Three Parts Dead (44 page)
“You’re right,” she said, with a perfunctory nod. “There’s no possible way I can damage you through this cage.”
He nodded, the lascivious gleam in his eye giving way to uncertainty.
“You worked it all out to perfection, Alexander. You planned Kos’s murder and your own ascension, Cabot’s assassination and Pelham’s attack on Iskar. You anticipated the Church’s asking me to represent them. You knew just how to slide back into control of my mind, and I expect you planned an alternative strategy if you failed at that. I do not doubt you have an escape plan, nor that if you continue down this path one day you will succeed, and make Ms. Abernathy and me grovel and scream and force us to commit all the other depravities you’ve dreamt of down your lonely, desperate, and angry life.
“But you made one crucial mistake.”
“Oh?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“You used a bound shadow to watch over Cardinal Gustave’s dagger, in case he turned on you.”
“Yes, and that god-benighted novice of yours let it loose. I am amazed he escaped alive.” He nodded. “An error in judgment, I admit, but hardly crucial.”
“Oh, you misunderstand me.” Elayne shook her head. “Your use of the shadow wasn’t a mistake. It was an efficient guardian, invisible to my own search of the Sanctum because its obedience to you was not ensured by direct Craft but by the terms under which you summoned it. You’re right to be amazed at Abelard’s survival. Your trap almost killed him, and several of his fellow priests, when he unwittingly set it free.
“I saved them. Ate your shadow, in fact, right in front of Abelard. You should have seen him, jaw slack and eyes bugged out.” She laughed a little, and he laughed with her. “I took that darkness into me, but I did not destroy it. I made it mine.”
He stopped laughing. Then he stopped smiling altogether.
“You made your one great mistake in the carriage between the Xiltanda and Justice’s temple. You kissed me.”
He thought back to that strange sensation as they kissed: a tingle of power and something else, like a worm slithering into his mouth. He remembered his surprise at her ingenuity. He had bound her Craft. She should not have been able to do anything to him.
She raised her hand, fingers crooked into a claw. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest. Something many-legged and sharp moved within his gullet.
“I did not employ the shadow against you in the Temple of Justice,” she said, “because it was more poetic to use Kos. Besides, as Tara’s mentor, I feel compelled to set a less bloodthirsty example. Call me a sentimentalist if you must.”
“Elayne,” he said, breath coming shallow and fast in his chest, “they’ll know. Kill me here, and they’ll know.”
“You said it yourself. No Craft of mine can penetrate that iron mesh. I’ve given you no food, no water, no poison. Prisoners die of heart attacks all the time.”
“Elayne.”
Her tone remained cool. “You murdered one of the few gods in this world who never hurt a single Craftsman. You mutilated a goddess and perverted her teachings. You warped a priest into a weapon and taught him how to kill so his victims would persist in pain. You’ve broken countless people and bent them to your will, and you enjoyed breaking the women most of all.”
“You bitch!” He leapt from his chair toward her, hands outstretched, mind consumed by rage. “You fucking—”
She closed her hand.
The world stopped without slowing.
He fell. Blood leaked from his mouth and pooled about him on the stone floor.
“Goodbye, Alexander,” she said before she left.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MAX GLADSTONE lives, works, and writes in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THREE PARTS DEAD
Copyright © 2012 by Max Gladstone All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Chris McGrath A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Gladstone, Max.
Three parts dead / Max Gladstone. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3310-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4668-0203-2 (e-book) I. Title.
PS3607.L343T47 2012
813'.6—dc23
2012019876
First Edition: October 2012