Green g-1

by Jay Lake

  She laughed. “Any woman of the Factor’s courts can cook for kings and princes. Here I’ve been giving you corn soup and boiled grouse. I would be honored if you did so.”

  The afternoon passed into evening as we worked together. The cottage had no separate kitchen, just the fireplace with its pot hooks, and a little wrought-iron rack where I might set a bread pan. The pantry was better than I might have expected, especially among the spices. We sent Corinthia Anastasia out half a dozen times. She grew more willing as the scents of cookery multiplied.

  Eventually I produced a braised rabbit in apples, baked into a butter crust. We had little nubbins of late lettuce from the garden, along with honeyed carrots and a boiled wine that I had carefully spiced by hand. I would have prepared our meal in the Selistani manner, but she had no spices for that, nor the right foodstuffs. Even so, I could have dined on the smells alone.

  I was happy, in a simple, satisfied way. If I could ever find the knack of not killing people, I realized I might like to be a cook. Open a little cafe in Copper Downs to serve Selistani food, or even better, a little cafe in Kalimpura to serve northern food. That scrap of dream distressed me, so I folded it away for another time.

  Evening carried a chill. The woman and I went outside anyway, and shared a bench with blankets wrapped around us. Her thigh was pressed against mine for the warmth. Rested and well-fed, it was easy to imagine us as friends. Or lovers. I felt so safe that I did not even know where my knife was. In a sense, that relieved me.

  Of course, it also worried me.

  “I leave tomorrow,” I told her.

  “Be well on the road.”

  Somehow I had expected a protest. “Thank you for sheltering me.”

  “I am not ignorant of your identity.” She paused, evidently choosing her words with care. “There are… versions… of your tale even in these hills. Especially in these hills.” She gave me a long, slow look. “Do you know where you are?”

  “No.”

  “Back when Copper Downs was a kingdom, before the Amphora Wars threw down the crowns of the Stone Coast, it was the custom of the city to bury the most important dead well away from the walls. I suppose they sought peace for their departed.”

  The Amphora Wars? How far into the past was she looking? I had not read of that conflict. The Ducal coronet reached back at least a thousand years, which meant any kingdom lay deeper in time than that. Thinking of the Factor, I said, “It also cut down on the ghosts in town, I imagine.”

  “You would not be wrong. There are long neglected tombs among these hills. Their inhabitants have not forgotten themselves, nor their city.”

  “You are a necromancer?”

  “No, no.” She smiled. “I speak with the dead-I do not summon them or bind them to my will. A necrolocutor, I suppose.”

  “With all that ancient wisdom, you live in a one-room cottage among the apples.”

  Snorting, she said, “Why do people always suppose the dead to be so wise, when the living are so foolish?”

  I thought about that. Surely the wisdom of the ancestors was a truism. “I had assumed the grave taught patience, and lent perspective, if nothing else. For those who did not pass on along the Wheel, or wherever their gods sent them.”

  “Mostly it makes them angry.”

  “There are many I have sped out of this life. I… I cannot count the number anymore.” I was thinking of the thieves Mother Shesturi’s handle slew in the park. “If they are all angry at me, I must trail such distemper like a shooting star.”

  “You are a weapon, my girl. Made so by the hands of others. Wielded by your own will now.”

  “Mostly,” I told her. “Mostly.”

  “You have a patron, yes? Patroness?”

  “I do,” I admitted.

  “Yet your hand is not guided, your will is not bent. Was this true in the courts of the Factor?”

  “Not at all. Nearly every moment was driven for me, and I in turn driven before the passing hours. I ran a race toward womanhood.” I thought of Mistress Tirelle. The snap of her neck echoed still in my ears, when I let myself hear it. “I first killed there within the bluestone walls. Many more died because of me.” A sob I had not known was coming escaped from me, though I tried hard to swallow it at the last second.

  She put an arm across my shoulders and hugged me close beneath the blanket. “I told you, I have known who you were since the first. You are well thought of among the tombs of old, at least by those ghosts with any sense of the world as it is today.”

  “For sending so many to their deaths?”

  “The city has its patrons. Its parents. Like any child, it journeys forward through time as they fall behind. You freed it.”

  “For Choybalsan,” I said bitterly, hating the salt tears in my voice.

  “Another step in the journey.”

  “I’m tired of killing people.” Curled closer to her, I shuddered with a swallowed sob. “I’m tired of freeing cities.”

  “You want to go home?”

  “Yes!” I shrieked at that, and cried into her shoulder for a while. When I finally found my voice, I stammered, breath heaving, “I have no home.”

  “Everyone comes home to the grave.” She stroked my hair. “The lucky ones come home to their hearts while they still can.”

  I wept awhile longer. When I sat up again and found my eyes not so overwhelmed by tears, I asked her the question that had been hanging behind my tongue. “Do you know any who survived the fall of the Factor’s house? Any g-girls? Or Mistresses?”

  She gave me a long steady look. I could see the questions in her own eyes. Finally: “One called Danae lives among the tombs high in the hills. She is almost a shade herself, but has not yet given up to lie beneath the flowers.”

  “Mistress Danae?” Words leapt in my throat, to go see her, to speak to her, to ask after my younger self, but I held them. Something very wary was in this woman’s tone.

  “Just Danae, I think. It took her a season to trust me within a stone’s throw. Even now we do not talk so much.” Sighing, she continued, “I bring her food and blankets, and sometimes tell her of high places where she might find shelter or needful things. She has been used past the point of shattering her spirit.”

  “I would wish her well, but I will not disturb her peace.”

  “Peace it is. Strange and fragile, but something called her here. I will not let her be unseated from this resting place.”

  “Thank you.” I leaned over to kiss her cheek. I knew from that brief taste of her that in a different time, this woman and I might have been great lovers and friends.

  Morning brought the gift of a new veil. My old one was long gone.

  “How did you know?” I asked with delight. This was a metal mesh, faced with black silk.

  The woman smiled. “No one betrayed you, but the tombs have been watching.”

  I turned it back and forth, looking at the fine steel links, marveling at how light it was. “This is a grave good?”

  “Yes. Freely given.”

  I boggled slightly at the dead making an offering, but was pleased enough. “Now if only I had a blade.”

  “I do not traffic in weapons,” she said seriously, “but if you would like the use of my gray-handled boning knife, I will not object.”

  The kitchen tools hung near the fire from a wooden slat. I knew exactly which steel she spoke of. This blade was far smaller and lighter than the last two I’d carried, which had both been fighting weapons. Taking it down, I hefted the knife with an enemy in mind. I could fight well enough bare-handed, but others would not recognize the threat.

  Is that why Skinless was immune to weapons but not to blows? Because no one here ever strengthens their hands hard enough to matter?

  That question I put away for later consideration. The knife I put away for later use. The handle stuck out of my boot top and made me look the rogue, but the time for subtlety was past. Especially veiled and dressed in black.

  Neckbre
aker had seemed a good idea in Kalimpura. I was coming to understand how childish he was. Even so, he was a safer person to be than the girl Green.

  I took up my veil and marveled at how well I could move, even with the raw seaming of scars about my body. I turned to my benefactress and her daughter. “There is much I owe you, but right now, my best thanks is my absence. I will head downhill and south, and forget that I ever knew this place.”

  Corinthia Anastasia darted toward me and hugged my waist hard. “Don’t be stupid,” she said earnestly.

  Her mother smiled sadly. “Listen to my child.”

  With my knife and my little wooden bell, I walked out into the sunlit orchard and away from them. The city awaited me. Choybalsan, too, and the Lily Goddess in Her distant temple. For all my dallying with gods, it seemed strange that my greatest blessing had come from a lone woman and her child.

  Though the tombs could not have been much more than a day’s ride up the Barley Road from Copper Downs, it took me three days of walking to cover the distance. I traveled in the hills to the west, though they lessened with each furlong south. There were goat tracks aplenty, and odd mossy walls to shelter beside from time to time. Those could have been the remains of castles or cottages. I did not know, and did not care.

  As I made my slow progress, I watched the road. Despite what I’d been told, it was largely empty. I did not know what the usual traffic here might be. Now there was only the occasional rider, always racing. They went both one way and the other.

  Choybalsan’s army might be called bandits, but truly they were farm boys and woodsmen dressed like rogues. There had never been enough people or trade in this empty country to support raiders. That meant they would campaign like farmers and woodcutters. Slowly and without precision.

  I would have expected scouts, in any case. Whatever was he doing? My escape was more than a week old now. Unless they’d gone hunting the Dancing Mistress, they must fall upon the city soon. There would not be enough to eat up there, and frost was not far away in the higher hills.

  Being ahead of them pleased me well enough.

  Then I crossed a wooded shoulder of a hill and heard the noise of surf ahead.

  Climbing away from the road, I found a good spreading oak. I scrambled up that tree to look south.

  Copper Downs lay before me. The sea glinted beyond, showing an endless southern horizon. Choybalsan’s army was drawn up in the open lands outside the city where the first few wayhouses and stables and shanties had been overwhelmed by several thousand men and horses. The lightning fence was not crackling just now, but surely this force had not come without their god-king before them in glorious array.

  I had not arrived in advance of them. I had rested too long amid the orchards of the dead.

  Brushing that aside as unworthy, I studied the army awhile. I looked as Mistress Tirelle had taught me. And saw with eyes of history, eyes sharpened by maps and mathematics. I was never an expert on the disposition and application of massed forces, but I knew more than a little of logistics. The Pomegranate Court had trained me in part to be a chatelaine. That is a job not much different from quartermaster, except for the uniform.

  Here are the things I could determine:

  They had been before the city at least three days. I was beyond crediting that an entire army had marched past me in the night unnoticed.

  They had not come in a sweeping mass, or the roadway I’d been following would have been badly used in a manner I could have spotted even from a distance.

  They had not fought since before arriving. The outlying buildings and small villages overrun by Choybalsan’s bandits were still intact. No burning, no wrack. So no one had stood against them. Not in a body, at any rate.

  That meant that some in and around the city had welcomed the army. Neither did anyone within sally out. The profusion of guards were largely patrolmen and gatekeepers, not trained to stand against massed force.

  What was this army waiting for?

  Perhaps Choybalsan was not here. In which case, I might not be too late.

  Why would you conquer your own city?

  That was when I knew where the bandit-king had gone. And why there was no lightning. Somewhere in the city, probably in the upper rooms of the Textile Bourse, Federo was offering the Interim Council the desperate bargain he would report having made with the perfidious Choybalsan.

  He didn’t need to conquer the city. He just needed to arrange a surrender to himself.

  I sat amid some bayberry bushes and laughed quietly. Federo’s arrogance had a surpassing cleverness that my soul was just dark enough to admire. At the same time, I wondered how it was he could put godhood on and off like a cloak. It seemed a most useful trick.

  Had all the gods started that way? Was the Splintering nothing more than a metaphor for the way that the measures of grace and evil within any man could grow at the right touch?

  Septio had said everything moved in a cycle.

  Which in turn made me wonder who the Lily Goddess had once been.

  My path led to the coast. I met the Quarry Highway with its small river alongside. A log tangle gave me a ford over the water. Sheer nerve took me across the broken pavers of the road. Close to the sea, I had to cross the East Road, but there I was able to crawl underneath the trackway following a flood channel meant to drain the north verge.

  Here the stones of the city gave way to shale and gravel beaches. The littoral east of the city was too shallow for a harbor. Choybalsan’s horsemen rode their circuit all the way to salt water. Some of the men, and most of the horses, seemed afraid of the sea, though a few riders raced whooping in the foamy edge of the water.

  Clouds had rolled in to steal the warmth of the sunlight and replace it with a chilled gloom. I skulked among the low ridges with their sparse vegetation, cursing that I would have to go all the way back to the Greenbriar River and across before I found a decently unpatrolled way in. As I grumbled about my fruitless effort, I nearly fell into a muddy creek that had been invisible from farther inland.

  That was odd. I should have seen it bridged at the East Road. I followed the water’s lazy course alongside one of the graveled banks, staying low so I wouldn’t be spotted by a horseman atop one of the ridges. The bank crooked west, as did the stream, until I found a stinking little pond choked with water lilies.

  It trapped enough water to keep a busy stream flowing, but this pond had no inflow. I stared at the lilies awhile. They would grow in bad water. Some people said the plants even cleaned water, made it fresh again.

  More to the point, the Goddess had sent me a dream of water lilies, when the Dancing Mistress and I had been imprisoned together beneath Her temple.

  First I tied the wooden bell, muffled with some vines, to my waist. I did not want to lose it. While a good soaking was not ideal, water would not ruin it immediately. Then I hefted the boning knife and waded in. The pond had a muddy graveled floor, tangled with roots. My feet found broken junk and stones even through my boots. My nose found the refuse of a city. This was a drain for the water and blood of Copper Downs.

  Standing still, I tried to locate a current. That was not so difficult. The flow seemed to originate from the gravel bank somewhat below the calm surface. I approached, the water growing first waist deep, then chest deep, then neck deep. I was in danger of being swallowed up before I met the end. With my free hand, I explored.

  An outflow issued from an opening of worked stone.

  Water never ran up. From this very low angle, the bank towered at least fifteen feet above my head.

  Could there be a sewer tunnel underneath it? This entire stretch of twisting, angled banks and dunes might easily cover the ruins of some ancient quarter of Copper Downs.

  The mine galleries beneath the city were certainly far older than the traditions of the people who lived above them now. Anything was possible.

  Not admitting fear to myself-for I could not afford such a luxury as that-I took three great whooping breaths to p
uff up my chest and make my heart brave with quickened blood. I held my knife braced forward, ducked into the stinking water, and braced my free hand against the top lip of the outlet.

  Pushing inward against the current was difficult. The roof of the drain remained obstinately level as I waddled at a crouch, while the floor was slick with some slime that threatened my footing and slowed my pace. I kept my free hand above me, hoping for some vault or rise where I might find air.

  If this entire drain was filled with water, then that would be the last hope of my life.

  Goddess. You showed me Your lilies. I do not believe You toy with me. We both fear what might be here. Help me on my way, that I might free all from the tyranny that comes.

  Praying to the Lily Goddess from within a swirl of muddy water far across the sea did not seem likely to help me, but I needed to do something. Anything. My lungs stung. Reflex fought for breath, tempting my mouth to open despite the burden of water sealing it shut.

  I could turn around, kick with the current, be back out among the lilies.

  I could find blessed air and the light of day.

  I could walk another path-surrender, even-and allow myself to be taken in.

  I could feel the top of the drain suddenly curve upward.

  Straightening my spine, I followed the rising stonework. My hand found air before my face, but a moment later, I was gasping in the dank, moldy air of Below. The familiar taste was as much a blessing as water in the desert.

  After several deep choking breaths, I headed onward, looking to stand straight up. I could see nothing at all, for there was no coldfire here. My hands told me the sewer had a low vault. That must have ended at the outflow.

  In order to breathe, I was forced to walk slightly bent at the knees and hips, with my head tilted backwards to keep my mouth above the water. The position was painful, but not excruciating. I had nowhere to go but forward.

  My knife before me, I advanced.

  I was forced to keep my feet in shuffling contact with the slimed bottom for fear of encountering a pit or a grate, or even just broken stones that might trip me and pull me under. The current seemed to become more powerful. I was cloaked in fear that slowly tinged with panic when I finally stumbled into a larger space where the air sussurated with echoes.