Last First Snow (5 page)

She looked at him with mild disbelief: they were not what they once were, but time had refined them both. Still, there were some lines one did not cross.

“Temoc,” she replied, and pondered her next words.

He almost succeeded at covering his laugh. “Not what I meant. We need to talk in private. Besides.” And then something she had not expected to see: the rock face broke, and he smiled almost like a normal person would. “I want you to meet my family.”

 

6

Chel guided them to the camp's edge. “Thank you,” Elayne said.

The woman bowed. “Good luck.” She set her hand to her heart when Temoc passed; they all did, the watchers on the border.

The crowds outside the camp were less respectful.

Wardens at attention paralleled the dockworkers' perimeter; Elayne and Temoc walked through their line, ignoring the poured-silver faces' reflective stares. Behind the Wardens gathered a second crowd, better dressed and angrier than the people of Chakal Square. Suited men waved signs shop-printed with the logo of the Skittersill Chamber of Commerce. Press passes sprouted from reporters' hatbands.

A sign-bearer spat at Temoc's feet. Temoc's stride hitched and he turned toward the spitter, slow as an executioner raising his axe. The man bore Temoc's gaze for a heartbeat, though it must have felt longer to him. His fingers twitched on his sign-haft, which was no larger around than Temoc's thumb.

Elayne saw Temoc fight a war with himself, and win.

When he turned away the little man with the sign began to shout again, louder than his fellows.

The pause had given reporters time to push through the crowd, pencils sharp, notebooks out. Elayne raised a hand to hail a cab. “Temoc?” A young woman with deep circles under her eyes shoved to the front of the journalist pack. “Gabby Jones, DL
Times
. A moment, please.”

“We have none to spare.”

“Who's your friend?”

“Another person who is leaving with me.”

“Any comment on rumors the King in Red is reaching out to the Chakal Square camp?”

Temoc shook his head.

“Are you denying he's reached out, or—”

A cab tried to gallop past them. Elayne locked its wheels with a tine of Craft, and it skidded to a halt by the sidewalk. The horse shot her a reproachful glare, which she ignored. “He means, no comment.”

“And you are?”

“A concerned citizen. If you'll excuse me.” She ushered Temoc into the carriage, followed, and slammed the door on the reporter. She released the cab's wheels, and the horse surged down Bloodletter's Street.

“I need to learn the trick of that,” Temoc said. “Handling the press.”

“You did well, I thought. It's not as hard as the other thing you did. Or didn't do.”

“When have I ever concerned myself with the ridicule of fools?”

But he did not speak again as they galloped south into the Skittersill.

Elayne opened the curtain to watch the city pass. She had worked on the Skittersill project from afar, and while she could plot their course on her mental map of the district, she did not recognize these shops and parks, the young claw-branched acacias or the hopscotch patterns children chalked on sidewalks.

They stopped by a stone gate in a windowless plaster wall. She paid for the cab, waving off Temoc's protest. Along the street only a few doors interrupted the smooth plaster. Old Quechal architecture presented a blank face to the world.

Temoc opened the gate and led her down a brief dark tunnel into light, and paradise.

Accustomed to a Dresediel Lex of arid brown—save for the manicured lawn of her hotel—Elayne stopped short, stunned by luxuriant green. The courtyard overflowed with flowering cactus and climbing vines. A table stood among the plants, set with a half-finished chess game. A three-stringed fiddle leaned in the shade near the front door. A boy sat cross-legged opposite the gate, playing solitaire.

“Welcome,” Temoc said. The boy looked up from his game, and smiled a broad and shining smile. Elayne would have recognized that expression even had the child not left the game and run toward them across the courtyard, shouting, “Dad!”

Temoc grabbed the boy, lifted him in a hug, swung him around so the force of their revolution made his feet describe a circle. The priestly mask was gone. Grinning, he set the boy down, and presented him to Elayne. “This is Caleb, my son. Caleb, meet Elayne Kevarian.”

Elayne accepted the boy's hand. His grip was strong.

She was still reeling when the screen door opened and a woman emerged: tall, tan, short-haired, with the elegant self-possession of minor royalty and tenured academics. She smiled, too, but there was tension in that smile. “I'm glad you're back,” she said to Temoc.

Temoc moved to her, river-swift and inevitable, held her, kissed her. Her hands seemed sculpted to his shoulders, and their parting was the parting of tectonic plates. Elayne felt guilty for having seen it, for being the pretext on which Temoc drew back and turned and introduced her to, “My wife, Mina.”

*   *   *

Lunch was leftovers—heavily spiced and roasted pork in a sauce touched with chocolate, and oranges for dessert. They ate outside, the dining room table being occupied at the moment by Mina's research, which topic gave Elayne, drowning in domesticity, a spar to clutch. “What do you study?”

“Migratory desert cultures. Mythography and foundational theology for the most part.”

“Exciting field?”

“These days. We're just coming out from under the shadow of Abervas and Klemt, last century—the family-tree model of religious structure.” She ate with her fork, sawing meat to pieces with its side, then spearing, and she leaned against the table when she spoke. “Very Gerhardtian—this sense that cultures grow more complex over time, and by studying modern ‘primitive' cultures we can approximate the beliefs of previous generations.”

“That isn't true?”

“No more than it's true monkeys evolve into men—in fact both came from something else. Cultural development and transformation happens everywhere, all the time—it's a disservice to modern nomads to see them as throwbacks who never made the jump to settled life. Klemt's students missed, well, basically everything pertinent about the subject. Turns out many of the cultures Klemt identified as ‘primitive pretextual' were recovering from post-Contact plague; we got off easy, our gods were strong enough to keep us going until our immune systems caught up with Old World bugs, but Contact wasn't so easy for everyone. Klemt was such a dominant force in the field that people spent a solid century ignoring what their own eyes told them in favor of his theories. Nomadic peoples aren't any more timeless than urbanites—their history just works differently. I spend most of my time in the field, trying to trace it. That's how I met Temoc.”

“We visited the same tribe at the same time,” Temoc said, “while I was wandering. We did not have much in common.”

“I thought he was a self-righteous prig. But adversity makes the heart grow fonder.”

“We stopped a renegade Scorpionkind clutch from infesting the desert with unbound demons.”

“That was the start, anyway.” Mina grabbed Temoc's wrist, and squeezed.

“How did
you
meet Dad?” the boy asked Elayne. He had obviously heard these stories before, and run out of patience for them.

Temoc coughed into his hand.

“We didn't like each other at first, either,” Elayne said. “Your father seems to have that effect on people.”

“You did save my life,” Temoc demurred.

“We met during Liberation. He worked with the old gods, and I was an attach
é
to the Liberating Forces.”

“You fought for the King in Red?”

She nodded. “When I was not much older than you. I joined at thirteen.”

“That young,” Mina said.

“It was a different time. The good people of my hometown tried to kill me when they learned I'd taught myself the basics of Craft; I didn't even know that what I did had a name. Lots of Craftworkers my age have similar stories, women especially. I ran away to the Hidden Schools—but they were under threat so often back then, I'd just as well have joined an artillery battalion. Soon I entered the fight in earnest. When I met your father I was fresh from the Semioticists' Rebellion in Southern Kath. Bad business. They sent me here for an easy assignment: help Kopil broker peace with your gods. It wasn't so easy as we thought. Talks broke down. Peace failed.” And snow fell on Dresediel Lex for the first and last time. Lightning crackled in the sky above, eternally, a tree of thorns on which Craftsmen impaled the gods they caught and killed. Engines of war rent the skies asunder. The King in Red blazed with hellfire in the heavens. She'd found Temoc in Sansilva snow, speared through the stomach with a thorn of ice. She had healed him. She wasn't sure even the King in Red knew that. “I run into your father once in a while—rarely when I expect, and always when he's up to something strange.”

“You visited the camp this morning, then,” Mina said, with evident distaste on the word “camp.”

“For business, yes.”

But at the mention of “business,” Temoc stood to clear their empty plates, and when he returned he bore a deck of cards.

They played a few hands of bridge, Temoc and Mina against Elayne and the boy. Elayne and Caleb lost the first two hands, but by the third they worked out the conflict between their bidding conventions, and they made that contract, and the fourth. The boy played the final hand, and though he ran two risky transports of which no teacher would approve, he made both good. In that garden courtyard, surrounded by cactus flowers, sun bright in the dry blue sky, sipping weak pale beer and playing cards, Elayne almost forgot Chakal Square.

Almost.

After the game, Caleb reclaimed the cards, and Mina retreated into the house and her work. Which left Elayne and Temoc alone under the sun, surrounded by cactus.

She finished her beer, and looked down into the bubbles that clung to the empty glass. “Why go to the camp at all, if you're worried about your family?”

He stood and began to pace, arms crossed, head down. In the silence, Elayne understood the role of the courtyards, of the inward-facing windows and the cactus and the vines. Green walled them round, warded them against the city outside.

“I have a church,” Temoc said. “Not far from here. A small place I built ten years ago. My congregation brought me word of the King in Red's plan. The broadsheets warned them, and called them to act. If enough gathered to oppose him, he could not continue. We might save ourselves by faith.”

“Obstinacy won't save anything,” she said. “Your gods made the Skittersill a slum for slaves. The god-wards keep property values low, and make the place practically uninsurable. Everyone who lives here risks plague, earthquakes, demon infestation. It hasn't happened yet because the old wards hold, but they won't last forever.”

“Yet families live, and love, and grow, here. The gods gave this land to the people—as slaves, yes, but it remains theirs in common and in trust, now the gods and owners are dead. You propose to steal their homes. Increase the land's value, allow its fee simple sale, and in five years no one will recognize this place. The god-wards protect it from your…”—he did not say “master”—“Boss.”

“So you joined the movement.”

“I told my faithful to follow their hearts. They wanted more. Their eyes accused me of cowardice. I went to the Square to serve, and as I served my congregation grew. The gods are closer than ever before to accepting our new, bloodless path.”

“And the cult of Temoc grows with your church.”

“Do you want me to desert them? I trained to serve and fight.” He tightened his fists until his knuckles cracked. “It took me years to learn peace, to learn to spare the fat small imitations of men who spit at my feet but cannot meet my eyes. What would be left if I turned my back on service?”

“A man,” she said.

“This is a problem of mine with the Kathic tongue,” he replied. “In High Quechal,
man
is an honor to be earned. It is not a state that remains when all else is ripped away.”

“Fine.” Even from this distance she could feel the heat off his skin. “So help them deal with us. That's why we made the Craft—to resolve problems without bloodshed.”

“The Craft was made for the same end as any other tool: to bring power to those who wield it.”

“Craftwork is more than a big stick to use on people we don't like. We fought to build a better world than that.”

“I have no power in the camp.”

“Those people look at you like a saint.”

“And what will happen when I try to lead them? I am the last Eagle Knight. Priest of the Old Gods. The King in Red has waited decades for an excuse to kill me, and you ask me to offer him one as a solstice present.”

“He'll deal with you in good faith, if I have to break his neck to make it happen.”

Temoc's default mode was statue, idol, edifice. He did not show weakness or confusion. The old priests had gouged all those from their recruits. But there were cracks in him, and desperation seeped through.

One of Temoc's house windows closed.

“You know I'm right. If you don't pull these people together, they'll listen to someone else. Someone angrier. If that happens, I can't guarantee their safety.”

She waited for him to talk. She waited a long time.

“I will do it,” he said.

“Thank you.” She kept tight rein on her satisfaction. “Send me word when you're ready. Now, if you'll excuse me. Where's the restroom?”

“Inside,” he said. “First door on the left.”

The screen door opened into a dim tiled dining room. Mina sat at the table in front of a fanned-out horseshoe of yellowed papers. Books gaped at her, propped against stacks of other books. Her pen drifted down the margin of her notepad, and she squinted through reading glasses at a tomb rubbing. She didn't look up as Elayne passed into the deeper dimness of the house. Oil shone from the bellies of glass lamps perched on shelves. Ghostlights were set into the ceiling, unlit. Through the door at the hall's end Elayne saw Caleb pondering cards spread on his bedroom floor for solitaire or prophecy.