Max Gladstone - Two Serpents Rise

“What?”

“The overheads. Turn them off. There should be one light on the center of the table, that’s all. One light so bright you can’t see the walls.”

“Caleb—”

“Do it. Please.”

A heavy weight struck the doors, which shuddered but held firm. A demon’s cry scoured the air.

Teo ran to a bank of dials on the wall, and turned them at random until the lights dimmed.

“More!”

Lights flickered, flared, cut out. Caleb could still see the wall. “Make the center light stronger.”

Her fingers flew. Twice more demons struck the doors. Wood splintered near the latch. “Here!” Teo spun the second-smallest dial clockwise. The table’s spotlight brightened to surgical brilliance. The world twisted.

The walls vanished.

The doors broke open. Beyond, ranks of eyes burned with ruby fire.

“Teo!”

She leapt over the dead demon’s claw, sprinted toward him, and grabbed his hand as he grabbed Temoc’s. Together, they ran into the dark. The fiends followed after.

The demons pursued on many legs—distortions in darkness, closing at an insectine gallop.

Caleb, Teo, and Temoc fled through shadows beneath the universe. They should long since have reached the King in Red’s apartment, but the farther they ran, the closer night drew around them.

The path was closed, apparently, on the far end. Caleb tried to remember what Kopil had done to open the way on the night the water ran black, but his memories blurred together.

The conference room’s walls existed as long as he could see them. Maybe the other door could not open while he knew it wasn’t there.

The demons’ footsteps grew louder.

“Close your eyes,” Caleb shouted.

“What?” Teo snapped back.

“Close them. Close them, or we’re stuck here.”

Their grips on his hands tightened.

Caleb closed his eyes.

Space was a net of flame; universes hung like water droplets at its intersections. The net spun and warped. Worlds merged, broke, reformed in fractal patterns.

Caleb let go of his father’s hand, reached out, and touched a smooth brass doorknob. He turned the knob, the latch gave, and he tumbled onto a red carpet.

Temoc and Teo staggered into the room after him. Demon footfalls pursued from the darkness beyond the door.

Caleb slammed the closet shut. He waited for a few heartbeats, then opened it again. Suits, robes, shirts, ties and expensive shoes had replaced the void.

“So this is where the monster sleeps,” Temoc said.

The room looked as Caleb had last seen it: round bed unmade, books stacked beside the armchair, piles of paperwork teetering on end tables.

“This doesn’t look like a monster’s room,” Teo said once she found her breath. “Doesn’t look like his, either. I don’t know what I would have pictured. Something cleaner.”

“He’s a busy man,” Caleb said. “Skeleton. Thing.” He wiped sweat from his eyes. “You want him to spend his days cleaning?”

“Or get maid service. A team of zombies could scour this place in five minutes.”

Temoc pursed his lips, and turned away.

“What?”

“You would rather exploit another’s body than dirty your own hands with work,” Temoc said. “I find that interesting.” He wandered away into the kitchen.

“Caleb,” Teo said, when Temoc was out of sight.

“Hm?”

She had flushed red, and her brows drew low over glaring eyes. “Your father.”

“Trust me, I know.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“And a murderer. And he just saved our lives, which, I know, doesn’t excuse the rest of it.” He leaned against the door, fighting exhaustion.

“Are you okay?”

Kopil’s empty unmade bed looked more comfortable than any he had seen in years. He wanted to lie there and vanish. “I’m tired. And I keep thinking about Mal.”

Teo sank into the red armchair. Neither of them spoke. She wove her fingers together, unwove them. “If she comes, and tries to stop us, what will you do?”

“I … I’ll fight her,” he said. “And I’ll die. She’s stronger than you can imagine. She’ll kill me.”

“What if she doesn’t, though? What if you win?”

He looked away.

She walked to him. In her eyes he saw himself reflected, a cutout shade, barely human.

In the kitchen, wood splintered, china broke, cutlery clattered on stone. Temoc appeared at the threshold, dignified and calm. “I have found the entrance to his office.”

The moon rose, and rising lost its light. Black sphere in a dusky sky, it stalked the sun.

Mal sat cross-legged above the city. Her mind moved with the serpents, turning in uneasy slumber. They whispered to her in High Quechal and tongues older still, brutal cries from the birth pangs of the world. Their dreams surrounded her like gallowglass tendrils, and they burned.

Where was Caleb? Somewhere safe, she hoped, and doubted. He was not the type to hide.

At Andrej’s on the day of the Heartstone acquisition, the day Kopil betrayed himself with a kiss, she had danced with Caleb on an empty floor. They danced without touching: she wrapped him in Craft and he grabbed her by those same ties. They were dancing now. How he thought to stop her, she could not imagine, but he would try.

She hoped she was wrong—hoped he would hide and wait, and she could find him later, when the battle was won, and explain herself, and all would be well.

And she hoped she was right. She hoped he was marshaling forces against her even now.

She felt the familiar lightning thrill of touching knifepoint to skin, before the small sharp movement of the wrist that let blood flow free.

Craft threaded through the Serpents’ diamond brains, through their pulsing hearts of molten rock. By itself, each of Heartstone’s systems served a purpose: channeling the Serpents’ hunger, dulling the edge of their sleeping minds, drawing them to the surface of the lava to be tamed.

Together, those strands wove the reins of the world.

With a small sharp movement of her wrist, she called the Serpents to her.

The stairs from Kopil’s kitchen were long, straight, and rough-hewn, so narrow Temoc had to climb them sideways.

“That apartment,” he said as they rose, “was once a vestry room. Priests prepared there for the ceremony. Divining stones were cast, chants sung, days named. They shed their own blood and prepared to shed the blood of others.”

“And that,” Teo said, “is why you broke the King in Red’s cabinets?”

“There used to be beautiful murals on those walls, depicting the triumph of the Twins, the sacrifice of Ili. Gone now. Replaced by porcelain and cutlery.”

The gray sliver at the top of the stair grew, and through it Caleb saw the curve of Kopil’s office dome.

They emerged through a thin opening that vanished behind them. The office had changed little since his first visit: carpet, plants, low bookshelves and chairs, and of course the altar-desk. The hospital bed was gone.

Kopil lay sprawled atop the desk, a mug of spilled coffee by his hand. His skull rested on a thick sheaf of papers.

Caleb ran to him, Teo close behind.

The King in Red did not move as they approached. Caleb knelt and lifted the skeleton’s hand. Somehow his bones clung together, as if bound by invisible rubber strings. Hand and arm were lighter than he expected, and clattered as he set them down.

“He’s gone,” Teo said, wondering.

“Can’t be. He’d have taken most of the pyramid with him. Deathless Kings go out in flames.” He rolled up the red robe’s sleeve. Glyphs glowed blue and silver against bone. “He’s alive, or whatever they call it. Unalive. Must be sleeping.”