Green g-1

by Jay Lake

  It took three attempts before I could lever myself out of the channel and up onto the walkway. I lay there stinking wet and gasping miserably awhile before realizing I could see. A faint glow interrupted by ridges of darkness presented itself to my eyes.

  Coldfire. Over dressed stone.

  Never in life had I been so glad for a revelation.

  I stumbled shivering to my feet and pawed at the mossy stuff until I had a decent glowing lump in my hand. To hell with whatever might glimpse me coming. I would either kill it or recruit it to my cause.

  With a few more deep satisfying breaths, I set out to find the part of the city I knew. My sense of direction had been unseated by the sewer tunnel, but logic told me that I had to be facing close to west. That I would work with, until I found something familiar here in the Below, or a surface exit that seemed safe enough for me to spy out from.

  Away from the drains, I walked on damp stones beneath the city, wondering who might help me. Skinless could perhaps have been recruited to stand against Choybalsan, but Septio was dead. I would not even consider the matter of the Pater Primus. Him I could not trust the worth of a broken straw.

  I had a friend or two here. Mother Iron, in her strange way. The Tavernkeep. Chowdry with him. They were not warriors. I considered seeking out the Rectifier. Anyone who killed priests and wore their remains openly wouldn’t trifle to reckon with gods.

  But he was one of the Dancing Mistress’ people. I could not know their hearts. They seemed completely unable to oppose Choybalsan. Perhaps they could not fight their own magic. The pardines had done little enough against the Duke in his four centuries of rule, standing the whole time on their stolen power.

  A vaulted arch loomed over me, a shaft of cloud-dimmed daylight spearing down from what seemed to be a street-side storm grate, though it opened to no drain. Where to go? Whom to seek help from?

  The Factor.

  I had seen his shade, that day. I was sure of it. He of all people had cause to hate and fear Choybalsan. Federo had stolen his very existence in order to become the bandit-king, the nascent god. Choybalsan was searching for the missing pieces-the keys, really-he thought I’d held. Surely the Factor’s ghost was sustained by a shred of the same. Doubtless Choybalsan would attempt to extract that power from him just as he’d wished to extract it from me.

  Whatever passions held the Factor here might serve my needs as well.

  I stepped gingerly into the barred square of light at the center of the space. How did you call the dead? According to Lacodemus, with libations. I wished I’d asked the woman in the orchards what rite she offered. Perhaps that would not have helped. It had seemed she was harder pressed to quiet the voices in her high tombs than to set their ghosts to talking in the first place.

  This would be done the old way. Warriors had poured wine into graves to speak with their dead, but I knew wine was only a signifier for blood. That was the Law of Similar Substitution, for those who pursued such things, and such exchanges always weakened the effect.

  For a moment I marveled again at the education that had been forced upon me.

  That same education suggested that I must not seek him as the Duke. As the Factor, he’d cared for me, in a strange way. As the Duke, I’d slain him, in a strange way. The form of this summoning certainly would matter.

  I untied my bell from my waist. Crumpled wet vines slipped free from the clappers that dangled on each side of the hollow rounded cup. I set it at my feet, then opened a shallow slash on the inside of my left forearm with the boning knife. Setting down the knife, I took up the bell and swung it slowly so that it rang as if Endurance walked close behind me.

  The sound brought tears to my eyes. A saltwater benediction could hardly lessen the power of the blood.

  “Factor.” There was no point in shouting. His shade would hear me or it would not. Blood dripped rapidly into the little square of sunlight to hiss slightly as it struck the mossy stones. The words flowed as they would. “Factor, I summon you. I, Green, whom you named Emerald, whose life you stole, call you forth.” A chill shook my spine as I took a deep shuddering breath. “You called me in the broken yard of your house. Now I call you by that same bond.”

  I fell silent, though I continued to ring the bell. It clop, clop, clopped. The hair on my arms lifted. I began to feel as I had when I’d passed the lightning fence. With a rush of panic, I wondered if I had somehow summoned Choybalsan.

  A scent of smoke met my nose. At my feet, the blood was curdling to black. A presence loomed at my back more dangerous than blades, more frightening than wounds.

  There was not enough courage in the world for me to turn and look. I shivered, crying now, wishing I had done anything other than this summoning. My knees became soft, trembling fit to fold and swallow me to the floor. I considered casting myself on my knife.

  A spray of water touched me from above. A single lily petal floated in the shaft of weak sunlight. It caught my eye, and my fear. The Goddess, I wondered, or some careless flower-seller in the street above?

  Did it matter? Cycles and circles. They could be one and the same, after all. Miracles always worked best through the mechanism of the mundane.

  Courage found me after all. Setting the bell down, I turned. The wooden clop continued to echo from within the surrounding darkness another moment or two before it faded.

  The Factor stood there, grubby and grave-pale as I’d glimpsed him at the ruins of his house. He did not look like a ghost-no will-of-the-wisp or smoky aspect. He seemed as real as Mother Iron.

  His eyes, though misted and dark, were not dead. The rest of him most certainly was, but laughter and tears and much more lived in that gaze. The opposite of how he’d appeared in life.

  I felt an odd stab of hope at that.

  “My prodigal Emerald returns to me at last,” he said.

  Hope, indeed. The old arrogance of power had not been washed out of him by death. With a laugh that I did not have to force from my lips, I replied, “I am Green, grown to myself, come to call you.”

  “I know who you are.”

  Even though I understood his perfidy, I felt a flash of sympathy for the pain that crossed his face.

  “I know what you did to me,” the Factor added.

  “It was needful.” I believed that, but I realized I believed it because I’d been told to.

  “Truly?” Now his smile was sly. “Tell me. How many did I kill during my centuries on the throne? What wars did this city fight? Did coin shrink and the harbor traffic wither? Was there dread and fear upon the streets?”

  His questions took me aback briefly. “How should I know? I was not given anything recent enough for me to understand such things. I was educated as… as…” My voice broke off as I realized the miserable truth. Softly, I continued. “I was educated as a woman of the time of your youth. Nothing was told to me of the world since you came to the throne.”

  “The long years are very lonely,” the Factor said. “You would have reminded me of who I once was.” His hand reached up as if to touch me, then dropped again. There was no noise as he moved, reminding me that he was not truly present.

  A swell of bitter rage crested within me. His loneliness was the cause of all my own loss? “I would have recalled your youth until I withered with age. While you went on forever!”

  “You will age with or without me.” His voice was sad, his eyes watered with tears. “What is terrible about aging in a splendid palace with a great city ready to do your bidding?”

  “You were a tyrant!” I tried to hang on to the old arguments, but really, they were nothing more than what I had been taught. What did any child know but what they had been told?

  “I was a tyrant who brought peace and prosperity and quiet streets at night, and silenced gods so they could not meddle daily in the business of men.” He sighed, though I wondered how someone with no breath could do so. Or speak, now that I thought upon it. “My crime, my tyranny, was not to rule, but to live beyond the years o
f ancestry and descent of entire families.”

  “Your crime,” I growled, “was to strip power from a peaceful people and bind it to yourself.”

  “How peaceful were those people?” Now his face flared with passion to match my own. “Do you know of the last war this city did fight? Under me, as a living man? We battled the pardines. In their time, they were terrible hunters and raiders. Others followed them, thinking by their appearance that they were wise and powerful. The shared path they have instead of souls lent them a strength in this world that could not be matched. Over a thousand men were lost wrestling them down. I took what they used to wreak the death of farmers and children and traders, stripped it from them, and made peace for Copper Downs. I even made peace for them!”

  I struggled against his logic. This man was the villain of centuries, yet to hear him tell it, he held the good of the city in his heart, and had delivered it.

  He was right. Hundreds must have died in the riots that followed the fall of the Duke. There were still buildings, even entire blocks, burned out and not rebuilt. The sea trade had diminished. The city lived in fear.

  As it had not under the Duke’s rule.

  A trick, a trap lay at the heart of this. I’d always known what it was. “You stole away the choices of generations. You stole away my choices. My freedom.”

  He laughed, bitter and hollow. “Freedom? To be a rice farmer’s wife? You should be on your knees thanking me, Green, for saving you.”

  “That was my fate!”

  Leaning close, the Factor said in that growling voice, “Then consider that I have changed your fate. You might rejoice in that if you were honest enough.”

  I took a breath and tried to fling his words away. I did not need his self-serving logic and the justification of his memories.

  What I did need was him.

  “We argue to no purpose,” I finally said, collecting my thoughts. “You are what you are now-”

  “What you made me,” he interrupted.

  “What you made yourself. You made me, after all.” I gave him the sweet, nasty smile that I seemed to be perfecting. “You are what you are; I am what I am. Choybalsan will gut us both to set himself in your stead.”

  The Factor shook his head. “Oh, no. I was never a god.”

  “I do not think this one should be, either. He is too cruel and foolish.”

  “Did I make you to be a judge?”

  I tried to stare him down, but that is impossible with a ghost. He did not blink. “No, but you made of me a person who is capable of judging, at need.”

  “You, who would kill gods, also have learned the ways of doing that?” His smile remained wicked. “My education must have been very deep, indeed.”

  “I l-learned that in the world. But to do what must be done, I need your help. Or at the least your advice.”

  The Factor spread his hands, like a greengrocer who has run out of turnips and must apologize. “You have only to ask.”

  Such a curious echo of Corinthia Anastasia’s remark. It took me a moment to unravel that he meant for me to request his aid right at that moment. “Fine. Will you please help me save your city, and yourself, from this man who would be the god-king?”

  “Yes.”

  He must fear Choybalsan far more desperately than I-he could not just board a ship, for example. The Factor made this sound so simple, so condescending, that for a moment I would have slain him all over again if I’d had such power.

  A while later, I sat on a step. The Factor paced before me. He made no noise except when he spoke. I’d just finished telling him of the fight within Choybalsan’s tent.

  “What made you think you could harm a god?” he demanded.

  “He looked like a man.” I shrugged, feeling vaguely ashamed. “Besides, I have heard of god-killers here in Copper Downs. If they could do so, why not I?”

  The Factor waved that off as inconsequential. “They were specialists from the Saffron Tower, passing through. One was not even human.”

  “Where did they fare next?”

  “Selistan.”

  A stab of cold fear found my heart.

  His malicious smile widened the wound. “Did someone go after you there?” he asked.

  “I am no goddess,” I told him. But I knew one. This killing was old news. Whoever they were, they had come and gone from Kalimpura long ago. Or so I devoutly hoped.

  The Factor pushed the question. “Do you think you harmed him?”

  “Only with the touch of my bare hands. I wish I’d thought to crush his chest while shoeless.” I spread my fingers and looked at them. “Not until I reached Kalimpura did I learn to fight properly.”

  “You did well enough here,” the Factor told me grudgingly.

  I glanced up to see some distant emotion in those eyes. Had he been handsome once, four hundred years ago when he was a young man with a name and a future? “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Where is my part in this?”

  “It is doubtful that I can bring him down weaponless,” I admitted. “He is far more powerful than the largest man. I came back to the city looking for you, in hopes that you could raise the sendings and avatars that haunt the Below. Fighting Skinless taught me how they must be struck. Federo-as-Choybalsan is turning into one of them.”

  “Larval gods,” he said with disgust. “Buds of the divine.”

  “Choybalsan is the get of no god.” I added, “Except maybe you.”

  “I can promise you Federo had no touch of the divine. Whatever Choybalsan is, it uses him as a host. Much as those wasps that lay their eggs inside other insects. That is why he is so powerful. A sending is little more than the cyst of a dream, loosened from the divine mind.” He was becoming angry again. “I spent much of my effort stamping them out, as a source of future trouble. He is a sending wrapped in a man.”

  “When he goes into town and plays the councilor, we see no lightning.”

  The Factor looked thoughtful. “The god may remain behind. Perhaps in that altar you mentioned.”

  I became excited. “In which case, we must attack Choybalsan at the Textile Bourse. He will be without his army, and lacking the full mantle of his powers!”

  “Though I do not agree, neither am I ready to deny you.” He renewed his pacing. “If I had Skinless, or something like it, we might be able to deal with the god. Have you ever seen dolphins kill a shark?”

  “Uh… no.”

  “A shark of any size is more than a match for a lone dolphin. They are tough, powerful, and very dangerous. The dolphin cannot bite back. He has no swords in his mouth.” The Factor grinned. All I could think of was the great dead-eyed monster that had nearly taken me when I first set out from Selistan. He continued: “Any one dolphin would fall before the shark like a child before a drunken guardsman. A dozen dolphins can surround a shark and batter him to death, moving too quickly for him to stop them.”

  “You want to surround Choybalsan with Skinless?”

  “With sendings and avatars. The gods are stirring. I would prefer to lay them once more to quiet rest, but I would use their children for this before our argument can be ended by the deaths of all.”

  I nodded. He’d come to the same conclusion as I. “Then I will go above the stones and look for what friends I can. It may be of use to have a few arms in the corporeal world.”

  “As you will. But I cannot raise Skinless. The monster is too well kept within the Algeficic Temple. It roams sometimes, but it is not free like the older ones.”

  “The canny ones, whom you never caught,” I said. “Mother Iron.”

  “Precisely.” He looked irritated now.

  I had my own problems with that temple. The god was a horror, and the Pater Primus a traitor, at the least. Still, they would no more profit by the coming of Choybalsan than anyone else. “I will do what I can.”

  He glanced over at the square of light admitted by the grate high in the ceiling. “It is a bit past the noon hour. If Federo is yet in the Textile Bour
se, we must catch him today. Meet me at the Lyme Street cistern three fingers before the sun sets.”

  I actually knew where that was. Nodding, I opened my mouth to speak, but the Factor was gone. Gone as if he’d never been there in the first place.

  Looking at my arm, I saw the long wound I’d made. I twirled the bell in my hand. A muffled clop sounded.

  I followed the steps on which I sat, until I found an exit.

  The stairs came up behind a set of public baths. A blessed good thing. It is difficult to persuade people to a cause when you are coated in drying sewage. I stepped out through a little closet. The steam was high, so these lower baths were in use. I stole to the first tub and slipped in, clothes and all, until I was completely under the near-scalding water.

  Holding my breath, I scrubbed at my hair. A minute later, I came up gasping and began to search for my veil. I could not remember where I’d had it last.

  At least I still held the knife and the bell.

  “You are supposed to wash before you sit in here,” said a man across from me. He was only a shadow through the curtains of steam.

  I had company, too. My hand closed on the haft of the knife.

  “The water has been terribly dirtied.” I knew that voice. He continued: “I should call the attendants and have you beaten and thrown out.”

  Recognition dawned.

  “Stefan Mohanda,” I said. What in the name of all the gods was he doing here? “Or should I call you the Pater Primus?”

  “Either is correct.” He leaned forward, becoming a firmer silhouette as the stinking water sloshed back toward me with its scum of sewage, slime, and blood. “Though never both at once. The scrying mirror told me where to expect you. Now what have you done with my favorite priest?”

  “Your fellow councilor laid open his gut and let him die.”

  “Federo? Never.” The Pater Primus laughed grimly. “The god I could easily believe that of. Not the man. A pity about Septio. He was a good lad, with the ass of an angel.”