“I wanted to talk to you about Kos’s resurrection.”
“Talk.”
“We need a strategy for rebuilding Kos, and the first step is for me to understand what the Church wants. What you want.”
“I want.” He did not say those words often, she thought. “I want my Lord back. The way He was.”
“Kos as you knew him is gone, Cardinal. We can resurrect him, but we can’t save everything. I need to know your priorities.”
“Our priority,” the old man said, “is to defeat Alexander Denovo.”
Ms. Kevarian joined him at the tower’s edge. She remembered that tension in his voice from his brief talk with Denovo at court. “This isn’t an adversarial process. We win to the extent we get what we want. Denovo loses to the extent he does not get what his clients want.” Wind filled the silence. Through the mist she heard the mechanical rush of a passing train. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
“I remember when you were not much older than your apprentice is now,” the Cardinal said. “And I was younger.”
“You were.”
“It doesn’t seem fair, that all the things of this world pass—that Gods pass—and not you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I don’t mean you in particular. Your people. Craftsmen. Craftswomen. Lingering on, untouchable.”
His words died somewhere in the depths of the cloud.
“Hardly untouchable,” she said.
“Denovo looks even less aged than you.”
“He drinks the life of those who come too close to him. Steals their youth. Also,” she said after a pause, “he moisturizes.”
She intended that as a joke, but the Cardinal did not laugh.
“Cardinal, I need you to tell me if you’re hiding anything about your relationship with Denovo.”
No response. Far below, she heard raised voices.
“When you met him at court, you behaved as if he’d wounded you personally. That by itself means little, but this afternoon I visited several of your creditors, his clients. They told me he angled for this position. He’s working virtually for free, and that’s not his style. He wouldn’t be here unless he thought he had something to gain, but your situation seems strong. Unless he knows something I don’t.”
Gustave turned away from the abyss, away from her. “You know the Technical Cardinal is responsible for maintaining Justice.”
“Yes.”
“For the last several months, Justice has felt a drain on her power in the early morning. The Blacksuits weaken on patrol, and Justice’s thoughts grow sluggish. Our people determined this trouble was Craft-related, but they could not trace its source. We sent word to Denovo, who was the chief architect of Justice. He came, advised me about our problem, and left.”
“He didn’t mention any of this when you met in the courtroom because…”
“We both felt it best his consultation remain secret. The Church did not want Justice to appear weak, and Denovo did not want anyone to know his greatest construct required maintenance.”
A gust of wind billowed Ms. Kevarian’s long coat behind her like a cape. She stuck her hands in her pockets. She heard, and he heard, the distant repeated cry: “God is dead! God is dead!”
“I think Denovo discovered something when he consulted for you,” Ms. Kevarian said. “Something that made him think Kos was weaker than he seemed. Knowing that, he positioned himself to represent the creditors when Kos died.”
Cardinal Gustave turned to face her. His expression was carefully blank. “Why? What could he gain from his position as counsel?”
“My question exactly.”
Gustave considered this, and Ms. Kevarian, and the clouds around him, with a firm, fixed expression. Saying nothing, he walked to the stair that led back down into the Sanctum’s depths.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Where else? I am going to speak with my people.” His staff tapped out a slow, inevitable rhythm. “I will show them that Kos’s truth endures, despite their weakness.”
“Applied Theology won’t work,” she said, though he knew this already. “Kos’s body may endure, but his soul is gone. He won’t be able to help you direct his power.”
“He appointed a little might for his priests’ daily use. That will remain through the dark of the moon, like the generators and trains and all the rest.”
“Without Kos, you can’t shape and refine his power. If you tried to light a fire you’d end up destroying the fireplace.”
“That,” he said grimly as he descended into the shadows of the Sanctum tower, “will be enough.”
Unseen within the gray erasure of the universe below, the crowd screamed on.
*
Tara stood in the hospital room, and caught her breath. Snaring Cat’s mind had taken more strength than she expected. This cloud-covered city had so much light but so few stars. She needed to be more efficient to accomplish all she had planned for tonight. An interrogation lay before her, combat and pursuit, but at the end she would gain another piece to the many puzzles surrounding Kos’s demise, and, if she was lucky, a weapon to use against Alexander Denovo.
In the process, she might even prove herself to Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, but that prospect seemed distant and barren to her now. It lacked the pleasant warmth that came when she thought of Denovo falling.
Shale lay in the bed, or at least his body did. The nurses had stripped him naked and plugged an intravenous drip into his arm. Risky at this low level of medicine, but there was no other way to feed him with his face gone. The folded bedsheets revealed the corded muscles of his chest, unsettling in their perfection, as if he had been built rather than grown. He was thinner, she thought, than yesterday. His freakishly swift metabolism was already cannibalizing fat and muscle. If Shale’s incapacitation lasted much longer, his body would devour itself from the inside.
She set her shoulder bag on a table across from the bed, beside a vase of flowers. From within she produced her slender black book. Its silver trim glimmered in the dying sunlight. She took other items from the bag as welclass="underline" a tiny gas burner the size of her clenched fist, a folded piece of black silk, a pen, a vial of ink the color of mercury, her small hammer, a pouch of silver nails, and a tiny silver knife.
Last chance to turn back, she told herself. Even now you could probably apologize to Cat. Go farther, and you can rely on no one but yourself.
She undid the latch on the black book. Sandwiched between the tenth and eleventh pages lay Shale’s face. The cool skin twitched as her fingers feathered over its cheek.
Tara unfolded the face, set it features-down on the black silk, uncapped the ink, sterilized the silver knife with the gas flame, and began to work.
*
Cat arrived at the vampire’s door, uncertain how she had come there. Her mind felt mulled, heated and seasoned. Need quickened in her breast.
She was tired. It had been a long and sober night, and a long day in plainclothes, relieved only by the brief ecstasy of the suit. The world felt empty, its colors garish and sharp without the flood of joy to cushion them.
In a moment’s inattention she opened the door and stepped into the vampire’s sickroom. She looked down at him, sleeping: lean and wiry, with black hair. His skin was marble-smooth, burned brown as old leather by exposure to sunlight. Slick, weak vampires like the one who had hustled her last night burst into flame in the sun, feared it like humans feared acid or spiders. This one had built up a tolerance, which took power, grit, and practice at enduring pain. He could sleep comfortably in a room with a window during the day, only blackout curtains separating him from death.
He could take her further down than she had ever been before.
His mouth had lolled open during his profound sleep, and she saw the tip of an ivory fang in the narrow gap between his lips.