by Jay Lake
“Over here, Green,” Jappa said, taking me from Samma. “We’ll make it all right.”
A sword frame stood in front of me, a heavy-legged tripod to support a wooden practice dummy. I saw the dummy was off its mounts. Jappa leaned me face forward against the frame and drew my hands above my head. The skin of them burned. Was that Curry’s blood?
“Are you going to slash me now?” I asked.
“No, darling,” she said. “I will give you the gift that Mother Chapurma gave me when we were both aspirants, and I came back from my first killing.”
She tied me to the frame with small leather straps. “What do you feel?” Jappa whispered in my ear.
I heard Samma whimpering Jappa’s name, then mine.
“Nothing,” I said. “Only blood on my hands.”
“You killed a man you didn’t know.”
Like Samma, I whimpered, then nodded.
“Now you are so cold, you burned yourself with water, just to feel something.”
“M-Mistress Tirelle,” I gasped.
“I am going to hurt you now.” Jappa’s voice was husky, low as it got when she was ready for her release after I had ridden her sweetpocket hard. “Only a little, but when you feel the pain, you will know that your other feelings will follow it back home to you.”
Closing my eyes, I whimpered again.
A crack echoed as I felt a lash across my naked back. I jumped against the frame, but truly it did not hurt even as much as a solid touch when we sparred in this very room. Samma shrieked once more.
Another crack, another touch of the lash-lower, across my buttocks. I jumped. She was right. The hot welt where the leather scored my skin reminded me of who I was.
A third blow, then Jappa leaned close. “Do you feel it?”
“Yes,” I gasped, then began to sob as she slowly flogged me. Blow after blow, driving me back from my cold place and into myself once more. Driving out the shade of Michael Curry. This was like the old beatings from Mistress Tirelle, except these were for me, to draw me in rather than push me away.
Somewhere in the middle, I felt the heat build in my sweetpocket. When Jappa set down her whip, I bucked, finding my own pleasure even as the splinters of the frame pushed into the front of my thighs, the crest of bone above my groin.
I had sworn I would never live under someone’s lash again. Now I swiftly came to love making a liar of myself.
Finally I lay shivering, my feet barely holding my weight against the pain of my binding. Jappa took me down. She and Samma drew some cloth around me and carried me weeping back to the dormitory. There Samma gave me suck against her breast while Jappa rubbed creams into my back and my poor burned hands, until I fell into the deepest, most dreamless sleep of my life.
The next morning, I was taken before Mother Vajpai, Mother Vishtha, and old Mother Meiko. They were in a room high up in the temple, where I had never before been. The space was more strangely shaped than most here, a teardrop with a floor across the bottom curve. The three sat in lotus on cushions. A single joss stick burned before them.
I was given a low stool with some quilted cotton folded across it.
“I… I might prefer to stand, Mothers,” I said when Mother Vajpai waved me to the seat. My buttocks still had welts. I was ashamed of everything I had done, or allowed to be done to me, the day before. That my hands were wrapped in oil-soaked cloth was the most direct evidence of my failings, but far from the only one.
“As it is to be pleasing you,” said Mother Meiko. “The chair is yours if you need it.”
“Thank you.” I bowed, but did not try to make the sign of the lily. Not with these hands, not in this state.
“When I took my first life,” Mother Vishtha said, “I did not return to the temple for three days. I was hiding in the banyans of Prince Kittathang Park the whole time, suckling eggs and chewing on leaves to banish my hunger.”
“I was finally bringing her home,” Mother Meiko added with a smile. “She was being my student, and time had come for her to return.”
Mother Vajpai spoke up. “When I took my first life, I came back and tried to assault my teaching Mother. She was eating at table in the refectory. I nearly caught her between the shoulders with a knife, when one of my sister Aspirants of the Blade stopped me.”
“Hah!” Mother Meiko glared at her. “You would never have been catching me. I watched the reflection of my wineglass as you were to be approaching.”
“And you-?” I asked her, the oldest. I saw clearly enough what they were doing.
“Me? I took a boat from the docks and rowed out to sea, until I was losing sight of the city.” Her eyes looked at something far away. “There I wanted to be in the world without a scrap of our land. The Goddess spoke to me from the water, and sent me home again.”
Mother Vajpai looked at me carefully and nodded slightly.
“The Goddess spoke to me yesterday,” I told them slowly. “Though I am not sure what she said. Once She used the voice of a child, and once Her words came from my mouth to a fireseller, though I could not hear them.”
“Now your hands are bandaged,” Mother Meiko said, “because you were being so diligent to scrub the blood away. You cannot walk well because you were having the sense beaten back into your body.”
“I needed to feel something.”
“Not all of us turn to the lash, Green,” said Mother Vishtha in that quiet voice. “But it is still being an honored road among the Mothers of this temple. The Blades especially. If you are moved to bend yourself over again, or to bend another girl to your will, please to be speaking to me first. I will show you what can be safely done without undue harm.” She smiled shyly. “Also how to find the most pleasure in what you do, at whichever end of the lash calls you the strongest.”
“All of that is between you and your heart,” said Mother Vajpai. “We will be aiding where we can, or when you ask. Something else is being between you and us, however.”
“She knows,” Mother Meiko added. The old woman laughed. “Her road has been harder than any of yours. I will be most surprised if it does not turn hard again along the way.”
“You want to know if I will be able to k-k-kill again. When asked
… told.” Beneath my bandages, I flexed my fingers.
Mother Vajpai fixed me with her smoldering eyes. “Will you follow the will of the Goddess in this? Or do you need to turn to another path?”
I wondered what would happen if I declined now. Quite possibly I would not leave this room alive. They could hardly turn me to the street once they’d made me a killer. But I was yet unsworn. This must be a dangerous time for them.
With that, the fog that had wrapped my mind since stumbling home yesterday lifted. I was clear-eyed and clearheaded once more. A most welcome feeling.
There was time between the last Petal and taking vows. As much as a year for some girls. I could not yet swear to the Lily Goddess and her temple, did not know if I would. That meant I was not forced to tell a lie today in order to remain here a bit longer.
“Yes,” I said. “At need, when called. I have killed three times. As Mother Meiko said to me, it becomes a habit.”
“You are excused from all lessons and obligations until the next Monday,” said Mother Vajpai. “Rest, think, pray. You may wish to spend that time at services, but no one will look to count you in the sanctuary.”
It was not credible that I would be anything but closely watched. I would do the same in their place, after all. This was like the Pomegranate Court, without the walls. Except that I could choose what came next, which had never been in the way of things within the Factor’s house.
Whatever the Goddess wanted of our uneasy relationship, I would remain here awhile and listen. I might yet choose not to be used, but I would be here until then.
For a time there was no more killing. It did not take me long to realize that my unique circumstances were why Mother Vajpai had sent me for Michael Curry. Any sworn Blade would have found a
shipboard killing on a northern vessel difficult. Whatever machinations had been upset within the Bittern Court did not flow back to me. Nor did I hear of the Temple of the Silver Lily suffering consequences.
I gathered some copper paisas and a beautiful flower from the altar and went to find my poor, frightened fireseller. Her cart was not where it had been. I searched every day for a week, but while finding people in Kalimpura was like finding birds in the sky, finding one person in Kalimpura was like finding a single, particular bird in the sky.
That was a disappointment.
Samma and I fought far more than before. I came to realize how much of a child she still was. She in turn was frightened by my flirtations with the lash. She soon kicked me out of bed. I took a pallet down by the end, sleeping by myself. Even the little ones began to avoid me.
I told myself I did not care.
I told myself I was a grown woman now, fourteen summers behind me and a fifteenth coming. I’d traveled the world and killed people, while these arrogant daughters of privilege knew nothing.
I told myself I was happy. Sometimes I even believed that. Killing Michael Curry had changed something else within me, though. His death had once more torn the cap off my well of rage. I took offense too easily, and used my prodigious strength to bully the other girls, to swagger in the streets and brush into the sort of boys who would fight a stranger without question. I kept my hair short and choppy. No one took me for a girl of the temple unless I walked pale-robed with the Mothers or some of the other aspirants. When I went out, I resumed binding my breasts, though they were never so large to begin with.
Once more, I was the tiger in the invisible cage that Little Kareen had seen around me. I lost the trick of being with people, of being one of them and one with them. In time, even the hard, old women such as Mother Argai liked me less, for I was more trouble to them than my lithe body and violently explosive passion were worth.
I still sparred with Mother Argai even after she stopped playing at sex with me. The same hardness that she disliked in me as a lover made me a good one to fight with, she claimed. “You’re not afraid for your face,” she’d growled. “Most young ones are. Ain’t been being roughed up enough yet.”
“I am what I am, Mother,” I told her with a leaping swing that touched the top of her head. This did little for me, as she scored on my ribs in the same pass.
“Who was it cut you so?”
“Me.” I grinned at the lift of her eyebrows. “I did it to myself .” As I spoke, I drove a hammerstrike with closed fist into her thigh.
We went to the baths after. Even though we no longer played at the flogging frame together, Mother Argai still liked to watch me wash. After all, we’d worked up the sweat side by side.
I lay stretched in the warm water, wondering if my breasts would ever be large enough to bob as Jappa’s did. Mother Argai’s had never grown so. She sat next to me with her eyes closed. I resisted the temptation to touch her on her certain spot along the hip. Instead I asked her about how best to get about in the city on my own.
“There’s something I’d like to do,” I started.
“Hmm. Ask someone else, girlie mine. I’m out of the business of doing you.”
Oddly, I found myself blushing. “No, no. I want to go outside the temple.”
“Our Goddess’ house is full of doors.” She yawned. “No woman is trapped here, least of all you who walk the streets every day.”
“Without people knowing it’s me.”
She cocked one eye open. “People here, or people out there?”
“People out there, Mother. I don’t suppose anyone’s business is private inside the temple.”
Mother Argai laughed. “Take two hundred and more of the most ornery, independent women in this city and put them under one roof? With the Goddess in charge, lurking in every corner like a fart in the Courts? No one’s business will ever be private. One grows accustomed.”
Her casual words surprised me. Women in the Lily Temple tended to be comfortable with their divine patron, but I rarely heard someone speak so crudely of the Lily Goddess.
“As may be, Mother. Still, I would pass the dockside unnoticed to hear news of the world.”
“Missing your other home, eh?” She slopped through the water to draw me into a wet hug. “Then don’t go as a Blade, or as Green. Go as someone else.”
“Who?”
“Put on a veil. Or mask, girl. You are your face to everyone who sees you. Most notice nothing else about you. Hide your face, you’ve hidden yourself.”
I curled closer into her arms, my fingers seeking that spot on her hip. “I shall think on it.”
Some time had passed since I had sewn more than my bells. I found the workshops on the ground floor of the temple, where I begged supplies for what I had in mind. The Mothers there were willing to give me black-dyed muslin, a bit of leather, and the appropriate needles and thread. “Ain’t nobody ever taking a liking to our work,” a white-haired woman told me. “If you are not being at the altar or the justiciary, you are being unseen hereabouts.”
“My interest in cloth and clothing has been with me most of my life, Mother,” I said politely. “I wish to take it up again as I approach my vows.”
“Such a sweet girl. Come see me at the end of my day. I’ll find something special to wrap you in.”
“Of course, Mother.”
Up in the dormitory, I began sewing pants and a tunic, with a cape and mask to go with it. I based them on my recollection of an illustration of the Carmine Flaxweed from one of Mistress Danae’s storybooks. He was the youngest son of a noble house that had been overthrown in Houghharrow, and had fought in secret to restore the fortunes of his brothers and his lover. I figured the look of a theatrical Stone Coast would-be assassin might pass well enough in this city of endless festival and spectacle.
While I made no great secret of my project, I found I preferred to work on it alone. It took me several weeks. When I was done, I had flared leggings, a cinched tunic with long sleeves puffed at the wrist, a leather half mask, and a tatted veil. I was forced to buy a hat-making such a thing was not among my skills. Brims were not popular in Kalimpura, so that was round with a pointed leather crown.
People would see only the gleam of my eyes. All else was dark and dramatic. Exactly the sort of outfit no working troublemaker would be caught dead in. I was trying for a naive but possibly dangerous dilettante. If I could not be anonymous, I would be memorable for something other than who I really was.
Taking a small sack of paisas with me, I went down to the Avenue of Ships late one afternoon dressed in my handmade blacks. I’d received a few stares leaving the Temple of the Silver Lily. The little space that followed the Mothers of the temple through the crowds of Kalimpura didn’t attach to this costume. Rough customers stayed away from me regardless. I saw pickpockets turn aside, as well as a pair of footpads. Perhaps it was the set of my shoulders.
Along the Avenue of Ships, I drew no stares at all. Enough strange costumes came off the ships in harbor that I fit in as just another oddity. I walked the length of the street as the sun was setting. No one bothered me.
I stepped into a tavern when dark fell. The signboard was at a slight angle, one chain slipping down. It read FALLEN AXE, with a crude painting of a black hood with two eyeholes. Somehow, that drew me.
Within was a wide room with a low ceiling supported by rough-hewn tree trunks. Tables encircled each trunk. A trough of water stood against the far wall, chunks of ice floating in it.
Sailors in the dress of half a dozen nations clustered at those tables. Few enough Selistani were here, which suited me fine.
The barkeeper, a local man with no hair, nodded.
I wondered what to do next.
Money. Money. I had never really bought anything. I slipped half a dozen coppers onto the bar.
He nodded again, then laid out a bowl and poured something dark and foamy from a jug.
I sniffed it. Bitter, almost
loamy, mixed with yeast. Ale? There had been wines back in the Pomegranate Court, and also at the table in the Lily Temple. Little Kareen had preferred a beer that smelled of swamp water, back when I’d worked for him outside the gates. I’d never tasted it myself.
Taking my bowl, I retreated to an empty table and listened. Sailors chattered in several languages I did not speak, though one table muttered along in thickly accented Petraean.
That was sufficient. I listened awhile longer to sounds that felt oddly like home to me, and drank from the edges of the thick unpleasant brew. I knew I looked like something from a festival dumb show. No one here cared, as half of them were equally out of place.
Eventually I headed back to the temple, smiling beneath my mask.
“Green.” Mother Vajpai stood at the door of the practice room where I fired arrows as fast as I could into a mudball target.
I turned with an arrow nocked.
She ignored the weapon to step toward me. “How are you, my girl?”
We hadn’t spoken much in the past few weeks. “Well enough, Mother.”
“You are growing closer to the need to take your vows.” She reached down and pushed the bow away, her fingers on the arrow shaft just behind the razored head.
I slipped the arrow loose and let the bowstring relax. “Yes, Mother.” I was growing ever further from any desire to take my vows. The Goddess had not spoken to me since Curry’s death. My quarrels with the older Blades were weakening the bond of sisterhood.
“We have let you be too long idle. Your… obsession… with costuming is unseemly.”
In her present mood, my temper would do me no good at all. “I would walk the city unnoticed, Mother. With my face, I cannot simply pull on some bright sari and pretend to be a merchant’s daughter. A costume draws attention to something I am not.” I smiled. “Mother Argai first gave me the idea.”
“I have spoken to Mother Argai concerning the wisdom of her suggestions.” She sighed. “You need to work more. Play less.”