Last First Snow by Max Gladstone Read Free Book Online

Red?”
    She nodded. “When I was not much older than you. I joined at thirteen.”
    â€œThat young,” Mina said.
    â€œIt 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.”
    â€œYou visited the camp this morning, then,” Mina said, with evident distaste on the word “camp.”
    â€œFor 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œObstinacy 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.”
    â€œYet 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.”
    â€œSo you joined the movement.”
    â€œI told my faithful to