A city-sized web of light hung between Elayne and the abyss. The web’s strands were thicker than mountains, its bonds firm as those at an atom’s heart. She scourged the web with Craft. She sliced its strands with fine logical blades, burned them with fury and frustration, lashed them with waves of flame and bound them in paradox.
The web endured. From this side, at least, it was unbreakable.
She drifted through interstices the size of city blocks, into the below. Great and terrible beings moved around her, like the blind fish that swam at the ocean floor. She ignored them, and struck the web from underneath. If she—one woman, alone—could force the slightest flaw in this edifice, could sever its most slender strand, it would never endure a full-on attack. A demonic incursion would bring more might to bear than even Elayne could manage.
She raised both hands. Talons of shadow boiled up from the deeps, hooked the web, and pulled down. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her arms shook with effort. The web twisted and stretched, but did not break.
“Are you satisfied?”
She did not acknowledge Judge Cafal’s presence, or her question, at first. Slowly, methodically, she tested other angles of attack, with no more success.
At last, defeated by her own creation, she rose through the black. A demon caught her around the ankle with a barbed-wire tongue and tried to pull her down into its gaping maw. She killed it, tore the tongue from her leg, and joined the judge in the vasty heavens.
Cafal here looked no different from Cafal in the fleshy world. Seeming and soul in perfect accord: Elayne respected that.
“Your honor. I thought you would be asleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “A hazard of the profession. Given the Skittersill’s troubles, I thought I might check your new wards. I did not expect to find you trying to destroy them.”
“Testing,” she corrected. “A signed contract binds all parties, whatever their feelings after the fact. The Skittersill riot should not damage the wards. But theory and practice seldom see eye-to-eye.”
Cafal laughed. “Don’t I know it. You found the wards secure, of course.”
“Yes.”
“Then why so glum?”
“I’m not,” she said.
“You wrought well, counselor. You knew that. You’re not here because you’re afraid you missed a weakness. You’re here because you hope you did.”
She considered lying, or playing dumb, and decided both tactics were beneath her. “We can’t stop violence in Chakal Square. Conflict is self-sustaining: when attacked, Wardens respond with force. The crowd meets that force with force, and so on. We need to dampen this resonance. We have something they want: the Warden Zoh. But they have nothing we desire, and so the King in Red does not need to listen to them. If the wards were flawed, we would have to resume negotiations.”
“You are dangerously close to violating your fiduciary duty.”
“My client’s current course of action is detrimental to his long-term interests. I am more faithful to my client than he is to himself.”
“That kind of faith is beyond your remit. The King in Red is in good standing with the Courts. The Skittersill ward remains strong, as you see. You built the thing, and even you can’t break it.”
“We have to stop the fighting,” she said.
The judge raised one eyebrow. “Do we?”
The answer seemed so obvious that Elayne checked herself before speaking, as if she were back in a Hidden Schools classroom. “I see.”
“The King in Red and his people have a civil disagreement. The court has no place in this.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you had seen what’s happening in the Square.”
“Perhaps not,” Cafal said. “But the Craft can only do so much.”
“Is that why we fought, your honor? To let people die needlessly because the Craft can only do so much?”
“We fought,” she said, and stopped. “I fought, that is, because people were trying to kill me, and I would be dead now if I let them succeed. You were young, then. I think the young fight for different reasons, or tell themselves they do.”
“Kopil is wrong,” Elayne said. “He’s hurting himself, and the city.”
“No Craft this court can offer will bend him to your will.”
“Then I’ll find another way.”
She thought she kept her voice neutral, but there must have been something naked in it. The judge reached out to her. “Elayne—”
But she was gone.