by Jay Lake
Feet scrabbling, I struck the edge of the opposite roof shins-first. Momentum brought my torso past the edge but I muffed the fall trying to protect the baby. It was a flat roof, and so I did not immediately slide off, but two of the half-rounded tiles on the edge did. They landed in the narrow space four storeys below with a shattering crack that betrayed my presence.
Forcing myself to move against the intense pain in both shins, I rolled all the way onto the roof, tucked flat and small. All I could do for a while was breathe, deep and hard. If Iso or Osi had thought to check just then I would have been a dead woman.
I had not blown a jump like that since… well, ever. I’d done better in my first childhood sallies with the Dancing Mistress. Shamed, I took a few more moments to collect myself. Flecks of snow eddied across the sky, dotting me with tiny, frozen kisses as I lay curled around my regrets and tried to will my legs back into motion. The damp of my borrowed clothing threatened to turn to clinging ice.
Bless you, winter, I thought. I’d always hated the cold. My old loathing was sufficient to get me moving again.
I stumbled to my feet, slipped the Eyes of the Hills back into an inner pocket, and went in search of a skylight or a stairway down.
***
Eventually I was confronted with the prospect of dangling from the building’s front and slipping through one of the fourth-storey windows that let into the offices within. Had there been a ledge? I tried to recall that much detail from my earlier observations. After the ugliness of my missed jump, I lacked my usual confidence in such maneuvers. The alternative was to climb back down and walk in the side door.
That appealed even less.
I waited for a lull in the traffic below-most people don’t look upward as they go about their business, but it only takes one-then slipped over the cornice along the street facing.
Ledge!
This time I was very careful of my balance, and managed to slip into the second window I tried. The small office within was vacant, furnished only with scattered junk and scraps of paper. Not even the rats had found anything to do here.
Now to creep fog-soft until I could listen downstairs. My shins still ached terribly, and I worried about how well I could hold a silent position, but I was committed to my course. With overdone caution I crept along the upper hall. I was wary of canary floorboards singing out my steps. Stairs carried me down to a landing on what would have been the third floor, in the ceiling of the cavernous warehouse. I was able to cautiously observe Iso, Osi, and the Rectifier crouched around a much larger and more elaborate version of their earlier diagram.
He was here. Now, how to get him away. I’d figured earlier that if I found the old pardine, my chances of walking out free and intact were much better than being caught alone with Iso and Osi. The question was whether I was willing to put that theory to the test.
Or I could create a distraction and meet later, after I’d separated the Rectifier from the twins. Setting fire to the building suggested itself. But I doubted I’d fool any of those three. Likely I’d create larger problems that I might later regret.
Such forethought still felt odd to me, but I had a child to consider now. Though I did not realize it then, finally I was coming into a measure of wisdom.
I was cold, I was tired, and my legs were killing me. The direct approach held a stronger appeal with every passing minute. Seizing the initiative, I clomped down the stairs, shouting out a greeting as I went and wishing I had something of the pardine language.
***
All three of them looked up, startled at my approach. At least I’d gotten into the building unnoticed. I knew the significance of me entering from upstairs would not be lost on either my newfound enemies or my old friend. “Rectifier,” I called out. “We must be away now.” I nodded to Iso and Osi. “Gentlemen. Always a delight to see you.”
The twins flowed into a stance that once more suggested violence, with the muscular aura of a fighting pose. The Rectifier simply stood, shrugged, and extended his claws. I knew what that meant. With luck, the other two did not.
“Green,” Iso called back to me as I reached the floor. I briefly lost sight of them through the jumbled maritime supplies, which should have scared me, but I trusted the Rectifier. I had to.
“Welcome,” his brother said. I realized from the cast of his voice that the two of them were on the move.
“Hold,” rumbled the Rectifier, but I could not tell to whom he was talking. Hopefully not me. Palming both my short knives, I vaulted up onto a stack of spars covered by cargo nets.
Osi’s head bobbed about two rods to my left, beyond several hummocks of crates. I could not see Iso. The Rectifier stared at me from a position almost directly in line with the side door. His ears flicked back once, he nodded, then he ducked.
He was on my side, then. I’d hoped to bluff my way out of here, but it appeared we’d be playing blade tag for our exit rights this afternoon.
This I could do.
A quick, short leap to a pile of deck grates, which shifted beneath my weight. I swiftly rolled off the back down into a little grimy walkway between the grates and a row of coiled hawsers. That had made some noise, and left a spiral of dust. I kept rolling into a space between two coils and slid backwards.
Silent for a five count, I heard footsteps moving very softly. A saffron-clad leg passed so close I could have stabbed a calf. Instead I tossed a piece of nautical debris, some chunk of brass, over my shoulder so that it sailed back toward the stairs with a clatter.
The twin, whichever he was, slipped onward quickly. I wriggled out and followed him.
“Green,” someone whispered, but not from behind me. I checked. I slid around the next corner to come upon either Iso or Osi craning their neck to look over into the next narrow walkway.
Flipping my remaining short knife around handle-first, I struck him hard at the base of the skull. He collapsed. The other brother shrieked nearby, then cursed in a language I did not recognize. At least I assumed it was cursing, from the tone and volume.
I had finally touched one of them after all.
The Rectifier roared, something shattered, and more cursing erupted.
I bent to cut this one’s throat when I heard the pardine shout out, “Do not kill them, Green. Leave with me now.”
Point against skin, I stopped. Did I trust him? These men were dangerous, hideously dangerous. But the Rectifier knew something, or he would not have spoken so.
I patted the fallen twin’s cheek instead. My fingers trailed along his papery skin. Let him cleanse himself of my feminine depravity. Still, being a Lily Blade, I also left behind a single ruby drop beading the twin’s neck as my calling card before I raced swiftly toward the door. There I followed the Rectifier out into the late afternoon’s snow flurries.
***
With a giant like the Rectifier alongside me there was small point in skulking, so we swaggered as if we owned the streets. A night of hard freeze-the season’s first, if so-seemed to be coming on. That drove most people indoors earlier than usual. Still, dozens marked our passing.
I looked over my shoulder to see if we were pursued. Nothing behind us but the pale shadows of snow swirling through city air.
“We should go Below,” I told him. “It will be warmer, and we will be hidden.”
“Prefer the open air,” the Rectifier growled at me. “Underground is too far from the trees.”
He led me instead to a tiny bar off a grimy alley near the Dockmarket. No sign here, any more than the Tavernkeep’s place was marked. Inside nine tables were drawn up knee-and-elbow distance apart. The ceiling was so low the Rectifier was forced to duck his head. The walls were crowded with broken weapons, rusted blades and shattered wooden poles-the aftermath of a battlefield or a dueling ground had been scoured to fit this place out. An odd assortment of characters lurked there, including a few more nonhumans. The world was vast, I knew, but where was the land of the very tall, very narrow-bodied blue-skinned man in pa
ngolin-hide armor? His eyes were as mournful as last year’s graveflowers.
I avoided his stare, and the stares of the others, while the Rectifier wedged us into a table at the back of the room.
“No one comes here,” he said against all evidence. The place smelled of sweat and ferment and the odd undercurrents of unfamiliar people. There was no fire, not in this room, just the close, stale of air being breathed by too many lungs.
“Why did you not let me kill them?” I asked, moving straight to the point.
“They were…” His voice rumbled, a pardine word being swallowed. “Bound, I should say. And much older than you realize. They carry the same weight of time as gods may do. Slaying either brother by yourself would release enough power to kill you.”
I knew that effect perfectly well from brute experience. Accumulated power didn’t simply leach away harmlessly into the air. “Fair enough,” I said, for again, I had to trust him. “But how will they be stopped?”
“Stopped from what?”
Feeling foolish, I answered, “Attacking Blackblood. I have declared myself their enemy. Surely my errand is of no account for them now.” Though abandoning my wrongful attack against Blackblood would just return the twins to the hunt for Desire’s daughters. Including the Lily Goddess. Which was no improvement at all. I had laid quite a trap for myself.
“Their work feeds their bond. You have put the brothers on a trail. They will hunt that trail until they make their kill. Or until they are thwarted.”
“Iso and Osi are not human, are they?”
He shrugged. “Neither am I.”
That was difficult to answer. Instead, I focused on the problem at hand. “I must now oppose what I have begun with the twins. Then I must find a way to turn the Selistani embassy from attacking the Lily Goddess.”
“Let them all kill each other.”
“No. There is a child at stake.”
He favored me with a curious stare. “You would upset the fate of cities for one child?”
I felt myself grow hot. “If not for one child, then for whom? How many count? If we stop at one, we may as well never try at all.”
The Rectifier raised a hand. Claws gleamed just at the tip of his blunt, furred fingers. “That is a matter for your people to decide. I merely point out how the costs hang in the balance.”
He had the right of it. For the same reason I could not simply charge into the Selistani embassy with blades drawn, neither could I exact my vengeance in a swift series of back-alley killings, nor set the will of two cities against one another.
Some prices truly were too high.
And some were already paid in full.
“I can perhaps solve this problem of Iso and Osi, and also protect Blackblood from my own worst impulses.” I reached within my clothes and pulled out the small velvet bag that contained the Eyes of the Hills. “I must ask you to take something from me, but only for safekeeping. You are specifically charged not to bargain the worth of this.”
He took the sack. “Should I look?”
“As it pleases you. In any case, I wish you to hold them for me.”
The Rectifier closed his eyes a long moment, fingers twined around their small burden. “I know what these are,” he said softly. “You carry a key to a lock you do not understand.”
I was startled at how precisely his words echoed my earlier thoughts. How had he known? Was I that transparent? “And you know where that lock may be found, yet I trust you to carry this key. People will try to take those from me. My position will be improved if they cannot be shaken out of me or seized while I am under restraint.”
“You should not do this, Green.” He slipped the bag inside his own ragged manleather vest. “But I will hold them for you, for the sake of what you did with the ox god.”
A narrow-faced woman brought us two tankards unasked, interrupting our conversation. The Rectifier glared at her until she wilted from his gaze and turned to glare at me. “How much?” I asked, surrendering to the inevitable.
“Two coppers.”
I fished a pair of the smallest taels from my diminishing cache of money. “Enough,” I told the woman. She drew her lips back as if to spit, then wandered away.
The smell was vile. Beer brewed from milling waste was my best guess. I did not touch it. “I bound your people’s ancient power into a human god.”
“Not all pardines agree with the Revanchists,” the Rectifier said mildly. He took a deep draught of his tankard. “Some sacrifices are better left unredeemed.”
“Here,” I told him. “Have mine.” With my fingertips, I shoved the questionable stuff across the little table. “Somehow I would not have expected you to see the world that way.”
“Yet you trust me.”
“I trust you because you fought me until the need had passed, and not a moment longer. You never lost sight of who I am.”
“You have never lived wild.”
I thought of my first days in Selistan, after leaving Pinarjee and Shar behind-my father in his dementia and the woman who was properly my stepmother, however I chose to think of her. I’d lived as close to wild then as ever I would. But I didn’t think that was what he had in mind. “No, I have not. Not as you mean it.”
Another long sip. “I am the greatest warrior of my people in this age, though we are a small echo of what once was. I understand as well as any of us what has been lost. Very few realize what was gained in return when that power was given away.”
Even across the table, I fancied I could still feel the crackle of the gems. I was certain the Rectifier could do so. “I thought it was stolen from you.”
“Could someone steal your spirit without your permission?” His eyes seemed to deepen as he stared at me over the rim of the tankard. “Some things can only be given away, not stolen. However that might be recalled later.”
“The Factor told me that as the Duke he had fought a great war against your people.”
“We are still very dangerous. Once we were far more so.” He took up my tankard. “I would not see those days return. It will be the end of us if they do. In their terror, your people would hunt mine until nothing remained but pelts, bones, and travelers’ tales. Even so, I will guard your treasure, not for that reason, but for your own sake.”
“Thank you,” I said simply. “I must go Below and seek further aid. When I want those back, I will find you.”
“If you need to tell someone where the Eyes of the Hills are in order to spare your own life, that does not trouble me.” He grinned, his mouth all teeth for a moment. “I could use the exercise should someone come searching for them in my hand.”
I took my leave of him then with no more ceremony than a swift farewell. Outside, I knew what I must do next. Mother Iron had already handed me this answer. I found a large sewer grate with an inspection ladder and slipped Below, out of the ever heavier snow and into the dank, sheltering darkness.
***
Winter cold had begun infecting the uppermost tunnels. I felt as if I wandered through ice. I was tired, while my rooftop adventuring earlier in the afternoon had left me with horribly aching shins and a deep sense of lassitude.
Still, Archimandrix had offered his services to me, and therefore presumably his guild’s entire strength. Mother Iron had indicated that old problems required old solutions. I was coming to appreciate how old a problem Iso and Osi truly were. Not to mention Desire…
I wasn’t sure exactly where I was Below, but I knew the direction I needed. A swath of coldfire in my hand, I headed for the great machines. Archimandrix would be somewhere near there. That was his world. I was only a guest here, far from the lost time in which he and his sorcerer-engineers still dwelt.
Which was fine with me.
The sewage tunnel opened into a larger gallery. Here the flow had been routed through masonry guideways-low walls containing the muck, in order to keep the runoff from flooding into the old mine tunnels. I stepped away from the shallow filth I’d been splashing t
hrough and reoriented myself toward the Temple of Endurance.
I walked, noting landmarks such as a great skeleton covered in moss and mold, some eldritch creature that could have served as a mount for Skinless. My thoughts continued to range through the issues bedeviling me. I wondered what the Rectifier would have me do about Endurance, if he could. He’d certainly intervened at the death of Federo and the casting down of Choybalsan. Had the wily pardine rethought his desires? Or perhaps the realities of the situation had simply passed the old rogue by.
Power moved in circles, in circuits. Like a rooftop tank of water released, it had to go somewhere. Bleeding it off would be as slow and cautious a problem as draining the tank through the smallest pipe.
Endurance was a safety valve on the ambitions of the pardine Revanchists and the rogue twins alike. The ox god was a safety valve on me also, in truth. He had already served this city well.
Soon I found myself among the machines of the great gallery beneath the temple at the old minehead. They were colder now, leaching what little warmth might be in this room to leave behind only the chill. Seen glittering in my coldfire, they looked as if frost had settled upon them.
Winter. That curse of cities and people alike. A blanket of quiet, white death to put us all to sleep.
I touched one of the old machines and thought of Archimandrix. The metal was so cold my fingers threatened to stick. My warmth would pour from me, I realized, to be absorbed within those brass and copper and iron angles. Time seemed to congeal here in the chill beneath the world. The ancient men in their leather masks who’d built this thing were waiting just beyond the line of shadows for their chance at trying yet again for whatever aims had first driven them.
“What purpose?” I asked the machine. It was large and inscrutable, with bolted hatches long since corroded to a single mass. Multijointed arms folded against the higher reaches of its body, where once they might have swung free to service some distant, unknowable need.