by Jay Lake
It was a moment of sisterhood and peace like I had not known since the better days at the Temple of the Silver Lily. A welcome gift in that difficult time. I was almost sorry to leave Copper Downs if this was what was growing here. Also, I felt quite pleased at my own role in helping foster these changes in the lazaret.
Beside me, Mother Vajpai touched my arm. “On what errand have you set Mother Argai?”
My heart seemed to seize cold and stiff. “None,” I replied. “She left me some hours ago to return here.”
Mother Vajpai glanced around. No one seemed to be paying us much attention among the smiles and the flying gossip and the pleased attention to the feast. “She has not come back.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. My knives were heavy on my wrists, and my body was not yet fit for a hunt or a chase, let alone any sort of fight at the end. And neither was Mother Vajpai. She would never again be the fighter she was before the bitch Surali had her toes cut off.
“Do you have any notion where she might have stopped off?” I asked. The question was almost certainly hopeless, though perhaps Mother Argai had found a local woman with a taste for the rough and exotic. A bit of shopping was hardly her style.
“She was with you.” I heard the almost-accusation in Mother Vajpai’s voice.
“Not for some time.” I worked at my pigeon, flicking the meat off the bone. There was small purpose in rushing back out into the street underfed.
As I finished it off, eating swiftly as I could with a modicum of decency, Laris rose again. “Green is among us,” she announced, once more using her “praying to Mother Iron” voice. “Though she has not frequented the lazaret much, she brought me here in the worst hour of my need. She brought us Mother Vajpai and Mother Argai.” At those words, Laris paused and looked around, her expression faintly puzzled. “She … she has been a friend to us. And it is she who will soon go, taking our Mothers with her.”
A chorus of groans greeted that statement, along with several mock wails of grief.
Laris nodded to me. “Green, will you speak a moment?”
Rising, I searched for words. I could hardly just announce that Mother Argai was missing and I feared for her life. Suddenly tongue-tied, I reached for something more appropriate. What did I know of inspiring people? I was no leader and never then thought I would be.
“I am p-proud to be a friend to this house and everyone in it,” I said, feeling very cold. “And I am sorry to be leaving without knowing you better. Eat well, and rest safely.”
Stepping over to Laris, I whispered in her ear, “Mother Argai has not come back from the Temple of Endurance, though she left more than two hours ago. Send word swiftly should she come before I return, and especially of her condition.”
Laris nodded, then glanced at Mother Vajpai. I followed her glance and caught my old teaching Mother’s eye. In return I received a curt nod, before she buried her face in her hands.
I had never seen that before. Discomfited, I scuttled away, loosening my knives and praying I could sort this situation without hurting myself too badly.
* * *
Finding someone in a city is decidedly not simple. Finding some who has deliberately hidden—or been hidden—away is terrifically more complex. I could scarcely just roam about calling out Mother Argai’s name.
What I could do was make the reasonable assumption that she’d headed from the Temple of Endurance to Bustle Street by the most direct route. Mother Argai was not fond of Below, and did not know her way about Copper Downs well enough to go casually wandering. I retraced the steps I thought she would have taken, looking for evidence of a struggle along the way.
It would have been useless to ask the Petraeans I met as I walked whether they had seen her. I did call out in Seliu the few times I saw a dark-skinned face, but none of my countrymen knew of a Lily Blade lost or taken on the street. Most of them did not even treat the question seriously.
I could hardly blame them for that. We Blades cultivated our reputation for invincibility with no little care. Still, anyone may be killed by a knife in the back or an arrow from a rooftop, no matter how mighty they are.
The sun was westering, dusk nearly upon the city. I moved as quickly as I could. By starlight, blood looks no different from dirty water, or even oil. A smear on a cobble might be my only clue.
I hunted, swift and careful, all the way up Durand Avenue back to the Temple of Endurance. Nothing. No sign of her, or a struggle. No dropped weapons, no freshly smashed wood, no blood smears. Nothing.
The ever-open gates of Endurance’s home awaited me. They were as devoid of guards as always. Sometimes one or another acolyte might sit there in a chair, to welcome or direct visitors, but Chowdry claimed quite fiercely that Endurance forbade even self-defense. Twice I had met a tulpa at this gate, a ghost or wisp of divinity rising up from Below, but it was not here either on this increasingly chill evening.
Passing within, I realized that my breasts ached. My body knew I was going back to my children. It paid no attention to my intents or purposes. “Soon,” I whispered, but first cast about the packed earth in front of the wooden temple where we’d held the Naming.
Odd bits of button and dropped cloth and incense stubs abounded, along with a few crushed fruits and someone’s sandal now trampled into the dirt. Again, nothing to indicate more.
I stalked through the compound, looking for Chowdry. Ponce was cooking in the tent kitchen, and waved cheerfully to me from the open flap. A crowd of acolytes waited outside, smiling and talking. A few also waved at me.
No Chowdry, though.
The grounds were not such a large place. I soon found him by the rising columns of the stone temple, arguing with a rotund little man who sported a fringe of white hair surrounding an otherwise bald scalp. The stranger was dressed in a mason’s smock, but that did not fool me—he was obviously used to being heard and obeyed. They both kept pointing at a sheaf of papers that could hardly be readable now that the light had almost failed.
As I approached, I realized they were becoming quite heated over the subject of stone. The stranger’s hand strayed to his belt where a knife might have been found.
“When are you going to ordain more priests from that growing mob of children that follow you?” I snapped.
Chowdry turned, looking sad. The not-mason appeared surprised; then his eyes narrowed as he studied me. With my skin color, I knew I was little more than a shadow to him, but clearly he recognized me nonetheless.
“Green—,” Chowdry began in Seliu, but the stranger cut him off.
“Not that foreign gabble, please. And you must be the girl-hero of Copper Downs.”
My suspicion of this man cemented to an immediate and overwhelming dislike. Though I never saw him again before I left the city for Selistan, at the time I was concerned I was meeting a new and powerful enemy. If I weren’t so tired and worried, I might have knifed him right there.
“Have you seen Mother Argai?” I asked Chowdry in our foreign gabble.
“Not since she came to see you about your weapons practice,” he answered. Then, “No, I tell a lie. She came back to your tent later. With a man I did not know.”
Panic seized me, stabbing my heart. “And you let them in?”
He was quite surprised. “With Mother Argai? What could happen? She is a Lily Blade.”
“We are not immortal!” I shouted in Petraean, then gave the stranger a look that should have shriveled his tongue in his head before sprinting off for my tent.
Behind me, voices were raised, offense being both taken and given. I was already drawing my short knives, and wished I had taken the trouble to stick some sense into the fat fool.
* * *
As I approached my tent, I was out of breath. In no wise was my body ready for racing about and confronting either the good or the bad. Ponce was close behind me, having abandoned the kitchen when he saw me sprinting past. In turn he drew along with him a ragged line of acolytes. These children—though many of t
hem were older than I—numbered both Petraean and Selistani among them.
A Blade handle’s worth, I realized with bitter irony. A handle who were forbidden to raise their hands even in self-defense.
I drew three huge, whooping breaths, then stepped into my tent.
Inside was cold and dark. The brazier had gone out and none of the lamps were lit. Dim light had followed me in, a narrow triangle of it making a path before me across the rucked-up rugs. I could hear breathing. Federo’s gurgling, I thought.
Where was Ilona? Where was Lucia? Mother Argai?
Blades forward, I scanned the room quietly. My effort was wasted when Ponce and several acolytes pushed in around me, one bearing a small lantern.
The stiletto glittered as it came out of the dark for my throat. A gloved hand held it, and the man behind it was wrapped in leather much as I was. Even his face was masked. I barely stepped aside from the thrust, and turned to trip him but lacked both strength and finesse, and staggered away. Ponce shrieked and jumped back, knocking the lantern from the acolyte’s hand.
Flame arced, oil spilled, and I parried another stab from the long, slim weapon. It rang like a glass bell that had been struck. I spun, now careful of my balance and center of gravity. I cannot afford this fight. My body would not sustain the effort.
He came a third time as the wall of the tent caught fire. This time I stepped into the blade, allowing it to slip between my torso and my left arm. That brought both my short knives within reach of my attacker. I planted one in his gut and the other in his neck. They slipped into his body as if he had been made of butter.
What kind of leather was this man armored with?
My attacker staggered back two steps, then flopped onto his butt, so he was sitting on the floor with his legs straight out before him. Even with the covered face, I could see his puzzlement in his eyes. I spent a moment slashing the tendons in both his heels, so he would not surprise me, then turned to the growing orange light behind me.
The tent wall was fully in flames. The rug closest was smoldering.
I grabbed up one of my babies and turned to find Ponce edging back through the flap of the tent. Or had he even left? “Here!” I shouted, and passed him my child. Marya, I realized.
Federo next, into the hands of a familiar-faced acolyte. Now both children were shrieking.
Panic rose within me. Where are Ilona and Lucia? Where is Mother Argai?
I paced around the side of the tent not yet in flames. My bed was lumpier than normal, I realized. A swift sweep of my short knife pulled the blanket aside to reveal Ilona unconscious and twisted into an odd pose. Stepping over her, I slashed at the tent wall. The thick fabric parted easily at the touch of my knife. That, too, seemed peculiar, though in the moment I had no time to think why. I turned again to face the clot of people crowding the flap. Smoke obscured my view, and I was hot. I waved them in past the flames and pointed to the new slit. “Get her out!”
I looked behind the brazier, but no sign of Lucia. Water was already being splashed, but the tent was almost an oven. I grabbed one of the loosely flopping feet of my enemy and dragged him into the evening air.
Hands slapped at me. I realized my leathers had been smoldering. And everything ached. Muscles in my groin were strained, too. I was angry. Very angry.
“Find Lucia,” I told Ponce, who was crowding close with a bowl of water as if I needed to be doused. “And Mother Argai. Find them now.”
Turning to my attacker, I kicked him hard in the ribs. A wet, weak grunt escaped. He would not be much longer in this world without serious attention. Unfortunately for him, the kind of attention I was about to offer him was entirely the wrong sort.
I slit the leather mask, not troubling about how deep the tip of my knife sank. It fell away from his face in a stream of blood.
The man was Selistani. Not only that, his face seemed vaguely familiar. I stared at the beak nose, the dark brows, trying to recall why I knew him.
It dawned on me, to no surprise at all, that this was one of Surali’s men. A Bittern Court agent, or possibly Street Guild.
Very gently I slit one of his nostrils for him. That woke him up with a muffled scream.
Chowdry touched my arm. “Green, no,” he began, but stopped with an expression of abject terror when I met his eyes.
“No one threatens my children,” I growled, then turned back to my victim.
He stared back at me, oddly serene as he mouthed in Seliu, “It does not matter.”
“Not to you, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “Not for very much longer.” I leaned close. “Where are Lucia and Mother Argai?”
He smiled. “That does not matter either.”
“I know whom you serve.” His other nostril opened at the touch of my blade. This time he winced, and that foolish smile was gone from his face. “I know what you want.” I leaned very close. “You will never succeed.”
“It does not matter.”
Sick of his pride and certainty, I stood and dragged my assailant back toward the burning tent. His dead weight was a further strain on my already-abused muscles. But I wanted him to know some real fear before his imminent death claimed him. No one was placing this man on Blackblood’s altar.
Propping the bastard up on his useless feet, I shoved him through the open flap into the roaring flames. Finally he screamed. I left him to his last moments of terror and stalked after my missing women. Later I would wish I had asked smarter questions of this man, but at the time, my anger was satisfied. That had seemed to be enough to me. The music of his anguished dying soothed my ears.
“We’ve found Mother Argai,” gasped Ponce, running toward me.
“Where?”
“Hidden between the tent lining and the outer canvas.”
I winced. “Alive?”
“Yes. A bad blow to the head, and she would have burned to death already if we hadn’t pulled her free.”
“What about Lucia?”
He shook his head, baffled and sad.
“Then bring me my children,” I snapped.
I turned, looking one way then the other. Chowdry watched me from close by. His expression was closed and hard, lit in the dancing flames of the burning tent.
“There are no apologies,” I told him.
Chowdry’s face sagged into a species of regret. “You draw trouble like a mast draws lightning.”
“I am leaving. I have business in Kalimpura.” I nodded over my shoulder. “Which has become all the more urgent now.” Surali’s agent had waited until I was birthed and about because no one watched over me so closely now. Nor my tent.
Ponce came me to with one of my babies in each arm. I took them and clutched them close while I glared at Chowdry. Clearly I could not let my children out of my sight.
“I cannot bless your going,” the priest said reluctantly in Petraean. “Nor can I be pressing you to stay.” He seemed old and helpless now. Night’s darkness hung around him like a shroud.
“You do not have a say,” I told him not unkindly. “But neither do you deserve these assaults on your temple simply because of my presence.” Not so long ago, two girls had died here at the hands of Surali’s troublemakers hunting me. “I will be gone within a day or two. My children will go with me.”
Chowdry gathered a long, deep breath. “I shall send Ponce with you.”
Ponce? I had figured Ilona to accompany me, to assist me in tending the babies. I doubted I could keep her away in any case. Not from crossing the sea in pursuit of her own child. That she had waited this long without taking ship herself after Corinthia Anastasia was something of a miracle.
But Ilona was troubled. Nearly hysterical, grieving her daughter. Ponce could help mind Ilona while she helped mind my children. And perhaps a sea voyage would heal her heart enough for her to see me again, I reflected with a mix of anticipation and guilt.
“I shall take him,” I said, then hastily added, “if he will go. But that is much to ask of a young man.”
&nbs
p; “This young man will not need to be asked.” That was Ponce, close by again. He looked as if he meant to be brave. “I am going.”
I turned to him, shifting my babies to my shoulders. It occurred to me I could never fight like this. Should the children have had small leathers of their own?
“Do you know where we are headed?”
“Kalimpura,” he said promptly.
“A city full of women like me, and men like that fool who attacked us. Are you certain you wish to go there?”
“I will follow you anywhere.” His eyes glittered.
“Then hold my children again, and guard them.” I handed him back the babies. Unaccountably but still much in the fashion of babies, they had fallen asleep. “With your life,” I added.
* * *
The fire was dying, defeated by water and the immolation of my tent that had served as its fuel. Ignoring the twisted and charred body of the man I’d killed, I stalked the perimeter of the ashes, marveling that the flames had not spread. Sister Gammage, the closest thing the Temple of Endurance had to a nurse, tended to Mother Argai and Ilona, both of whom were laid out nearby on a quilted blanket. With the tent in embers, lanterns had been brought out.
There was still no sign of Lucia. Ponce had acolytes out all over the tent camp, and looking in the two temple buildings. I stared at the collapsed ruin of the tent, smoldering, shredded canvas draped over the bed and the two chests.
The chests, I thought in horror.
I rushed to a nearby tent, pushed inside—it was vacant—and tore down one of the two poles propping up the central ring. The roof creaked and sagged as I ran out again. The ashes of my own were too hot to stand in, but I leaned as close as I could and shoved the pole through the ruins to the first of the chests. My impromptu probe dragged along the collapsed, burned cloth like a plow through a reluctant field. I did not have the leverage to lift and poke as if I had a giant finger, but I managed to force the pole to the front of the chest.
Despite the danger I quickly stepped into the ashes, working my way up the pole until I did have the leverage to lift the lid. I shoved, ignoring the heat seeping into my feet through my boots. The chest creaked open, burned tent sliding off it. Within were clothes and sacks, smoldering now, probably ruined.