The judge cleared her schedule—unheard-of in Elayne’s experience, but the King in Red was not a normal client and this was not a normal case. Cafal’s assistant ushered them to the inner office. The judge sat behind her desk, the same deep lines graven in the same square face, the same broad mouth fixed in the same passionless disapproval. Her sharp blue raptor’s gaze flicked over the three of them, lingered on Elayne, and settled at last on Temoc, who returned the stare without expression. Elayne thought about cats and kings, and wondered which was which.
Cafal addressed Elayne first. “Counselor. Have you fixed your problem?”
“Yes, your honor. The Chakal Square Committee have agreed to a compromise. They send Temoc Almotil as their representative.”
“Does he have Craft training?”
“I am a theologian,” Temoc said.
“Enough to understand the agreement under discussion?”
He nodded.
“It’s irregular for someone to claim authority in my court without a document to prove it. Do you really speak for those people?”
“Would we have met with him for the last two days if he did not?”
“You’re against a wall, counselor. In your situation, I might be tempted to meet with anyone willing to meet with me.”
“With all respect.” Temoc did not raise his voice, but they all looked at him. “Evidence is an echo of truth. My people have sent me, and so I am here.”
Cafal’s laugh inspired neither confidence nor comfort. “Such responsibility. Good thing you have broad shoulders.”
“My shoulders have little bearing on the situation.”
“I’ve seen your name in the papers, Temoc Almotil. But it’s interesting to learn what sort of man you are in person.”
Cafal snapped her fingers, and they stood astride Dresediel Lex. The twin suns of her eyes cast their shadows down its alleys and over its pyramids.
“Very well,” said the judge from the vast and arching sky. “Show me your deal.”
* * *
After two days in the Chakal Square tent, after Bel and the Major and Kapania Kemal, after the staring crowd and the brewing riot and the red-arms and the demon wind and the faces in the sky, Elayne found the afternoon’s work straightforward. Not that it was easy—Cafal’s gaze was implacable, her mind sharp. But she did not jag sideways in the middle of an argument to question the philosophical foundations of the Craft, nor did she object to basic terms of art.
Temoc answered questions, when questions came. Explained, patiently, about spiders, and about webs, about the Skittersill protesters’ need to know their lives would not be sold out from under them. Crossed his arms, and rarely let his hand drift to the hilt of his knife.
Easy. But when the judge said, “So mote it be,” and they fell back from the dream in which three long strides could compass the distance from Worldsedge to Stonewood, into their ill-fitting bodies, when they shook hands and congratulated one another on a job almost done, when they left the Court and emerged into the late afternoon, Elayne felt less triumphant than she expected.
The victorious afterglow of the enemies’ agreement in Chakal Square faded fast. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Court of Craft as traffic rolled by, as the King in Red and Tan Batac waited for a valet to bring their carriages and Temoc tried without success to hail a cab, she felt the unease of having walked a quarter mile down the wrong fork in a road. The first year she’d moved to Alt Selene she often got lost without noticing at first: with each passing block the stores seemed stranger, unfamiliar script invaded road signs, caustic spiced vapor drifted from restaurant kitchen vents, until she reached a district that might have been lifted from the sprawling metropolis of Kho Katang. And all the while she’d felt she was on the right road.
Hells. She gave, as always, too much credence to foreboding. Glandular chemistry was subject to pheromones, to context, to the angry orange sky that hung over Dresediel Lex like the sole of the proverbial other shoe.
Two carriages arrived, one crimson-lacquered for the King in Red, and Tan Batac’s black and sleek, drawn by a horse that bore the same relation to normal horses that temple paintings bore to normal men: idealized, exaggerated, impossible. Both pulled off and merged into traffic, drivers whipping the horses’ flanks.
Temoc waved for another cab. This one slowed a fraction before the driver remembered a pressing engagement somewhere across town and sped past, leaving a trail of dust. In another city, mud might have splattered on Temoc’s pants, but late summer in Dresediel Lex was dry.
He’s dangerous, Kopil had said, and he was right. But Temoc was also, if not a friend, at least a person she did not want to see stranded downtown at rush hour. “In a hurry?”
Temoc frowned up at the sky. “I hoped to return home and eat before the evening sacrifice.”
“Good luck at this hour,” she said. “The carriageway’s backed up to Monicola, and Chakal Square makes surface streets even worse a gamble than usual.”
“Then I will go straight to the Square.”
“It’s been a long day. How about dinner first? I know a place that’s fast.”