Two Serpents Rise Read Online Free Page B

talk about this later?”
    No response.
    He turned back to his father, to apologize or to curse, but Temoc was gone. Wind blew down Bloodletter’s Street from the ocean and sent a small flock of discarded newspapers flapping into the night: gray beasts old the moment they were made.
    “I hate it when he does that,” Caleb said to nobody in particular, and limped across the street to the House of Seven Stars.
    *   *   *
    Teo had an apartment on the seventh floor, a corner room she’d bought with her own soulstuff. The day she signed the contract she’d drunk a half-gallon of gin with Caleb in celebration. “Mine. Not my father’s, not my mother’s, not my family’s. My soul, my house.” When he observed that she was technically part of her family, she’d thrown a napkin at him and called him a bastard.
    “You know what I mean. My cousins are all tied to the purse strings. Not one of them has even the poorest excuse for a career. They live in those damn beach houses up the coast, or circle the globe on Pop’s ticket, three weeks doing coke off the naked back of an eighteen-year-old boy in one of those nameless ports south of the Shining Empire, a month ogling sentient ice sculptures in Koschei’s kingdom. Lunch in Iskar, dinner in Camlaan, a romp in the Pleasure Quarters of Alt Coulumb, and none of it earned. This place, this is mine.” She put a fierce edge on that word.
    “And what’s yours,” Caleb replied, drink-slurred, “is mine.”
    “I’ll hang the most absurd pictures on the wall, and keep a shelf of single malts, and polish the counters so they reflect themselves a hundred million times. Never will there be a single book out of place or a single picture crooked.”
    She was drunk, too.
    “Can I visit?”
    “You may call on me for the occasional bacchanal and revel.” She glared down her nose at him like an empress from her throne. “In exchange, if I am out of town on business, you must feed Compton,” meaning her cat, a treacherous calico.
    “Sure,” he said, and took the key she offered.
    He leaned against the lift wall and watched the floor numbers tick up to seven. Phantoms filled his skull: Temoc, father, rebel, murderer, saint. The goddess whispered in his ear. Blood. Stars reflected in dark water. They all faded into vacant, expansive night, the night after the death of the world.
    The night of his mind shone black. Mal curved before him like a blade.
    The lift’s bell called Caleb back from the ocean of her eyes to a white-carpeted hallway hung with dull oil paintings. Vases of silk flowers stood on teak tables heavy with ornamental bronze. He shuffled down the hall, and searched his jacket pockets for Teo’s key.
    His thoughts were chaos and blood and fire as he slid the key into the lock. Chaos, blood, and fire; flood, poison, riot, ruin. Mal didn’t seem the poisoning type, but what was the poisoning type? Why linger at Bright Mirror if she wasn’t involved? She should have snuck away the moment she saw Wardens. Perhaps she trusted her shark’s tooth to keep her safe. Flimsy defense, since Caleb could see her. Then again, the Wardens lacked Caleb’s scars.
    He needed a bed, or a comfortable couch. He’d catch hell from Teo in the morning for stumbling in unannounced, but her apartment was closer to the office than his, and he had stashed clothes in her closet—clubbing clothes, yes, but he could salvage an outfit from them for work.
    He pushed the key home, turned the knob.
    Light stung his eyes, and for a confused moment he thought, good, Teo’s still awake. He stepped into the living room.
    Thirty seconds and a shriek later he staggered, eyes closed, out into the hallway. The door slammed behind him. His cheeks burned. From within, he heard two women’s voices raised in argument. He waited, eyes still shut, until Teo’s words assumed the weight of finality, and the other woman retreated toward the bedroom, cursing.
    The latch turned and the door opened.
    “You