by Jay Lake
“I know who you are,” I said, bending low. “Laris. Priestess of Marya.”
She nodded, eyes bright with tears. Or possibly fear.
How it must break a priest’s heart when their god dies. Worse than the agony of a lover perishing of the crab disease, or even a child being taken by the flux. “I am sorry,” I whispered. “Do you know what just happened?”
“She rode me.” Laris’ chin dropped, as if she were falling asleep just then and there.
“Desire, not Marya.”
“Desire?” Laris sounded drunk, almost.
“Where were you?”
“In the lazaret on Bustle Street.”
I’d heard of that place. Girls went there sometimes to lose babies, either before or after they were born. “A place where women can doctor women.”
A faint smile ghosted across Laris’ face. “Men will kill us all.”
Perhaps they already have. I pushed the thought away. “Do you know what Desire spoke to me of?”
“Wh-when She rode me, I became light.” Laris shivered and pulled herself back deeper into the fouled straw. “I-I’m cold. Can you take me home?”
“No,” I said softly. My fingertips brushed her face, and I felt an upwelling of sympathy and pity for this broken woman. “But I can take you back to Bustle Street.”
“They tried before, you know,” Laris said as I hoisted her to her feet. I considered hiring a horse, but the remainder of my haul from the theft earlier this day wasn’t in coin. Not yet. And I didn’t feel like trying to bargain a jeweled brooch for brief use of a mount worth a fraction of its value.
“I’m sure they did.” I had to return her to where she needed to be. Time was slipping away. At least it was not snowing now.
“Last time we stopped them.” She took a deep, shuddering gasp, then clung on to me. “My sister and me, we stopped them.”
“Stopped who?” I looked out of the alley mouth along the Street of Horizons. Where was Skinless when I needed him, anyway? The Temple of the Frog God rose to my right, faced with slick green tiles and vaguely disturbing sculptures along the roofline. To my left was the Sailor’s House, a generic sanctuary dedicated to a dozen gods and goddesses of the sea—from the Hanchu ports, the Smagadine cities, Selistan, and farther beyond the endless horizons of the world’s oceans.
The street had traffic, but nowhere near a crowd. I eyed a dung cart that presented some possibilities. A swift getaway didn’t seem likely considering the two shaggy mules dispirited between its poles.
Off we went. Laris had found her feet, and stumbled along beside me. She the drunk, I the friend carrying her home to sleep off her misfortune. It was a simple enough guise, all too ordinary for the city. “The Saffron Tower,” Laris breathed in my ear, returning my earlier semblance of affection.
And by the Wheel, my sweetpocket stirred at the warmth of her. What a terribly foolish moment to be thinking of the solace of skin. “Tell me about them,” I said, to keep her talking. I knew a little—the Saffron Tower was both a place and a monastic order headquartered in that place. It was located somewhere along the channel connecting the Storm Sea to the Sunward Sea, well east of the Stone Coast. Religious contemplatives on some rocky headland, looking for their gods in the toss of waves and the glare of distant sunsets.
Or pilgrims, I realized, searching the world for the pattern of the fall of the titanics.
“Monks,” she slurred. “In yellow robes. Except the last ones weren’t monks, they were servants.”
“Servants sent to kill a god.” My mouth was running ahead of my thoughts.
“A Selistani red man and a sprite woman.” She giggled. “He was … something to behold. Something more to fuck. A sturdy giant.”
Selistani? Red man? Mythical beings of the Fire Lakes well south and west of Kalimpura. “What did you do with them? Where did they go next?”
“My sister and I took them carnally as a rite of the goddess.” Her voice caught. “I believe they departed south across the Storm Sea after.”
To Selistan. Had the plot been moving before this most recent surge of events? I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice. “How long ago?”
“Years…” Her voice slurred. “Years, and tears ago. Not long after the Duke fell.”
I felt a brief surge of despair. Once again, the whole business seemed to trace back to me.
She stumbled again, and began muttering. I all but carried her through the slush and cold water of the streets. Together we wended toward Bustle Street and the lazaret there. My thoughts dwelled on old men in saffron brocade, whose wiles were generations beyond my own. How much like a god would a man become if he’d lived hundreds of years in health and sound mind? How different were these twins from the Duke?
Magic, divinity, the life of people and cities. It all played together. And I knew what to do about powerful immortals.
Of all people, I knew. Some lessons truly did last a lifetime.
* * *
A pale, heavy woman with a face scarred by pox and old violence peered at me through a narrow gap in the lazaret’s front door. The place had obviously been built for a counting house or something of the sort, and was still fortified as it had been during its heyday. “What is she doing out there?” the doorkeeper asked with a gasp of recognition.
“The goddess brought her to the temple. Laris was not fit to return on her own.”
“Come in, come in…” The door creaked open and I stepped into the shadows to face a pair of crossbows.
Crossbows?
I almost dropped Laris to reach for my blades when I realized the weapons were mounted on swivels, but untended.
“From earlier days,” the heavy woman said. “Though they’ve been fired a time or two since. Not many here with the strength to string or cock them.”
The winding gears were locked back with pawls, but those weapons should have been manageable even for a fairly small person, assuming the cranks were the right size. Probably no one in this women’s house understood that. “You find yourselves under siege often?”
“Sometimes.” A slow sigh escaped her. “A man has every right to his wife,” she added cryptically.
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but something in her tone stirred my unease about stolen children. “Please,” I said. “Take Laris and care for her. Again.”
The woman reached for the priestess in my arms. “You’re a killer, aren’t you?” She grunted as I shifted Laris’ weight over.
“Is that so clear to you?”
“Yes,” she said, over the unconscious priestess’ shoulder. “Return if you need shelter. We’ll see to you, or give you a safe enough bed. Can’t hurt to have a woman like you around.”
If there were a Lily Blade handle to be raised in this city, I now knew of a candidate Blade house. “I will remember you,” I said truthfully. “And I may have a few women to send here.” Mother Vajpai. Samma. Corinthia Anastasia. I made a mental note to inform Mother Argai of this place, its location, and her likely welcome. “Some of those I send may not speak Petraean. They would be dark like me, and have my same manners.”
“Marya help them if so,” she said. “Go, go, woman. And be welcome on your return.”
I slipped back out into the street and puzzled on what I’d just learned.
* * *
Wrapped in my stolen robe, I was not so conspicuous as I might otherwise have been. My feet were tired, and I would swear my ankles were swelling inside my boots. In fact, my whole body was exhausted in a way I didn’t recall it ever being before.
Pregnancy.
I had never asked for a child. I had also never considered seeking out some place such as the lazaret to rid myself of the baby. She was mine.
Mine. Not Blackblood’s, nor the Lily Goddess’.
Mine.
Thinking about Desire, I could not say if She’d heeded my warning. I’d certainly failed to enlist Her. Most probably, I’d endangered Her anew. Iso and Osi were distracted f
rom Desire for the moment by my co-opting them in an attempt to control Blackblood, but I could hardly hope they’d take him down.
The audacity of the larger plot was almost overwhelming. Plot-within-a-plot. Or more accurately, a plot-outside-a-plot. Much as in the twins’ view of the divine, layers played into layers in this matter.
At the core, Surali was making a play for me to satisfy her personal vengeance, and possibly the Bittern Court’s, for the way I’d handled the killing of Michael Curry. They’d not won the Eyes of the Hills as they’d hoped. Even so, the gems had been secured with the key I’d thrown into the harbor back in Kalimpura. I pitied whoever had been forced to dive to recover it.
Wrapped around that was a larger effort to overthrow the Lily Goddess and shift the balance of power in Kalimpura toward the Bittern Court and their allies. Specifically including the Street Guild and its longstanding rivalry with the Lily Blades. That effort seemed to encompass an attempt to assassinate the Lily Goddess. Which would, among other things, well and truly put paid to whatever place of safety the women of Kalimpura could hope to find. Let alone those from the rest of Selistan with the courage to come seeking aid.
Laid around all that was a larger effort to stalk the daughters of Desire. The Saffron Tower sought to overthrow what it saw as the error made at the beginning of time when Father Sunbones had allowed his daughter Desire to exercise Her free reign in the garden. At least, that was the man’s tale. As I’d first read it in Goddes &e Theyre Desyres, the story had concluded with a warning to women and their goddesses.
Passing another layer, wrapped around that was the effort to stalk Desire Herself. The titanics were long gone from the affairs of the world, or so we who lived in these lesser days were taught. But the old, old anger of men and their gods at the rebellion of women was very real.
Stop Desire from continuing to raise daughter-goddesses at need, and you would stop the thread of subtle power that united and protected women wherever on the plate of the earth the writ of the old titanics ran.
And to do all this, Surali and the Saffron Tower would casually overthrow both the political and divine order of Copper Downs. The sheer effrontery of this offended me. The intersection of a hunt as old as time and a political conspiracy of this generation of power in Kalimpura was deeply unfortunate. My presence at the heart was even more unfortunate.
Or had the Lily Goddess intended this all along? Had Her mother-goddess, Desire, intended this? Was I only and ever a weapon forged, honed and drawn for this moment?
Such thoughts brought me past the verge of illness. I stumbled in the snow, placing my hand on a wall as I toppled past the verge and spewed my guts. Not so much there, in truth—the pears from before, and whatever orts I’d snatched at the beginning of the day.
I was no one’s tool. I’d fought and killed to escape being used. The idea that my entire life was of someone’s making, even beyond the slavery of the Factor’s house, was enough to set my heart racing and my imagination spinning until my head felt fit to burst.
With a chilled hand, I wiped the vile, stinging tang from my lips and moved on. While I’d been thinking, my footsteps had carried me back toward the Temple of Endurance. Why did I need Chowdry now?
But I didn’t need Chowdry. I needed the god.
Despite my gloating earlier about slaying the Duke, there was no fire I could raise against Iso and Osi. Not at their age and power. Even the Rectifier might be crushed beneath the weight of their wills. Archimandrix would only be a distraction. At most, I’d warned Desire, though it was inconceivable the goddess had not already known. She was a titanic. She could surely see their every step.
Why She didn’t just act against them directly was beyond me. All magic had rules—sorcerous or divine. I didn’t suppose it was mysterious for a goddess, even a titanic, to be bound by those rules.
But Endurance … Endurance was not sprung from Desire, nor any titanic. My ox god had not even arisen from the human impulse to religion. I’d instantiated him with the stolen power of ancient pardine Hunts, their braided soulpaths filtered through four centuries of the Duke’s iron grasp on the numinal affairs of this city.
Whatever magics and weapons Iso and Osi deployed would be less effective against my Endurance. I hoped.
I swept through the open gates of the temple to ask my father’s ox to protect me one last time. And through me, so many others.
* * *
The afternoon brought a stinging trace of frozen rain by way of reminding me that winter was here. As if I could have forgotten. Also, more of that raw wind. Chowdry’s acolytes had abandoned their construction project under threat from the weather. I heard singing somewhere inside the tent encampment, but I ignored the music. Instead I stepped up to the door of the wooden temple and passed within.
The bead curtain parted at my touch. The ox statue sat where I’d last seen him placed, amid his incense burners and guttering tapers. My belled silk still lay between his forelegs, an offering of my entire life, in a way. Which I supposed was a strange echo of the truth. The hangings on the wall had changed—more added and the rest rearranged. The air smelled of incense and oranges and the slightly rotten odor of rain-soaked wood.
I stood quietly before the ox, so close I could touch his muzzle. The impression of a stable was still overwhelming. And still more than a little amusing. Endurance in life had been a creature of the sun, the water, rice paddies and ditches and the stubbled margins of our little walkway back toward the road to town. Pinarjee, my father, could no more have built an enclosed stable like this than Endurance would have sheltered in it.
Yet I was coming to a renewed appreciation of the relationship of gods to place. Desire had shown me that, as had Iso and Osi in a different fashion. No one in Copper Downs would understand a god who stood in a rice paddy. But a stable was a meaningful symbol to anyone who lived in this land of cold winters and long spring rains.
Carefully I reached out and brushed my fingers across the ox’s nose. I almost expected it to be warm and damp, as in life, but that was just an illusion of the moment. Prayers were tied to the horns as I’d seen them before. I hooked a few off, curious what I’d see. It didn’t feel like snooping—in one strange sense, I was an avatar of the god Endurance. Or perhaps the god was an avatar of mine.
I laid that uneasy thought aside for consideration at some future date. It didn’t need to trouble me now. Instead I read the prayers I’d taken.
I want for Nitsa to rest easy
That one stirred my heart, for Nitsa had died in my place. I gave the ox a long, thoughtful stare.
I am sorey for what I did to the Merchants’ dautter
Please give me a better chance
Green needs peace, her world is too driven
The last one stirred me all over again. I found myself both angry and sad at the same time. I crumpled the prayers, each on a little slip of foil-backed paper, and bent to feed them to a fat, slow beeswax candle burning with the faint scent of oranges almost beneath Endurance’s chin. One by one the prayers flared with blue flame. They curled to ashes as they reached toward the ceiling.
When I was done, I rocked back on my heels. Much as when I was a child.
“Do you suppose the god is hearing them better that way?”
Chowdry’s voice, speaking Seliu. I heard the clack of the bead curtain immediately thereafter. I considered palming my knife, then realized that if Chowdry wished me ill, he wouldn’t inform me of that by stabbing me in his own sanctuary.
“In truth, I am not so sure the god hears prayers at all,” I answered as he came to squat next to me. “Intentions perhaps. Actions certainly. But what are prayers except packaged hopes? And what god will deliver hope when we are here to care for ourselves?”
“Endurance is not hearing the words,” Chowdry said quietly. “But Endurance does hear prayers, I can tell you.”
I favored the priest-pirate with a sidelong glance. “He was my god even before he was yours.”
“Do you pray in Seliu?” I asked him.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But even the Selistani acolytes are wanting to worship and pray in Petraean. In half a generation, Endurance will not be a Bhopuri god at all. Just a Stone Coast god with a few odd words in the mouths of his temple priests.”
I looked back at those blank marble eyes. “I should hope that Endurance would ever be too humble to fall prey to hubris.” That was perhaps the point of seating the god in an ox in the first place.
“What are you wanting here, Green?”
I let that question wash over me, wondering the best way to answer.
He mistook my silence and continued: “You are not coming about to debate theology, or develop ritual. You are not being a builder to raise the temple. And for all your dancing with those terrible women back home, I am sure you were never being so much of one for the gods.”
“I want to stop some plots, and set others in motion.” Vague but truthful. “I have met another god—a goddess, actually—who I would never have thought to see even if I’d spent all the years of my life within a temple. Now I have returned to this god. To my god.”
“He is not being your god.” Chowdry leaned forward and tapped some ash off the end of an incense stick. “He is belonging to all of us, and to this city. You do not see the roots, but they are there already. Settling deep into stone so that he will never be removed except by great force.”
“I know about roots, Chowdry.” My right fingers trailed on his left arm a moment. “Endurance’s roots and my own are in a sun-drenched rice paddy back in Bhopura. Selistan’s sun is our sun. Yours as well. And now I will call upon the god for the sake of my memory and his. If he ignores me, well, I can hardly be worse off than I am now. If he heeds my call, then I will have once more raised a great ally.”
“You cannot be summoning gods as if they were clowns for a children’s party.”