by Jay Lake
I soon realized Michael Citrak was annoyed at everything. He even looked annoyed-slim and fussy with a pursed mouth and frantic eyes that never quite rested their gaze on anyone or anything. His clothes were fussy as well; a maroon cambric shirt that had been pressed to creasing with a flatiron, over tapered wool slacks in a pale gray without a speck of dust on them.
“This is enough money to find you trouble,” he told me. “I know she’s good for it. You lose it, someone will have your head. Probably mine as well. Trusting such a sum to a foreign boy, I don’t know.”
“I shan’t lose it,” I said in my snootiest voice.
He gave me a small velvet purse stitched quickly shut with a silvered thread that had been finished in an ornate knot, then sealed with a lead slug and a wax stamp. Clearly it was not for the likes of me to open such a precious burden.
I tucked it away and bowed once. “A wasting upon your goats, and flux on you and all whom you love,” I told him pleasantly in Seliu.
“Foreigners,” he sniffed.
Grinning, I walked out through the garden, past the guard, and down Spindle Street once more. I was fifteen minutes from the ship. There I would be free of my burden.
Four men, rough-faced and thick-bodied with middle age, dropped off a wagon tailgate as I approached. They didn’t even bother to flank me.
“Give it up, boy,” the one with the thickest beard said. “Whatever you came up this road to fetch from the palace. We don’t got time for foolery.” He held a cudgel. The man to his left was armed with a short knife, similar to my lost bandit blade. The other two flexed their hands like stranglers.
“Are you with Choybalsan?”
“Huh. Smart one, are you? We’re making a living here. You’re losing one.”
“No. I don’t think so.” I took a step back. This would have to be quick, for I needed to return to Lucidinous before Srini thought me a deserter.
“Pound the kid,” the leader said in a tired voice. “Break whatever you want.”
Rushing three steps toward the knife-wielder, I took a high, showy leap. I crashed into his face with my elbows. He was fat and slow on his feet, and tumbled back. My weight went with him to drive his head into the cobbles. I snatched his knife up and turned in one motion to bury it in the gut of their spokesman.
“Good luck making that living,” I snarled. His eyes were wide with shock as he swayed on his feet. Yanking the knife free, I swiped it clean, left and right across his leather shirtfront, then pushed him over with a tap of my fingers.
The other two backed away. I saluted them with the blade, then trotted off to bring the money to the Dancing Mistress.
It was obvious now what the people of this city were afraid of. They didn’t need a bandit king here in Copper Downs when they had each other.
The rain had picked up by the time I returned to Lucidinous. It bore the sharp, dark scent of the ocean. The Dancing Mistress waited at the ship’s rail with Srini. Having a knife in my leggings once more made me happier, though this one was not balanced as well as my old blade. Energized from the mugging, I walked on the balls of my feet.
I might have killed one or both of the two I’d tangled with. Only if the others didn’t fetch some help for their friends, though. In this city, I could be the terror that both the Dancing Mistress and the Blades had trained me up to be.
Stopping next to the base of the plank, I tossed the sewn purse up to the Dancing Mistress. She seemed surprised as she grabbed it out of the air. I scanned the crowd, now mostly sailors and laborers as the debarking passengers and their natural predators had moved on to other business. The Dancing Mistress and Srini counted out the funds, murmuring together. Then she came down the plank followed by Chowdry, who carried a ditty bag he must have cadged from among the crew.
She looked me up and down. “What happened?”
“Someone tried to make trouble.”
“And?…”
“And I made trouble for them.” I grinned manically. “Let us be away.”
“Green…” Her voice trailed off. She and Chowdry followed me off the quay in silence. The Dancing Mistress plucked at my arm. “If it is your aim not to be known, perhaps you should be discreet.”
She had the right of it. I could have outrun those oafs easily enough. Simply sprinted the other way, then dodged down a cross-street or taken to the roofs. It had felt good to stretch out and really work . I hadn’t cared to play the victim.
“As may be,” I said.
She let it drop and so did I. We stood in the street, Chowdry close by.
“You do not want to go to the Council yet,” the Dancing Mistress finally said. “We have landed almost without notice. What would you do instead?”
I’d given that some thought aboard Lucidinous. Wandering streets almost unknown to me wasn’t a worthwhile way to learn anything of value. While the empty halls of the Ducal Palace had certainly been tempting, I knew my earlier logic about venturing there held true.
“Let us visit the Pomegranate Court,” I told her. “Look over the Factor’s house. See some of the city. Then if we find nothing, go Below. You told me time and again that the underground was the dreaming mind of the city. Let us learn what Copper Downs thinks on now as it drowses.”
Two years of running the streets of Kalimpura had taught me something of how to read a city and her people.
“We will need to settle Chowdry first,” the Dancing Mistress replied. “I know a tavern where he can work the kitchen, sleep beneath the tables in the mornings, and be out of harm’s way.”
Turning to him, I said in Seliu, “You are ashore now. Will you cook in a tavern for a time, to stay hidden?”
“I-I will.” His voice was stricken. “I did not know we came so far. I shall never go home.”
Clapping him on the shoulder, I felt in his sorrow an echo of my own despair. “We will see you settled for now, and return in a few days’ time to figure a better arrangement.” My attention back on the Dancing Mistress, I added, “Is this tavern peaceful, or full of brawls?”
“Oh, very peaceful,” she said. “Let us both take him there, so you can explain to the keeper. Then we will go on together.”
The place she had in mind was run by one of her people, mostly for her people. The inn had no sign, and it stood off a quiet alley near a district of breweries. Chowdry was made welcome with little fuss. I met the first man of the Dancing Mistress’ people I had ever seen.
He kept the bar, though in this place, that did not mean quite what it did elsewhere in the city. Scattered tables held deep stone bowls filled with scented waters. It felt welcoming. Like returning to a home I’d never known.
The bartender, whom I was to know only as the Tavernkeep, stood taller than the Dancing Mistress. His shoulders were no broader than hers, but he was rangier, with longer arms and legs, and larger hands and feet.
“You are she.” He studied me. My costume meant nothing here. Besides, I was fairly sure these people saw almost as much with their noses as with their eyes.
“I am who I am. I am also responsible for this sailor far from home. He believes he may already be in the land of the dead.”
We settled the former Selistani pirate into a very quiet house after some small chaffer. I gave him his duties in his own language, made sure he and the Tavernkeep knew one another’s look-and smell-and then we were back out into the rain. That had turned from the earlier curtains of mist to a vigorous shower, a cold cousin of Kalimpura’s monsoon.
Together we passed through streets vacated by the rain. Another difference: in Kalimpura the traffic barely changed for the weather, except in the face of the occasional full-on typhoon. Here we might almost have been alone in the city.
We passed close to the remains of the old wall with its cap of strange wooden structures, then into a neighborhood of wider streets that showed little sign of regular use. A district of wealth. Finally we found a street with a very familiar block of town houses. A bluestone wall rose on t
he other side. I drifted to a stop and stared upward.
“I should think we may use the gate now,” the Dancing Mistress said.
“Perhaps. That somehow seems less fitting.” I sprinted for the drainpipe at the far end of the block and swarmed up, much as I had on our night runs long ago. She was half a dozen heartbeats behind me.
On the broad walkway atop the outer wall, I looked down into the yard next to the Pomegranate Court. Whatever tree had stood there-I could not remember now-was gone. Even its base had been torn out. Weeds thrived in the jumbled pile of soil and stone where it had once grown.
Copper had been stripped from the roof beneath my feet. The exposed beams sagged, covered with rot and mold.
Something inside me fell. “This place is empty,” I whispered.
“Which is why we could have used the front gate.”
“Still…” I don’t know what I’d thought to find. Girls in captivity. Perfidy. Bandits living in the rooms of my youth. This was almost as bad as seeing Papa in his hut, Endurance dying in the mud beyond, while that desperate woman Shar looked on me as the thief who would steal her tiny, tiny future.
I had learned cooking and dance and the stories of old here. The swell of regret was surprising.
With dread I stalked down the wall toward the Pomegranate Court. I didn’t want to compass the strides. Rather I wanted to remain safely distant, closed off from whatever had happened there.
You left the place with a corpse cooling behind you, I thought. What do you expect now?
My home had burned. My tree was shattered, spread across the court to rot. The horse box still stood, fairly intact and apparently spared from the fire. The building below my feet was a total loss. There was no body in the yard, at least.
The Dancing Mistress folded me into her shoulder. I was the scourge of this city. I had come to defend, to attack, to right wrongs-not to shed tears for a hated youth from which I had struggled to escape every minute I’d spent here.
“Wh-what happened?”
She hugged me tight, then set me at arm’s length. “His men mutinied.” Her voice was quiet. “The day you met the Duke, once the spells were gone and the word flew across the city on wings of rumor, the guards slew the residential Mistresses. They raped the older girls to death. For their beauty, I suppose. A few of the younger girls escaped. A handful of the visiting Mistresses were trapped as well. Of them, I believe only Mistress Danae emerged alive.”
I was on my knees, heaving as I had done the night I killed Mistress Tirelle. Oh, Goddess. All I had meant to do was find my way out, not call down death on a house full of women. The girls were innocents, just as I had been. Even the Mistresses…
Goddess, have a mercy for their souls, if it is not too late, I prayed. These people do not follow the Wheel as they do in Your south, but there must be some balm for them.
The rain fell on me like a benediction. My hair was plastered to my head. It felt as if the Goddess’ hand were pressing down on me. I listened for a long time to see if She would guide my heart. She told me nothing that I wanted to hear. That silence meant more than words might have been able to say.
“It is my doing,” I finally said, wiping the bile from my mouth. My heart felt ground to shattered glass. “I wrought this.”
The Dancing Mistress knelt before me. “Green. We know now that the Duke created this disaster, in his guise as the Factor. He set men to guard these girls as if they were treasures out of legend, and treated the guardians harshly. The girls were doomed the moment he was gone. If someone else had done the deed, you would have met your end as well.”
“I did it,” I repeated stupidly. Killed them all, with a few words.
“They died.” Her voice was hard now. “With and of the Duke. Come now, we must move on. Nothing is for you here.”
She was right, though my legs protested. Whatever I might have found in the rooms of the Pomegranate Court had been wiped out by fire and weather since those first days of riot and blood. Perhaps that was just as well, I thought. The ghosts I could meet down there would be very unpleasant.
I was too upset to climb down the drain. The Dancing Mistress led me to the main gate and a little stair choked with leaves and debris but still passable. We descended into a narrow alley that must once have given access from the street to the blank-faced central tower.
Looking up, I tried to imagine the men who had lived there. How they had thought, felt, why they had taken the lives of so many girls and women with such pain. I knew what sort of men they were. Like the four who had tried to rob me of my purse today. Not the elegant guardians who’d ridden blindfolded with the Factor’s coach, but angry brutes who believed their strength made them right.
What did men like that think would happen to them as they grew old and frail? To their wives and children? Did the world only ever belong to the strong?
The tally of my dead had just more than doubled, with the women and girls of the Factor’s house to my account.
I realized the Dancing Mistress was plucking at my arm. “We go Below now,” she said. “It will be good to be out of the rain.”
“It is just water.” I tried to smile. “I’ve been told that washes away sin.”
“My people do not believe in sin.” Her voice was serious. “There is only circumstance, and choice. Green, you had neither circumstance nor choice when great harm befell this place.”
I nodded, because that was what she expected. As we turned toward the street, something caught my eye. I looked back toward the blank-walled central tower. Someone stood there, half-hidden in the pouring rain.
Tapping the Dancing Mistress’ arm in battle code for rapid reconnaissance, I sprinted toward the figure.
I heard her curse, and realized I’d used a signal of the Lily Blades. Which she would not know. Still, she would follow.
Whoever it was seemed to retreat as I approached. At the same time, they did not move at all. I burst through a swirling curtain of rain to find the Factor-the Duke-standing in the shattered doorway of the tower. The skin of his face was as gray as his rotten clothes. He appeared surprised to see me, then backed into the shadows with one hand raised before him.
He was gone.
The Dancing Mistress caught up to me. “What?”
Shivering, I found my voice. “The Factor was just here.” And why not? “He was dead long before I slipped your words within his ear, Mistress. Surely he still is.”
Like a god, I realized. Ghosts and gods were not so far apart. Especially as the greatest part of their power came from how much a person believed. As with tulpas?
“A glamer.” She touched my face, peering into my eyes in the graying light of the rainy afternoon.
Staring up at the blank bluestone rising between the closing walls of this gateway, I was inclined to agree with her.
Over the next few days, the Dancing Mistress and I visited different parts of the city. I wanted to see Copper Downs by daylight, without riot on my heels. I wanted to understand more of what there was here. At the same time, we set about purchasing various neccessities with her recently procured funds.
“I cannot put the Interim Council off long,” she told me. “Only Federo’s absence has allowed me to avoid them more than a day.”
“Where is he?” We were down in the Dockmarket eating a watery northern curry of some lumpy squash mixed with stewed fowl. I thought these Petraeans should be barred from using the word curry to describe it, even if someone had waved masala powder near the pot as they thought about cooking it.
“Off on an embassy chasing after help to fight Choybalsan.”
“Houghharrow or Dun Cranmoor?”
“Would that it were so. No, he makes a circuit of fishing villages and farming towns. The other cities of the Stone Coast have yet to take this bandit seriously. Federo is begging his spearmen in tens and twenties from little men with little troubles who cannot see past their own bend in the road.”
“A pretty problem,” I said.
“But not mine. I would still prefer to hide my face a while longer, in case anyone has a particularly keen memory or a thirst for old vengeance.”
My ship-made blacks were wearying, the wrong texture and weight for my comfort. I would owe the Dancing Mistress a double hand of silver taels for the new ones she ordered for me.
While we waited for my purchases to be ready, we quartered the streets. The Dancing Mistress showed me the compound where she had met a shaman in the days after the Duke’s fall. She told me the story of how she and a Hunt of her people had run him to the ground.
“More of our magic on the loose,” she said sadly. “A forerunner of this Choybalsan.”
I did not sense any stirrings of either the divine or the profane as we passed through the little squatter village beneath the willows of the long-abandoned estate.
So it was. I saw granaries and slaughterhouses and the five armories around the city and streets full of the most ragged poor-they did not call themselves beggars here-as well as the quiet boulevards surrounding the high-walled gates of wealth. We walked the docks, for there was no single Avenue of Ships here as in Kalimpura. We passed by warehouses, factories, bourses, markets, exchanges, moneylenders, public strong rooms, and all the appurtenances of commerce on which a great city must run. Likewise the slips where ships were built and refitted, the parks, the rubbish heaps, the old mineheads now walled in and nearly forgotten, and the Ducal Palace from the outside.
I felt like a traveler coming back to his own home for the first time. Neither was true here, of course-I was no mere traveler, and while this city had been my residence a long while, it was never my home.
Perhaps most odd, all the traveling and talking of places and names made me long for my belled silk. More understandably, at night my empty sheets made me wish for a woman’s arms and a place where I might be whipped freely and in safety.
“Where do women find one another here?” I asked the Dancing Mistress as we walked down the Street of Advocates.