Green g-1

by Jay Lake

  Peace filled this quiet darkness. I wondered if Blackblood should have been silent all these years. People knew pain regardless of the god. They would know more pain under Choybalsan. He had burned much, for all that his farmers and bandits worshipped him. Choybalsan would do anything.

  By the time Skinless laid my body down again, my resolve had returned. It vanished momentarily in the renewed pain of weight on my shoulder, but I knew how to find myself amid suffering.

  A light flickered, forcing me to shut my eyes a moment.

  When I opened them again, Skinless was fumbling with a bit of smoldering punk, moving from bowl to bowl, lighting the crudest sorts of oil lamps. I found it odd to see this shambling horror stepping to the task like some chambermaid preparing for her lord’s return.

  The bell lay next to me, I realized. Most of the mercury was gone, but a few drops showed a throne on my other side. A small shadowed figure perched on the edge of the seat.

  It took three tries, but I managed to force my head to turn the other way. My body possessed little strength.

  In the guttering light of the lamps-which smelled like no oil I knew-I could see that the throne had been made of tiny skulls. Babies, perhaps, or monkeys. I could not tell. Blackblood sat on the edge, tapping his heels.

  Where Skinless was a horror out of the depths of nightmare, the god was a child. He was robed, his head hairless. His eyes were filled with blood, as after a solid beating to the head. They glinted red in the flickering light of the lamps. Otherwise, he seemed almost normal.

  “I see you have arisen.” Amazingly, I managed to spit the words out without howling the pain that racked my body.

  “To my surprise.” He frowned. “Much has changed.”

  “Even in the last few hours.” I had to stop, close my eyes, and let my heart race a moment. This would be a very inconvenient time for it to burst. At least let me say my piece, I prayed.

  “You have seen my theopomp. Skinless smells him upon you.”

  “I t-told your servant. He died in my arms, after I gave him a mercy. Choybalsan had w-wounded him beyond healing.”

  The lights glittered with the tears that returned to my eyes.

  Blackblood made a small noise. Then: “You are not one of mine.”

  “No. I follow a distant Goddess.”

  “Skinless smells Her upon you, too.”

  “Soon, oh god, there will be no more for you. We were to fight Choybalsan today.”

  He laughed. The sound was small, light, as the twittering of birds, yet it set all my joints to grating. I was lost in that wave of pain for a while.

  When I focused again, the god looked pleased with himself.

  “You do not understand time, little foreign girl. You are not of us. Your offering of pain is well enough done, but I cannot and will not take you up.”

  Several kinds of hope bloomed. “What of Choybalsan? Will you send Skinless to fight him, if it is not too late?”

  Blackblood leaned toward me, then slipped from his throne to squat barely a handspan away. I would not have touched him even if I could move, but here he was.

  “Why should I?” he whispered.

  This was my moment. “To preserve yourself.”

  His eyes slid shut. He did not breathe, any more than Skinless did, but something rippled through the god’s body. Without looking at me again, he spoke. “You value continued existence differently than I, because you do not understand time. There will always be pain. There will always be me, or something in my place no different.”

  “Even your priests have turned against you. The Pater Primus conspired with Choybalsan, and brought his brother priests along. You have little left. Is today the day you wish to die?” Then, thinking on what he had said, “Does Skinless miss its theopomp? Do you miss Septio?”

  This time he giggled. Another wave of pain washed over me like the tide tugging at a body on the beach. “So asks the girl who claimed his life.” His smile widened. I wished I had not looked within his mouth. “You claimed his seed, too.” A pale hand stretched toward my belly. “I should not be so hard on myself, were I a woman in your condition.”

  My gut roiled in panic. He could not mean it so. Not me. Not here. Not now.

  Not Septio.

  How could any woman be pregnant the very first time she ever lay with a man? Mistress Cherlise would have laughed to hear me say so. But it was too soon even to begin to suspect.

  Unless the god had known from the beginning…

  Blackblood brushed his fingers over my shoulder. The pain bloomed like one of his priests’ bombards, then left me. “You will bring my theopomp’s child to me in time. For now, go and do what seems best to you.”

  I somehow expected him to vanish as the Factor had, but he hopped back upon his throne and sulked. When Skinless took me up again, this time carrying me as if I were the baby, I began to cry.

  Moments later, with no labyrinth in our way, we were in the upper hall. Priests scattered, shouting. A pistol cracked. Skinless ignored them all, until it reached the outer doors. My heart thrilled to see that it was still daylight outside.

  The avatar turned and stared back at the cowering priests who had rebelled against its god. Hefting me to its shoulder as if it meant to burp me like an infant, it closed the doors with its other hand. I peered around, away from my view of the knobs of its spine and the muscle of its back.

  Skinless pressed its palm against the doors until they smoked.

  When we turned away, the doors were bulged and cracked and brazed shut. Within, the screaming began.

  The screaming began as well on the Street of Horizons as people scattered in wild fear of my new protector.

  Skinless loped through the city. I discovered that I once more clutched my ox bell. The boning knife was gone, and with it the lives that weapon had claimed, but this reconstructed memory clopped in time to its footfalls.

  In daylight, I realized how tall Skinless truly was-twice the height of a normal man, and closer to three times my own. I also understood it carried me for speed. My pain had lifted, especially the shattering in my shoulder. Even the older aches, ghosts of prior wounds, were banished.

  Such a gift the pain god had given me.

  Thank you, I prayed.

  A great pale eye ringed with muscle fibers and little folds of fat turned toward me a moment.

  Its passage left a trail of shouting and fear, but no one tried to follow. I even saw some of the Interim Council’s civil guards fleeing. Fewer people were about as we approached Lyme Street. The sun stood nearly at the appointed time when I glimpsed the Textile Bourse.

  A mob roared before the temporary seat of government. Either the Factor or the Rectifier had done good work. Perhaps both of them.

  Then I understood my error. He had said to meet at the cistern three fingers before the sun sets. The sort of powers the Factor could bring to this fight would likely not walk in daylight.

  We would need to trap Choybalsan half an hour, perhaps longer, before our forces arrived. Even Skinless was not so powerful as all that.

  It dropped me gently in front of him, then stood behind me with arms folded. The edges of the mob noticed the two of us. Their shouting trailed to uneasy silence.

  I brandished the bell. That was foolish, but I had no weapon, and needed to raise a sign. “I am Green!” I shouted. “I am come to aid you in throwing down this bandit god-king out of the north.”

  Some people jeered. The Rectifier and the Tavernkeep stepped to the front of the press.

  “Welcome,” the pardine barbarian’s voice boomed like an explosion in the street.

  Bell held high, we advanced. With my hand on the rim of the sounding cup, it did not clop, but still it was my standard. I tried not to consider that I was stepping into an unwinnable fight with the unwanted burden of life just beginning to take root in my belly.

  I tried not to think of children and what could happen to them in this world. I tried not to think at all. This was a tim
e to stall for reinforcements, then fight.

  The door to the Textile Bourse banged open. Nast, the old clerk, stepped out. Half a dozen guardsmen crowded around him and past him to fill the little landing at the top of the front steps.

  They had pistols and crossbows in their hands, and swords across their backs. The council meant for there to be no rushing of their halls of state.

  “The Interim Council takes notice of the fears of the people of Copper Downs.” His voice was reedy with fatigue and stress, but it carried. I noticed Nast did not even read from the paper in his hand. “We are making favorable terms even now with the tribes who have come among us. Return to your homes, put away your fears, and await a new day of peace and prosperity. Any who leave now will be pardoned, their faces forgotten.”

  He looked around, his eyes widening at the sight of Skinless, then tightening once more when he saw me.

  “Any who do not leave now,” he continued, “are subject to the full terms of the Riot Decree. You have ten minutes to disperse.”

  I began pushing through the crowd toward the steps. Whatever had whipped them into a mob was fading. Too many edged away from Skinless, from the Textile Bourse, from so much trouble as all this had suddenly become.

  When I gained the steps, Nast pointed me out to two crossbowmen. Though it made me itch as badly as any firevine leaf, I turned my back on them. If they shot me down now, the mob would re-form. Speaking out was my best protection.

  “Copper Downs has been betrayed,” I called.

  A shuffling murmur answered me. The edges of the little mob had stopped bleeding men.

  “An agent has been in our midst, working against us.” This was not the moment to lay out my theories about how Federo had been possessed by the god. I prayed there might be a moment when such consideration mattered, but it did not seem likely.

  “He has stood high in the halls of state, and made pretense of repelling our enemies, while secretly inviting them in.” I drew another deep breath. “He has worked to quiet the gods before they can speak, and put the Temple Quarter to silent shame once more. He has allowed trade to be driven from the docks, employment to be lost from the factories and warehouses, and fear to run upon our streets.”

  “That’s enough,” said Nast quietly behind me. “Get along, Mistress Green, before you are pinned like a butterfly.”

  I turned back and gave him a steady look. “You will let all that he has done come to pass?”

  “Before I permit the ruin of a war in my city?” Nast’s words were brave, but his eyes were defeated. “Yes.”

  I faced the crowd once more. My shoulders itched worse now. “Do you want a war?”

  “No!” Their voice was one, multiplied.

  “We have not had a conflict in centuries. Why would Choybalsan bring us one now?” I glanced at the sun, which was already behind buildings, though it must yet be a finger above the horizon. “Why would Councilor Federo betray us to war?”

  A pistol barked behind me. I dropped, though the ball had already whizzed past me and caught a man in advocate’s robes straight in his chest. Another shot raised splinters of stone next to my head.

  The mob rushed the stairs. I heaved myself over the side into the tangled, abandoned garden there, landing amid a thorny nest of roses.

  This I would endure as well.

  I clawed to my feet. A guardsman screamed as he flew over my head. Skinless loomed above me. I heard Nast’s voice shouting, before the old clerk was cut off with a wet, breaking noise.

  Down the street, more screaming began. The Factor and whomever he had summoned must be coming out of the cistern, I realized. Then lightning struck the peak of the Textile Bourse and began to dance there, and I knew the end of our plans had come.

  We had hoped to take the man Federo without the god Choybalsan riding him. He was now greater than all of us.

  The roof exploded. I saw him jump to the ruined peak almost directly over my head. Every window on Lyme Street shattered in a spray of glass as deadly as any pistol volley. His laughter must have echoed for furlongs.

  So much for hope, I thought, and clutched at my belly to protect my baby from the fog of splinters shining orange in the sunset.

  Skinless swept me up once more. The map of musculature and tendons that made up its body wept from a thousand small punctures. I tried to figure what that might mean, but it carried me away from the Textile Bourse so quickly, I could not catch up to the thought before the avatar set me down next to the Factor in the mouth of an alley.

  The ghost was looking decidedly watery in the evening light. His apparent solidity underground did not hold up so well on the surface. He was also very angry. “So it has come to this.”

  I stood and tried to call the threads together. “There will never be a better chance than now.” I spoke quickly, shouting over the rippling thunder. “We have as many forces as we can hope to summon, and Choybalsan is not surrounded by his army.”

  The Factor turned round slowly to look at his little group. Mother Iron, her cloak drawn tight around her face. The Thin Woodman of whom I’d been told. Three other corporeals I did not know, each demihuman and oddly shaped as the first two.

  “You would kill this shark with five dolphins?” I demanded.

  “And your naked wonder there.”

  I reached up to pat Skinless’ thigh. “This is not mine, any more than they are yours.”

  “You have me.” That was the Rectifier, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

  The Tavernkeep stepped beside him. “Us as well.” He was followed by Chowdry and the tan woman of his people whom I had met before.

  I should have been warmed by this display, but mostly I was angry. Temper bubbled inside me, rising to color my thoughts and push reason aside. Choybalsan was defeating us merely by standing on a rooftop.

  “We will join together in the Hunt,” the Rectifier said behind me.

  “Take up your spears.” I looked around. “Do we have any pistols or crossbows? I want to get him off that high place so we can reach him.”

  “You won’t hurt him with ranged weapons,” said the Factor.

  “I don’t plan to hurt him. Let’s make him angry enough to be stupid.” Angry enough to match me, stupidity for stupidity. “I have faced him in a fight before, and beaten him down.” With the aid of the Dancing Mistress. “If I distract him sufficiently now, draw him away from the height of his power, Skinless and Mother Iron and the rest can slay him.” I took a deep breath, shaking. “But we need to get him off the roof!”

  The pardines scattered, calling for the weapons I’d requested. The Rectifier and the tan woman bounded across Lyme Street and ran along the front of the line of buildings, out of Choybalsan’s view. The Tavernkeep sprinted down the middle of the road, shoving past the fleeing crowd of citizens that were the remains of the earlier mob, along with whatever locals had had enough.

  I sighted my finger at Choybalsan and wished that the Lily Goddess had granted me something more powerful than obligation.

  Choybalsan turned and looked at me. His smile was visible even at my distance. I tasted metal in my mouth, and my hair began to prickle.

  “Move, now!” I shouted, and ran for the street.

  Light immediately behind me etched shadows in my vision. It came with a sizzling noise, like oil boiling, and was followed by a thunderclap that drove me painfully to my knees. My little wooden bell spun slowly on a cobble.

  I could hear nothing. The shadows refused to be blinked away. Shaking my head, I rose to my feet. Someone pressed something into my hand. The Tavernkeep, I realized. I looked stupidly at the pistol he’d given me.

  “I do not know how to use it,” he said apologetically, though I could barely hear him.

  I felt that metal taste again. “Get away! He’s throwing lightning at anyone who comes near me.” My best armor right now was the fact that Choybalsan still wanted something-the shred of the Duke’s old power he believed I still held, that he required to complete
his transformation.

  How to turn that against him?

  Lightning struck beside me again as the Tavernkeep sprinted away. This time, I had my eyes closed and my head bowed. My entire body felt as if it were smoldering, but I was neither blinded nor driven off my feet.

  When I looked again, the Tavernkeep was picking himself up and staggering farther away. Skinless stood beside me once more, staring up at Choybalsan. Mother Iron stepped up to my other side.

  The challenge would be clear enough. Now to bring him down.

  I raised the clumsy pistol and aimed it at the god’s feet, where he stood on a smoldering peak of the Textile Bourse’s roof. The weapon barked and spat when I pulled the trigger. Stone spalled away from the facing well below him.

  So much for accuracy. I was too far-pistols were never much good past a few dozen feet anyway. I threw the weapon aside.

  Lightning continued to arc around Choybalsan. The roof smoked, and the thunder was deafening. Even in the face of such eye-bright violence, we had been wrong to flee the Textile Bourse before. I walked down the street. I would approach the god Choybalsan with upturned face and weaponless hands rather than cowering among the untended roses below his feet. My escort of avatars and sendings came with me.

  I saw a crossbow bolt soar upward from near the foot of the building. It was a magnificent shot. Had Choybalsan been a man, he would have fallen with a wounded foot. As it was, he aimed lightning into the little garden of the building next door. Whichever of my allies had taken that shot did not fire again.

  He had still not struck me down. Likewise he did not spend lightning on my escort. I stood in the street before the Textile Bourse, amid dropped weapons, pools of blood, charred wood, and the debris of a fleeing crowd. Spreading my arms wide, I called up to him.

  “You wish to take your missing measure of grace from me!” I shouted. “Come down here and do so!”

  Choybalsan jumped forty feet off the building to land flat on his heels in front of me. My escort was tense, ready to leap at him, but awaiting the word from me.

  I held it back. The lightning had stopped.