks, and dresses draped in the usual way. Braids did not fall up. A carriage rolled past. She heard nothing.
Stomach and world turned somersaults together. She looked up in hope of relief.
Bad idea.
She stood on what seemed a crystal plane, beneath which Alt Coulumb jutted down into blue sky. But the plane was in fact a shallow bowl rising in slow swell on all sides, here slashed with ocean froth, there scraped with green, the crystal curve at vision’s edge so tall it would shame the tallest mountain Tara had ever seen—no, not the bottom of a bowl at all. She craned her neck back and back, and far above the walls arched and joined to a domed roof, and up there she saw stars that were streetlights and stars that were also stars.
She stood in the empty inside of the globe.
She felt the architecture of this dream. She could scream into the void. She could pound the glass with enough force to crack planets and burn stars. It would never break. The world’s hollow heart was her empire and her tomb.
But she was not alone.
Abelard lay beside her, moaning. He flickered in and out, by turns old and young, corpse shriveled, rotten, infant, empty robe, man-shaped inferno.
The dream’s third occupant stood with her back toward them—a slender woman in a dark suit, with short storm-white hair. This was a strange angle from which to see Elayne Kevarian. With her back turned, she might be anyone.
She was not.
Ms. Kevarian took a silver watch from her pocket. She snapped it open, consulted its face, closed it again.
Tara gripped Abelard’s shifting shoulder. “Pull yourself together.”
The shivers slowed, and his form congealed. She helped him to his feet. “Thank you,” he said. In the crystal globe’s silent center, even a whisper carried. “Does everything you do hurt this much?”
“Are you both decent?” Ms. Kevarian asked. “I have a tight schedule.”
“Yes,” Tara said.
Her old boss’s footsteps were loud as drumbeats as she turned. The face was much as Tara remembered: sharp, marked with thin lines cut by decades of Craftwork. Black eyes flicked over Tara, right to Abelard, and back to Tara for a second review. The mouth, efficient as a lizard’s, turned up at one corner. “It is good to see you, Ms. Abernathy. I’ve heard much about your work with the Church of Kos. The community is palpably relieved Kos’s church finally has a competent full-time advisor—even if their gain was my loss.”
She felt a thrill. Once she would have done anything to please this woman. Once? “It’s good to see you, too,” she said. “You remember Abelard?”
“Of course. You have come up in the world, Technician. Congratulations.”
He bowed his head, too nervous for the formality to take. “Thank you.”
“You’re on a case?” Tara said.
“As ever. The Shining Empire this time. A member of their Divine Guard has died. I’m charged to resurrect her without disturbing the giant monster whose consort she is. An interesting problem. What can I do for you?”
“I don’t suppose you can tag out of your current case for a few days? We have a situation here.”
“Kos is in trouble,” Abelard said. “And Seril.”
“In three days,” Tara explained, “our creditors and shareholders will challenge Kos’s by attacking Seril. I have to focus on a long shot that might save us, and I need—we need,” she corrected with a glance to Abelard, “to stall the enemies at the gates.” She produced a folded document: a copy of Ramp’s challenge.
“Who’s the opposing counsel?”
“Madeline Ramp, with Daphne Mains assisting.”
“Ramp. Interesting.”
“You’ve worked with her?”
“A practicing theorist—the most dangerous kind.” Ms. Kevarian flipped through the document. She nodded at various points. “Ramp was involved—you’re aware of the Alt Selene outbreak, in the eighties?”