by Jay Lake
Just not today.
“Return Below,” he said slowly. “Touch any of the great machines with your power. We will know.”
With my power? “Of course,” I murmured. “But for now, farewell.” I placed one hand on a rung, then turned back to him. “I thank you for the lesson in your history.”
“It is not mine,” Archimandrix mumbled, embarrassed. “I only recall it on behalf of those who have passed onward.”
With that, I climbed, wondering how much I would have to work to break out at the top.
* * *
Someone had been clever enough to build a trapdoor. Not only that, they had been wise enough to leave it unlatched for me. The true dangers of Below were far more intangible than night stalkers surfacing to rob and to raid. I had never heard of a gang of thieves using the network of sewers, tunnels, and old mine galleries for access around the city. Any that tried would be made short work of. I had been introduced with great civility and care in my day, so I supposed that I counted as one of the dangers of Below myself at this point.
Archimandrix was not so much a danger as a puzzle. I was most unclear on what aid he, his brass apes, and his derelict machines would bring me. But I trusted Mother Iron and her word. I just didn’t understand her. I had my counsel from deeper time, for all that was worth in the question of goddesses and city-killing power.
The temple construction was idle, which seemed curious. The afternoon had not finished slipping away. Chowdry’s acolytes should be at their laying-out of the foundation. Though I understood something of architecture, construction was not a skill of mine. Still, it seemed to me they were nearly at need of digging the trenches for the stonework courses.
Had this been my work gang, shovels would already be in hand.
I followed the buzz of voices into the tent camp. They were raising and fitting a new kitchen tent. That I could excuse.
Slipping around the edge of the busy crowd, I headed for the tent that I’d been using. I wasn’t sure who’d been dispossessed, but I wouldn’t be here much longer. Every day I spent here was a danger to the temple and Endurance. The god might grant me divine protection, but that hadn’t stopped murderers at the gates. Since Chowdry would neither set nor hire guards—And is that his foolishness, or the word of Endurance? I wondered—I needed to take myself somewhere that could be closed off, or much better hidden.
I paused around the canvas corner of my tent at the sound of voices. Something familiar but out of place. Listening, I realized I was hearing a muttered argument in Seliu between Chowdry and someone whose voice I recognized but could not in that instant put a name to.
Whom?
“… this is not a matter for these pale folk.”
“I will not be having any of this,” Chowdry hissed.
“It will be worse for all of us. That other one slew the entire ship but me! Chittachai lies burned beneath the ocean.”
The other man was Little Baji!
Chowdry grunted. “Good riddance to Utavi, I say, though I am sorry for the rest of them. But my answer is still being no.”
“I am making no threats,” replied Little Baji mournfully. “But the rest of them are threats. Those Blade women are mad as dogs in the market. Even the girl Samma. And that other one, the bitch from the Bittern Court. She frightens them all.”
“This is Copper Downs, not Kalimpura.” Good man, I thought, mentally urging Chowdry on. “Those powers hold no fear for me.”
“Your ox god is Selistani surely as Green herself.”
I knew my cue when I heard it. I slipped around the corner, short knife in my hand, and laid the blade edge at Little Baji’s throat. “Looking for someone?” I asked, also in Seliu.
Chowdry glared at me. “I won’t have you drawing weapons in my temple either, Green.”
“This isn’t a weapon,” I told him, my free hand tugging Little Baji’s short-cropped hair back to expose and tighten the skin of his neck. I eased the blade along as if shaving him, or stropping it on a piece of inferior leather. “This is a sacrament of the Lily Goddess.”
Little Baji whimpered but did not answer. Chowdry appeared incensed. “I would not sell you to him. I will not be selling him to you, either. Let the man go, and both of you take your troubles elsewhere.”
I shoved Little Baji away from me. I was angry now at both of them and perhaps at myself. “If your mistresses want me, they can seek me out. I’ll cut their throats as easily as I will cut yours. And take more pleasure in it. Tell them I said that, and also that I’m done with dancing to the tunes of others.”
Not god nor goddess, nor mistress nor politicians. I realized I meant what I said—I was done. Between my time in the High Hills and the rubble of Marya’s temple, ambitions for the paths of power had truly fled me.
I lived now for me and for my daughter.
Somehow I doubted that was what Mother Iron meant by the oldest powers, but there was no power older than the bond between a mother and her child. Even the titanics knew better than that. Desire perhaps most of all, with Her brood of daughter-goddesses scattered across the plate of the world like so much smelt.
Chowdry’s old crewmate rubbed his neck and stared at me. “You’re all madwomen,” he muttered. “That girl Samma killed us all and burnt the ship.”
“Samma?” I laughed. “If she took all of you on, then you were worse than useless. Return to your kennel, fool, and tell Surali and Mother Vajpai that I am done with them.”
Nodding brusquely at both men, I paid them the insult of turning my back and entering my tent. You cannot strike me down, I said, in the language of angry men. You dare not.
And so they didn’t. When I emerged a few minutes later, both Chowdry and Little Baji were gone. Only Ponce stood there.
“I am to escort you from the temple grounds,” he said, looking as mournful as he sounded.
“Chowdry is angry with me, but the god will not cast me aside.”
Ponce shrugged. “This I do not know. I just wish things were different.”
“All my life I’ve been wishing things were different.” Patting his arm, I continued, “Besides, you are safer without me. I must solve some problems that have sharp edges behind them. A public ejection of me from this place may spare you further turmoil.”
He walked me to the doorless gateway, but refused to shout down a banishment as I urged him to. His last words to me were “That big priest-killing pardine is back. I heard he was looking for you.”
“Good thing I’m not a priest.” I walked away whistling, pretending to far more cheer than I felt.
* * *
Once again I sought the roofs. They were among the safest places for me to think, and my likelihood of unfortunate incidents seemed minimal. A glance to the south suggested heavy squalls rolling in. For now the air was pale and quiet, with that tension which awaits a coming storm.
I knew all about coming storms, was quite capable of throwing more than a few lightning bolts myself at need.
Thinking wasn’t always so productive, unfortunately. That forced me to concentrate on my worries, which had a tendency to multiply one another like mice in a pantry. I wasn’t ready for more of Archimandrix, the Eyes of the Hills were heavy and sparking with tension within the inner pocket of my canvas shirt, and the rest of my troubles had not seen fit to take themselves away either. I could hardly search for the Rectifier with the Eyes of the Hills in my possession. Both good money and bad said the Revanchists would sense their presence. Besides, neither Mother Vajpai nor Surali was any kind of a fool—the two of them would have men among the Selistani refugees at the Tavernkeep’s place, even if they hadn’t already on my last visit.
The idea of simply taking to my heels and returning to Ilona’s cottage in the High Hills had a certain appeal. But fleeing had never been my style, not when turning to fight was any option. It was just that not even I could fight everyone at once. At the moment the whole city was starting to feel like my enemy.
Besides,
back in the High Hills, Erio would surely stir up whatever trouble a ghost from past ages would be able to. Ilona would welcome me, but she would not accept me if the graves were made uneasy by my continued presence. The old king was a vivimancer, a power among the dead who called the living to him to do his bidding. I did not believe he wouldn’t seek to bind me further through Ilona.
The worst was, he had the right of the business. Danger presented to me and to my child. Walking away from Copper Downs not only betrayed the city, it betrayed my daughter.
Everyone had stakes in this game, and they all seemed laid against me.
With a strange reluctance, my thoughts circled back to the twins Iso and Osi. We’d spoken before about how gods came to be, and found their power. This knowledge in turn would suggest ways that gods might be checked. Common sense indicated that a woman would sooner stand sword-armed against a storm as deter divine intent, yet gods bore a relationship to their worshippers nothing like the violent indifference of a seaborne cyclone. The twins’ studies uniquely qualified them in this regard. Besides, if everything here went so badly against me that I simply could not carry on, their pilgrimage was a vehicle by which I might escape both Copper Downs and my ever-burgeoning role as Blade to this fractious city.
As for Desire, well, the farther away from the ruined temple and Her presence I was, the less did I know what I felt there. I could identify a residue of overwhelming grief for Her daughter Marya, mixed with an intense personal urge to not experience the emotions of a titanic ever again in my life.
I was sick of being god-touched, and tired of being the point of contention.
Iso and Osi represented another avenue of ancient wisdom, should I wish to examine that question further. And somewhat more sensibly articulate than either Mother Iron or Archimandrix. Even better, the wandering twins could help me protect myself from Blackblood. As strangers to the city with only polite interest in our factions and their fates, the two of them could also possibly counsel me on how best to pit the Dancing Mistress’ pardine Revanchists and the Selistani embassy against one another—surely my securing the Eyes of the Hills from Samma would allow me to dictate the terms of that balance, if I could best puzzle how to use the gems.
In truth, all that wondering pointed to only one reasonable conclusion. I must unravel one thing at a time, or determine that the knot was so tangled I had no choice but to cut it and move on.
Stated thusly, my plan was simple to the point of elegance. Short on useful details, perhaps, but those sorts of things tended to appear as needed.
Day was coming to an end by the time I’d fully sorted my thoughts. Iso and Osi followed their meditations and evening rites—this was the hour at which they had turned me out previously for the sin of being female. I skulked across rooftops until I found a rented room being vacated by a night worker, some clerk bound for an evening counting out the day’s receipts, wearing the suit he carefully pressed before dressing and taking his leave. It was the work of moments to quietly force open his window. Within, I blocked his door with the lone chair, washed myself in his little basin, ate of his small bowl of dried fruit, and slipped into his not too grubby bedclothes for a few watches of comfortable rest. I did not neglect to leave an overgenerous silver tael on the washstand for the stranger’s troubles, though I hoped he would not be too fearful and confused by my break-in.
Even in those days of my youth, I understood the value of small kindnesses in life.
* * *
I awoke in the later hours of the night, to judge by the lowered, glowering moon above the swift-moving clouds. The forced window rattled with the fast, nervous air. The squalls I’d seen the afternoon before had taken their time, but were still on their way. The impending rain rendered seeking the rooftops now an unlikely choice. I felt a bit guilty about appropriating my host’s tiny rented room, so I took some time to straighten and clean. I even mended the torn shirt he had set out in his clothespress. Leaving the room better than I had found it, including the silver tael on the washstand, I headed to the cobbles and into the city before the rains that seemed likely to arrive with the dawn.
The baby hungered me, and tugged once more at my incipient nausea, so I ignored the roughening weather to slip around to the bakery near the Textile Bourse for a fresh cardamom roll and some kava. The woman there smiled to see me. I knew I’d risen in their estimation, because this time I was invited to sit in the kitchen and eat while two large, silent men worked the ovens. They were stripped to the waist, and their reddish-gold skins sweated in the heat like the demons of baking. They kept themselves clean with towels and wore long padded gloves to handle the breads.
The woman sat with me a little while once I’d tucked in. “We know you,” she said shyly.
That was worrisome, but it could mean anything. “You are kind,” I mumbled around a mouthful.
“You called the ox god, and spared the city.” She nodded her head. I looked up at a sudden gap in the gentle noises of baking to see both the men—her brothers?—standing at attention with the butts of their long wooden paddles grounded to the floor. They nodded as well.
“Endurance called himself.” I found myself embarrassed. “It was only my voice that made the prayer.”
That brought a shrug from the woman. She handed me a small fruit with a ribbon tied to it. “Offering. For the god, for you. Our thanks.”
She would not let me pay, either. I ate the cherry—a single one at that, strange offering though it seemed—and tied the stone into the ribbon to slip within my pocket. I bowed, took my leave, and went to find the twin pilgrims. Avoiding any chance of being viewed by prying eyes from within the Textile Bourse was my first step. After that I slipped into the burgeoning morning traffic of the city along with the beginning of the serious rain.
* * *
Iso and Osi were unsurprised to see me. So unsurprised, in fact, that they had already laid out a third setting for tea before my arrival.
“A fortune told?” I asked lightly. Their warehouse echoed with the drumming of the storm on the high, flat roof.
“Our rites are thorough,” said Osi.
Iso nodded. “Sometimes common sense is enough. Even for old men such as us.”
Common sense and good finger on the pulse of rumor, I’d bet. Anyone who made it their business to learn their way around the local gods of necessity learned their way around much else of the local life as well. And these two certainly had long practice at both.
“I thank you.” The Eyes of the Hills seemed to crackle inside my shirt, as if their velvet bag were alive. Likewise I fancied the twins’ attention drawn toward the hidden gems. Once more my memories of the encounter with Desire loomed large.
One thing at a time. These two had no place in my troubles, but I did not yet know them well enough to trust them with everything that had befallen me. How I wish I’d listened to that thought more carefully at the time.
“Tea first,” Osi said.
Iso: “Then we will speak more of gods.”
So tea we took, amid some very polite and inconsequential talk of local foods and the fall harvest and the inadvisability of eating shellfish that had not been bought off the decks of a boat just in. Always they passed the sentences back and forth between them as if in some private game. I had to strain not to hear them as one man. I knew that would be a mistake.
In time the tea service was wiped clean. They were fastidious in handling what I had used, and avoided my immediate presence with an almost eerie grace that was both fascinating and irritating. Once again ignoring my own inner wisdom, I laid aside my feelings on the matter in the interests of my larger needs. We had taken seats on mats laid in a circle so that we made three even points. I sat watching them as they watched me.
“You have been touched,” said Iso.
Osi added, “The gods follow you as a dog will follow a cat in an alley.”
“I am not bait, nor prey, for them.”
“No,” Iso agreed. “But once a w
ay has been opened from the divine into a human mind, it is easier for the divine to follow a second time.”
“Though far more often,” his brother added, “whatever god opens the way guards his prophet with jealousy.”
“You are most unusual, Mistress Green. You speak with several gods, and for none of them.”
“We know priests who would give all to be touched as you have been.”
“They can have it!” I almost shouted. These two certainly knew how to spark my fears and anger. “This is worse than being swarmed by beggars. You can kick a beggar, or outrun her. No door can be locked firmly enough to deter the entry of a god.”
Iso shook his head gravely. “Though they often manifest as human, and we speak of them so, you would be better served to think of the gods as forces.”
“As you might think of a storm, or an earthquake,” Osi added.
That, I could understand.
Iso continued. “But directed. And with intelligence.”
Osi touched his brother’s arm, as if for emphasis. “To call them beggars does not properly describe your experiences, or characterize the nature of the divine.”
“But they are beggars,” I protested, realization dawning within me. “The gods demand attention and sacrifice and devotion. If enough people turn away from them, they fade. All the power of a goddess is in her followers.”
Iso leaned close, so that I almost thought for a moment that he might touch me, ritual cleanliness or no. “We have learned much. Wisdom passed down from older times, that was once used like swords in the hands of warring priests.”
“When the titanics fell,” Osi said, “the world was wounded. How could it not be so? Just as when a mother dies the child’s heart is stricken, even if that child has grown to be a general of armies.”