“Yes.”
“If he really has been negligent, you can press him out.” Tara set her beer down on top of the circle she’d been drawing. “One afternoon at the Court of Craft and you’d be done. But the Craft is serious.” She laid her hand on the table, fingers softly curled. The sun dimmed and knelt. A chill wind blew from nowhere. A flame leapt from Tara’s palm to her fingers and danced from tip to tip—but flame was not the right word. Matt didn’t know a word for it, or the not quite glow it cast. “A bond through the Craft is as like, and unlike, a real relationship as this light is like a fire. This burns, but there’s no heat, and it has edges that cut, which a real fire does not. If I do what you ask, it will burn your relationship with your father and replace it with a Craftwork bond. It’s an option.” She closed her fist around the flame. Almost-light ran in rivulets up her arm along tracks like tattoos Matt hadn’t seen before. “But there are others.”
“Like what?”
“Mediation,” she said. “Which requires talking to him—with a Craftswoman present, to ensure your bargains take. It’s hard, but offers more chance of healing. If you care. Either way, the choice is yours.”
Neither Claire nor Tara had looked at Matt. He folded his hands. Sunlight kneaded warmth into his skin.
“I’ll be out of town for a few days. When I’m back, if you still want to go to court, I’ll help.” She looked as if she wanted to say something other than what she said next: “Think it over. Either way, I won’t charge.”
“Thank you,” Claire said.
“For what? I only offered you a hard choice.”
“At least I have one.”
Tara pondered her remaining beer. “I have to go. Flying out of Alt Coulumb this evening. Lots to do before then.”
“You seem worried,” Matt said.
“I am.” She stood. “But I can’t talk about it now. Take care of yourselves in the next few days, okay?”
“We will.”
“Good luck.”
After she left, the waiter brought the sandwiches.
44
Tara caught a cab at sundown and settled in to read and ponder fate.
The near crash shocked her awake. The horse reared, hooves pawing. The carriage rocked and landed hard on bad shocks.
Tara dove out the door, blade drawn, shadow-clad, expecting cutpurses, demons, treachery, some machination of Madeline Ramp’s. She found Shale in the center of the road dodging hooves, hands raised. A black leather valise rested at his feet.
Tara released her knife and banished her shadows. “What the hells are you doing here?”
Shale snatched his bag and darted past hooves toward her. “Coming with you.”
“No.” She touched the beast’s flank, and it steadied, though its ears slicked back.
“You needed me to translate. You might need me again.”
“Aev put you up to this.”
“She would be angry if she knew I was here,” he said. “I already bought a ticket.” A white hologram-stamped card protruded from a side pocket of his valise. “I will follow you.”
“I could stop you.”
“You are fighting for my people. I endangered us all two nights ago. Let me help.”
The horse snorted and scraped a spark off the cobblestones.
“Fine,” she said. “Get in before I change my mind.”
He carried the valise as if it weighed very little—not that Tara’s luggage was much larger—but a blink told Tara the bag lacked any magical capabilities, folded space, or hidden compartments. “That’s all you brought?”
“Books,” he said. He pulled the door shut, and they rolled west into the night.
“No toothbrush? Clothes?”
“This flesh doesn’t work the same as yours. Close enough for imitation only. I do not need to eat in this form. My sweat’s pure water unless I wish it otherwise. Conserves salts.”
Tara pushed back the velvet curtain. They rode past a broad dark space walled with brick: a park or a graveyard. Shale would know which. Wind shifted leaves like clouds above the wall. If there were graves, she could not see them.
Leaving a city was like peeling off a sticky bandage: no matter how fast you tried to go, a few grimy traces still lingered on your skin. Even after buildings gave way to open fields, Tara still didn’t feel as though they’d left Alt Coulumb. The skeleton of a burned house stood watch over swaying wheat.
“The moon roads would be faster,” Shale said. “All places are one where Seril’s moon shines.”
“The red-eye will get us to DL by sunrise, and I don’t want to take any more of Seril’s power than I have to. If we need her roads later, we’ll use them.”
They crested the western ridge and took a right turn through a spur of the Geistwood. Stars shone clear in the dark. Tara tasted their light. In Alt Coulumb, where human fires blunted the stars, wielding Craft felt like doing surgery wearing wool mittens. Out here, the mittens fell away, and her scalpel was sharp as ever.