by Jay Lake
I would not restart the fight with her, but neither would I treat with her. Mother Vishtha said I’d broken too many stalks. Quite possibly that was true, and a great pity besides. But where the Dancing Mistress had come from, I’d not only broken stalks, I’d set fire to the entire plantation.
Whoever wanted me there, whatever they wanted me for, it could not be to the good.
Everything was broken; everything was ruined. I did not fear the Death Right, but I was finished in this city. Even if I hid my face for a few years, whenever I reappeared, people would mark the scars and remember scandal and old disgrace. I knew how these Selistani were-tongues sharp as adders’ teeth and a memory for insult that could extend across generations.
As for the traitorous wretch across from me, she had everything to fear from the Death Right. I’d claimed the life of one Stone Coaster who had killed in self-defense. My privilege, such as it might be now, was no shield at all to her.
She could keep her damned emeralds and phony stories about stolen valuables and the preciousness of whatever had been snatched across the sea against its will.
They will kill her.
“Green.” The Dancing Mistress’ voice was soft.
That was when I realized I was sobbing. “Leave me alone,” I said in Seliu, barely able to speak through the tears.
“I’m sorry,” she replied in Petraean.
My heart roiled along with my gut. I took a few breaths to calm myself, then answered her in that language. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Well, you found me. More fool you.” Bitterness infused my voice.
“No fool at all. The first hour I was here, I found you.” She smiled, lopsided with some pain in her neck or jaw. “As if my steps had been guided.”
Perhaps they had, if the Lily Goddess’ hand was to be discerned. “Don’t be so pleased. You are about to be charged under the Death Right.”
“I was attacked.”
“You killed, without privilege.” I shrugged, which sent a stabbing pain through my old wound. “It is our way here.”
She stepped across the cell and knelt before me. “Nonetheless, I am glad I found you. Such a fight you made. I am proud of you.”
“Even though I landed blows on you?”
“Especially because you landed blows on me.”
I laughed through the bitter tears. The Dancing Mistress tore a strip off her toga and dipped it in the ewer. I wondered what she was about when she turned back and said, “Let me bathe your hurts.”
For a moment, I wanted to send her away with my words and with my hands, but I stopped myself. Whatever she’d come for, it hadn’t been to push me once more into the confines of the Pomegranate Court. The Duke was vanished to dust, and the Factor with him. Mistress Tirelle was dead. No one remained to keep me in that place.
I began to slip free of my blacks. “Why did you ask for an emerald? I thought you were here to take me into captivity once again.”
“No, no, no,” she said, brushing my face tenderly with her fingers. “I needed to inquire cautiously at first. I did not know if you were alive, let alone here in Kalimpura. This was no more than where the ship I took brought me.”
“You are a traveler very far from home.”
“So are you, Green, for your home is lost to all but memory.”
That she had the right of. We had much in common, the Dancing Mistress and I. The thought saddened me, so I bowed my head and tried to will myself toward peace as she slowly dabbed at my wounds. I was cut in a dozen places, and bruised in twice as many. Not to mention the hurts to my soul. My skin was marred with friction burns and smears of coal dust. Pains plagued me just as after the roughest workout, which the cool touch of the wet rag soothed.
Her fingers were lithe enough, for all that they were stubby and broad. The caress of her hands was so gentle as the fur slid over my skin. I let myself be eased into the Dancing Mistress’ arms while she cleaned and comforted me.
After a time, I realized that she was singing softly to me in some language of her people. I did not understand the words, and could barely hear them besides, but the sense of it seemed to be a chanson of peace and rest.
When they came for us, her life could be at an end. Mine was likely in peril as well, depending on how many of Mother Vishtha’s stalks I’d broken. Here in the shadowed cold and damp of the cell was as close as I’d felt to cared for, at least since the night Jappa and Samma had helped me back to the dormitory. Possibly ever.
I curled in the Dancing Mistress’ embrace. Her silvery fur was the softest of blankets. Her hands slipped over me like night wind through a garden. She traced the patterns of my bruises, giving me a little jolt of delicious hurt without it being so painful as to draw me to full wakefulness. I moaned so slightly at the touch, and so she did more of it.
We were entangled a very long time. It never passed into the pounding sex I had enjoyed with the older Mothers. More like the early exploration with Samma. Nothing was pushed or opened or thrust within, but the endless circling of her hands, and then her tongue and tail, brought me to a wet, wishing tremble all the same.
I wanted to stir myself, to wash her, to stroke her fur and tickle her back and find a way to return the jelly-legged feeling she gave me, but the Dancing Mistress was too giving, too kind, too gentle as she folded me closer into her arms and laid her head across my shoulders.
What came next was a dream, I supposed later on. Or possibly a visitation from the Lily Goddess. She was not shut of me, nor I of Her, for all that we had so tenuous a connection. She is an autochthonous deity, as Septio explained to me later-meaning that she is rooted in her place and time. Even Bhopura to the east within the same lands was beyond the purview of such a goddess, let alone the doings of a girl across the Storm Sea far to the north.
Yet there are those who ascribe much to the tales of the Splintering of the Gods, the so-called theogenic dispersion, the birth of the gods in the First Days when the course of suns had not been laid in the sky and the plate of the world was silent as any table the night before the feast of life was laid upon it.
Mistress Danae might have said that the Lily Goddess was a splinter of one of the titanics in the leviathan times before, one of Desire’s children. As a nephil-daughter of their shattering, She would have sister shards in other times and places.
I stood in a rainfall. Not the straight, warm rain of the Selistani monsoon season, but a whirling bluster of cold water and dissonant wind as autumn might bring, back in Copper Downs. A city lay in ruins around me. It stretched beyond the horizon. Most buildings were rubble and foundation posts, but a few stood higher and nearly unharmed. One of those was the Ragisthuri Ice and Fuel bunker. Another was a looming bluestone fortress, which might have been the Factor’s house.
Plants grew around my ankles, rising from the soil even as I noticed them. I looked up again to see the ruins being strangled. Already the works of generations were being lost in a curling jungle. The leaves were broad and shaped like hands, with a low nap of silver fur on the underside and a pale, fleshy aspect above. They moved, their fingers wriggling, and each showed me a silver lily before the rain washed the flowers away.
In time, I stood alone atop a rock amid a wind-tossed lake. The city was gone, but for the bit beneath my feet. The twining vines had become roots for plants that floated like water lilies. I was amid a sea of hands. They began to curl one by one, then all of them, to the horizon, forming fists that reached for me.
I awoke with a sharp gasp, unaware that I had been dreaming. My head jerked back and jammed into the Dancing Mistress’ jaw. She mewed in pain, but hugged me tighter.
“I am sorry,” I mumbled in Seliu. “Was there a wind within our cell?”
She stroked my hair. “I cannot understand you, dearest, when you speak the tongue of this place.”
Though I did not want to leave the circle of her arms, I sat up. The stone floor was cold. I pushed my blacks b
eneath me for a seat and leaned close to her from the side, as friends will.
“Nothing came as I slept?” I asked in Petraean.
“Nothing and no one.”
“Mmm.” I hugged her closer. “I am sorry that we hurt each other.”
She whispered in my ear, her left hand on the skin of my right thigh. “You have learned so much.”
“And more I would show you, if times were different.” We both giggled at the tone in my voice. “Now that you have found me,” I finally said, “will you explain what it is that drove you so far from home to search for me?”
She folded her hands and stared at the floor a little while. Embarrassment or simply lost in thought, I could not tell. Then she looked up. “These are dire times in Copper Downs. Much that the Duke had bound away was loosed when you struck him down. Trouble has unfolded on trouble. Some… some of us… feel that your part in the fall of the Duke might give you powers of both resistance and attack in the problems at hand.”
My heart skipped. “Some of who? Only you and Federo even know of my role, yes?”
“There are others. Septio. Mother Iron.”
“Septio and Mother Iron sent you across the sea?” I was baffled. “What did Federo have to say about it?”
“Federo does not know.” She took a great shuddering breath. “It may be that he stands at the center of these difficulties.”
Then I realized she was weeping. I drew her head into my lap and began to stroke at her cheek, her neck, her little round ears. The Dancing Mistress did not cry, exactly-I do not even know if her people can cry as humans do-but she was a knot of fear and sadness. I knew that mix well. Even though these troubles were not mine anymore, my heart opened to her.
I held her close, kissing her head and calling her sweet names in Seliu. In time she sighed and drew me down, and we kissed mouth to mouth. Her breath was no worse than any other woman’s, and her arms were familiar.
For a while we managed to forget what was soon to come.
When the door banged open, the Mothers were angry. The Dancing Mistress and I tried to untangle, shielding our eyes against the invasion of brighter light. They became angrier.
“Get up,” barked Mother Vishtha. She had Mother Argai beside her, the other woman with a crossbow in her hands. I could see several more Mothers in the hallway beyond. Had they expected me to grow violent and give battle to them all?
I stood, all too aware of my nakedness. Both these women had many times taken me into their beds, but now the revulsion was plain upon their faces. The Dancing Mistress found her feet beside me and slipped into a fighting stance that would let her use the immense leverage of her hind legs.
“Where is it written that you should lie with animals?” growled Mother Argai.
Mother Vishtha waved her to silence.
“She is not an animal,” I told them, speaking urgently to overcome the glittering danger of the moment. “This is my best and oldest teacher!”
“Then let her speak.” Mother Vishtha pointed at the Dancing Mistress and snarled, “Defend yourself, miserable creature.”
“Wh-where is lodgings?” the pardine stammered in horrendously accented Seliu.
I glanced at her, amazed. “What?” I demanded in Petraean.
“I only know a few phrases,” she snapped, not taking her eyes off the crossbow. “I’d figured on having more time here to learn before things grew difficult.”
“The yowling of an animal,” Mother Vishtha announced. “Just as a bird may be taught to speak, so has someone taught this one.” She glared at me. “How could you?”
“Why did you come here?” I demanded hotly of the Mothers. Surely they had not trooped down the stairs to harass me over this.
Some of the anger left Mother Vishtha’s face. “To bring you before the Mothers in assembly.”
Mother Argai’s crossbow wavered slightly as she spoke. “The Street Guild and the Bittern Court both seek charges. One of the dead is a Master’s son.”
“Your little adventure today was badly played,” Mother Vishtha said. “We should have barred you from those blacks when you first made them.”
Only I’d done too well as a Blade, I realized. The runs, which were meant to embarrass me and turn the sentiment of the sworn women against me, had induced the opposite effect.
“Green.” The Dancing Mistress’ voice was thick and low.
“They are here to conduct us upstairs,” I told her. “To a hearing before the Mothers of the Temple of the Silver Lily. I do not know how this may go.”
“Will they kill us?”
“Likely not.” Not me, at any rate. Would that I knew more than “likely.”
“I am going to dress-”
“No,” Mother Vishtha interrupted. “Not in your ridiculous costume.” She threw me the pale robe of undyed muslin of an aspirant.
I slipped myself into the robe, directly over my skin.
“Will your animal need a collar?” asked Mother Argai in a nasty voice.
I waited until my head was clear and she could hear my words. “No more so than you.”
Her face tightened, but her finger on the crossbow trigger did not.
The Dancing Mistress gathered her torn, muddy toga close and followed me out. We went up the stairs with Mother Vishtha in front of us and weapons at our back.
We did not go to the little room high in the temple, as I had expected. I’d thought to see an inner court as I had once before, Mother Vajpai and Mother Meiko besides Mother Vishtha and one or two of the other senior Mothers.
Instead we entered the main sanctuary. Wednesday afternoon wasn’t time for services, but still the galleried seats were nearly full. Mothers in the robes and sashes of all the temple orders were present, as were a number of women from outside. I saw more than a few in the colors of Street Guild wives or the Bittern Court.
Of course the Bittern Court. I’d done them a bad turn, in the death of the man Curry when I’d dropped his key into the harbor. Whoever had arranged that killing now saw a chance to pay me out for my insolence.
“We are to be made an example of,” I whispered to the Dancing Mistress.
“You don’t say.”
Despairing of her fate, I fell silent then. There was little I could tell her, unless it came time for me to translate some speech or exhortation. Or sentence.
The Temple Mother waited before the altar at the center of the sacred circle. Always the woman in that role was the senior Mother of the priestesses, though she was advised by the Justiciary Mother, the Blade Mother-Mother Meiko since before I’d been here-and a few of the other senior Mothers from the healing and teaching orders.
I had never had much to do with the Temple Mother. She had lost her color with age, rather than never having had it baked into her in the first place as with a northerner under their tiny pale sun. Her name was Mother Umaavani, though I knew no one who called her by that name except Mother Meiko.
Today the Temple Mother stood and stared at me with those pale eyes as I walked downward among the ring of seats. The Dancing Mistress followed half a pace behind me. I knew from the prickle of my back that Mother Argai still stood at the top of the gallery with her crossbow, and probably the rest of the impromptu handle that Mother Vishtha had put together to come fetch me.
It was strange to be stared at by the old woman, who normally attended only to the altar and the progress of the prayers. This truly was a hearing and not a service-no incense, no bells, no scurrying priestly aspirants.
Just a very angry Temple Mother, me, and the woman who was both my oldest teacher and newest lover.
I stared back, gave her my hardest glare. Where I could make even Mother Gita look aside when the anger was upon me, there was nothing in me that would push away the Temple Mother. No more than I could push Mother Meiko, I realized.
In moments, I stood at the bottom of the steps in the circle of the altar. I had never walked here-never expected to, except when it came time to take my vows
as a sworn Blade.
She must have been thinking the same thing, for the first words the Temple Mother said to me were “I had hoped to meet you differently, Green.”
“Mother.” She was the only Mother in the entire Lily Temple who required no name or title beyond that honorific.
“You seem to have been a great deal of trouble, dear.”
Though her voice and words were sweet enough, I knew the look on her face. This woman might well have run with the Blades at some time in her life. Not that I’d ever heard such a rumor, but the hardness was there.
“I have done what was needed, Mother.”
“Oh, yes.” She began to pace in front of the great silver lily as if the two of us were having a conversation, without the Dancing Mistress at my side and more than two hundred others looking on. “How did you know these things were needed? Did the Goddess speak to you?”
“At times,” I said baldly. If I could keep them talking, we might somehow both walk away. “But I never understood what was required of me. Her voice is like distant thunder, Mother, telling me of rain, but not how much water will flow across my doorstep.”
“So it is with the Goddess sometimes, child.” The Temple Mother’s voice was filled with sadness. “If She herself did not tell you what was needed, how did you know Her will?”
I took a deep breath. I did not know where these questions might yet lead. All I could do was follow, and try to jump where she pointed. “I judged for myself, Mother.”
“And did Mother Blade and your other teachers not tell you the one true rule of the Lily Blades?”
This trap I knew. I’d stepped into it as casually as a child walking into a mud puddle. I saw no point in pretending to coyness. “We do not judge.”
“She has judged,” the Temple Mother called out in a voice that rang to the heights of the sanctuary. “Even where we have taught her to do no such thing.”
Applause smattered above me, followed by the buzz of voices. The Temple Mother was speaking to the Street Guild, I realized. And the Bittern Court.