by Jay Lake
“The Goddess has ceased speaking to you.” That was not a question.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I have not heard Her since before I fought alongside the rest of Mother Shesturi’s handle.”
“The rest of Mother Shesturi’s handle.” She snorted. “To be listening to yourself. You claim you are an aspirant in one breath, and a Blade in the next. Here is what you are, Green: You are being neither this thing nor that. You are being a girl who will not choose which of her fates she is to follow. You are being nothing at all.”
“Mother.” I tucked my chin low.
Her pipe tapped my forehead. “We are nearly upon the moon that brings us Vaisakha month. You are nearly being to your fifteenth summer. That is old enough to be an auntie or wife. Or a sworn Blade. When the month of Vaisakha ends, come back and be telling me if you will swear your vows.”
“Otherwise?” I asked, my voice barely above a breath.
Nothing pleasant rode in Mother Meiko’s smile. “Otherwise you will be cast upon the goodwill of the Goddess. Ask yourself how much care you have been showing Her, girl. Ask yourself how much care She is to be showing you in return.”
I was reminded then that this was the Blade Mother, who stood over all of us. She could kill as easily as she could count the days of the week and with no more remorse. Throwing me out of the Temple of the Silver Lily would be nothing for her. In a strange way, it might even be fitting. Mother Meiko had invited me to come in the first place, after all.
That evening I nursed my resentments as carefully as any babe at the breast. I will show them! I could free the children in the thrall of the Beggar Caste, race to the harbor to confront the most corrupt captains, fly over the curled and pointed rooftops of this city in search of some crime so foul that my redressing it would bring undeniable credit on the temple, along with the sweet revenge of my repudiation. Or perhaps just slink away into the night, leaving them to question where they had wronged me and wonder what had become of me.
In the end, I did what I always did these days. I slipped into my blacks and walked out a side door of the temple. Sometimes my trips to the docks were more about the drinking than the listening.
This was one of those nights.
I had a month to make up my mind, so naturally I spent the next few weeks declining to think about the problem at hand. My days and nights were full enough, and I suppose I must have believed the Goddess would move me somehow. The needle on the compass of my purpose had been spinning for a while.
Down along the Avenue of Ships, in the middle of a warm, rainy Wednesday, which happened to be the Festival of Coal Demons, the Goddess spoke to me again. I did not feel Her presence as I had in the past, but there was no mistaking the furred, rangy shape that stepped through the crowd near me.
A Stone Coast pardine.
I had never seen one of that race here in Selistan. Sometimes the Lily Goddess made Her will known through unlikely chance.
As I took a few strides more, I realized this was the Dancing Mistress. Only strongly drilled habit kept me moving when I wanted to stop and stare. She was bare-handed and barefooted, wore a light toga of some open-weave fabric, and carried a satchel over her shoulder-almost as she’d looked back in Copper Downs, except dressed for our weather.
I brushed past her, close enough to touch. Her pace faltered as if she’d noticed me, but I was clothed as Neckbreaker, not to mention three years older and taller than when last she’d seen me. The small riot of beggars and children who jostled in her wake kept her moving, or she might have turned to stare.
At least, so I fancied.
What is she doing here?
I took half a dozen more steps. Then I rounded a bollard, using our distance to keep her from noticing. I could follow this woman far better than she could follow me. Especially on these streets. With the Coal Demon festival in full swing, there were firecarts everywhere, people in blackface or redface, and vertical firepots of glazed terra cotta at almost every corner, burning even now with their rain chimneys on.
She was a canny woman, perhaps the most so I’d ever met, but this chaos would defeat her. At least so long as she was new to the city.
The Dancing Mistress must be new to Kalimpura, I realized. Else I’d have heard tell of her in the taverns. Possibly even as gossip in the temple. When one of the Red Men of the fire lakes had come to the city in the cool season, they had talked of nothing else at table for days.
For a pardine, they would gossip a whole season long.
I followed, watching the crowd that surrounded her. She walked as one did in Copper Downs, as if one’s business was one’s own and there could be an expectation of privacy. I recalled the shoving, crowded madness of my arrival here, before I had learned to move among the Kalimpuri. I further recalled how little the Dancing Mistress liked to be touched.
They were plucking at her fur, by the Goddess. I almost began to laugh. No one here had seen her claws, certainly, or watched her teeth bare as she worked through the angry hurt of a bad throw or a low blow.
She tried to step around the statue of Mahachelai on his Horse of Skulls, keeping the plinth close to her left hand. Two of the smaller beggar children slid between the Dancing Mistress’ thigh and the granite base. She kicked them away, and they began to squeal.
I immediately recognized the Broken Wing. It was a beggar’s takedown, which rarely worked on sailors or soldiers, but was sometimes effective on traders or captains in the company of their wives. Those unfortunates could not show the flint in their hearts with their women at their sides, and so while one child squalled and pretended to have been hurt by the horse or carriage, the other quickly insisted on a small sum to see his sibling home without trouble, otherwise the militia would be here quite soon, begging the master’s pardon.
That Kalimpura had no militia-and no particular interest in maintenance of the public order as the Stone Coast understood the idea-was not something that every traveler knew in the moment of confronting a frightened, crying child. Some of the little ones in the Beggar Caste were so good that I’d seen the Broken Wing run through to the payoff even when the touch had spotted the initial dive.
The Dancing Mistress made the mistake of turning and kneeling to see what she had done. I pushed forward through the crowd, growling from behind my mask, just as a cutpurse plucked at the satchel on her arm. She whirled, and blood spattered.
The claws were out.
Drawing my pigsticker, I ran toward her. I had to stop her before she killed one of these beggars, or the other citizens stepping into the fray like the fools that they were.
If they lost their lives on my blade, it would be a matter for negotiation. If they lost their lives at her hands…
There were too many backs in the way, too many bobbing heads. I scrambled up a big man’s shoulders as he cursed me. In that moment, I had forgotten that I was masked and in black. No one but me knew I was a Blade.
“Out, away,” I roared, my voice screeching far too high to gain their attention. I jumped past my perch and onto a woman, knocking her down and me with her. Her neighbor in the crowd saw my knife and wiggled away as I regained my feet.
The Dancing Mistress was clinging to one of the Skull Horse’s legs, swinging a stick she had not been carrying moments before. I thanked the Goddess and the tulpas of my lost home that she hadn’t snatched a blade. Still, there was blood and people screaming for more blood. The Death Right could yet be at issue.
With fists and elbows, I fought through to her. A pair of toughs from the Street Guild were closing on the Dancing Mistress. I popped one of them behind the ear with a stiff-fingered jab. He stumbled backwards, howling. She tried to kick the other away, but caught him in the throat and soft under-part of the jaw with her foot claws.
His skin tore open in an impressive spray of blood. His fellow grabbed at me. I turned, blocked a stab from a dagger, then drove my own knife into his gut. The tough went down for good that time, vomiting blood and bile. The other stagg
ered as people around us panicked. Those in the front tried to push backwards while those behind tried to push forward.
I grabbed at her wrist and called out in Petraean, “With me, with me.”
Though there was the light of battle in her eyes, the Dancing Mistress responded to the words. She jumped down onto the two bodies, one still moving and groaning, and shouted,“Where?”
Pointing ahead, I charged with elbows and knife butt flying. People moved quickly enough.
She followed.
Our saving grace would be that the street was so crowded with festival traffic. The entire screaming mess of the riot had probably gone unnoticed twenty paces away. I shoved and prayed, counting on the Dancing Mistress to remain close on my heels.
What I didn’t count on was the mass of children following us, shrieking about violence and the Death Right. I was certain that the Street Guild man whom I’d stabbed was dead. The other likely so, and him by the Dancing Mistress’ hand.
I was protected from the Death Right, but she was not. If a child with any family of substance had been hurt as well, her fate was probably sealed.
Realizing what I was thinking, I nearly dropped to my knees in disgust. Children. Whom I’d spent so much time claiming to worry about and fear for. How easy it was to see them as an obstacle, an inconvenience, when they were not of my own accounting.
Ahead of us, a writhing line of coal demons chased a fire snake. I turned with bared blade and shifted the Dancing Mistress past me. I showed the mob of children the bloody edge. “Get away from the docks,” I screamed at them in Seliu, “before any more of the child-takers come!”
That was a stupid lie, but it gave them pause. A moment was all I needed. “Keep close!” I shouted in Petraean. The snake dodged and twisted right before us in a clash of gongs, spewing nose-searing red and orange vapors from censers dangling below his frills. Underneath, a line of sweating, nearly naked men worked poles and spun back and forth on their heels. They were a storm of legs and wood, with the crowd pressed skin-close on the other side.
This was the woman who’d taught me how to move. I moved. With a quick tumble and a screamed apology, I slipped between two of the snake dancers. The Dancing Mistress was so close behind me that she must have slipped between the next two. I heard an angry shout, but already a twelve-foot coal demon roared and vomited black smoke amid the crashing of his gongs.
Shoulder first, I pressed into the next part of the crowd. These people were a shift from one of the green-wallah houses, for the group of them smelled of garlic and onions. Not so much different from lily bulbs, I thought, and wondered if the Goddess had sent them.
I wasn’t concerned now about whether the Dancing Mistress could follow me. She still was my superior in the art of swift, graceful economy of motion. I was worried that some ripple of outrage would pursue us both, even through the snake. The street was a peculiar thing, and rumor traveled by strange paths.
While I could slip away easily enough, it would be impossible to deny her part in the fighting.
Amid a hail of firecrackers, with their red-and-gold flurry of shredded paper and stink of pouther, we slid into an alleyway. Though the din was magnified here by the confined space between the walls, there was no one with us.
I stepped back into the shadows and looked up as she loomed behind me. “My thanks, stranger,” she began, but I put up my hand for silence.
This had to be the Ragisthuri Ice and Fuel bunker house on my left, and the Wheelwright’s Guild Storehouse on my right. A small haven was located in a shack atop the bunker.
“Up,” I said, and began climbing the drainpipe.
Once again, I did not need to look to see if she followed.
She scrambled up behind me, then across the roof toward the little shack. I opened the ill-fitting door. No locks on this small haven. Inside was a collection of ladders and rags and buckets-stuff too difficult or worthless to bother bringing up and down for use whenever the roof needed cleaning or maintenance. Many of our small havens were as anonymous as this.
The junk was out in four armloads. I opened a folded piece of canvas, then reached behind a loose board to find a pouch that would contain needles and thread and a few other healing essentials. There was also a clay water jar. The place reeked of old paint and moldy cloth, but it was quiet and hidden.
The Dancing Mistress stepped inside with me. Together we filled the space. Small havens were for the most part, well, small. They were intended for one Blade to go to ground until help could arrive.
I had just betrayed the location of this small haven to a foreigner. Not to mention their very existence.
Putting that aside, I touched my face. After all our dodging and leaping, the mask was still on. My blood pounded in my ears, and I found I was trembling. I took a deep breath and tried to relax. “You nearly forfeited your life down there, Northerner,” I told her.
“My thanks again, sir.” I realized her breathing was quite ragged. “That was very poorly played on my part.”
She’d never spoken much of her people, but I knew they came from woodlands high in the mountains. Five was a crowd and ten a mob. I remembered how Kalimpura seemed to me when I first came, and I had not arrived during a festival. “You’ve never seen so many people in one place in your life.”
I was not quite ready to reveal myself, not until I understood what it was she did here. The Lily Goddess had not pulled this woman all the way across the Storm Sea merely for my bedevilment. Something else was afoot.
She sighed. “I have never seen so many people, even adding up all the days of my life. Now, who are you, please?”
Think like a Blade, I told myself, and not a former student of this woman. “This is my city. You will answer first. Who are you, and what is your business here?”
“I am… searching for something.” She took a long look into my veiled eyes. “A priceless emerald stolen several years ago in Copper Downs.”
Me.
A chill stole across my spine, counterpoint to the redness in my eyes and ears. Me. What did they want me back for? Enslaved, boxed up for years, then turned loose to kill, after all the use they’d made of me, after all the ruin they’d made of my life, why call me back now?
Betrayal flooded me like bile in my sleeping mouth. “You will not find it here!” I roared in Seliu.
The knife was in my hand now. She kicked me with those powerful hind legs-so hard, I slammed against the door of the small haven and tumbled out to land among the jumbled trash and equipment.
My back hurt, my legs shivered, and the wound in my upper arm felt raw all over again. The Dancing Mistress leapt out of the little shack just in time to meet my arms coming up. I threw her past me, then followed to jump on her legs and scrabble for her neck from behind.
She twisted, sloughed me off, then caught my right thigh with a handful of claws. I kicked at her, scooted backwards and onto my feet as I brought the knife out far enough to make her rethink her next lunge.
We circled a moment, both panting. Neither of us had gone for the eyes or the throat. There were some rules here, then. At least until one of us discarded them. I would not let her kill me, and I would not let her take me back to Copper Downs.
I had slain a teacher before.
She spun on one heel, whip fast, but I knew that move from the old days. The Dancing Mistress had never taught me to attack, but she’d taught me to defend myself, and I still defended best from her. Shoulder first, I leapt inside the swing of her other leg and slammed into her chest. The knife could have gone into her gut, but I pulled the blow and scored a deep cut on her thigh.
We separated once more.
“You did not make the kill,” she gasped.
“A mistake I shall not repeat.”
We circled a moment longer, both catching our breath, before we met in a flurry of blows. I tapped her hard, half a dozen times, but she tapped me harder, twice on the side of my head so that she drove me to my knees.
This time, the Dancing Mistress bore me down with sheer weight. She let the claws of her right hand extend for her kill as she whipped away my mask and veil with her left.
The shock of recognition was written large and plain upon her face. “Green?”
“Never Emerald,” I spat. A sob caught up with me then, overwhelming the red river of my anger.
“Up,” someone said in Seliu. I looked to see Mother Vishtha leading a handle. Five women with swords out. One of them was Jappa, at that.
I staggered to my feet. “You came just in time, this-”
The flat of Mother Vishtha’s blade darted in and caught me on the side of the head, right on the bruise the Dancing Mistress had raised. I whimpered and dropped back to my knees.
Her voice was hollow, and came to me from a distance I could not measure in that moment. “There is a riot below. Death Right has been cried. Worse, you have exposed a small haven to a stranger.” Mother Vishtha’s breath was hot on my face then as she leaned close. Even in my blow-addled stupor, I could read the fury in her eyes. “You have broken too many stalks today, Green.”
They bound our hands and marched us to the edge of the roof, where we were lowered on ropes from one hostile set of hands to another before being taken away as prisoners through the roaring city. Every step was misery, every glance from the Dancing Mistress a murderous accusation.
Soon enough, we were in a cell beneath the Temple. I did not recognize the room, though it was off the same damp hallway as our practice rooms. I had always thought the little door led to a closet or some such.
I sat with my back to mossy stone. The Dancing Mistress sat facing me against the other wall. A large ewer of water stood between us, and a smaller metal bucket for slops. Some light flickered through the window relieved within the door, and beneath the crack at the bottom, but we sat mostly in red-laced shadow. I ached abominably, as after a very rough round of sparring. Which was unsurprising, of course. The Dancing Mistress winced also.
For a very long time we just looked at one another. Even in the deep shadow, I could see that her eyes were tightened and her ears set low. That meant she was angry. I knew my own face must be hard as well. All the doubts that had flooded into me when she’d mentioned the word emerald were back, deviling me.