Captain Maura Varg drummed a syncopated rhythm on the interview room table in the Temple of Justice. A column of light drifted through the high window.
Cat sat across from her, with Lee to the left, composed and silent. “We’re here whenever you’re ready to talk, Maura.”
“Don’t like the beat?” Varg accelerated, drumrolled. “Keeping a different pattern with each hand’s the hard part. And I want a Craftsman in the room before I talk to you.”
“Stop drumming.”
She did, leaned back in her chair, and planted her boots on the table.
“Boots down.”
Varg returned her feet to the floor. “I could do jumping jacks.”
“Cut the shit.”
“Bring me a Craftsman.”
“What possible out do you think you have in this situation?”
“I know my rights.”
“We caught you in a dreamglass factory. You ran, resisted arrest, assaulted a civilian.”
“Civilian? You mean Raz?” She laughed. “Tackled me first. I grabbed him in self-defense.”
“You cut his throat. I don’t think those wings will fly you far.”
“He pushed into the knife. Which he wouldn’t have done if he thought there was a chance it would harm him.”
“Not necessarily true.”
“You know him better than I do? After what, Officer Elle, a few weeks all told on portside visits?” She shook her head. “He’s a mystery to you. You suckered me in here, fine. You seized my ship. You want to play the do-gooder by strangling legitimate commerce, that’s your damage. But you got what you got on false grounds, and I’ll drag you and Justice into court to prove it.”
“False grounds? You brought enough soul into that house to buy a full dreamglass shipment.”
“An agent hired me to make a trade. She told me where to go and when to get there and what to do once I was there. I’d just realized what was happening—I was about to leave before you jumped in.”
“You set your briefcase on the table and picked up theirs.”
“They looked similar. Either way, this stinks. I do business in Alt Coulumb. If I was buying dreamglass, why would I buy from a local supplier? I can just weigh anchor and sail somewhere it’s legal. You set me up, and I want a Craftsman.”
“You’ll get one, don’t worry,” Cat said. “And when you do, I’ll see you go down for a kidnapper, a smuggler, and a slaver.”
“All that just ’cause I cut the guy you want to ride.”
Cat stood. “What did you say?”
“He’s dropped by Alt Coulumb more in the last year than in the forty previous, but I didn’t expect he’d go through all that trouble for someone like you. He didn’t used to care for girls with habits. Maybe he’s slipping. They do, you know, when they’re long in the tooth.”
Cat had grown in the last year. There was a time, not long past, when she would have leaned across the table and broken Varg’s jaw. When she wouldn’t have stopped with the jaw.
Time was past. That was good, she told herself.
Still felt like hells that all she could do was say, “Fuck you,” and walk away.
* * *
“I don’t know how you stand it here,” Daphne said to Tara as they walked down the stone paths of the Sacred Precinct, full from a Business District lunch for which Daphne’d paid. Which was only rational: Daphne was the one making a firm salary.
This wasn’t how Tara envisioned their reunion. They’d talked over lunch—salad, lobster ravioli in a butter sauce, a glass of wine for each—but the conversation stayed light. New books read. Old friends, roommates, rivals moved on to positions of influence. Val worked with Halcyon Vega at Varkath Nebuchadnezzar, which seemed an odd choice since everyone expected she’d go straight into necromancy. No surprise to anyone Chris Li talked his way into a Judicial clerkship, though both had their doubts about how a Xivai beach bum born and bred would adapt to a year in Trälheim. Tara lost herself so deep in the conversation she could almost ignore the ticking clock in the back of her mind, counting the time she should have been at work. By the time the check came, they had broken through the shell of their shared history to find the silence beneath.
So Tara led them to the Sacred Precinct, to stone-edged gravel paths. Around them, monks and priests strolled in hooded silence. Two old nuns laughed across the grass. A bearded man counted rosary beads on a bench.
“Daffy,” Tara said, changing the subject, and Daphne chuckled at the nickname. “What’s the last thing you remember from the Schools?”
“I don’t know.” She kicked the gravel hard enough to leave a trench; small rocks bounced off the toe of her shoe. Mess up the leather doing that, Tara thought. Daphne’s family had enough nice things she’d never learned to care for them. “It’s all muddled. My last clear memory’s junior year spring break. My junior year, not yours, when we went to the Fangs.”
“That’s clear for you? Blood and hells. I lost a day in that mess.”
“You, me, Julian, Chris, Val, Mike Ngabe. Playing soccer on the beach. You got mad at Mike for something—”
“I fell,” she said. “He laughed at me.”
“So you built an affinity between the ball and his sunglasses. Broke his nose.”
“I didn’t think it would hit him that hard. And I was drunk.”
“After that it’s muddy.” She picked up two rocks and juggled them as they walked: a trick, she’d told Tara many times before, of throwing the second when the first began its descent. Tara never mastered the timing of the fall. “I remember working in Professor Denovo’s lab. Really tremendous fascinating stuff, vivisecting gods, experimental faith dynamics.” Tara remembered that tone of voice: the drunkenness of discovery. The rocks Daphne juggled were small; Tara could not hear their impact on her skin. “He liked my work. I remember his smile.” Tara clenched her jaw to keep herself from saying something stupid. “And I remember cutting things open, peeling flesh like a kid opening a birthday present. Working ten hours at a stretch hunting a slice of new knowledge. Draining myself so far I didn’t feel I was moving so much as being moved, like a puppet with a hand inside me. I remember grays. I remember lots of gray, toward the end. Not recognizing my face in the mirror. Waking up in bed in a strange body.” She caught both the rocks and squeezed. Glyphs sparked on her fingers, and a fine dust rained onto the gravel.
“Daphne, I’m sorry.”
She opened her hand. Dust coated her palm, surrounding a small sculpture of a sparrow with wings stretched. Its tiny head revolved. Wings flapped, but the sparrow could not fly.
“It’s the local gods,” Tara said. “They don’t let things fly that they don’t own.”
She held out her palm and Daphne passed her the bird. Tiny talons pricked her skin; it chirped. “I didn’t see what was happening to you until too late,” Tara said. “He was in my head, too. When you collapsed, when they took you home, that shocked me sober. I snapped out of his control. I got revenge, or tried. I burned his lab. They kicked me out. I thought you were gone.”
“I woke up a year ago, in my house, with a headache. I spent weeks in the garden watching flowers. It took a long time to piece myself together. The chance of getting a job was low, but then Ramp came with an offer from Grossman and Mime. They were interested in everyone who worked with Professor Denovo. A lot of our friends ended up there. Ramp is a tough boss, but she has a sense of humor and enjoys her work, which is more than I could say for many Craftswomen.”
“It doesn’t bother you that she used to work with Denovo?”
“He was a good teacher,” she said. “A hard driver, but you’d have to be to get as far as him.”
“He sapped your soul. He bound us to serve him. Our minds pointed where he wanted them to point.”
Something clicked closed behind Daphne’s face. “What did he do that everyone you’ve ever worked with hasn’t? People bind each other. That’s all the Craft is.”
“You went home in a coma.”
“I chose to work hard. If my body couldn’t handle it—”
“That’s what I’m saying, Daphne. You didn’t choose.”
“Fine,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Tara wanted to take her shoulders and shake her, but she didn’t. The bird flapped its wings and sang frustration. “You’re happy where you are?”
“Are you?”
“Of course. I’m helping my friends. I’m protecting my city.”
“Seriously, Tara?” She pointed up. The Sanctum of Kos towered overhead, huge and black, buttressed and bubbled with lifts and turrets and bay windows. “Working for a god? It’s cool you have so much authority, but don’t you see this is a dead-end gig?”
“Alt Coulumb’s an important place, and I’m working for the biggest game in town. Doesn’t seem dead end to me.”
“You can’t even fly here. Working in-house at a church, hells, they’ll never pay you half what you’re worth. What kind of career prospects do you have? Will you take holy orders or something?”
“I don’t plan to.”
“There you go. I mean, I’m sure you think you can do good work here. But did you really leave Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao for this?”
“I saw what my life at the firm would have been. Traveling from city to city without knowing any of them, having clients and colleagues and puppets instead of people. Alt Coulumb’s more than a convention hotel, a handful of boardrooms, and the nice restaurants the firm will pay for. I have friends here. They need me.”
“Friends,” she said, “don’t command gods, or raise the dead, or drink the light of shadows or hunt nightmares or make deals in blood or anything you trained for. I know what you went through to reach the Hidden Schools. Years of wandering the desert working shit jobs, learning whatever hedge magic you could from sun-blind witches and confidence tricksters, all to pass the entrance exams. And once you made it, you worked harder than any of us. Why throw it all away?”
“Because it was rotten. Our teacher was hurting you. Hurting us.”
“That’s not right and that’s not even what I mean.” Her voice rose, and her arms too. Glyphs on her skin glowed and gravel whirled beneath her feet. “You’re so—” But Daphne didn’t say what Tara was. She let her arms fall. The gravel stilled, leaving spiral grooves centered on Daphne’s scuffed shoes. “Damn, I’m sorry. You ran. You were better than all of us, every single one of us, and you ran. I know the in-house rates gods pay, and I know the rent in Alt Coulumb, and the thought of you of all people sitting in a coffin-size studio stressing whether you can pay down your loans this month—it sickens me. If half the stories I heard about what you did last year during Kos’s resurrection are true, you could have written your ticket at Kelethres Albrecht or any other firm. I can’t believe you see your future here, protecting god-botherers from their own dumb mistakes.”
“You want to offer me a job.”
“I want to help my boss. But I asked her, and if you’re looking, we could make room. Not in this matter, of course.”
“I’m not looking for work,” she said. “I know what you’re trying to do. And it’s sweet, Daffy. Tempting, even. I wouldn’t have understood what I’m saying now either, a year ago. I don’t blame you for being who you are, and wanting the things you want. You’re a master of the universe. Congratulations. I thought I wanted that, too. Turns out I didn’t.”
“The schools’ collections department doesn’t care what you want.”
“There are trade-offs, sure. I won’t deny that every few days I want to grab the Council of Cardinals by the neck and shake them until their heads do the bobble doll thing. But I’m doing good work.”
“That’s a god-botherer’s line.”
“The Wars are over,” she said. “It’s not us versus them. There’s room to work in the middle.” She held out her hand. A little help here?
Silver flowed through her mind and down her arm. The bird sculpture hopped twice more, and on the third hop, flew.
“Nice,” Daphne said. “But it proves nothing. Gods took away your wings. Of course they can give them back and call it a miracle.” But her smile was a younger woman’s smile, a smile like the one Tara remembered.
“I was trying to be symbolic,” Tara said. “Hells. I know you want to help me. Thanks. Same goes for you. If you’re ever looking for a change—”
“If I want to crash my career into a mountainside, I’ll give you a call.”
“Deal. I have to get back to work, but there’s a place over by Seventeenth with great frozen lemonade—good for a pickup before an afternoon of doc review.”
“Thanks,” Daphne said. “It’s good to see you, Tara.”
They walked back through the garden. The stone bird flew widening circles overhead.