The story so far... Four Roads Cross
Last time on ‘Craft Sequence Story So Far’… gods are murdered, and resurrected. An abuser is finally brought down. There’s a vampirate. ELAYNE KEVARIAN. Read the article here, and then join us for FOUR ROADS CROSS.
This post contains extensive spoilers for Four Roads Cross, some spoilers for the rest of the series, and expects the reader to have already read all currently published Craft Sequence books.
Four Roads Cross
“The day after Tara moved into her new office, she laid a piece of cream-white paper on her desk and wrote, in large ruby letters at the top: “In Case the Survival of the Moon Goddess Seril or the Presence of Her Gargoyles in Alt Coulumb Should Become Public Knowledge Before She Regains Sufficient Power to Defend Herself.”
This did not leave much room on the paper. Fortunately, or rather, unfortunately, she did not know what to write next.
She walked Alt Coulumb’s streets. She immersed herself in its libraries. She consulted the stars and the scholars of Craft, though in the latter case she kept the details of her query general. She spoke with gibbering horros from beyond the edge of time, and erected elaborate palaces of possibility, networked and interlaced contingencies, none of which satisfied.
After all this, she returned the paper to her desk and wrote, in small letters beneath the overlong heading: “We are probably screwed.”
Then she burned the paper, because it was a stupid document to leave lying around.”
Dramatis Personae
Our Leads
TARA ABERNATHY - Craftswoman, in-house counsel for the Church of Kos. Reluctant priestess of Seril. Doesn’t know her limits, and plays to win no matter the game.
ABELARD - Junior priest in the Church of Kos, now also a saint. Has a personal line to his god and isn’t super happy about his new special status.
CATHERINE ELLE - Blacksuit (cop) and now priestess of Seril. Recovering vampire bite addict. Fighting demons both literal and metaphorical. Definitely crushing on Raz.
RAZ PELHAM - Vampirate (I WILL make vampirate happen), captain of Kell’s Bounty, running sting operations with Cat. Has mysterious vampire baggage.
Other Alt Coulumbites
SHALE - Gargoyle, child of Seril, breaking rules to save people who pray to his goddess while he’s supposed to be in hiding. Published poet. Beef with Tara after she stole his face.
CORBIN RAFFERTY - Aggressive alcoholic man, father of three girls. Gets caught up in Madeline Ramp’s plan to steal Denovo’s skull.
RAFFERTY SISTERS - Claire, Ellen and Hannah Rafferty. Daughters of Corbin. Claire runs their market stall most of the time. Ellen prayed to Seril and becomes something of a lay priestess. Hannah is their younger sister, not super involved in the plot.
MATT ADORNE - Egg seller in the Paupers Quarter Market. Friendly with Tara Abernathy. Becomes embroiled in the Seril Matter by helping out his neighbour’s daughters. Father of two sons.
GABBY JONES - Journalist / singer in Alt Coulumb. Formerly of Dresediel Lex until she witnessed the Skittersill Rising and its brutal suppression. Investigating reports that Seril and Her children have returned.
AEV - Leader of the gargoyles / children of Seril. Works closely with Tara Abernathy. Will fight to the death to defend her goddess.
SERIL - Recently revived Lady of Alt Coulumb, goddess of the moon, thought to have been killed in the God Wars. Doesn’t quite understand privacy or physical matter, but does try to support her priestesses.
KOS - Fire lord of Alt Coulumb, stayed neutral in the God Wars and has reaped the benefits since. Lover of Seril (not a euphemism). A nice kind of god. Metaphorically burned by the betrayal of Cardinal Gustave in Three Parts Dead and leaning rather heavily on Abelard.
Dresediel Lexians
CALEB ALTEMOC - Founder of Two Serpents Group, a Concern-slash-holy-order that’s trying to fix war damage. Plan A always seems to be to throw himself into danger as a sacrifice. Son of a fugitive and an archaeologist. Connected with the King in Red.
KOPIL, THE KING IN RED - Deathless King of Dresediel Lex and Chief Executive of Red King Consolidated. A Craftsman who has gone full skeleton but not managed to rid himself of his PTSD or his drama queen tendencies. Donor to Two Serpents Group, and old friend of Elayne Kevarian - though they haven’t talked since Last First Snow.
TEO BATAN - Caleb’s best friend who will still call him out on his shit (though he still never listens). Survived a sacrifice attempt. Works with Caleb in the Two Serpents Group. Barely in this book but I like her so including her in this list.
Assorted Others
MADELINE RAMP - Opposition Craftswoman trying to take down Seril. Close colleague of Alexander Denovo, trying to continue his work.
DAPHNE MAINS - Tara’s friend from the Hidden Schools, formerly catatonic due to Denovo messing with her mind. Now somehow totally fine, and working with Ramp…
ASHLEIGH WAKEFIELD - Craftsperson with Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao representing Kos in the Seril case. Covers half their face with a mask, for reasons known if you play Choice of the Deathless.
ALEXANDER DENOVO - Recently deceased Craftsman who tried to kill Kos and become a god; abusive, manipulated minds, destroyed lives.
UMAR AND HASIM - Two refugees from Agdel Lex.
MAURA VARG - Drug smuggler.
CARDINAL EVANGELIST BEDE - A senior priest in the Church of Kos in charge of diversifying the Church’s portfolio.
What happens in Four Roads Cross?
Our characters start on seemingly disparate paths and plot, but they weave together into one overall story centred around the recently revived moon goddess SERIL. On two sides of the chess board we have those who want to restore Her to full power; on the other, those who want to send her back to the grave and take down her lover, the fire god KOS for good measure.
Let’s start with TARA ABERNATHY, whose first job as in-house counsel for the Church of Kos was to dispose of ALEXANDER DENOVO’s body, is focused on keeping Seril’s return secret whilst working out how to restore some of Her old power to Her. However, Seril’s gargoyles are giving truth to rumour by answering prayers across the Paupers’ Quarter. One night, lead gargoyle AEV saves journalist GABBY JONES, who of course immediately breaks the story. Tara tries unsuccessfully to quash it, and needs to come up with a Plan B.
To shore up Seril’s credit, Tara needs Her old records - scripture and archives that spell out what Seril owns and how Her theology works. Having somewhat reluctantly become Seril’s priestess, Tara is able to ask her directly - but Seril claims to not have such archives. She had poetry, stone and wing and claw - her gargoyles. After some argument about the whole face-stealing shenanigans, SHALE agrees to fly Tara over the city and translate Stone poetry into Craftwork legal jargon.
Across the city at the Temple of Kos, junior priest ABELARD is troubled. He’s been promoted to living sainthood for carrying Kos in his cigarette after He was nearly killed, but Abelard feels a fraud. He’s being called into meetings by the likes of CARDINAL EVANGELIST BEDE to discuss credit and shareholders, but has no idea what they’re talking about. He’s there as Kos’s own representative, he realises, and feels even worse. At Tara’s urging, he tries to speak to Kos - and learns that now, as a saint, he can do so in a more direct way than standard prayer.
Kos is scared. After Cardinal Gustave’s betrayal a year ago, Kos is wary of trusting His senior cardinals and is using Abelard as His eyes into a world He doesn’t fully understand. Abelard realises that the other priests know that their Lord doesn’t trust them, and that Abelard is His conduit. Kos shows Abelard the city through His eyes, shows Abelard the tangled web of obligations and prayer and decisions in which He exists, and asks for guidance. Should He force Seril and Her children to stand alone? Or should He help, thus risking His own power?
Meanwhile, at the docks cop CAT ELLE and vampirate RAZ PELHAM bust MAURA VARG for drug smuggling - and uncover a people trafficking operation. Dozens of people are trapped by predatory loan agreements as debt zombies, and slumber in Varg’s hold. Due to international agreements, Kos can’t intervene - but Seril might be able to. Between heists and paperwork, Cat and Raz dance around their mutual attraction and the spectre of Cat’s addiction to vampire bites.
And, finally (wow this is already so long), in the Paupers’ Quarter rumours abound about Seril and Her children. Debate rages over what should be done. Drunkard CORBIN RAFFERTY demands that the gargoyles be shattered, while MATT ADORNE tries to keep the peace. Rafferty’s daughter ELLEN confesses that she has prayed and been rescued by a gargoyle when lost. Corbin is incandescent with rage, and demands Ellen pray to bring gargoyles as proof they’re back. Unwillingly, she does so and Shale appears. He uses Seril’s power to show Corbin the error of his ways, unintentionally hospitalising Corbin. Ellen and her sisters CLAIRE and HANNAH move in with the Adornes.
All the pieces are moving on the board. Seril’s opponents press their attack.
Craftswoman MADELINE RAMP shows up to serve suit against Kos for His off-book relationship with Seril, and consequent undisclosed liabilities. Ramp is an old associate of Denovo’s, making Tara immediately suspicious of her convenient timing to appear in the city. Even weirder, Ramp’s assistant is DAPHNE MAINS - Tara’s best friend from the Hidden Schools, last seen catatonic from Denovo messing with her mind. Yet somehow she’s here with one of Denovo’s allies.
Time for the offence.
Tara sets up an exclusive interview between Seril and Gabby Jones. Cat and Raz free the debt zombies in Seril’s name - only to be hit by a trap. The refugees are infected with demons, and if the demons can break Seril, they’re free. Blacksuits, gargoyles, and Raz are attacked. Seril screams mid-interview as Her children and Her power are eaten. In the Adorne home, Ellen Rafferty falls ill, crying out.
Abelard asks Kos to intervene. Demons fall to fire in the night sky.
And there’s the proof Ramp needed: Kos has undeclared interest in Seril. She presses suit, and Tara calls a Council of War.
The board is set for the next phase of play.
With the help of Elayne Kevarian, Tara gets Craftsperson Ashleigh Wakefield to represent Kos in the forthcoming suit whilst she and Shale fly to Dresediel Lex to speak with the King in Red and ask him to return the rights to Alt Coulumb’s skies, which he took as spoils of war after killing Seril.
This goes about as well as you would expect.
Shale tries to kill Kopil, who is Kopil-ing on a fake beach, drinking a bright pink cocktail with four paper umbrellas. However, he is impressed enough (and / or wants to get back in Elayne’s good books enough) that he tells them that he gave the rights to the Two Serpents Group, so off Tara and Shale go to try and deal with CALEB ALTEMOC. In classic Caleb style, however, he’s managed to throw himself into the middle of danger and is currently holding together a mountain that houses an ancient goddess. Shale takes his place, Caleb gives Tara the sky rights, and Tara threatens the mountain goddess. Standard Abernathy behaviour.
Back in Alt Coulumb, debt zombies turned demon-free refugees are beginning to wake up. DR HASIM tells Cat that Grimwald Savings called in a loan unexpectedly, leading to their zombiehood. Hasim’s lover UMAR remains unconscious. Gabby Jones is determined to finish her story; in lieu of Seril, she interviews lead gargoyle Aev. Ellen Rafferty asks Claire to help her bring people together to pray for Seril, and Abelard goes out to spread Kos’ word in support of Seril. In evensong, Gabby shares her interviews and the gargoyles join the Criers’ Guild in praise of their Moon-mother. Word quickly spreads throughout Alt Coulumb.
Cat and Raz go for a longshot solution. Raz reveals there’s a community of ancient vampires living deep under the ocean; the two of them swim down to treat with them. In exchange for some of Cat’s blood, a vampire priestess offers a jewel of her cult’s blood in the form of a red jade. If Raz eats the jewel, he can use the vampires’ ancient power but will become subsumed into the cult and essentially die. Not anyone’s first choice, fair to say. Cat and Raz finally resolve their unresolved sexual tension and bang it out.
And now, we approach the endgame.
The court case begins. Ramp and Wakefield go head to head - but Wakefield only represents Kos, and thus must step aside when Seril is brought in. With Tara stuck in Dresediel Lex, Seril is undefended. She convinces Caleb to give her the rights to the sky, but there’s no way for her to get a dragon flight back to Alt Coulumb in time. She must wait for the sun to set, then Seril can transport her via the mood road. Aev and the gargoyles come to defend Seril in Tara’s stead. Daphne - or, as we learn, the thing wearing Daphne’s body - fights them.
The Rafferty sisters lead a vigil in the Paupers’ Quarter; Dr Hasim and fellow refugees step in to support, and show Ellen how to weave the disparate, conflicting stories of all worshippers together into one prayer. In hospital, Umar (still controlled by a demon) awakens, and forces Corbin Rafferty to help him break into the Temple of Justice, steal Denovo’s skull, and send it to a mysterious third party. They then try to break up the vigil, but Corbin’s daughters stand up to him, and Dr Hasim breaks the demon’s control over Umar.
Daphne is eating Seril through Her gargoyles, until Cat joins the fray and tries to arrest Daphne for assaulting Aev, a citizen of Alt Coulumb. Joined by her fellow Blacksuits, she fights Daphne, freeing up some of Seril’s power to final transport Tara across the continent. Tara appears, and shows she has gained Seril’s rights to the skies of Alt Coulumb. The being that was Daphne fights to destroy the contract. Tara, as is standard for Tara, is about to sacrifice herself when Raz steps in. He drinks from the jade, gaining the power of all the ancient vampires to save Tara and kill Daphne-that-was.
They win.
Cat, as representative of Seril, offers Raz asylum so he doesn’t have to go to the vampires undersea - but it means he can’t leave the city. Back in her home, Madeline Ramp, back in her home, receives a delivery of what she thinks is Denovo’s skull - except it’s missing. Tara intercepted it, and appears via Craftwork hologram to banter with Ramp.
Finally, Tara joins a delegation of Deathless Kings, the Two Serpents Group, and M Grimwald to save Shale from the mountain goddess and build Her a body. She talks to Grimwald, hypothesising that they caught wind of Ramp’s plan and called in the debt held by the refugees to ensure they’d be in Alt Coulumb ready to help.
“Caleb. I studied your Concern. A bridge between gods and men, that’s your slogan.”
“Yes.”
“That’s Alt Coulumb. The city’s not perfect, but its gods are trying, and so’s the church. For forty years Kos ruled alone, complacent. With Seril back, He’s worked more to help His city. If She goes, He’ll collapse.”
“What would I tell the board?”
“Tell them you spent their donations to save a city. To heal a wound made long ago, in the Wars. I’m not a hired gun. I have friends in Alt Coulumb. I left them to fight a losing battle on the chance you could help us. I am breaking every rule of negotiation: I have no leverage to exploit, and no alternative. You don’t know me well enough to know how hard that is. But here I am. What would you do, if these were your friends?”
The importance of Four Roads Cross
Four Roads Cross is the first book in either publication or chronological order to operate as a direct sequel, in this case to Three Parts Dead. Chapter one starts immediately after the epilogue of the former, and then we jump a year but pick up with more or less the same set of characters as our protagonists. There’s something particularly satisfying about following familiar characters in a familiar place; as much as I love the Craft Sequence jumping around, it can be startling and disorienting on your first read. With Four Roads Cross the familiarity provides a sense of safety that then allows the narrative to do something quite different from other books.
The book can have quite a different impact depending on when you read it. In publication order, it comes fifth; chronologically it’s fourth. That positioning before or after Full Fathom Five in your reading order makes a big difference to how it feels. If you read it before, this is the first time you see characters from different books start crossing over - Tara meets Caleb, Kopil and (briefly) Teo, there’s references to the Skittersill Rising and the whole eclipse-twin-serpents-rampant thing a couple of years ago. If you’ve played the games, you get the fun cameo of Ashleigh Wakefield. You begin to see how the Craft Sequence is going to unfold, with characters and plots interweaving in a delightful way.
If you read it after Full Fathom Five, things suddenly start to make sense. We’ll go into this more in the next part of the series, but it can be pretty confusing when suddenly Cat shows up in Kavekana with no explanation for what happened to her between Three Parts Dead and now, especially as her Blacksuit is now silver and has wings. Then, suddenly, Teo appears, and clearly has an existing relationship with the Alt Coulumb gang. Reading publication order can make you think you’ve missed a book somehow - and you have. It’s Four Roads Cross.
So, Four Roads Cross begins (or continues, but I prefer begins) the process of our characters coming together, which is essential for the future of the series. But that’s not all! On my first read way back in 2016ish, I remember thinking that Four Roads Cross was fun, but felt a bit like a redo of Three Parts Dead. Kos and/or Seril are at risk. Tara must save the day against a Craftsperson who has an underlying plot to take them down.
But having reread the book a shocking number of times, I feel quite differently. Sure, the overarching plot on paper is familiar. Yet we get so much more depth in Four Roads Cross than in any of the other books. This is the first time we get insight into the mind of a god - both Kos via Abelard, and Seril via her amusing conversations with Tara and Cat. (I can never look at a bowl of carrots the same way.) Gods therefore become more tangible, more relatable. It was sad to hear about Kos and Seril dying in Three Parts Dead, but it felt like a done deal and a cool fantasy thing that you may have seen before. Here, they’re people. They’re fully fledged characters. We understand them like we understand Tara and Abelard, we feel their conflicts, their fears, the pressures weighing on them. When we hear that the demons are eating Seril, the stakes feel so much higher than when we just knew Her as a distant goddess up in the sky somewhere.
The world also feels wider, and not just because Tara visits another location. Getting POV from Matt Adorne adds a new dimension to the series - someone who’s just a normal guy. He has a stake in the city because he lives there and pays his taxes. But he’s no Craftsman, no priest. Through him and the others from the Paupers’ Quarter, we get a new view on the city, its gods, and why they matter.
It’s not all characterisation and worldbuilding, though. Most certainly not. Through all of this, Four Roads Cross lays the groundwork for some of the Big Plotty Things that are to come.
You know what I’m talking about.
Oh yes.
SPACE SPIDERS.
“We fought the God Wars for freedom, and you throw that struggle in my face to endorse the work of a madman developing better tools of slavery.”
“We fought the God Wars for power, child. That’s what freedom is. No one fights for any other reason.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Which of do you think has the surer truth? The one who believes continents are shattered in the name of high-minded ideals, or the one who believes continents are shattered because two people who can shatter continents want different things?”
Abernathy clutched the skull in her hands as if to crush it.
Ramp too her silence as license to continue. “The world is breaking. The Wars made cracks, and we have broken it further. Our work turns soil to ash and water to poison. Even as we push ourselves to the brink of doom, beings of a size you cannot comprehends watch us with many eyes across vast gulfs of space. The universe is larger than this petty island of rock. As if we needed an external threat: this planet will not last forever, and when it dies we must be elsewhere. We have not done the work we need. Gods slow us with compromise. Small minds see only small context: local politics and squabbles of history. It takes genius to see large enough to build the tools to break the world, not like a man breaks a mirror, but like a chick breaks an eggshell.”
Embarassingly, in my first space spiders article I totally missed this reference and only caught it on my recent reread. Eek. Ah well, we’ve got it now.
Ramp sets up the skazzerai for us perfectly, and even throws us a bone (ha) about how important Alexander Denovo is. His secrets are kept inside his skull, she says. And if you’ve read Dead Country, you’ll know exactly what those secrets are and how they connect to the skazzerai.
(Need a reminder? Here’s all the skazzerai articles for your reading pleasure).
There is also something else that I REALLY want to talk about, but alas it’s a spoiler for Wicked Problems so you’ll just have to wait and see for yourself.
Promise it’s a good one.
Until then, make sure you pre-order Wicked Problems! It’s out in 2 days time from the time of writing.
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