Elayne landed behind the Wardens’ barricade and released her opteran to buzz off into the morning.
Black-uniformed faceless figures marched around her, fortifying camp, feeding the feathered serpent mounts: a colony of large and surly ants. More Wardens had arrived overnight. A sandbag wall stood between Elayne and the crowd. Bad omen for the morning of a peace.
She sought the King in Red, and found Tan Batac waiting outside the Wardens’ command tent, thumbs bowing out his suspenders, head bent, investigating his brown wingtips over the mound of his belly. His cheeks twitched, his mustache trembled. Always in motion, even when still—two thousand years before, Aristocritus used that phrase to describe the universe. He might have been prophecying Tan Batac.
“Is that it?” he said when he saw her, and pointed to the briefcase.
She lifted the case slowly and with effort.
“Looks heavy.”
“It is. Only a few slips of paper, but enough Craft’s woven through to make them ten times heavier than lead.”
“I started insurance negotiations after we left yesterday. Hope I can lock in a good price before this drives us all out of business.”
“The deal will bring you more business than it drives out.”
“Of course.” He nodded, licked his lips, nodded again.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“Your sacrifice. If you had not compromised yesterday, I doubt we would have reached an agreement so soon, if ever.”
“Sacrifice,” he said, and “yes,” and: “You’re welcome. And thank you, too. Without you. Well. None of this might have happened.”
He extended his hand, and she shook it. His grip was strong and soft, his palm cold. His eyes remained unsure.
The King in Red emerged from the command tent, robed in crimson and clinging shadows. “Good morning,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”
Batac hid his fragile edges when Kopil appeared. “Let’s.”
Zoh led the Wardens, with Chihuac by his side, all clad in dress blacks: high-collared jackets and creased trousers and patent leather shoes. The King in Red cackled when Elayne noted the uniforms. “This is an affair of state,” he said. “After a fashion. We must show respect. Besides, a little awe never hurt.”
“No,” Elayne agreed. “But.” Quietly, as they approached the barricade. “Promise me something.”
“What?”
“No more sky speeches. And if I ask you to stop doing anything while we’re in the square, especially anything Craft-related, listen.”
“Elayne. I know how to control my own people.”
“These aren’t your people at the moment, and this is a dangerous time.”
“Whatever happened,” he said, “to the woman who razed the Askoshan Necropolis? I miss her.”
Elayne let one corner of her mouth creep upward. “She wouldn’t have survived as long as I have. She didn’t, in fact.”
Kopil raised his hand. A length of barricade erupted, sandbags reshaping themselves into an arch. Zoh led the way through, and Elayne, Tan Batac, the King in Red, and their escort entered Chakal Square for the last time. The barricade closed behind them.
Elayne expected the crowd, the red-arms’ array. She wasn’t ready for the suppressed anger of Chakal Square, for the tension like a long-held breath. She hoped Temoc had stopped the broadsheets. So large a mob, confused and mad, was a solution awaiting a seed to crystallize it into action.
A misplaced word would be enough. A shove, a laugh. A shift in the hot dead wind. Sand blown in the wrong woman’s eye. The path they walked to the tent where Temoc waited might seem wide, but was in fact narrow as a blade.
Temoc, she saw as they drew near, had brought his family.
She almost wrecked it all in that moment: almost grew a hundred feet tall and threw him across the square and shouted, What were you thinking?
But she controlled herself. Caleb and Mina seemed like messengers from a cleaner, more composed world, somewhere beyond the stars. Elayne met Mina’s gaze, offering as much reassurance as she could without breaking character. For the boy, Caleb, she risked more: she smiled at him, and he smiled back.
The King in Red stepped forth, and Temoc advanced to meet him. “We have drawn up the deal,” Kopil said, with the barest touch of Craft woven through his voice so the words would carry. “Are your people ready?”
He offered the amplification Craft to Temoc: a nice gesture, to make his first act surrender. “We are,” Temoc said.
Elayne’s cue. “This briefcase contains our deal.” Likewise amplified. Blood and hells, but she was ready to stop playing for the cheap seats. If she wanted to act out before judge and jury, she’d have gone into another branch of Craft.
Nothing for it. Sometimes even a necromancer had to appear in public. At least there were fewer torches and pitchforks than usual, so far.
“Thank you,” Temoc said.
Before Elayne entered the tent for what she hoped would be the last time, she glanced back to Mina—but she did not meet the other woman’s eyes again before she passed into shadow.
* * *
Entering the meeting tent felt like slipping into a limpid pool after a long hike. They all felt it: even the Major relaxed, free of the Square’s anxiety. Bel laughed at something Kapania said, and Hal poured them all water. The King in Red sagged, and for a moment he resembled a kindly, ancient uncle who just happened to be a skeleton crowned with red gold. Tan Batac was the only one who looked nervous, and one for ten wasn’t a bad ratio.
Temoc entered the tent last. Elayne caught him before he could take his seat. “What do you think you’re doing, bringing them here?”
“This is a historic moment.”
“Historic and dangerous.”
“I did not expect the crowd to be so tense. We are on the verge of victory.”
“To them, victory and defeat look a lot alike.”
“Then let us show them the difference,” he said.
She released him, and they sat. Silence fell. With her thumb Elayne rolled the briefcase tumblers to her combination, opened the latches, rolled the tumblers random again, and lifted the lid. Bill Kemal tensed as if he expected something to explode, but the case was empty save for a manila folder, a dip pen, and a shallow silver bowl. She removed folder, bowl, and pen, set them on the table, and closed the case. “Here we are.”
She opened the folder and slid the document into the center of the table. Five pages, with a signature on the fifth.
“So small,” Kapania said. “I thought contracts like this ran for hundreds of pages.”
“Hundreds,” Elayne confirmed, “or thousands. This is a special case. We’ve done most of the work. These papers alter the original pursuant to your requirements, most substantially the preconditions of fee simple sale and the insurance and protection mandate. I’d like to walk through the terms of the agreement one by one. Please pay attention. I’ll pause for questions after every subsection. I appreciate your holding questions for a pause, since there’s a good chance your issues may be addressed in the text.” Nods around the table. “Section one.”
Fewer questions than she expected, and no outbursts. No major changes—a few words here or there, easy emendations Tan Batac and the King in Red let slide. Before her watch ticked quarter past ten, she turned the final page and said, “Are we agreed?”
The King in Red nodded.
Tan Batac said, “Yes.”
“We are,” said Temoc.
“Sounds good,” said Bill Kemal, and Kapania, “Sure.”
“Yes,” said Bel after a long, slow nod.
“Acceptable,” said the Major in a steel-string twang.
Xatoc said, “Yeah.”
And Hal Techita said, “Sounds good.”
And that was that.
Almost.
She drew her knife from the glyph above her heart, savored that old shiver of corruption and universal wrong. They’d been through a lot together, this blade and her. She kept it subtle; only gathered a little light into the edge. The oculus dimmed to pale gold. “Some of you,” she said, “may find this next part unpleasant, but it’s necessary. You may use your own blade, but unless you do this sort of thing often best let me do the honors.” With a stroke of her finger, she honed the moonlight curve.
They all let her make the cuts, even Temoc. She needed only a drop, in most cases so fine a cut the victim felt no pain until Elayne was done. Temoc did not flinch. Tan Batac bit his lip as the blade descended; she did not warn him this was a bad idea if one expected jaw-clenching pain. She added her own blood, to lend the firm’s seal to the contract. When the bowl reached the King in Red, the others caught their breath. Kopil held out one hand, palm raised. The sparks of his eyes blazed, and wind howled from a distant, blasted plane. The universe blinked, and when light returned a tiny sphere of ruby liquid hovered over his outstretched hand. He turned his hand sideways, and the blood fell into the silver bowl with a plop. No one asked him for an explanation, and he offered none—only leaned back and sipped coffee.
With water added, and fixative, the blood became tolerable ink. Each party signed in turn. A wheel turned beneath the onionskin surface of reality, giant weights fell into place, and, as Tan Batac signed, the work was done. A long-drawn note on the deepest edge of Elayne’s hearing shifted pitch.
This was the part of the job she loved: the world changed, and she changed it. They changed it, together—these people she dragged to the table and guided through darkness.
She clapped. Even Tan Batac joined in her applause.
“Good work, everyone,” she said, and returned the contract to her briefcase. They looked around, stunned by victory achieved in spite of themselves.
Then they rose, and as one left the tent.