Page 25 of The Salt-Black Tree
Outside the café, Pasadena woke in lazy stages under a bright winter dawn. No snow, no ice, but Baba’s presence was a chill against the nape, a current of cold water clasping a startled swimmer’s legs. None of the migrant workers he’d brushed against last night would remember more than a vivid nightmare or two; some of them might even enjoy a sudden spate of cooler weather.
Oblivious, all of them. Which was as it should be.
“You gonna visit her soon?” he finally asked, as she obviously wanted him to. The beldame had some end in mind, or she wouldn’t be bothering with a rube breakfast.
All this trouble for one wayward little girl. He might have expected the old woman to simply let things take their course, one way or the other. Maybe she was bored, or maybe a nice pliablezaikawas more to her taste.
It was an open question.
“It occurred to me,” the harridan of winter said softly, lifting her mug, “that you might want the pleasure.”
So that’s it.Dima considered his own coffee—hot, sweet, dark as sin. There was no tang of traitor’s blood or other offering in it; the waitress’s misery was faint spice at best. The nephew in the kitchen might have something to offer, especially if he desired some luck at the races.
He didn’t shift in his seat, but his silence was telling. She would know he felt some interest. “What’s the price?”
“Consider it more of a courtesy.” Baba’s lips, the exact shade of the last mostly deoxygenated blood wrung from a shuddering mortal heart, pursed slightly as she blew across her own drink. “Since it was my inattention, after all, which allowed her to subtract that certain item.”
Of course the beldame wouldn’t admit she owed Dmitri anything, even if it was an unalterable truth. “You want something in return. Like a promise not to hurt the little girl.”
“Do I?” Baba’s low, husky laugh was almost pleasant, except for the thin sliver of ice at its heart. “Maria stole it, Maria pays. Everything nice and neat, balanced just so.”
Even Winter had her own strange sense of justice. It was part and parcel of her function; otherwise she might go around slapping the black hand upon her fellow divinities with abandon. She was made to keep a particular equilibrium, just as hisdevotchkawas.
Just as Dmitri himself. “Maria hid her own arcana, too. Deep, in taproots. Sent little girl to collect them.”
“How interesting. She certainly didn’t thinkyou’dbe willing to provide transport. Marisol’s in town, by the way.” Baba took a sip, her eyebrows raising. “Not wintering in Florida this year.”
Now there was news. That flame could burn more than one scavenging moth, but he didn’t think it likely this country’s incarnation of summer would bestir herself to more than a few gifts before settling back into off-season torpor. Flora would be better, but the divinity of harvest and fruition had other business.
Shealwayshad other business.
“I thought you wanted me to look after littlezaika.”
“Oh, Dima.” Baba did not laugh again, but sharp chilly amusement feathered the edge of his name. “At a certain point, children have to walk on their own. Besides, you’ll see her again before this is finished.”
“That a promise, or a threat?”
“Merely a certainty.” Baba’s pointed chin turned a few fractions; she gazed at the rube waitress. “Like the cancer in little Sydney’s pancreas. It won’t be long now.”
Especially not as they counted time. “How much of this did you have planned, old woman?”
“No need for a plan when the pattern is so clear.” Baba’s shrug was a masterpiece of ambiguity. “Maria’s not the first to try this.”
“Some succeeded.” He could name them effortlessly enough.
After all, the secret knowledge of every theft was his.
“A few,” Baba allowed, taking a decorous sip of her thick, creamer-splashed brew. “How many won’t if Maria is an example, though? The arc bends towards justice,moy vnuck. Just too slowly for mortals to see.”
“You’re philosophical today.”
“It must be my age.”
The cook slammed a palm over the order bell, and Sydney hurried to bring her two customers their loaded plates on a big round plastic tray she handled with a wince. “Here you go. Pancakes, bacon, hash browns, eggs. Dry white toast and triple bacon. Can I bring you anything else? Orange juice?”
Baba looked at the rube, her dark eyes glinting, and the silence stretched uncomfortably as the cook clattered through cleanup and whatever preparation was needed for the anticipated morning rush of hungry mortal mouths. An invisible, powerful current swept through the diner, married to a frigid breeze. Sydney, her mouth falling open slightly, trembled like a rabbit caught in the hunter’s snare.
Hisdevotchkawould never look this washed-out, this dispirited, this hopeless. Even with Maria alive Nat burned with incipient divinity, fresh and stainless. Was that why he was unwilling to hie himself all the way back across the continent to attend to what was, after all, only a loose end?
