Max Gladstone - Two Serpents Rise

She rubbed her bare arms, and shivered from the cold.

Either the woman had not seen him, or didn’t think he could see her. If the former, she’d see him soon enough; if the latter, no sense demonstrating she was wrong. He surveyed grounds, sky, water, and shed, as if she did not exist. Step by nonchalant step, he drew closer. She glanced at him, and smiled a self-satisfied smile. She did not greet him, nor did she speak, which settled the matter to Caleb’s satisfaction. She thought she was invisible. Fair enough.

When he came within range, he sprang.

He pinned her arms to the wall. She did not curse or struggle, only stared at him with wide startled eyes of a brighter black than he’d known eyes could be.

He was lucky, he realized, that she didn’t try to fight him. Her arms felt strong, and his groin was exposed to her knee.

“Who,” she asked, “are you?”

“That’s my line.”

“You don’t look like a Warden. Is this your hobby, jumping unarmed women in the middle of the night?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m taking the air,” she said with a smile. “Waiting for a nice man to accost me. Only way to get a date in this town.”

“Give me a straight answer.”

“I fell from the sky.” She was beautiful, he thought, as weapons were beautiful. No. Focus.

“I work for RKC. This reservoir has been poisoned. The water’s infested with Tzimet. One of our workers is dead. I’m not here to joke.”

Her smile broke. “I’m sorry.”

“Who are you?”

“You first.”

“I’m Caleb Altemoc,” he said before it occurred to him not to answer.

“You can call me Mal,” she said. “I’m a cliff runner.” Caleb’s eyebrows rose. The rules of cliff running were as simple as the rules of murder: runners chose a starting rooftop and a destination, and met at moonrise to race, following any path they chose so long as their feet never touched ground. “I train in these mountains at night. I’ve come every evening for a couple months, but usually no one’s awake. Between the Wardens, the zombies, and the carts, I had to stop and watch.”

“Months. Why haven’t we caught you before now?”

Her eyes flicked down. A shark’s tooth pendant hung from a cord around her neck. The tooth was etched with the Quechal glyph for “eye,” capped by a double arc that signified denial or falsehood. Eye and arc both glowed with soft green light. A strong ward against detection. Expensive, but cliff running was a sport for idiots, madmen, and people who could afford good doctors.

“Why should I believe you?”

“If I’d poisoned this water, would I wait around for someone to discover me?”

“That’s for the Wardens to decide.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Trespassing is wrong. And they’ll want to talk to you even if you’re innocent. If you’ve been here every night for the past few months, you might have seen something that could help us.”

“I won’t go with the Wardens.” She pushed against his grip, to test him. He did not release her, and shifted to the side to bring his groin out of range. “You know how they feel about cliff runners. Ask me what you want, but keep them out of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she said, and hit him in the face with her forehead.

Caleb stumbled, and caught himself against brick. Blind, he turned, following her footfalls. His vision cleared in time to see her leap out over the reservoir. He cried a warning she did not seem to hear.

Claws of black water burst up to pierce and catch and rend. She fell between them all, landed on a thick rowan log, and sprang from it to the next. Talons sliced through the air behind her. Mal fled toward the dam, trailing a wake of hungry mouths.

Caleb had no time to call after her. Four thorn-tipped columns rose from the water, arched above him, and descended. He dodged right, hit the ground hard, lurched to his feet and sprinted along the water’s edge. The Tzimet could not see him, but they knew humans: where one was, others would be also.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mal run and leap, now an arc, now a vector.

He did not wonder at her, because he had no time. He ran with fear-born speed.

Iron stairs led down to catwalks crisscrossing the dam’s face. Caleb reached the stairs seconds ahead of the Tzimet, clattered down the first flight, and crouched low on the landing. The dam plummeted three hundred feet beneath him to a broad valley of orange groves. Miles away, Dresediel Lex burned like an offering to angry, absent gods. He pushed all thoughts of height and falling from his mind. The iron landing, the dam, these were his world.

Wards at the dam’s crest stopped floods during the winter rains. They should hold the Tzimet.

Emphasis on “should.”

He swore. Mal (if that was her real name) was his best lead, and she’d be dead soon, if she wasn’t already. One misstep, a log rolling wrong underfoot, and she would fall into a demon’s mouth.

He waited for her screams.

A scream did come—but a scream of frustration, not pain, and issued from no human throat.

Mal dove off the dam into empty space.

Once, twice, she somersaulted, falling ten feet, fifteen. Caleb’s stomach sank. She fell, or flew, without sound.

Twenty feet down, she snapped to a midair stop and dangled, nose inches from the dam’s pebbled concrete face. A harness girded her hips, and a long thin cord ran from that harness to the crest of the dam.

Blue light flared above as Tzimet strained against the wards. Iron groaned and tore. A claw raked over the dam’s edge. Lightning crackled at its tip.

Mal pushed off the concrete and began to sway like a pendulum, reaching for the nearest catwalk—one level down from Caleb. He ran to the stairs. Another talon pressed through the dam wards, scraping, seeking.

At the apex of Mal’s next swing, he strained for her. She clasped a calloused hand around his wrist, pulled herself to him, wrapped a leg around the catwalk’s railing, and unhooked her tether.

“Thanks,” she said. Sparks showered upon them. Fire and Craft-light lanced in her eyes.

“You’re insane.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said, and smiled, and let go of his arm.

He grabbed for her, too slowly. She fell—ten feet back and down, to roll and land on a lower catwalk, stand, run, and leap again. She accelerated, jumping from ledge to ledge until she reached the two-hundred-yard ladder to the valley floor.

Caleb climbed over the railing to follow her, but the chasm clenched his stomach. His legs quaked. He retreated from the edge.

Above, demons clawed at the emptiness that bound them.

The Wardens would catch her in the valley, he told himself, knowing they would not. She was already gone.

An hour and a half later, a driverless carriage deposited Caleb on the corner of Sansilva Boulevard and Bloodletter’s Street, beside a jewelry shop and a closed coffee house. He hurt. Adrenaline’s tide receded to reveal pits of exhaustion, pain, and shock. He’d told the Wardens he was fine, he’d make it home on his own, thanks for the concern, but these were lies. He was a good liar.

Broad streets stretched vacant on all sides. The carriage rattled off down the empty road. Night wind brushed his hair, tried and failed to wrap him in a comforting embrace.

He remembered lightning-lit eyes, and a tan body falling.

He’d given the carriage the wrong address, and stumbled a block and a half to his destination, a ten-story metal pyramid built by an Iskari architect mimicking Quechal designs. Over the door, a plaque bore the building’s name in an art deco perversion of High Quechal script: the House of Seven Stars.