They rode the lift in silence to the roof, which was broad and flat and mounded with feathered serpents. Couatl slept here, coiled. Scaled sides swelled and shrank with their breath. A tail-tip twitched. Wings shivered. Wardens paced among the sleepers, stroked their sides, soothed them.
“Do they dream?” Elayne asked.
“Animal dreams,” the King in Red replied. “Flight and food. Hunting.”
“Is that all?” A crocodilian head peeked out of a ten-foot-tall coil. Its mouth could have swallowed her whole.
“Of what else should they dream?”
“They belonged to the gods, before the Wars.”
“Yes.”
“Do they remember them?”
“I don’t think so.”
They reached the low wall at the roof’s edge. The King in Red climbed up and offered her a hand, which she accepted though she didn’t need his help.
Behind them, to the north, stood the Sansilva pyramids where the gods had died. Here, downtown, most of the buildings were modern, with slanted walls and bas-relief flourishes to evoke old Quechal architecture. Liberation laid waste to these streets forty years ago—they’d been lined with civilian structures of plaster and wood, less durable than sandstone and obsidian temples. Conquerors built the modern city on the wreckage.
They faced south, toward the Skittersill. If Elayne craned her neck she could see the district’s houses: low and street-mazed with adobe walls and brightly painted wood. “You wanted to ask me something,” Kopil said.
“End this. Drop the barriers. Let everyone go home.”
“If only it were that easy.” He stepped out onto emptiness. “Walk with me.”
She did, and found firm footing on the expanse. The ground waited twelve stories down. She triggered a few levitation glyphs, minimum power.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asked.
“Trust,” she replied, “but verify.”
They walked south, moving faster than their pace. Downtown streets latticed beneath them, brilliant lines and luminous intersections. The King in Red took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped it down, removed one, gripped the filter between his teeth, and offered her the pack.
“No thanks. I’m trying to quit.”
“Good idea,” he said. “These things will kill you.” He slid the pack into his pocket, and lit his cigarette with a flick of his fingers. “I should know.”
“Was that what did it in the end? Cancer?”
He exhaled a thin line of smoke. “Damn, I should do this more.” She didn’t ask what he meant. “I went in for a checkup when I was, I barely even remember. Sixty maybe? This would have been before Belladonna transferred you to the DL office.”
“That was ’sixty-three.”
“A couple years before that. I went in with a cough, bit of a rattle in the chest. Joint pain. There was a growth in the lung. They could have taken it out, even then. Would have hurt, a lot, but they could have done it. I figured, why bother? I’d been working on premortem exercises for a few years at that point. I won’t say I expected it—back then we didn’t know as much about these things as we know now.” He gestured to the cigarette. “But you reach a certain age and you take precautions.”
“A certain age,” she echoed.
“I hope I don’t offend. You were, what, twenty at Liberation?”
“Seventeen.”
“So you know what I’m talking about. The long slow night draws near. Looks like you’ve lived cleaner than I did. I was a mess, after the Wars. Twenty-two-hour days. We rebuilt this city with our bare hands, mortgaged our souls a hundred times over, a thousand, to pull Dresediel Lex out of the shadows. My life was work. No time for love, for the gym, for long walks on the beach or any of the other things people who don’t know what it means to give yourself to a cause say we should do with our time. Maybe they aren’t wrong. By sixty I carried a lot of extra weight and a vicious temper. I hadn’t slept eight unbroken hours in a decade. So when the doctor told me what was growing in my lung I wasted a week on self-pity, then said what the hells, let’s get this over with. I wasn’t using the body for anything important. Took a couple months’ vacation, threw myself into premortem prep, wrestled a dragon for the secret of eternal life, hid my death in a needle in an egg in a chicken in a trunk on an island in an ocean in a safe-deposit box down at First Lexican Bank, then went for the final buff-and-wax. And now I can smoke the occasional cigarette with impunity. I recommend early transfer to anyone who asks. Reduces the trauma.”
“Flesh has treated me well so far. I’ll keep it as long as it’s mine to keep.”
“Ever the romantic. That’s the bane of your generation, I think, the youngsters. Though I’ll grant—your body doesn’t seem to have betrayed you as ferociously as mine.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I think.” And, after a few minutes’ silent walk: “You do realize you’re bringing us toward Chakal Square.”
“Really? I thought you were.”
“I’m following you.”
“Then who’s driving this thing?”
She closed her eyes, raised wards, and woke her glyphs before she heard his low stone-grinding chuckle.
“You are an infuriating individual.”
“I had you for a second,” he said.
“You realize I was about to break your Craft, send us tumbling to our demise.”
“Who’s we? You’re the one still made of meat. And anyway, we’d have thought of something before we hit the ground. Now. You were telling me to give up.”
“I didn’t mean you should give up, just that you should end this. Drop the barriers. Offer amnesty. Apologize. At the very least punish Zoh for what he did.”
“Show weakness, you mean.”
“It’s not weakness—they know they can’t beat you. Why not choose mercy?”
“Because.” They stopped. Chakal Square lay a hundred feet below and a quarter-mile distant. Smoke drifted up from bonfire constellations, and the space between the fires surged with people. Any lower and Elayne could have heard their songs and prayers, lamentations and drunken speeches. At this height the voices faded into silence and wind. The people were just currents in the dark.
“Because,” she echoed.
“Because we live off dividends of fear,” he said at last. “This is a city of millions—Quechal and foreign, rich and poor, strong and weak. We are all races, and none. We are human, and not. We are patchwork, and like any patchwork, our seams are our weakest point.”
“Alt Coulumb could say as much. Or Alt Selene.”
“Alt Coulumb’s god binds its people together; Alt Selene has its death cults and warring spirits, both solutions of a kind. We thought our new order’s enemies would be too scared to fight, and for decades they were. The memory of Liberation was enough. We beat the gods, that was the line—and if you don’t get on board, we’ll beat you, too. But these people.” She heard scorn in that word, and a hint of wonder. “They don’t remember Liberation. They think the Wardens are my strength, rather than symbols of that strength, and the longer this siege lasts the more they lose their fear. If dockworkers and fanatics can stand against me in Chakal Square, why not the migrants of Stonewood? Why not the settlers of Fisherman’s Vale? Why not the Midland farmers, who already resent us for taking their water? Why shouldn’t the crime families get in on the deal as well? If Tan Batac and his people saw an opportunity to rebel, they would.”
“You worry too much.”
“A soft victory here will not keep my city safe and whole. A slow successful siege won’t do. I must remind these people what powers hold Dresediel Lex intact. The Skittersill Rising will become a lesson to this city, and to the world.”
New depths opened in his voice: the bass expanded, rumbling through Elayne’s body, buzzing in her eyeballs. Blue flame licked Kopil’s fingers, and sparks darted between his teeth. He grew large again, as his will distorted and shaped reality. When she blinked, she saw him as a nova of blood. Anyone in the crowd below with a lick of Craft could look up and see it, see him, a doomsday sun in the night sky.
“So why,” he said, “should I not open the ground beneath them now? Why not rain fire from the heavens? Why not descend into their midst, shadow-winged with a fiery sword, and walk from tent to tent singing slaying songs? I could ash the rock upon which they stand, dry the fountain from which they drink. I could fill the streets with poison gas and rend their dreams to shreds. Fear would stitch Dresediel Lex together again.”
“And you would have the blood of thousands on your hands.”
“That blood’s already there. I’d add a fresh coat to what’s left over from the Wars.”
“Do you think our colleagues will look kindly on a mass murderer?”
“What is war but mass murder? And they called me a hero for that.”
“There are other ways to rule.”
“Name one that works.”
“You’re scared. Tan Batac, shot in the middle of that crowd, it scared you. Nothing wrong with that.”
“I don’t scare,” he said.
Beneath them, the dancers spun faster.
“If you need a victory,” Elayne said, “take one. But don’t use the Craft. Don’t cross that line.”
“What do you propose?”
“Let the Wardens do their job.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It is. They’re keeping the hostages in the meeting tent, or your oracles would have found them already. You know who the ringleaders are; those are your high-priority targets. Start the press tomorrow, attack with Wardens on all sides. Concentrate the defenders’ attention on their perimeter, then hit them from above. Arrest the leaders. Rescue the hostages. Move dispute to the Courts. Prosecute Zoh at the same time. The riot folds. People slink away. You get your victory. They get their lives.”
“It’s risky, Elayne. Every time we fail, their power grows.”
She shrugged. “So don’t fail.”
“If this doesn’t work—”
“It will.”
“If it doesn’t, I will need to act, to maintain order. Do you understand? My hand will be forced. Fire will fall. I’ll have no choice.”
“We always have a choice.”
“I made mine already,” he said. “Long ago.”
Below a dancer stumbled, and spun out of control toward a fire. Someone caught her before she burned.