Full Fathom Five (37 page)

“They aren’t our gods, Kai. Our gods left us. They sailed off across the ocean, and no half-sentient ghost babbling in the pool at night can take their place.”

“Not at first,” she said. “But one day.”

“We’ll never make it that far.” He turned to the window, to Kavekana. “Look at us. Our pretty little lives. Beachside poetry readings. Cocktails with tiny umbrellas. The great and good flock to our shores and overpay for drinks. You know what it’s like out there, over the horizon. In the Gleb. In Southern Kath. The poor swarm Dresediel Lex and Alt Coulumb in hungry millions, yes, but the most miserable gap-toothed glory-addict quivering on a Coulumbite street corner stands on the backs of a hundred men in lands he can’t even name. Do you know what the great powers do to tiny nations with no armies to speak of, atrophied industry, warm climates? Empires may still stand on the coast of southern Kath, but the jungle’s burning. Zombie-worked plantations consume rain forest mile by mile. Northern Craftsmen and Iskari bishops and Shining Empire families trade the locals scraps of soul for the land their ancestors built. In the Southern Gleb, Deathless Kings rule the cities while hungry men and gods scrap over bloodstone mines. We survive because an accident of history made us valuable. And if our value fades, the masters of the world will demand something else from us. Build ships. Grow sugarcane. Bow before Iskari squid gods. Host a military base. Our value is the price of our independence.”

“You talk as if there’s a war coming.”

“Of course there is. You read the newspapers. Giant serpents over Dresediel Lex. A god killed in Alt Coulumb, and the outbreak there a year later. These aren’t accidents. There’s a story here. And it’s not just the big things, the sudden changes and grand tales. Koschei’s armies fence with the Golden Horde across the steppe—because they’re scared. The Shining Empire stretches its tentacles across the Pax, and Dhistran armies train in police actions for an invasion they know will come one day. The world’s smaller than ever, and you put too many big things in a small space and they eye one another wondering who’s biggest. We may be social animals, but our gods are not. They’re hungry, and bloody.”

“You’ve given this speech before,” she said.

His face had flushed red. As he recovered his breath the flush receded, like a flower closing. The old mask returned. “I have,” he said.

“To whom?”

“Monica, first. I don’t think you knew her well—she was a partner, managed the first idol that woke up. She was as scared as me. She knew something had to be done.”

“You killed it. The idol. The goddess.”

“It’s not as if it was murder,” he said. “Just. We’re in a position to hear a lot, you know. Some of the most influential Craftsmen and priests and decision-makers on the planet come to us to safeguard their souls against whatever coming doom they fear. We invested that idol’s soul in mining futures we knew were on the verge of collapse. She died. And so we saved the world. This world.” He rapped his desk with his knuckles. “Our world.”

“Until another god came along.”

“The second surprised us, but we knew what to do. Got the pilgrims to sign off on the trade, talked about exceptional risk and exceptional reward. So easy to convince people when they trust you.” He sat on the desk. The toes of his shoes scraped against the ground as his legs swung. “By the third time, we had a process in place. Not documented, of course. But a process.”

“We’ve waited since the wars for the gods to come back,” she said, and was surprised the words sounded so flat. Stone walls and statues ate the echoes of her voice. “And you’ve been killing them for years.”

“When you say it that way, it sounds bad.” He shook his head. “We’ve been saving the world. One death at a time.”

“And whenever someone found out, you invited them out for coffee, explained the situation. Those who agreed with you got paid off. What happened to those who didn’t?”

“Nobody disagreed.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“No one has. I present the choice, they weigh their options. Now, don’t mistake me: not everyone is happy. Monica, for example.” He sighed. “She couldn’t continue, after the third. She left—took a job at an Iskari soul haven. We decided—I decided, I guess, after that—to have the priests involved sign strict confidentiality agreements. Take their memories of what they’d been forced to do.”

“Which brings us to Mara,” she said.

“Of course, Mara. Delicate moral sensibilities, but a good soldier. Knew that what looked like a choice wasn’t. She wept, but she did the right thing. We let her choose the tools: her brother consults for the Shining Empire, you know, and he let the Helmsman’s plan slip. On the day the god was due to die, she stood watch poolside, knowing she’d soon forget it all. And then you jumped. Tried to undo the hardest choice of her life. I can’t imagine what she must have felt, watching you sink.”

“I spoiled the plan.”

For the first time, he hesitated. He held his hands palms up, balancing. “I suppose, if you look at it from a certain point of view. Your dive caught the Grimwalds’ attention. Which brought the Craftswoman down upon us. But I don’t blame you. I should have expected Mara’s friends to come mourn with her. I should have expected you to do something strange.”

“I didn’t, though.” She felt a thrill as she said it. “There’s nothing strange about trying to save a murder victim. You told me I was mad, and sent me away. I wasn’t.”

“You were idealistic,” he said. “Isolated. You didn’t feel the threat. I thought work with Twilling would prepare you for this conversation. A few months of seeing how little we really matter to our clients beyond the reward we offer them. I didn’t lie to you, Kai. I hope you can see that.”

“The gods won’t stop waking up,” she said.

“Then we’ll keep killing them.”

“The island is changing, Jace. You’re trying to save a world that’s going away. We all have been, since the wars. Old Kavekana’s gone.” She felt a thrill as she said it, a breaking of thick ice. “Something new is about to happen.”

“And if we let it, we’ll all pay. Mara understood that.”

“Where is she? I want to hear all this from her.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well. That part, I think, really is your fault.”

Kai felt the room grow colder. “What do you mean?”

“Your unexpected dive caused the lawsuit. The lawsuit allowed Ms. Kevarian to depose Mara. You remember your deposition.”

Her mind stretched to violin strings and the Craftswoman’s will the bow. “Yes.”

“We Craft our memory blocks well, but Mara—I don’t know whether to blame her stubbornness or praise her perspicacity. The Craftswoman didn’t find anything, but Mara realized some of her own memories were missing.”

I’ve been made partner.
Their breakfast by the water, when Kai was so distracted by her frustrated pride—she’d missed Mara’s desperation. A woman groping among the jagged pieces of her mind for a truth she was afraid to feel.

Jace would have asked Mara to edit the Blue Lady’s records herself—and she kept a single shred of evidence, the stigma of her crime. Unsettled by the deposition, she found the notebook. And once she realized what had happened, where would she turn for help?

“In some ways we must all credit your persistence. Her meeting Ms. Kevarian inside the library dream was a stroke of brilliance; we might not have noticed had you not chosen that night to sneak into her crèche.”

“Mara didn’t tell you I was there. You tracked me through my cane.”

“Well, of course Mara didn’t, but the cane was strictly medical. Telemetry, that’s all. Gave us a vague sense of your location. I wouldn’t have known you were in the library if Gavin didn’t tell me.”

“Gavin.”

“What can I say? Your friends worry about you.”

“You killed her,” she said. If she hadn’t used that word already in this conversation, she might not have been able to use it now. “Mara.”

“Oh, gods, no.” The suggestion shocked him. “No, Kai. Don’t. I mean, how could you even. Mara was scared. So scared, when she realized what she’d done. We had to have our talk again, that’s all. I explained our duty, and hers.”

“She never forgot her duty to our clients. To our future.”

“She forgot her duty to this.” One arm thrown wide, he embraced the view beyond his window, the island in fullest green. “Makawe and his sisters left for the God Wars, and trusted us to watch their island for them. We swore to keep it safe.”

“By destroying everything it stands for.”

“What are half-formed gods next to the lives of men, and women? Next to the lives we’ve built here? Mara was confused, that’s all. She needed help. So I helped.”

“I went by her house yesterday. She hadn’t been home since her meeting with Ms. Kevarian in the crèche. Since you caught her.”

“We talked, after I found you. I showed her the contract she’d signed. I explained the situation. She needed rest. Protection too, in case the Grimwalds and their Craftswoman came after her.”

“Where is she?”

“Here. In the mountain.”

“Show me.”

He pointed to the scroll on the desktop. “Sign this, and I will take you to her. I answered your questions. I was wrong, to keep you out of the loop. Can you forgive me that?”

She nodded, once, slowly. She couldn’t forgive, but she didn’t want him to stop talking. The longer he went on, the more time she had to decide what to do.

“Sign this, and join our circle. You’ll forget this entire affair unless I bring it up. You’ll return to the mountain with honor. Direct reports. Salary increase. You can help me analyze the pool, find out why idols are waking up, and stop them. Sign, and help me help us all. I’ll take you to Mara, and we’ll talk. What do you say?”

She’d expected the offer, the temptation, and was surprised to find herself not weighing options, but looking for the right words. In the end she settled on, “No.”

Jace sighed. “Okay.” He replaced scroll and pen in his desk drawer. “I’m getting worse at this in my old age. Scared and sentimental. A bad combination. I look forward to retirement.”

“You expect to last that long?”

“Of course. And I expect you, or Mara, or one of the others, to pick up for me once I’m gone.”

“You really convinced her.”

“I convinced her. She is being convinced.”

Kai blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Well.” Someone had once told him what an apologetic smile looked like, and he tried and failed to imitate it now. “There are many ways to remind someone of their duty.”

He held out one hand, palm up, and crooked his fingers.

Kai braced—for what, she did not know. A wave of compulsion, a weight settling against her mind, a blow. She felt nothing. Wind whistled through the floor exchanges. “You’re no Craftsman, Jace.”

“No.” He chuckled. “No, of course not. But it’s interesting, you know. I redecorated this office years ago, and everyone was so happy I got rid of the clutter that they didn’t ask why I kept the statues.”

She remembered, then, that there were no floor exchanges in Jace’s office. What she’d taken for their whistle had been a long, high, human whimper. As if from someone Penitent.

Heavy footsteps shivered through the stone floor behind her. A massive hand caught her arm, lifted, and twisted. She rose to the tips of her toes, straining against the statue’s grip. The Penitent’s grip.

“I’m so sorry,” Jace said. “I hope it goes easy for you. I hope you wake up two days from now and tell me you understand. You’re a delicate instrument, and the Penitents aren’t made for delicacy. But you’re strong, too, strong enough I hope not to break completely. You’re worth so much more than a simple watchwoman.”

She could barely think through the pain, but still she recognized the voice with which the Penitent screamed. She recognized this Penitent’s voice. “You put her in here.”

Jace contemplated the space between his shoes. “Solved a few problems at once: Mara, and the poet. These Penitents barely deserve the name. Prototypes. The first ones Makawe made, before we hired a Craftsman to improve the design. They don’t answer to the Watch, or to the Council of Families. They serve the priesthood. Me.”

“The poet,” she said. “You had her kill Margot.”

“Thank you for finding him, by the way. I sent Mara to resolve that particular issue. Claude must have told you that Penitents work best through action: forced through the motions of justice, body and mind grow used to them. Soon it all seems second nature.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Classic projection. My motives are clear; yours, deranged.”

“You’re killing people.”

“I saved us all. You’re the one who wants to tear Kavekana apart. Soon, you’ll understand.” He pinched fingers and thumb together, pointed up, and slowly spread them, like a five-petaled flower opening. Rock ground against rock. A statue by the wall opened on hidden seams to reveal an interior of violet crystal teeth, with a human-shaped hollow inside. “I’m sorry.” She tried to kick him, but he stepped back, and she only succeeded in wrenching her shoulder in the Penitent’s grip.

Mara’s Penitent dragged her. She struggled for purchase on the floor, but her shoes scraped over stone without catching. “You can’t do this.”

Jace looked away.

“Mara.” Step by step they neared the open statue, the crystal teeth. Mara, still Mara despite the Penitent, despite the voices in her head—Mara sobbed, through layers of rock. Kai almost stopped fighting, to spare her the strain. Almost. “Mara, don’t do this.”

Ms. Kevarian’s card. The Craftswoman might not be able to save her, but at least she’d know what had happened. Kai reached for her pocket, but before she could grab the card, Mara seized her other arm.

Crystal spikes caught light like ice at sunset. Mara turned Kai, lifted, and pressed her into the crèche. Kai’s throat was raw. She’d been shouting. She didn’t know what she’d said, if anything at all.

Stone hands forced her back. At first the geode teeth were dead pressure against her jacket. Then they moved, piercing her sleeves, sliding across skin. Mara released her and Kai tried to lunge for freedom, but stone encircled her arm and razor wire clasped her fingers. She fought, spit at the last into the Penitent’s blank face, but still the crystal dragged her in.