“I wouldn’t have put it that way,” she said.

—I bear these people because Craftsmen, broadly speaking, do not love what they cannot use, and destroy what they do not love. So I make myself useful in some minimal way, as do others of my kind.

“Because you’re afraid of us?”

—No. Because I enjoy flying far and fast, and I find this work more pleasant.

“Than what?”

—War.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “But don’t you find it sad that you have to live like this? That you can’t just hum in a cave somewhere?”

—No.

She waited.

—I find it funny.

“What?”

—We are what we ever were: huge, strong, and ancient beyond your reckoning. We have crossed vast gulfs of time and space. And you think (the subsonic dread returned in sharp pulses rather than the earlier sustained note, and her mind named the dread pattern laughter) you think because looking at us you can say that one draws a salary, this one bears us from place to place, that your limited comprehension gives you any measure of safety or control.

Far ahead, lightning flashed green between towered clouds.

“I’d like to stay out here for a while,” Tara said. “If it’s all right with you. I won’t talk. I just want to watch.”

The great eye closed.

Soon the hum returned.

46

46

“I hate this place,” Shale said as they fought through the plaster labyrinth of Dresediel Lex Metropolitan Airport alongside three thousand other people and their luggage. Most of the crowd were business travelers, but a fraction trailed bellhops and brass luggage carts driven by rat brains—and, like pebbles in an hourglass, that fraction was more than enough to stem traffic’s flow. “Why would anyone live here?”

“The weather’s nice.”

“They have to import water”—with audible scorn—“from outside the city. How good can the weather be?”

“It doesn’t rain, for one thing.” She danced sideways to avoid tripping over the rolling suitcase of a scale-skinned Craftsman who’d turned an unexpected left. “Except once or twice a year. Then it floods.”

“Every fall like clockwork the whole country catches fire. The earth shakes!”

Recovering her footing, Tara almost bowled over two women arguing in a language she didn’t know. “What do you expect? They have enormous lava serpents underground.”

“Before the wars, the gods kept the rain coming here. But with the gods dead, what’s left? The city survives only because it steals water from others. These people are an affront to the world.”

“Now you’re being dramatic. The world doesn’t mind.”

“Fires. Earthquakes.”