by Jay Lake
She stepped out of nothingness, and was indeed Desire. I imagined any woman would know this goddess simply by Her aspect. I tried to look close, but again She was of all shapes and sizes and colors in one body, so it was like staring at a crowd and trying to make them into a single person.
You were drawn to My temple. Desire’s voice was a thousand women whispering on the threshold of their greatest passion.
“I followed where my feet led me.” I would not admit to being Her creature, even temporarily. My purpose was to shut myself of gods. Not to accept more.
No, She said. Your purpose is much greater than that.
This time, the titanic was not driving me so close to the edge of reason. Had I grown stronger, or was She grown gentler with me? “You cheat by heeding my thoughts,” I told Her. Defiance was ever my way, even in the face of all good sense. Or perhaps especially then.
Laughter now, a storm off the sea. You would stand protesting before Father Sunbones himself.
Having already raised the argument, there was no reason not to follow where it led. “I would sooner steal his spoons and find my way home again.”
Your fierce will is what draws the divine to you, Green. Now Desire spoke in a voice I could swear was my mother’s, for all that I had no memory of her. You are a candle amid the vague shadows of so many other souls.
“I am not Your candle,” I said, struggling against the gentle temptation enfolded in Her tone. Not my mother, You do not play fair, I thought with a desperate urgency.
Fairness is such a human idea, She said, Her vasty power almost gentle now. But I bring you something far greater than fairness.
“What?” I let myself grow sullen, for that, too, is a kind of armor against temptation. Whatever came next was surely intended to woo my unwary heart.
I bring you magnificent opportunity. Though Her multiplicitous body did not move, I had the impression Desire knelt before me, to reach me on my level as an adult might bend down to address a small child. This city will need another in Marya’s stead. In time the women of Copper Downs would find their own goddess, and she will come together. If I might raise such a one now, much needless privation would be spared.
My words failed me for a moment, two, three; a long gap of thought unrealized. Finally, I spat out a protest. “You do not mean to elevate me to godhood!”
You have experience of theogeny, Green. You have touched and been touched by more of the divine than almost any priest or eremite. Marya’s passing was no accident. A newly raised goddess with your powers and experience could do much to block another such effort at casting down.
“No!” I tried not to shout, but I was offended, frightened. “I c-cannot do this. I harbor no hopes of ever reaching such an estate. I can’t even stand the thought of being a priestess of my own goddess. C-caring for myself and my child is t-too much. How could I look to the needs of generations of women?”
And their children, Desire reminded me.
I reined my voice in. “I have held too much fate in my hands already. I will not grasp more. Find Yourself another girl. Luck to you both when you do.”
This offer will not be repeated, the goddess warned me. I felt the pressure of scolding, of deeds ill done, of poorly considered choices and the impulsive shame of youth.
“Do not do that,” I growled. My knives were close, though none of them long enough for this target. “I will not be pressed even by You.”
Those rebellions arise from within, Green. Desire’s face came into focus, long with regret and sadness. I am not here, in truth. You have only the least focus of My attention. Most of what you see and hear is your own words and feelings. That is how I know your thoughts.
I wondered if She had just given me some great secret of godhood that I was too dense to comprehend. No matter. I would not play this game for anyone else; I certainly was not intending to play it for Her.
Besides all that, I was certain that I would be a terrible goddess.
“My thanks,” I said, begrudging even the gratitude. “But, no. I have held enough authority to know that I wish no more of it.”
She was gone with the sigh of a dying child, leaving me weeping atop a heap of broken stones and clutching at my belly to protect the baby within from everything.
***
After a while, Ponce, the pleasant young man from the Temple of Endurance, came to me where I sat listening to the breeze fuss among Marya’s ruins. He was winded, as if he’d been sprinting across the city. A spot of ash was smeared across his forehead.
“Another attack?” My words puffed white in the cold. It was then that I noticed that the pain in my chest and hand were gone as well. Had Desire taken them? I could not decide whether to curse or praise. Divine healing was rank bribery to one like me, who was supposed to learn from her mistakes. Memory of pain is an excellent teacher.
“No.” Ponce stopped, bent with his hands just above his knees. He drew in several deep, shuddering breaths that steamed harder than mine. The scent of him was strong and musky, and tugged at a corner of my thoughts in an echo of Septio better left untouched in this moment. Some lingering aspect of Desire still upon me. Or an unfortunate taste on my part for young men of priestly vocation.
“Worse, perhaps,” he added as he straightened and focused his attention.
I looked into his brown Selistani eyes and wondered what he saw of me. Had the goddess left Her mark? The very touch of a titanic was like walking into a bonfire. Despite the evidence of my own experiences, I knew that in these latter days of the world, they were not worshipped directly. Or indeed thought to be present at all. I wondered if this acolyte could spy Her words yet upon me. “What is worse?”
“A woman cries for you.”
A handful of responses crowded my thinking, none of them respectful or appropriate. I swallowed what would surely have been a smirk, settling for “What does she say?”
“She pulls at her hair and shouts your name, then bursts into tears.” He appeared baffled. “None of us have ever seen her before. She is not known in the temple.”
With a long, slow sigh I unfolded myself from my rubble pile. Whatever Desire had intended, that moment had passed, taking the goddess’ plans with it. I found myself hard-pressed to care overmuch about divine ambitions. As for the crying woman… “Is this a trick? Did you spy bravos lurking in the bushes nearby?”
“No,” said Ponce gravely. “And if we did, we would not offer up our fists. This is done as Endurance wills.”
Endurance is an ox, I thought scornfully, then felt guilty over the words. When Ponce steadied my arm, I did not even notice. My balance was just strange lately.
I broke into a trot. Not a hard run, for my escort was already winded, but something to move my body with the newfound energy Desire seemed to have imparted to me. I could not help but be grateful for that. On the other hand, too soon these boy’s pants would have to be let out or replaced. I might as well maintain what I could of my poor body in some useful shape.
Ponce kept up with me. I could hear the breath shuddering ragged in his chest as he ran, but his legs pistoned every time mine did and more. He proved to be a magnificent pacekeeper.
We ran down Whitetop Street and over Durand Avenue, straight into the Velviere District. I watched again for Skinless, or others on my trail, but saw only the business of the day.
I slowed down as we approached the area around the temple. Traffic thinned there. This was a part of town that named street runners “thief” without waiting to see if anything had actually been stolen. The temple surely already had unhappy neighbors, simply for drawing any traffic at all through those recently opened gates, where only a blank wall had for so very long guarded nothing but empty mine galleries rotting beneath a layer of brambles.
Still, our approach was brisk. The same old Selistani man sat on the chair outside the gate. Endurance already with an avatar? He nodded us in with no acknowledgment from Ponce and a bare answering nod in return from me.
Inside, the temple seemed to be in its usual state of disarray, except for the quarryman’s low-bedded wagon with its team of four enormous draft horses. Foundation stones were being unloaded.
That explained the ash on Ponce’s forehead-dust.
“She’s at the kitchen. Asti is pouring kava down her, or was when I left to find you.”
Something that had been nagging at my mind leapt to the front. “How did you know where I was?”
He grinned. “Endurance told me.”
The god was mute. I wondered if my ox was manifesting new powers. More likely Ponce was very close to his patron deity’s dreaming mind. That was where this god spoke-not in thundering visions and declamatory exhortations forced from the fumbling mouths of arrogant priests, but directly through the thoughts and deeds of his followers. I had to admit that this seemed an elegant solution to the corruption of priests.
We walked toward the kitchen tent. My heart beat cold and hard for the span of half a dozen breaths. Ilona sat at one of the long tables. Her orange dress was torn, soiled, bloodied. Her hair trailed in a madwoman’s messy cloud, like dreams escaping from a mind overheated with confusion. A mug shivered in her hands, spilling steam and brown drops on the trestle tabletop before her.
I did not see Corinthia Anastasia anywhere about.
Shoving past Ponce, I raced to Ilona’s side, full of unnamed dread. “I am here.” I plucked at her elbow. “What has happened?”
She looked at me and dropped her mug. It bounced on the table, sending chips of ceramic and a spray of kava flying. “Green,” Ilona gasped, then collapsed sobbing into my arms.
I looked across her bare head toward Ponce as I stroked her neck and back. “Have you gotten any more from her? Where is her daughter?”
He shrugged, hands spread wide, face a mask of wordless regret.
“Ilona,” I whispered, holding her close. “Listen to me, Ilona. Where is Corinthia Anastasia?”
She mumbled something into my shoulder that ended in a shriek and a sob. My heart hardened in that moment. My enemies had gone hunting among my friends. I would pay them out in rich, hot blood.
“If you do not tell me,” I crooned, patting her hair, “I cannot help you.”
The older woman broke away from my shoulder to look me in the face. Her own dark eyes were rimmed with ragged red. One was bruised, as from a blow. “They took her.” Ilona’s voice was so plain and stark that it carried more weight of grief than an army of tears could have borne.
I gripped her shoulders tight, forcing her to keep looking at me. “Who did?”
“I d-don’t know. Men. Dark-skinned. Selistani.”
“Looking for me?”
“They didn’t say.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “They didn’t say anything at all. Just beat me, laid Corinthia Anastasia across their saddlebags, and set fire to my cottage. Then they were g-gone.”
My rage blossomed like oil burning in a scorching pan. Whoever did this would pay, body and soul. I would piss on their corpses instead of lighting the candles or painting them with the red and the white.
This was aimed at me, a trap laid with a single prey in mind, but it was sprung about a child stolen away to snatch at my attention. No one could have conceived of a harder strike to my heart, short of ripping my own babe from my womb.
I’d been attacked here at the Temple of Endurance, to the cost of two lives, and shrugged it off. I’d been confronted to the point of riot at the Tavernkeep’s place and continued about my business. This, though…
The only question was whether it was the Selistani embassy behind this-Surali, to be specific, whose face I should have smashed instead of her fingers-or some other player.
Clutching tight to Ilona, I forced the fire of my thoughts to burn slower. If the Interim Council wanted me they would simply send for me. Blackblood might have hired the men who’d killed the girls, but I could not see that god causing his nervous priests to hire Selistani migrants-who could not possibly know these High Hills-as freelance raiders to commit such dirty work among the ancestral graves of his own people.
No, this was the work of whoever had been asking after me at Briarpool right before my return. Whomever Corinthia Anastasia had spied on that day, and showed herself to in the process. Possibly the pardine Revanchists. But again-why would they use Selistani agents? My mind came back to the embassy, Surali, and the people who would know how child stealing overset my heart.
Mother Vajpai.
No.
Not possible.
Not her.
Regardless of my banishment, or the political situation between the Temple of the Silver Lily and the Bittern Court, I could not credit Mother Vajpai, even now, with setting such a vile trap. But I could credit her with informing Surali of my feelings for children and the uses to which they were put. And the Bittern Court woman was quite able to make such a disaster for me, laughing all the while. They’d certainly brought their own bravos from across the sea. Little Baji and some other pirate toughs, or the Prince of the City’s men.
I would bar the doors of their rented mansion and burn it to ash with everyone roasting inside.
All this pouring through my head, I leaned close to Ilona. “I know who has your daughter. I will see to her return.”
“It was h-h…” Her news delivered, and accepted, she dissolved into tears, leaving her latest words unspoken.
Oh, the power of a child over a parent’s heart. Though I did not know it then, I would be so weakened by that power in the years to come. At the same time, it is a different kind of strength. Ilona cried in my arms for a while. Eventually I coaxed her to the tent I had been using and got her to lie down upon a cot within. Someone else slept there these days, I didn’t know whom, but I wasn’t concerned with that. Instead I wrapped myself around Ilona’s back and picked at her hair in an attempt to ease the horrid mess, while she wept herself to sleep. I realized from her messiness, and the sweaty reek upon her, that she’d raced straight all the leagues from her cottage in the High Hills to here.
As Ilona slept I cleaned her a bit more, then unbuttoned her dress and eased her out of it. She rolled as I tugged at her arms and legs. Beneath she wore a simple cotton shift that I did not attempt to remove. I could not see pulling it over her head without waking her. Instead I fetched warm water and a cloth to clean her face, her hands, her feet. In another time this would have been sensual, even sexual. Right now it was all I could do for her.
The whole time I cleansed her and wiped away the grime of the road and her suffering, I considered the problem.
Surali.
This whole business hinged in large part on the Bittern Court woman. Though I longed for hot, bloody vengeance, the child was far more at stake. Could I trade the Eyes of the Hills for Corinthia Anastasia? What would I be giving up? What kept the girl safe from another abduction afterward?
The only answer was that they must surrender the child and be forced to leave the city. Unburnt, though if I could find a way to trouble their ship…
No, I would not do that. I had known too many sailors by now to think that in pursuit of my wrath they could just be disregarded as furniture aboard their vessels.
Still, Surali would never run far enough to escape me, even if I was forced to let her slip my grasp awhile in this time and place.
As I watched Ilona sleep, my thoughts returned to the subject of Blackblood. Another child taker, in his own words. I still wondered how he fit in. He’d sent those men to me, killing the girls in the Temple of Endurance.
Or had he?
I’d assumed that, but had not yet proven it. Skinless had sought me not so long ago, yet I had persuaded him away with the open hand of friendship. The avatar and I shared a bond. Beyond that the god still must have been willing to let his pursuit of me lag awhile. After all, Skinless was little more than a finger from Blackblood’s divine hand. If the god had chosen to close his fist over me, Skinless would have folded me in, despite the creature’s dim regard for
me.
If the raid on the temple had been commissioned by Surali-and I had to admit, that sort of action was more her style than Blackblood’s-the deed was done with local bravos hired to find me. Their failure to do so might have prompted her to send a handful of Street Guild men out to the High Hills in a side bet, a play to secure another hold on me should Mother Vajpai and Samma fail to tame me.
Which they in turn indeed failed to do. Mother Vajpai had fought to lose. Further evidence that it was unlikely to be she who had stolen Corinthia Anastasia away.
Here was the betrayal. Even Samma allowing herself to be forced to part with the Eyes of the Hills was a portion of the betrayal. The Lily Blades playing false to everyone. That was not our way, but these were perilous times with terrible pressures.
If Surali was behind the attack on the Temple of Endurance, then what had Blackblood done to me? In response to… nothing?… I had set not one, but two, enemies upon him. Iso and Osi were no friends to the god. The magics of their ancient rites would not be so easy for Blackblood to ignore. Not to mention I’d united them with the Rectifier, who was a mercenary in the purest sense of the word. He had no loyalty to Blackblood at all, nor to any human god.
In that moment, my focus finally returned to the chalk marks on the wall of Marya’s temple. I understood how great my blindness had been. I did know what they signified. They were the same marks Iso and Osi had shown me in counseling me how to cloak myself from the attentions of a god. Wards, and boundaries. They were the same marks the twins had been drawing on the warehouse floor to the Rectifier’s benefit.
Those two were on a more troubling pilgrimage than they’d admitted to me. Except they had. Their rite forbade eating with or touching women. I thought back to the stories of Desire and Her daughters that I’d read long ago. Both the men’s and the women’s version spoke of the daughter-goddesses always watching for a man at the window, just as a woman would with a drunken husband to avoid.
Sick with realization, I was near to throwing up. Iso and Osi had brought down Marya. Slain her. Not in open conflict over the future of a city and the fortunes of its people, but by stealth and guile and timeless rite in pursuit of an ancient grudge. The ultimate beating of woman by man, laying a death magic on her protector goddesses.