by Jay Lake
Once I found another city wall and bent inland, the city resumed its usual crowding. I passed four gates in all before returning to my starting place as dusk fell.
Half a day to make a circuit little more than fifty furlongs around. I felt a stir of amazement. With dusk coming, I tried three of the sleeping carts before one would take me on. I did not know where else it would be safe to rest. Every inch of ground not being actively trod upon here seemed to belong to someone, just as Little Kareen had held his patch outside the gate.
By the end of the next day, despair had returned. I was almost drained of paisas. I did not see how to rob people in here without raising a great ruckus. Besides which, it had become clear that the little cutpurses had been set to following me with purpose.
Someone was watching.
I considered seeking a ship, but my only nautical skill was cooking. I was uncertain I could maintain the deception of my gender for an entire voyage. Besides, where would I go? Not back to Copper Downs, where surely there were many who would be pleased to take my head if my role in the fall of the Duke had become known. Where else, besides? In the country of the red men whom I had just passed, I would be a stranger without language or purpose.
Here I had no purpose, either. But also, here I was not so utterly strange. I spoke the language reasonably enough now.
The old pilgrim’s words came back to me. Ask at the temple of the Lily Goddess for Mother Meiko. Perhaps they hired toughs there, to defend their altar gold and run the beggars away from the porticos. I thought she might have seen me for a woman. If I were to be exposed, a women’s temple seemed less dangerous than the open street. That Little Kareen had guessed my secret meant I had not hidden myself away so well.
Besides all that, I was beginning to feel nauseated. Something stirred in my gut. The pigeon, perhaps, or an injury from my beating that had been awoken by my endless walking.
I began to inquire after the temple of the Lily Goddess. People ignored me, until one of the little cutpurses on my trail piped up. “The Silver Lily. Ahead, at the statue of Maja’s Boar. Turn there, and head north to the Blood Fountain.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m tired of you,” he complained. “You go to ground, and I can go home.” I knew better than to ask who had set him on me. Little Kareen had shown me well enough how that aspect of Kalimpura worked. Instead, I followed the directions, wondering what truly flowed in the Blood Fountain and whether it was sacred to the Lily Goddess.
Perhaps she is a patron I could follow, I thought. I had claimed the blood of two people now, not counting the dust of the Duke and his henchmen.
The Blood Fountain was so-called because the water ran over marble of a brilliant red. I paused before the thing, which had seven levels ascending and was covered with a myriad of carvings. Most of them had worn under the water’s flow until they looked like so many small, lumpy pillows.
It stood at the center of a circle where the endless traffic went round and round. Five streets radiating as spokes to head to other parts of the city. A number of buildings faced the center. Given the peculiar architecture of this place, I was at first hard-put to say which was most likely to be a temple.
I followed the flow around past an inn that seemed to be in a state of riot on the ground floor. After the challenge of crossing the traffic-choked streets, I found myself before a market that was closing up for the night. The place seemed to specialize in live animals, judging from the smell and the few cages still rattling and thumping next to stalls with their awnings being rolled tight.
The odors of the market revived the nausea I’d been fighting down since eating the spiced pigeon. I held my guts behind my teeth and moved on. Next to the market was a shop selling textiles and clothing. Another time, I might have tried to look. Crossing the next street, I found a more probable building. It was a pointed dome, like a gigantic clove of garlic. The upper reaches were cladded with silver. The lower portions had been built onto with timber and bricks in a haphazard way. Part of a grand marble stair in the same red stone of the Blood Fountain was still visible, though the impromptu walls intruded on its onetime majesty.
That seemed promising. I climbed the stairs, stepping over beggars. They slept clear of the top of the stairs, where the lintels bowed outward so that the entrance was almost round. There were no doors, just an opening to a dusky interior.
I passed within. The scent of incense was so heavy and cloying that I heaved to breathe it. I found myself on my knees on the cold marble, spewing beneath a little bench.
A woman in a pale robe approached and stared me down with a pursed mouth, looking more Hanchu than Selistani in the flickering interior light. She was of middle years, neither old nor young, with a well-bred appearance.
“Mother Meiko said you might find your way here,” she told me. “I should, however, have preferred a less spectacular entrance.” She helped me rise and gain control of myself. “What you lack in stealth, you have more than made up for in style, my dear.”
I woke the next morning in a narrow bed, beneath a tall, thin triangular window. Sunlight blazed in along with the squabble of birds. Mother Meiko sat on a low stool, leaning upon one of her sticks.
“Do not be eating so much of that orange pepper powder,” she said. “Hillman’s bonnet, it is being called. It will be the death of you.”
I gasped for air. My mouth felt like one of those towering chicken coops out on the street. “Not yet, Mistress.”
“Not yet, girl.” She paused, pursed her lips, then came to some decision. “You are a girl, whomever you have killed.”
Suddenly I was very awake. I did not even know where the door was, let alone the path out of here. I could run rooftops all I wanted, but not fit through a window small as this.
She tapped me with her stick. “Listen, you. I am not here for anyone’s justice.”
I tried for straightforward. “My thanks for the night’s rest, and the aid. I would like to move onward.”
“No, you would not.” Mother Meiko tapped me again. “You are being foreign, and though your face is as Selistani as mine, you are knowing far too little of this place to be safe alone. You bear a great burden, and strange skills.” Another tap. “Skills that are being difficult to find in most places. Especially for a girl.”
Even in Seliu, that word gave me a shot of anger. Clearly such a reaction would not serve me here. “Please call me Green, Mother.”
“Green.” She leaned on her stick again and watched me awhile.
I watched her back, but I was tired and did not feel well. Curiosity and fear were a potent mix. Finally I had to ask. “How did you know I had killed a man?”
“Hmm.” Mother Meiko studied me awhile longer. “A chit of your age has no business with that knife.” With her words, I shifted my leg to test that the weight of my blade was still there. It was. “On the road, you looked at it sometimes as if it were being a snake, and sometimes as if it were being your best friend. So I knew the blade had done you a great service. What service could a blade be doing a girl, but to save her life? Or possibly her virginity?”
“Both,” I admitted.
“You know of the Death Right?”
“Yes.”
“To kill once is hard. To kill again, easier. To kill a third time, a habit.”
It was strange to hear this woman who could have been my grandmother talk so casually of murder. As if that were a normal part of life. She was drawing me toward honesty.
“I have killed… twice.”
Mother Meiko seized on my hesitation. “Only twice?”
“Only twice.”
“Hmm.” Another long thoughtful pause. “How did you celebrate your misdeeds?”
“By vomiting copiously, then crying great tears.” I sighed. “I prayed for both their souls, though likely neither deserved my regret.”
She reached forward so far, I feared she would topple from her stool, then took my hand. “In that case, you still hav
e your own soul. There might be a place here for you.”
“If I can kill a third time?”
Mother Meiko’s smile chilled my blood. My heart slid within my chest. “Yes. If you can kill a third time.”
“Wh-what of those who guard the Death Right?”
“My dear Green, who do you think we are?”
I wondered then if it was she the cutpurses had worked for. Even Little Kareen might have answered to this woman. Grandmother or no, despite her twinkling eyes and apple cheeks, she was as fearsome as any plotter of the Duke’s court back in Copper Downs.
In that moment, I feared her as much as I’d feared anyone. There was nowhere for me to run, I knew. Not from her. Not in this city.
I forced a smile, though surely she knew it to be as false as I did. “I am delighted to accept more of your hospitality, then.”
“Never seen them take one so old as you,” said the sharp-faced girl. Her nose was as thin as my grandmother’s. She’d mumbled her name so fast, I hadn’t caught it. She wore a pale robe and sandals, was perhaps a year younger than I, and seemed to have been placed in charge of me. I followed her through a curving hall.
“How old are they… we… usually?”
“I was a baby,” she said proudly. “Brought to the Bone Door.”
I was taken as a baby, too. But no one brought me to a secret entrance of a women’s temple. “I am twelve, close to thirteen.”
“Yes. You’re from the east, right? Bhopura?”
“Well…”
She shook her head. “I saw your belled silk amid your things. Only the peasants out there do that. It’s such a waste, but sometimes you see them on the walls of the great houses here. As if farmers’ wives could do art.”
I took an instant and thorough dislike to this girl. “I’ve traveled.”
“Why would you do that? Everything worth having is right here in Kalimpura.”
Then we were in a chamber with a great alabaster bath set into the floor. The hatchet-faced girl slipped out of her pale robe and kicked away her sandals. She had no breasts yet, I saw, which made me ashamed of mine. “Come on, into the water with you.”
It took me a little longer to unwind the boy’s clothing I’d been wearing. When I kicked free of my sandal leggings and set my knife upon the floor, she whistled. “We don’t get metal like that until we’ve passed the Sixth Petal.”
“What?” The question slipped out of me. I didn’t really want to talk more than I had to with this awful girl.
“Tests. We have to hunt with certain weapons before we get better ones.” Her voice grew admiring. “You must have proved very well to someone.”
“Only in life,” I muttered. My arm drawn across the odd swell of my small breasts, I slipped into the bath.
The girl dropped balls of herbs and salts in with me before she followed me. The water was soon blessedly milky. She studied me for a while, meeting me eye to eye. “I saw your bruises,” she finally said. “Somebody really did it to you.”
I didn’t see how to avoid answering her. “About eight or ten of them.”
The girl leaned forward. “Did you make them sorry?”
“They were already sorry,” I said shortly. “That’s why they beat me.”
For some reason, this impressed her.
We sat awhile in silence. She obviously strained to fill it, but had acquired enough cunning to attempt entrapping me first. Finally she gave up. “I’m to wash your hair and give you robes and bring you to Mother Vajpai. I don’t think you’re supposed to carry your pigsticker around. None of the Blades do. Not inside the temple.”
Blades. That was an interesting term. Despite the slow leaching of my pain and fatigue by the bath, my mind was engaged. “What did you say your name was?” I asked reluctantly. I could hardly call her “girl.”
“Samma,” she answered in a small voice.
“That’s a nice name.”
“No, it’s not.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “You are from far away. It’s what they call dogs here, mostly.”
“What should I call you instead?”
“It’s my name,” Samma said unhappily.
“Names can change. Trust me.” I’d killed for mine, after all.
“You’re a strange one, Green.”
I leaned forward from the rolled edge of the tub. “As may be. My arms hurt. Can you help me with my hair?”
Her touch on my head, the brush of her chest against my back, was like balm for a pain I hadn’t known I’d been feeling. Were ordinary children raised in their parents’ arms? When Samma began to trace her fingers on my neck and shoulders, I shivered so hard, I nearly passed out.
In time we went to see Mother Vajpai, properly attired. My pigsticker was wrapped in a bath towel so it would not be presented as a weapon on our arrival.
She turned out to be the woman I had met briefly on my arrival here at the Temple of the Silver Lily. Today she stood dressed in red silks and chenilles chased with silver threads. Her hair was drawn up in a tight net of rubies, and her eyes rimmed with a powder the same color.
“Mother Vajpai,” I said, bowing my head.
Samma touched me once on the shoulder, for luck perhaps, then retreated. She closed the curved double doors through which she had just led me.
This room was taller than it was wide, like the temple itself, with a triangular floor. The point was behind the woman. It held no furniture except carpets and cushions on the floor.
“You are Green,” Mother Vajpai said. “Mother Meiko spoke highly of you. She does not often do so.”
“We met on the road. I walked beside her for a while. We did not talk.”
Mother Vajpai steepled her hands and nodded. “Mother Meiko listens very, very well. Especially to silence.”
I realized ruefully how true that must be. “Yes.”
“You are a stranger here.”
That hadn’t been a question, and so required no answer.
“You were raised across the sea,” she said after a smooth moment. “Stone Coast. Houghharrow? Or perhaps Copper Downs?”
“Copper Downs, Mother.”
“Someone there has spent a great deal of effort to make you into something.” She walked around behind me. “We do not make women into something here in Kalimpura. Sometimes, rarely, a woman makes herself.” Mother Vajpai passed in front of me again.
Her review was an echo of the Factor’s inspection. My anger rose fast. “I am no one’s tool. I will be the sword in no one’s hand.”
“All people are held in someone else’s hand.” She bent close to meet me eye to eye. “It is the way of Creation. The secret is to choose whose fingers are tangled in your hair.”
“Whose are tangled in your hair, Mother?” I asked in my nastiest voice.
Her smile dawned like a sun made of silver-rimmed ivory. I had never seen such teeth, and was caught for a moment in their strangeness. “I serve the Lily Goddess, my little Green. No man wields me. No ruler calls my step. No council reins me in.”
“No.” I could see this trap easily enough. “Your Goddess wraps her hand around your heart. Whoever she is.”
“You are of Copper Downs, my girl. Their gods have been silent far too long. The people of that city follow their own ways with a recklessness that will someday be accounted for. You are not understanding what a goddess is.”
“A goddess is a tulpa grown large.”
Still bent to face me, she shook her head in dismissal. “Tulpas. Country superstition. Little spirits who are being worshipped by ignorant farmers and disingenuous monks.”
I had thought them more like larval gods. Or very ancient ones worn to nothing. Fragments, like in the oldest stories.
Mother Vajpai continued. “No, Green. A goddess is the sum of all her believers, all the prayers and hopes and curses and despair ever uttered in her name. Our Goddess spans the lives of women, from the darkest night of a girl raped and left for dead in a waterfront alley to the silver-bright weddi
ng day of the highest princess in the land. The hand of the Lily Goddess upon my heart is my own hand, multiplied a thousandfold. We serve Her as She serves us. We are Her, and She is us.”
I knew that for as great a load of claptrap as any myth out of Mistress Danae’s books. Gods were real, surely enough. Septio’s silent Blackblood back in Copper Downs had been real. The various theogenies and dieophanies I’d read of during my years under tutelage had made it quite clear that gods were bullies, children, pettifoggers, and taskmasters different only from the worst of men in the degree of the power they held.
The depths of my youthful hubris were staggering.
“As may be, Mother,” I said politely.
She stretched to her full height once more. “Of course, you are not believing me. How could you? You come to us from a country of apostates. There is nowhere here in Kalimpura for you. I know of your troubles outside the gates. You-”
“You do not know my troubles, Mother,” I interrupted. “You have not the least notion of them.”
She shook her head. “A girl of your age has not killed without great provocation. Where will you go, with that habit of anger in your heart and the killing already in your hands?”
That much of my troubles she did understand. “I will find a way,” I said, surly and restless now. I was ready to be quit of her.
“There is a way here for you.”
“For a killer orphan?” I snapped. “For a lost girl with murder in her eye who knows too much about nothing, and not enough about anything?”
“For a girl who can keep her balance, and knows her way around a knife, yes. I’d wager much that you have other talents as well.”
“I can prepare a banquet, sew clothes fit for a Duke’s court, and play nine different instruments,” I said, almost snarling.
“No doubt is harbored in my mind,” Mother Vajpai replied sweetly. “We have an order of guardians here in this temple. The Blades stand behind the younger daughters and widows who serve the Lily Goddess. They wield the Goddess’ will to the very hilt if needed. Their way can be yours.”