by Jay Lake
My voice had risen at the last, and the crude obscenity caught at her, as I’d known it would.
Her voice was as sorrowful as her face. “We need Green, who had grown to be heart to all the Blades, though we did not understand that until after we had let you slip away.”
I was forced to remind myself that Mother Vajpai always maintained absolute control of herself. The emotion was a weapon surely as any spinning kick or hand strike. Seizing my own will, I replied, “You did not let me go. You drove me away. Because of your friend out there. Surali. If you find me ungrateful or suspicious, you might inquire of her as to why.”
Mother Vajpai sighed. I watched Samma carefully out of the corner of my eye. If they were playing with me, she would betray the game. And my old lover did look nervous. She flexed her hands, as she always did before a sparring match.
So this is how it is to be.
Still, I could not bring myself to strike first.
Mother Vajpai began to speak again, but I interrupted her. “It is time for me to leave. I have soldiers waiting.” Let her wonder about that. Lily Blades were famously fierce fighters, but we were never expected to stand against men-at-arms in battle formation. That training for us would have been too much for the Street Guild and the other swordsmen of Kalimpura to stomach.
“This is the will of the Lily Goddess, Green,” Mother Vajpai said sternly. Her tone of voice struck deep in me. Had I been raised from birth within the Temple of the Silver Lily, as Samma was, and most of the other Blade aspirants were, it might have disarmed me as readily as a spin-kick to the side of the knee.
As it was, she just renewed my anger. My hand brushed my abdomen. “I know what happens to children there, Mother. I know what happened to me.”
“Copper Downs happened to you,” snapped Mother Vajpai. Her eyes widened as she grasped the significance of my touch. “Ah … Do not bring a child into the world here.”
“Now we know—” Samma began, but Mother Vajpai hushed her with an urgent hand motion.
Now we know what?
Now we know it is time to leave, before more of this game is given away.
It was a mistake to have met privately with them. I could only give thanks to the Lily Goddess that they did not have Mother Argai or another experienced Blade in here. These two I might be able to escape, though I could not hope to best them.
I should not have been surprised at such a betrayal from Mother Vajpai, but Samma …
With that thought, I turned toward the door.
“Green.” The commanding voice again, shifting slightly as she moved. “The Lily Goddess commands this.”
I feinted toward the door’s latch, saying, “The Lily Goddess…” But I was already in motion. A swift spin on my right heel, half a step, a three-fingered jab to Samma’s abdomen to bring her to her knees for a crucial moment.
Mother Vajpai had taken the bait. She crashed into the door I’d just been touching, then came off it again with that preternatural speed I’d always respected and feared in her. By then I was up on the window ledge, swinging a cast-iron lamp base at the mullioned glass. I followed it through in a squeeze so tight the jagged edges tore my robes. My bundle of leathers and belled silk flew free, while the short knives I had tucked within bounced into a bed of peonies just below the window.
I jumped after them even as Samma began to shriek.
Mother Vajpai was quicker, and could either see through walls or knew me very well. Possibly both. She was already in a leaping kick when she cleared the window casing, trailing shards of glass in a glittering fog. I stood to meet her—no time to reach the long knife at my thigh—and took her lead foot in my shoulder instead of my neck or chest.
That spun me around with a crack that sounded like a broken bone. I rolled into a cartwheel and came to my feet on the graveled path beyond the peonies. Mother Vajpai was after me again, this time with my long knife in her hands. I had not even seen her draw it from my scabbard. And I’d never fought her without rules.
No rules?
I stepped into the sweep of the blade, let it score my left biceps, and slammed my head into the hollow at the base of her throat. Then I bit her, digging my teeth in over the pulsing artery.
She had the wrong knife now. One of the short knives she could have reversed, and simply stabbed me. Instead Mother Vajpai was forced to club my left shoulder from behind with the hilt. I felt her blood bloom hot and salty in my mouth and my fingers scrabbled at her short hair, trying to force her head back.
“Halt!” shouted someone in Petraean. The unmistakable hiss of a crossbow bolt narrowly passed us by.
As if we were sparring she slapped me out. The long knife thudded to the gravel path. Mother Vajpai moved swiftly back three strides, pressing a hand tight over her wounded neck. The spaces where her fingers met were marked with carmine lines like claws.
I nodded to her—the courtesy of the training room was not easily broken, even now—and spun to see Kohlmann standing on the path with a crossbow in his hand. He already had it recocked. Where had he gotten the thing? By the Wheel, the man was both fast and strong. I marked that against future need. The Prince’s guards were spread out behind him with weapons drawn, while the protocol master looked to be at mortal risk of apoplexy.
Samma stumbled out of the house behind them, her face sick with what might have been regret. Or perhaps just nausea, given where I’d kicked her.
“I believe I am ready to depart,” I told Kohlmann in my most even voice.
The guards looked to the protocol master—not to Mother Vajpai, I noticed—who nodded wearily. I turned back to face my old teacher. The vicious glint in her eye nearly sent me away without speaking, but I could not just let loose of this.
“Had you asked me as an equal,” I said softly, “you might have heard a different answer.”
Her reply came as I reached for my scattered knives, abandoned leathers, and belled silk, voice pitched so soft and low that only I could hear it. “I am sorry.”
Walking away from her, Kohlmann kept his body between me and the house. Looking past him, I saw why. The Bittern Court woman—no, Surali. Surali stood in the doorway with an expression that could have curdled kava.
She was the key to this drama. What threat had the Bittern Court held over the Temple of the Silver Lily to force all that must have unfolded?
Moot now. I could not afford to care. Not even bothering to meet Samma’s eye, I walked down the path with Kohlmann.
“They will not shoot us down,” he said.
That did not deserve any answer whatsoever, so I gave it none. As we passed the gate, he fired the crossbow’s next bolt into the trees, then handed the empty weapon to the peacock-guard. Mother Argai gave me a strange look indeed, one that after a moment I deciphered as grudging respect.
“Green,” Kohlmann said as we walked easily back down Ríchard Avenue. By the goddess, this man was a coolheaded one. “We must speak of this as soon as possible. You very nearly launched a war back there.”
“Councilor,” I began as we turned the corner onto Knightspark Street. Out of sight of Mother Argai, I put every ounce of my strength into running. I let the pains in my back and the open wound in my arm and the ache in my shoulder and roiling of the baby and the dissolution of my stomach all pour into the pavement, feet slamming one after the other as the loosened silk jingled. He shouted once, but did not give chase.
I did not care. All I wanted was to be free for a while. Even Below would have been too limiting. So I ran. I ran as if the wind were at my heels. I ran as if I were the wind. I ran as if my very life depended on it, though blood slicked and stinging, my arms and my back threatened to collapse like poorly handled soufflé.
I ran until I was sick and I ran some more, crossing what seemed like half the city and back again until in my turnings I reached the Temple of Endurance.
* * *
The temple was under construction on the grounds of the old minehead in the Velviere District.
I’d run so hard and unthinking I’d spiraled around it twice before stopping at the modest gate that had been knocked into the ancient boundary wall. The minehead had originally been walled off without any entrance at all, in order to permanently block the site from the fine homes and buildings surrounding it. I knew the location, but when I’d left Copper Downs, they were still arguing over the size of the hole.
What I saw now as I panted out the hard knot in my gut was a pair of green lacquered pillars standing against the old stone of the protective wall, topped by a crossbar that looked more Hanchu than anything to me. Between the pillars tall oaken doors stood open. Wide enough to drive an oxcart through, I realized.
An older man—not Selistani—in an undyed linen robe of a simple cut sat on a chair before the gate, a walking stick across his lap. He looked at me incuriously as I stood bent with hands on my knees, gasping. My lungs burned as the air puffed away from me in thin, white shreds.
Finally I found my breath, straightened, and approached him.
“Been in a fight, have yer?”
I grimaced. “A master of the understatement, I see. Please, I seek admittance.”
“Temple’s open.” He didn’t shift his position or lay his stick aside. I could have stepped around the man easily enough, but this had the feel of a test.
“The temple is open, but I have not been invited to enter.”
A smile dawned upon his face. “Now, that is a different matter.”
“I am Green,” I told him. “Summoned by the god.”
“A silent god has spoken to you.” His words were flat but his eyes twinkled.
I’d already had this stupid argument, with Chowdry, and I knew the secret answer. “Endurance is mute, not silent.” I leaned closer. “Besides, he was my ox!”
The old man spun his staff so close to my face he might have taken a tooth out, then rose from his cane chair. “We know who you are, Mother Green. We are glad of your return.” A swift, mocking bow. “Welcome, and bid fair to enter.”
I walked past him a couple of strides, then turned. The man was gone, only his chair remaining. Stepping back, I ran my fingers across the fraying cane. Cool, and still beaded with the morning’s frost now dripping to water.
Another one of this city’s avatars, or possibly a ghost. Building a temple atop a minehead, when the local tulpas haunted the dangerous galleries and tunnels of Below, had not been the wisest judgment ever made. I tried to remember if this had been my idea.
Somehow I had the feeling that it was.
The last time I’d passed this way, the area within the walls had been a forest of brambles and broken machinery. Those were difficult days indeed. Now the lot was cleared. A low fence stood around the open shaft, apparently to keep people from wandering into it and breaking their necks. Though there was a ladder below, it would be a long, fatal fall for the inattentive or unlucky. Oddly, Chowdry and his acolytes had not blocked or guarded the opening, as I might have done in their place.
Most of the metalwork and timber baulks about the property had been taken down or hauled away. A hasty wooden structure about two rods square obviously serving as a temporary temple stood to the south of the shaft, while foundation stones and colored posts laid around the shaft showed where a more ambitious structure would someday rise.
The small building was set on piers, raised far enough above the ground that three steps led to the porch. Chowdry sat there with hands folded, watching my approach. Several faces peered from within.
“You have come,” he called in Seliu.
“I am here.”
“Would you like aid with those wounds?”
I staggered forward and sat beside him, my loosened bundle of belongings slipping to the ground. The time was not yet right for me to enter the god’s sanctuary. Though I served the Lily Goddess, Endurance was my god in the most literal sense. I still wasn’t prepared to face him just then.
“The blood on my mouth is not my own,” I said. “But if someone can see to my arm, I’d be obliged. Everything else will heal. Oh, and you had an avatar at the gate when I came in. Saucy old bastard.”
“You are being as a lamp to moths for the spirits of this place.” Then, in Petraean, over his shoulder, “Fetch Sister Gammage out here, with her needles and bandages.”
Chowdry held my hand as Sister Gammage—an older Stone Coast woman with a squint and not very many teeth, but a steady hand with a needle—cleaned and sewed my arm. I could almost forgive Chowdry for Little Baji being in the city, but was not prepared to ask the questions that rose from that unfortunate business.
After they were done I allowed myself to be led to a large tent among a stand of them behind the temple where hot water was being poured into an enormous copper bath. Chowdry brought my silk and leathers before excusing himself. Sister Gammage chased everyone else away, persuaded me to give up my knives for a little while, stripped my damaged robe from me, and helped me slip into the water. Once there she brought me a flowered tea I did not recognize—which is saying something, given my early training—and left me to soak in peace.
Soak I did until I slept. The water was so hot my muscles did not knot.
* * *
I rested two days in another tent, in truth sulking while people chattered, laughed, and labored outside. Sister Gammage or Chowdry brought me lentils and watered milk, for the baby. My gut would suddenly tolerate nothing else. Where had these food sicknesses come from?
Also at my request I’d been provided with boys’ clothing. The robe was a silly idea, proven pointless. I refused to return to the leathers, was all but ready to be shut of them completely; so brown corduroy breeches, canvas shirt, low sturdy workboots, and wide, flat cap seemed far more practical. There was even a quilted cotton jacket adequate at least to the autumn chill. I could run roofs, tumble through dirt, and, best of all, attract no attention whatsoever while dressed as an everyday youth of this city.
Well, except for my dark skin and the slashed scars upon my cheeks, but one thing at a time. Perhaps some profession here wore masks or veils I could adopt without causing comment. Beekeepers? Temple virgins?
In the meantime, I hid my leathers and my good fighting boots in a bundle beneath a pile of stones between the tent complex and the wall. I wrapped them carefully in waxed linen, then tent canvas, and scattered herbs within the folds to keep off the molder. I did not know how long I might need the Blade costume to wait in secret for me, but it required care much as anyone or anything else might.
Best of all, no one bothered me. Whoever was looking for me—the Interim Council, the Kalimpuri embassy—Chowdry and his people were having none of it. I had not yet been to see the ox god, but I was certainly under his protection. Much as I had been as a small child, and likewise down the years since.
This situation was not so restful as being at Ilona’s cottage had proven, but it was peace enough to be worth my while. Still, I knew events moved in the city. The ghost Erio had been worried about what might happen here soon. Regardless of my usual opinion of the ancient dead, that one had been lucid, focused, and afraid of something.
Mostly the baby needed me to rest. I tried to keep relatively still and calm, let my back ease up, my shoulder heal, all my bruises fade, and the stitches on my arm be reduced from weeping pink fluid to a horrid scratching that smelled faintly of the gin that Sister Gammage splashed on the wound every few hours.
Gin and hot baths, they seemed to be the entirety of her book of healing. Well, that and stitches. Definitely my kind of woman.
On my third morning, the lentils did not satisfy, and my own laziness was beginning to irritate me. When restfulness became a problem, it was no longer a solution, as the Lily Blades liked to say. I rose, gathered my belled silk and adjusted my boy’s clothing, then headed out to find better fare. I needed to be well-fed before I could square accounts with my ox god. The baby did not seem to mind, and my appetite was drawn to the crackling smell of sausages on a fire nearby.
“Mother Green!” said a cheerful young man who looked Selistani and sounded Stone Coast. He appeared vaguely familiar—one of the drawers of water for my bath two days ago? He also held a large, flat pan covered with the sizzling meat.
“I am no one’s mother,” I snapped. Not true, of course. And it was better than “Lady Green.” “But I have a mother of a hunger.”
“Take a place.” He pointed to a long wide wooden table under a thin canvas roof where a dozen young people, mixed Selistani and Petraean, sat wearing undyed linen robes, chattering happily as they ate their way through scrambled eggs, sausage, and chunks of brown bread.
This was so utterly unlike the refectory at the Temple of the Silver Lily that I had to gawk a moment. All the aspirants there had lived with intense discipline, not just the Blades. Here the atmosphere was more that of a fair, or a camp. Children playing at ritual for a lark, not serious acolytes. Not at all like my poor Septio had been, either.
I shook off my mood and laughed. “Sit? No. You sit!” I gently shoved him aside from his pan and took over the cooking. They had a decent selection of spices, and I called for cheese and white wine to enrich the eggs. If only I could have remade the bread.…
A hot stove in front of me, a pan in my hands—these things much improved my spirit. Cooking absorbed my energy and calmed my spirit awhile. I fed Endurance’s young acolytes until I could resist the smell no more, then loaded my own crockery plate and found a place among them while the boy resumed cooking, somewhat educated and chastened both.
I ate so much that eventually most of the acolytes stopped talking and watched me shovel food in. The baby seemed happy, and so did my stomach. I would not waste the opportunity.
Finally I pushed aside my fifth serving. The young cook began to clap. After an embarrassed moment, the rest of them did so, too. There was nothing for it but to rise and take my bow. At least I was properly fed. “I have been called before the god,” I told them, and headed off through the tents toward the small wooden temple.