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Authors: Max Gladstone
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to work with than a full Craftswoman. Easier this way. Stab him, take his face, run.”
What can we do?
“Not much. Steal the face, steal the mind. The wound will recover, but you won’t get any testimony from him. On the plus side, once stolen, the face is almost impossible to destroy. Neither half can live without the other, but they can’t die, either. Keep his body safe, and you might find the face if you look hard enough.
“Of course I’ll be available to answer questions. I don’t know where we’ll be staying. You can reach my boss or me through the Sanctum of Kos Everburning. I assume you know the—
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Heart pounding, she reached the street, hand in the air and a gargoyle’s face in her shoulder bag. It had been an odd couple of hours, and she had a feeling that, before the week was out, her life would grow stranger still.
But she could deal with strange. She was starting to like the big city.
“Taxi!”
4
At Alt Coulumb’s heart, the press of humanity and architecture yielded to a green circle half a mile in diameter: the Holy Precinct, with the towering Sanctum of Kos at its heart. To the north it bordered the business district, where skeletal mages in flowing robes bargained with creatures from beyond the mortal world in towers of black glass that scraped the sky. To the south lay the university campuses, gentrified, upper-class, and comfortably distant from the machinations of Northtown. East and west spread the no-man’s land between the poles, home to residential zones, slums, dives, and vice.
The most notorious of these regions, the Pleasure Quarters, actually abutted the Holy Precinct, a holdover from centuries past when some saint decreed that the fire in the blood and loins belonged to Kos Everburning as much as the fire of hearth and furnace.
“Problem being,” Tara’s taxi driver said as he swung the goad halfheartedly at the flanks of his slow-moving nag, “that Kos is great and wise”—he pointed to the holy symbol suspended from the buggy’s rearview mirror, a stylized three-tongued flame within a diamond—“but not as practiced as a fertility deity in managing diseases. I love our Lord with all my soul, but the Church did well to give up on sex and focus on the burning. Stick to what you know, I say.”
“So the priests got out of the business, but the brothels remained?”
“Well. I wouldn’t say the priests got out of the business. They’re still, ah, joined to it, at the hip as it were. The Church got out, though, and well done, too. Man goes to pray to leave that kind of stuff behind. Nowadays, if the girls and their boys go wild and roll onto the temple grounds, the priests tromp over, round them up, and cart them off.”
Their buggy rattled along, and the basalt tower grew ever larger before them. Tara watched the buildings that flanked their taxi. The closer they drew to the Holy Precinct, the more grooved scars she saw in the towers’ stone, always several stories above street level. “What about those marks on the buildings? Did the priests take up decorating, too?”
Harness jangled and leather creaked. When the driver spoke again his voice was low and strained. “Ah. Those.”
“I’m sorry. If it’s a sensitive subject, I can…”
“No trouble, miss. They’re war scars, is all.”
“I thought Alt Coulumb wasn’t damaged in the God Wars.”
He snorted. “Weren’t any Craftsmen, but it was damaged all the same.”
Tara was confused, but her driver seemed uneasy with the subject. She chose her next words with care. “Shouldn’t someone have fixed them by now? It’s been fifty years.”
“Can’t be fixed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Stone Men made ’em, didn’t they?” He spit onto the street. “Can’t cover up their claw marks. The building remembers. Put in new stones and a minute later they’re scarred again.”
Tara’s breath caught, but she tried to keep her tone conversational. “Stone Men.
What can we do?
“Not much. Steal the face, steal the mind. The wound will recover, but you won’t get any testimony from him. On the plus side, once stolen, the face is almost impossible to destroy. Neither half can live without the other, but they can’t die, either. Keep his body safe, and you might find the face if you look hard enough.
“Of course I’ll be available to answer questions. I don’t know where we’ll be staying. You can reach my boss or me through the Sanctum of Kos Everburning. I assume you know the—
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Heart pounding, she reached the street, hand in the air and a gargoyle’s face in her shoulder bag. It had been an odd couple of hours, and she had a feeling that, before the week was out, her life would grow stranger still.
But she could deal with strange. She was starting to like the big city.
“Taxi!”
4
At Alt Coulumb’s heart, the press of humanity and architecture yielded to a green circle half a mile in diameter: the Holy Precinct, with the towering Sanctum of Kos at its heart. To the north it bordered the business district, where skeletal mages in flowing robes bargained with creatures from beyond the mortal world in towers of black glass that scraped the sky. To the south lay the university campuses, gentrified, upper-class, and comfortably distant from the machinations of Northtown. East and west spread the no-man’s land between the poles, home to residential zones, slums, dives, and vice.
The most notorious of these regions, the Pleasure Quarters, actually abutted the Holy Precinct, a holdover from centuries past when some saint decreed that the fire in the blood and loins belonged to Kos Everburning as much as the fire of hearth and furnace.
“Problem being,” Tara’s taxi driver said as he swung the goad halfheartedly at the flanks of his slow-moving nag, “that Kos is great and wise”—he pointed to the holy symbol suspended from the buggy’s rearview mirror, a stylized three-tongued flame within a diamond—“but not as practiced as a fertility deity in managing diseases. I love our Lord with all my soul, but the Church did well to give up on sex and focus on the burning. Stick to what you know, I say.”
“So the priests got out of the business, but the brothels remained?”
“Well. I wouldn’t say the priests got out of the business. They’re still, ah, joined to it, at the hip as it were. The Church got out, though, and well done, too. Man goes to pray to leave that kind of stuff behind. Nowadays, if the girls and their boys go wild and roll onto the temple grounds, the priests tromp over, round them up, and cart them off.”
Their buggy rattled along, and the basalt tower grew ever larger before them. Tara watched the buildings that flanked their taxi. The closer they drew to the Holy Precinct, the more grooved scars she saw in the towers’ stone, always several stories above street level. “What about those marks on the buildings? Did the priests take up decorating, too?”
Harness jangled and leather creaked. When the driver spoke again his voice was low and strained. “Ah. Those.”
“I’m sorry. If it’s a sensitive subject, I can…”
“No trouble, miss. They’re war scars, is all.”
“I thought Alt Coulumb wasn’t damaged in the God Wars.”
He snorted. “Weren’t any Craftsmen, but it was damaged all the same.”
Tara was confused, but her driver seemed uneasy with the subject. She chose her next words with care. “Shouldn’t someone have fixed them by now? It’s been fifty years.”
“Can’t be fixed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Stone Men made ’em, didn’t they?” He spit onto the street. “Can’t cover up their claw marks. The building remembers. Put in new stones and a minute later they’re scarred again.”
Tara’s breath caught, but she tried to keep her tone conversational. “Stone Men.
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