Free Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

wavered, and he drew in a ragged breath as he paused for the comma. Tara looked down from the staggering heights and saw the same young acolyte who had been waiting on the stairs when she pulled into the lot. He was seated, bent forward over his knees. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. Voluminous robes hung from his thin body, and his upturned eyes were set deep in a pale face.
    “It is,” she acknowledged.
    “I know what you’re thinking.”
    She arched an eyebrow at him.
    The young man plucked the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled a long, narrow stream of smoke. “Or, I know what you were thinking.”
    “Try me.”
    “You were thinking that the columns, the buttresses, are unnecessary. That we added them for show, or out of fear.”
    Her eyes widened a tick, and she nodded. “How did you know?”
    “You’re sharp enough to get fooled.” His attempt at a laugh crumbled into a hacking cough.
    “Are you all right?” She reached for him, but he waved her off hastily. The coughing fit persisted, long and ugly and wet. The fingers of his extended hand curled slowly into a fist, and he struck himself in the chest, hard. The cough stopped with a low rattle and he kept talking as though nothing had happened.
    “See how the columns are broader than they should be? Same with the buttresses?”
    She nodded, though she didn’t, in fact, see.
    “Not structural. A disguise. Building the Sanctum, they thought, no sense having big fat steam pipes coming off the central tower. Too ugly, too vulnerable. Hide ’em. Every other building has columns, so we might as well use these.”
    “Good idea.”
    “Stupid idea,” the young man said, pointing. “Fancy stonework makes it hard to access the pipe joints there, and there. Whenever anything goes wrong, we need to redo all the masonry, and at night, too, to keep people from seeing.”
    “Do you tell this to everyone who stops by?”
    He drew in another breath. “Only if they’re wearing a suit.” His ragged smile looked out of place, too broad and sincere for his tonsure and his robes and his slender frame.
    “Well, I hope you never get attacked by someone in a suit.”
    “Hasn’t happened yet.” He returned the cigarette to his mouth and lurched forward. Tara was afraid he would fall on his face, but he recovered his balance and stood, unsteadily. “You’re Tara Abernathy.” He stuck out a thin hand, which trembled in hers as she shook it. Beneath the smile and the rambling mode of speech, he was afraid. “I’m Novice Technician Abelard. They told me to wait for you. Outside.”
    “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
    “The air out here feels too cold, and I haven’t been … healthy. Lately.”
    “You might try quitting.” She nodded at his cigarette.
    He let his head loll back to the sky, and his eyes drifted closed, as if he was waiting for rain. None fell, and he opened his eyes again. “I started when I joined the priesthood. A sign of my devotion. I won’t stop now.”
    “You’re talking about—”
    He shot her a look, but she’d already checked her tongue.
    “How many people know about our problem?” she asked instead.
    “As few as possible. Technical staff, mostly. The higher-ups. We’ve put it about that the Holy One is contemplating His own perfection, and must not be bothered by mortal concerns.”
    “How long will that hold?”
    He started up the stairs. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”
    The tower’s twenty-foot-tall main doors were opened on feast days alone, Abelard explained as he led Tara to a smaller side entrance. “Takes too much time. You know, to move these monsters you need about fifty monks hauling on each door.” He patted one of his branch-thin arms. “We’re not the heartiest people around.”
    “You can’t get Kos to give a push?”
    “Of course not. It’d be disrespectful on a feast day. Plus, we wouldn’t get to see the Cardinals fall over when the doors finally budge. I think Kos finds it