by Jay Lake
I felt a familiar curdling in the air around me.
If this is Your will, so be it. If Your will is that we should prosper, I beg You to favor us now with Your presence, the light of Your wisdom, Your love and support and guidance. My Sisters’ hunger for Your face that has been turned away from them by our misguided leaders and their wrongful acts.
Come, please. We await You.
I looked up again to see flower petals drifting above me. The congregation was silent, holding in their breath as one woman. The thickened air reminded me of so many of these moments.
Then I caught sight of Mafic. He was grinning. The expression was clearly aimed at me.
This was what the old bastard had been waiting for, I realized with dawning horror. Not to take me away as I’d first thought, but for me to call the Lily Goddess. Or perhaps both. He must certainly be that clever.
Now that I had invoked my goddess, I did not know how to stop Her coming. I did not even know if that was either possible or desirable for me to do so. I wished mightily that things had gone better with Firesetter, that his prodigious strength might be here at my back. Or even better, that the Rectifier had come across the Storm Sea with me. His power and experience at fighting priests would have served well in this terrible moment.
There was another I could call on. I looked steadily back at Mafic. If Mistress Tirelle had taught me anything during my years in the Pomegranate Court, it was to keep my thoughts and feelings from my face. So with my expression stilled, I began to pray again. Surely not even this one could take on two divine powers at the same time.
Desire, I said soundlessly, forming the words and releasing them where they might be heard. Like the Lily Goddess, the titanic listened to me. Whatever Her reasons might be. Your enemies have come to the house of one of Your daughters. Stand forth now that we might stop them here. I offer You the chance to redress the wrongs of the long centuries, and keep another from being struck down as so many have before.
But I had not reckoned on the depths of Mafic’s intrigue, nor of Mother Srirani’s foolishness. Or perhaps it was Surali’s treachery I had failed to understand. I have long since realized there was no difference, that the Temple Mother and the Bittern Court woman had become two ends of the same stick.
That day, all I knew was more Street Guild were shouldering their way into the temple from one of the gallery entrances. My prayer to Desire trailed off at the sight of their weapons above me. Wood and metal stocks without the bow attached. Guns, just as Lalo’s men had used aboard Prince Enero. The mystic weapons Chowdry had written to warn me of.
“No!” I screamed at the same time as the Temple Mother spun backwards as if kicked in the chest. The first gun barked, somehow after she’d been struck. She dropped to the floor to wind up leaning against the altar. Blood soaked the front of her robes. Her eyes were wide with surprise. Mother Vajpai knelt to Mother Srirani’s side, heedless of the buzzing thunder chipping the marble floor around us.
Turning this way and that, I saw everything as if in one, great glance. There are moments in combat, in lovemaking, in parenting, when time slows to a nothingness and a great well of experience can fill very, very quickly. Blue black smoke drifted from the long guns. Even the men holding them seemed surprised at their effect. In the gallery, women were screaming, leaping to their feet, turning to one another. There were far too few Blades up there. Detained, perhaps, or forbidden from attending this convocation. I saw no weapons on those of my Blade Sisters who were present—had they all been disarmed at Mother Srirani’s order?
It wouldn’t have mattered if they were present, no one could outrun thunder. Not even a Lily Blade.
We would all be dead, or fallen, very soon.
Not knowing what else to do, I leapt atop the altar amid the confused swirl of mist and flower petals.
“You will not,” I said, my voice low once more. I drew upon the power of every god who’d ever touched me, upon every tingle of magic or miracle that had passed through my hands thus far in my short life. Filled with a rage as great as any I had ever known in my life, I took the god-blooded short knife in my hand and pointed it at one of the gun-men.
I burned like fire. My hands twisted and popped. The long gun at which I had aimed my will exploded in a burst of fire and noise and shredded fingers.
The great, carved double doors that were the formal entrance to the sanctuary burst open in a rush of foaming water. The ocean had come for me a third time, its boundless fists battering down the swordsmen who had menaced me and sweeping them in a violent boil across the floor of the sanctuary. Mafic stood thigh-deep in the water wrestling with a whirlwind—no, two whirlwinds. Desire had manifested as well.
They battled in a small, fierce storm touched to ground. A waterspout, raging, crackling, hissing like some great cat in pain, spitting sparks and fire and flecks of glittering death through the air.
No matter how powerful Mafic was, he was not a god. Let alone a titanic. His trap had been laid for one, not two. The Saffron Tower could never have meant to attack Desire face-to-face under such uncontrolled circumstances. I prayed that Mafic would choke on his success in finding his quarry.
In any event, he seemed overwhelmed just as I had hoped. His gun-men, safely above the flood that lapped at the altar top now, were not. They had turned instead and were firing their weapons into the mass of my Sisters. Those women were trying to flee, being driven out.
Where are the Blades? Disarmed, and possibly confined, going by what Mother Srirani had said.
I pointed my god-blooded knife at another long gun and willed it to destruction as the first one had. The firearm erupted in a satisfying gout of flame and smoke. Its wielder dropped away handless and screaming.
That gave pause to the other Street Guildsmen up in the gallery. Wishing that I could throw the blade in my hand, but not daring to discard it, I turned toward Mafic.
Fantail caught my eye. Not dead, not at all. She had ridden the flood like a horse and even now raised long fist-headed snakes of the ocean water to strike at the other Street Guild and their terrible weapons. I jumped off the altar back into the swirling tide and fought my way waist-deep toward Mafic, who mouthed the words of some Saffron Tower ritual as he stood straight against the twinned whirlwinds of his would-be victims. Lightnings crackled around him. He was drawing a whirlwind of his own, the water dark with spume. Around their battle steam rose and smoked, as if Firesetter were here standing against his old master.
He was a human problem. I was a human solution. Soaked to the bone with salt water, burnt by the heat of it so close to this fight, I jumped onto Mafic’s back and jabbed the god-blooded knife into his shoulder, just above the clavicle.
Whether a woman’s touch was painful anathema to him as it had been to Iso and Osi, I did not know. But a blade sunk deep into flesh should be sufficient to interrupt any man’s efforts. He twisted as I grappled around his head, digging the fingers of my free hand for his eyes even as I turned the blade in its wound.
Above me the long guns barked again. Mafic staggered as if he had been punched. His dark whirlwind collapsed, and with it the forms of the Lily Goddess and Desire. I dropped from his back to get a proper swing at him with my short knife, but the tide was already retreating. He rolled away from me with the salt water.
Fearing the firearms more in that moment, I turned my attention upward again. A handful of Blades had converged on the Street Guild in the gallery and were casting them over the rail to fall to the sanctuary floor. Without their weapons, I noted.
Mafic, then. He could not be permitted to get away. I whirled back toward him to see him tumbling out through the broken doors. The water was departing, much of it draining through the floor into the refectory and kitchen below, the rest retreating as it had come. A hand plucked at me to stop me from racing after him.
“Not alone, Green,” said Mother Vajpai. She was as sodden with blood and salt water as I. “Not even you.”
Firesetter s
tood amid the broken doors, glowering. Wisps of smoke danced across his massive red chest, the leather trews, the rough-spun vest.
I stood panting as quiet descended upon our temple once more. A single lily petal spun out of the air to land upon my knife blade and stick there as if it had grown from that place.
* * *
The damage to the sanctuary was considerable. Both Desire and the Lily Goddess had vanished. This did not alarm me. More to the point, we had lost many. That was a source of greater concern.
A quick count found the Temple Mother dead, though whether of her wounds or of drowning, I could not say. Six of the Street Guild were dead as well, and nine other Mothers and Sisters of the temple. Most of the slain women had been struck by the long guns. The men seemed to have perished variously of broken necks, drowning, or being beaten. And exploding firearms, I was pleased to note.
An Intercessory Aspirant raced in through the front doors, breathless. “The tide,” she gasped. “It came up out of the sewers … and broke open … the Blood Fountain.” She dropped to her knees. “You saved us … Mother Green.”
Not me, I thought. Fantail. At most, I’d summoned her. From where had the Red Man’s apsara come, and to where did she go? “She was alive,” I said to him, ignoring the Aspirant.
“And still is,” he growled. “Even now, my Fantail herds the ocean back to its bed, to keep your city dry.”
“Bless you.”
His smile was crooked and pained. “Perhaps you already have.”
The Mothers and Sisters of the Temple of the Silver Lily were gathering close around me now. Hands reached out to brush my leathers or pluck at my sopping, sticky hair. Awed murmurs rose.
“We must go,” I said, trying to shrug them off. “Mafic is loose. The game is blown wide open. Surali holds one of our own hostage, and another beside her. These two need rescue before she grows so desperate as to do worse than hold them in place. And we must smash the Street Guild and the Bittern Court while the power to do so remains in our hands.”
“No,” said one of the older Justiciary Mothers. Her name was Atawani, I thought. “Not yet.”
“You have prayed down the Lily Goddess,” another called out.
“You are the next Temple Mother!” shouted a third.
“No! Absolutely not!” That was insane on the face of things. I would no more be the next Temple Mother than I would be the next Prince of the City. “You will find a Mother in the usual way”—through meetings among the heads of the orders and a vote of the senior Mothers—“but for now, we must release and rearm the Blades. Every Mother and senior Aspirant, so that we might strike while disarray is still upon our enemies.”
Some of them were willing to argue more, especially the Justiciary Mothers, but the rest moved off quickly enough to obey me. I shoved the last of my would-be advisors aside and strode about the sanctuary collecting the surviving long guns. They stank of sulfur and blood. Mother Vajpai walked with me, her former strength of spirit fully restored here in the temple.
“Here,” I said, putting one of the infernal things into her hands. “Please figure what you can of their operation. Whether we wish to use these or not, we need to begin an understanding of how to fight against them.”
Mother Vajpai sat down in a salty puddle on one of the flights leading up into the gallery and began examining the weapon closely. I noticed she was careful not to point the tip at me or anyone else. Herself most definitely included.
I turned and approached Firesetter. He sat smoldering on one of the benches where I had waited my turn at trial earlier. I swore to myself those benches would be taken out of here if I ever had anything to say about it.
“Where are the others from the safe house?”
“Here,” he said. “I could not leave them behind.”
“My children?…”
He turned and stepped out the doors. A moment later, Ilona and Ponce crowded in, each carrying one of my babies. Mother Argai followed close behind, looking rather more pleased with herself than usual.
I kissed my two caregivers and gathered my children in my arms. It was not unheard of for Blades to bear children, but we rarely bothered with such things. That I had two so small here in the temple would have been a curiosity on a normal day.
Today, with the sanctuary and galleries refilling, it was a wonder. I looked around to see Blades, Justiciars, Intercessors, Domiciliars—every order of the temple was filing in. Following the noise, following the news.
Mother Srirani had been laid across the flower altar itself. The babies cooing and babbling in my arms, I knelt before her and the goddess she had served in so misguided a fashion.
“These are my children,” I told the Lily Goddess and all Her followers crowding in around and above me. “I beg of You that they will be safe here, kept so by Your divine regard and my strong hands.”
Turning, I looked over the gathering storm of women. They had purpose now, reminding me of nothing so much as the mob outside Blackblood’s temple back in Copper Downs, the night I’d caused Iso and Osi to be struck down.
Fantail was back, too, standing with her arm raised around Firesetter’s waist, though he was three times her height. Ponce, Ilona, and Mother Argai watched me carefully. I knew what they wanted. Likewise Mother Vajpai gave me a lengthy, approving stare, one of the long guns across her lap. In point of fact, most of the temple now watched me and waited for my words—Mother Surekha and Mother Shesturi, Mother Tonjaree, and so many others known to me.
“I ask my friends from across the sea to stay here and watch over my children one more time.” They came and took my babies from me. Little Federo fussed at this; Marya just stared so intently that I wondered not for the first time who it was that looked out from those wide brown eyes. “I ask Mother Argai to stay to protect them here in the safety of the temple. As to who should stand here before the altar, we will answer that question. But not yet. Now it is time to rescue one of our own, that Mother Srirani allowed to languish in the clutches of the Bittern Court. Now is the time to rescue the daughter of one very dear to me.
“Now is the time to act.” I raised my god-blooded knife high. “I pursue Mafic and Surali to the Bittern Court. There we will free their hostages and end this feud once and for all, as Mother Srirani spoke of. Not on their terms, but on ours.”
With those words, I strode toward the broken doors. Thankfully, Firesetter and Fantail both followed me. Behind them came dozens of Blades, almost our entire force. Sisters and Mothers of all the orders poured out onto the front steps to watch us march forth from the watery chaos of the Blood Fountain’s plaza. Beggars crying out half-drowned, Beast Market merchants chasing down their wares, carters struggling to rehitch their calming teams—they all paused in their efforts. Hundreds more Selistani faces turned to me in a shared, silent amazement.
The women of the Temple of the Silver Lily had all obeyed me without argument, I realized, once the first impulse to look to authority had been settled. I would give back my borrowed power like a cloak once this was done. For now, even the notoriously proud Justiciary Mothers had not raised a significant protest.
Even Mother Vajpai, the Blade Mother herself, had followed my bidding. She stood on the steps with one of the long guns cradled in her arms. Others bobbed in the hands of some of the senior Blade Mothers. The look on Mother Vajpai’s face I could only describe as delighted pride.
I was both horrified and thrilled. Most of all, the sheer lack of argument from this fractious bunch of women pleased me.
“We go to free their prisoners and put their leaders to the sword!” I shouted. “I claim Death Right against the entire Bittern Court!”
With that, I began to run. Behind me, the largest Blade handle in my lifetime ran with me. One way or another, this would be over soon.
* * *
We raced up Shalavana Avenue. Everyone had gotten out of our way. Even the armed guards we met. Even the Street Guild we met. I did not waste energy or violence on tho
se small patrols. Such fighting would only have broken our momentum.
More than fifty Blades was a force fit not just to be reckoned with, but to terrify. We were all armored with rage at the violation of our temple and its sanctuary. That the Red Man loped gracefully in our midst, an escaped coal demon bearing his own flame, only made us all the more a terror to those we passed along the way.
Massed fighting was not the usual way of things in Kalimpura. Even the worst of the street wars between Guilds and Courts were affairs of pinpoint struggles, targeted killings, and quiet work in the dark. Or politics. Or all of that together. The Street Guild’s increasing boldness had raised uneasy scandal.
We were settling that unease.
I did not even need to direct my assault. My Blades stormed the Bittern Court’s postern gate and went over the walls in a tide of leather and steel that rolled up the opposition before us. Whatever Mafic might have done with more of those firearms, the outside guards did not have them.
Firesetter did not bother with the postern or the wall. Instead he simply struck down the great carriage gates facing onto Shalavana Avenue with his fists and stormed into their front garden. I knew a mob of regular folk would follow swiftly as their own boldness dared—to loot, to stare, to bear witness to the fall of a power.
The power that fell had better be the Bittern Court. I cast aside the possibility that the Blades might break upon this rock, and through us the Temple of the Silver Lily fail.
“Find if there are more of those weapons!” I shouted to Mother Vajpai. “We cannot have them used against us.”
“Do you want us to use them at all?” she asked.
I glanced at the Bittern Court’s great hall, where knots of fighting were visible. Women in black swarmed through the gardens, kicked open doors, subdued servants, and battled guards. “Not unless they do so first. Let us make this no worse than it already must be.”
“We only found five,” she said, and was off.
Five what? I wondered, but the thought was lost as a crossbow quarrel nearly gutted me. I charged the man who had hidden in a thorn tree before he could fire again, and lost track of what would later become a fatally important question—where all the long guns had gotten to.