Green flame dripped from the walls. It bubbled and convulsed as she approached the floating man, and assumed huge apelike forms.

Oss’s teeth clattered.

Shale regarded the fire-apes skeptically. “Can you fix them like you did our friend here?”

“The closer I come to Altemoc, the more damage my Craft does,” she said, voice level. If she didn’t stay calm, who would? “Oss should buy us some time.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Shale said. Displaced wind battered her. He suddenly occupied more space than he had moments before.

She neared the lightning nexus. Fire shapes closed in. One lunged at Tara, but several hundred pounds of gargoyle bowled it to the diamond floor. Oss charged two more elementals, and its bone talons tore through fire.

Tara set down her backpack, smoothed the lapels of her jacket, and stepped toward the lightning.

Uniformed figures splayed prone on the diamond floor, breathing deep. A cane lay at Altemoc’s feet. She was close enough to see the man himself, thirty-two or -three, nice cheekbones, jawline a bit too narrow. The glyphs that shone through his suit were not glyphs at all, but scars.

She cleared her throat. Behind her, Shale roared and punched through an elemental’s face. “Good morning,” she said. It was morning somewhere. “I’m Tara Abernathy. The Two Serpents Group sent me to negotiate for your prisoners’ release. To whom am I speaking?”

Altemoc’s head jerked down to face her, a poorly managed marionette’s movement. His eyes opened, and the space between his lids was flat and blinding red. Not a good sign. He opened his mouth. Blood-light lit his teeth from within.

She was almost ready for the voice when it came: a man’s wrapped around and through a woman’s, if that woman were a thousand meters tall and made of fire.

What/have/you/done/

“Let’s start with a name. You have me at a disadvantage.”

Two elementals seized Shale’s arms and tried to pull him apart. Moonlight from his wounds spilled on the diamond floor. His wings beat, the elementals lost their footing, and he pulled free—to rip one’s leg from its body and swing it clublike into the other’s face.

Firekeeper/call/me/or/Deathwarden/Thunderspeaker/Shewhoburns/

“Ms. Keeper,” she said. “I think I understand most of your situation, but let’s see if I have it right.”

Speak/

“Down there, under our feet, you’ve trapped a raw demon, one that entered this world through a crack, unsummoned, without limits on its power. I didn’t know that was possible in the pre-Craft era, but if you made me guess I’d say it came through during a war between gods, a few thousand years ago. About right?”

Gods/serpents/thosebeyond/outspiders/skazzerai/