by Jay Lake
We had much to repair here.
The water over the rail was filthy, litter and dead fish everywhere. That was familiar and strangely comforting as well. I spotted a few of the little skiffs that crawled the harbor trawling for useful flotsam. Anything in open water was fair game, though most things of value were too heavy to do anything but sink to the muddy bottom.
Like the Eyes of the Hills, those gems I’d stolen from the trader Michael Curry whom I had murdered aboard Crow’s Wing so long ago. They were finally recovered and sent back to Copper Downs. Could I have averted much of what came later if I’d handled that differently at the time?
A fool’s question, that was, except insofar as one might profit from learning by asking. Could have done, should have done, solved nothing in the present and did little to improve the future.
Mother Vajpai limped up next to me. “Are you ready to come home?”
“Is this home?” Of course, I had chosen it to be home, most specifically, in leaving Copper Downs as I had. Surali be damned, I was Selistani, and I would stay in Selistan awhile. Perhaps a very long while.
She sighed. “Once more I will counsel you not to go ashore. Let Mother Argai and me see to the streets and the temple before you.”
“No.” My voice was flat. We’d hashed over this argument a dozen times in the past ten days. I did wonder when I had stopped taking orders from Mother Vajpai, and what that might ultimately signify. “I must go ashore. If I arrive as a coward, I will live as a coward. Let my enemies see me coming.”
“We do not even know who your enemies are.”
“Oh, we surely do,” I said, all hot breath and passion in the moment. “They are the people trying to kill me.”
“You will never settle their complaints by killing them first.”
A strange remark coming from a woman who had trained an entire generation of Lily Blades, and long commanded enforcement of the Death Right on behalf of Kalimpura as a whole. “My technique certainly does slow down the people who are sent after me.”
“You must be skilled every single time. They require luck only once.” It was an old saying among the Blades, and usually applied to the dangers of operating alone. We ran in handles for many reasons.
Prince Enero was closing on Agina’s Pier at dead slow. We would be twenty or thirty minutes docking and tying up before anyone debarked. “Let us go see to the children,” I said. Change of subject and peace offering all at once. And frankly, Mother Vajpai had taken surprisingly well to the babies.
* * *
Marya and Federo were two months old now. Already their personalities were emerging. At birth they had been tiny, squalling burdens with unending hunger at one end and unending shit at the other. Thank the gods for foolish mother-love.
Now, well, I loved them all the more. Federo was a little fussier, more unhappy when he was not fed promptly, expecting to sleep shortly after each feeding. Marya, on the other hand, already treated the world as her personal plaything and fought to stay bright-eyed and awake if anything was happening for her to watch or reach a chubby little fist toward.
She reminded me of myself more than he did.
Both of them darkened as they grew. They had been born a sort of wrinkled, graying pink, but their coloring seemed to be settling in to a pleasing brown. It was the same hue my upper arms and belly grew in winter when my skin was too long away from the sun. Here in Kalimpura, they would be as strangely pale as I had been strangely dark in Copper Downs. The twins would carry their dead father always on their hands and faces for the whole world to see.
I gathered Federo to my chest while Ilona swaddled Marya. Ponce hovered about, packing our few belongings and annoying Ilona with his attempts to help her. He made a hash of properly rolling my belled silk, as well, which annoyed me. I felt a pang of regret at having spent so much time arguing strategy with Mother Argai and Mother Vajpai while my children had been cared for by the other two.
Yet … twins … On my own, I would scarcely have ever slept. The babies certainly did not follow the same schedule. Three adults paying close attention and two more hovering at the edges barely kept up with them. How did ordinary mothers do this, while working in the market or as maids, keeping a house, and doing all the things women did? Me, for the most part I ran about raising holy hell and occasionally stopping to cook a fine meal, and still I felt overwhelmed.
Later on, I was to realize how much I missed out on, then and as time passed. The world had never meant for me to be a mother tending her cradles throughout the watches of the day and night. That life has gone as it has since those early days is enough of a blessing, I suppose. Who ever has enough time for their children? Who ever has spent too much time with their children?
Buoyed by my foolish love, I gave both my children over to Ilona and Ponce. “Mother Argai will stay with you,” I instructed them. “Do not leave the ship until someone she trusts comes bearing a message.”
“What if the captain has the purser throw us off?” Ilona asked, ever practical.
“He will not,” I said. “He is quite clear on what will happen if he does.” Which was to say that I had spoken to the mate, Lalo, and said the only way Prince Enero would be gracefully rid of me was if ship and crew sheltered my children until I had made ready for them ashore.
“Three days,” he’d promised me, “but no more,” then gone off to argue awhile with the captain and the senior crew.
Sometimes I thought that my friends were every bit as strange, and possibly dangerous, as my enemies.
* * *
Though I’d been assured my banishment was lifted, those statements had come amid a much larger and more complex web of deceit. Mother Vajpai had since admitted she wasn’t certain of the Temple Mother’s position. In any case, Surali had been back in Kalimpura long enough to ensure any outcome she preferred.
It was quite possible that a Death Right claim had been filed against me. My best hope there was that the Blade monopoly on such judicial killings still held, as it had for decades on decades before I had arrived in Kalimpura. I doubted very many of my fellow Blades would be willing to carry such a mission out. Not with me as the target. I wasn’t even too sure that the Lily Goddess might not find some way to object, though Her influence on Her followers was largely indirect. I’d learned that during my first stay in Kalimpura, when it had become apparent that very few besides me could see or hear Her manifestations.
In any case, there was little for it but to walk down to the docks and head for our temple. If someone approached me with murder in her eye, unless they made their intentions known by a crossbow bolt in my back, I would be able to talk or fight, or both. My left arm still ached, but it worked. The shipboard sparring with Mother Argai had worn off most of my pregnancy fat and restored me to something like fighting trim.
We descended the metal ladder to a dock surging as always with wharfingers, stevedores, couriers, news brokers, prostitutes, chandler’s boys, draymen, food sellers, commodities factors, and the dozen other professions found along any working waterfront. Colored silk streamers waved aloft signified this specialty or that service, but Mother Vajpai and I were not buying.
And it was a relief to finally be back in a place where our leathers made a passage for us. No one trod on the foot of a Lily Blade, or landed a too-sharp elbow in one’s ribs. No one who wanted to end the day with as many fingers as they began it with, at any rate.
The reality was that we were far more gentle and careful with our power than people seemed to believe. But a fearsome reputation had its uses. Besides, enough others in this city, notably including the Street Guild, plied such a rougher trade that anybody with sense avoided becoming entangled in the likes of us as well.
The most amazing thing, though, was not the shouting of Seliu from hundreds of mouths, nor the heat pounding down upon my head, nor the fitful sea wind that raised its own memories and the familiar line of buildings ahead of me. No, those were just a welcome for a long-vanished trav
eler. The most amazing thing was the smell.
I walked, caught up in the mix of rot from beneath the pier, the sharp freshness of a tide run in, cardamom and honey from a vendor selling fried locusts, the burnt smell of some recently passed festival or funeral procession, the scent of thousands of my countrymen sweating at their labors, the dung of horses and donkeys, the tang of sewage.… My nose found a riotous mélange that would have told me I was in Kalimpura even if I’d been swept blindfolded across the plate of the world by some kindly djinni to land here all unknowing.
My feet took me toward a cart with roasting pistachios in a clay vessel parked at the base of the wharf, where it met the seawall and the Street of Ships. The green nuts were unknown in Copper Downs. Though they were not a special, coveted favorite, they would taste of home to me. I turned to Mother Vajpai to ask if she had any coin upon here, but realized that three large men loomed behind her, raising staves.
She caught my glance and ducked even as the first wood whistled through the air where her head had just been.
The crowd danced aside like oil in a hot pan. These were Street Guild attacking us. When last I knew, they’d had the right to violence on the docks. Policing, some called it, but their role was little more than a monopoly for their own free use of force. Under the protection of the Bittern Court, of course.
I was already moving as those thoughts raced through my head. The pistachio seller’s copper ladle served to scoop a handful of tiny, hot missiles for the first man’s face. The ladle itself followed to bounce off the head of the second. I palmed my short knife but was unwilling to throw it, for fear of losing the second and last of the god-blooded blades.
When have I ever feared to throw a knife?
With that thought, I forced myself to hurl it overhand.
The short knife pierced the third man’s chest like he’d been a paper manikin set out for some funerary pyre. He tumbled backwards as if he’d been kicked in the chest. Meanwhile, Mother Vajpai had reached up from below to tackle the first man—the one still flicking hot pistachios out of his beard. He would be dead in moments.
I charged the second man, who was obviously enraged about being batted with the ladle. Behind me, the pistachio seller yelled. I did not have time to draw my long knife, so I took my target with my good shoulder in his belly.
He refused to go down. Instead, he danced backwards, robbing me of my momentum and trying to box my ears. The corpse of his fellow was to my right, so I dropped away from the drubbing and scooped up my knife once more.
Ten seconds later, both his hands were lying on the pavement and he was screaming at the gushing stumps of his arms.
Mother Vajpai popped to her feet and quieted him with a punch to the throat.
I took a deep breath and scanned around us. This area of the dock had rapidly grown empty, almost unheard of during a Kalimpuri day. The people were drawn back to watch from a distance safe enough from thrown knives or shattered teeth. Their behavior might also have had something to do with the half dozen Street Guildsmen now approaching at a slow step. These had their own blades out, and looked as if they meant to fight as one man.
“Well?” I asked Mother Vajpai.
“A good student will always offer a solution,” she gasped.
I neglected our attackers long enough to turn my head and just stare at her. “You jest,” I said, incredulous.
“What would you do?”
“Well, I—” With that, I stopped, for she indeed jested, and I had caught the joke. God-blooded dagger or not, we were done for if they closed on us, for surely there were more of their fellows just behind.
I eyed the nearby edge of the wharf. “How well do you swim?”
She was spared the need to answer me by the arrival of a Blade handle, shouting in unison and swinging their long knives. The half dozen Street Guild who were approaching us fell back. Our ring of watchers, always ready for the violent theater of the Kalimpuri streets, suddenly swept into motion once more.
A minute later we were standing over three corpses, surrounded by eight women in leather with Mother Surekha in the lead. I recognized all the women, though none of them had been among my favorites. Nor the other way around.
“Welcome home,” Surekha said to Mother Vajpai. Me she favored with a longer, slower glare. Much left unsaid.
She had never been an especial friend to me, but so far as I knew, we had not been enemies. The new order here in Kalimpura and especially among the Lily Blades was not promising.
“We should return to the temple quickly,” Mother Vajpai said. “Before these Street Guild come for us in greater numbers.”
Mother Surekha nodded. “Those are my orders, from the Temple Mother herself.”
How many people had known we were coming? I wondered. This was not one but two welcoming committees here along the docks, all prepared for violence. It wasn’t as if Prince Enero had signaled ahead.
Or perhaps the captain had done so. I certainly could not read the nautical flags they had used to negotiate their initial approach to the harbor.
“Let us go,” I said, wishing briefly that I could light candles for these dead. It seemed important, if impossible.
As we began to run, I wondered if I might have been better off with my first group of attackers. At least their agenda had been clear-cut. I had not made myself popular with the Street Guild during Surali’s excursion to Copper Downs—they had left a number of men behind, all of them dead either directly or indirectly by my hand.
Really, the principle was simple enough, if I could just get people to listen: Don’t attack me or my children, and I won’t attack you.
We ran some more. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Mother Vajpai limp. It was not for me to beg her some relief. She was Blade Mother, and would either assert her authority or step away. But her weaknesses belonged to her.
* * *
The Blood Fountain still flowed in the plaza before the Temple of the Silver Lily. I felt another wave of a sort of reversed nostalgia, pleased to be home and still very much a stranger. The Beast Market was in full swing and high odor both, while the temple’s well-worn red marble steps were more crowded with beggars than ordinarily so. Many of them were unusually large and healthy—the Street Guild was assembling here in hopes of catching me out. The building itself rose with that distinctive almost-teardrop shape, the silver cladding nearer to the peak bright in the afternoon sun.
We trotted up the steps, barking out a marching chant, and cleared through the great doors at the top and into the foyer where once upon a time I had first arrived, lonely and scared and ill. The same tapestries greeted me, the same low benches. It was a peaceful place, and familiar.
Mother Surekha’s handle stood down there, with some catching of breath and stretching of backs. I knew this drill—no one wanted to appear weak or tired, but bodies had their own notions. I was pleased enough that I wasn’t aching or worse, and so stood breathing just a bit heavier than normal.
Yet none of them drifted off to eat or sleep or bathe or play amongst themselves, as we so often had after a run when I was here. All the women stayed near me, hard-faced with hands near knife hilts.
So I was a prisoner, though they had not yet bound me over. I glanced at Mother Vajpai. Her attention was unfocused. Banishing pain from her feet, I was certain. Seeking a bit of peace before the next act of this little morality play unfolded.
Betrayal was most certainly in the air. The only question was from whom, and of whom.
* * *
As Mother Vajpai and I entered, I noted the sanctuary had not changed since I was last here almost two years ago at my banishment. This was a deep, galleried well that filled the central space of the temple’s architecture. Seats rose in tiers so that the congregants could all see what their Temple Mother was about, and her words would be heard by all ears.
It was a curious arrangement, I’d come to realize. Most religious architecture places the goddess, and her chief servants, bef
ore and above the congregation. No one looked down upon a priest, in my experience. Not if that priest could help it.
Yet here the arrangement spoke of a different relationship between the worshippers and the worshipped, between the leaders and the led.
My life had once before depended on that relationship. I wondered today if it would so depend yet again. That seemed unfortunately likely.
The galleries were peopled but uncrowded. This was not an hour when services normally occurred. The whispering that had arisen at our entry died down quickly. I met many interested eyes, and even a few friendly ones, in the faces above me.
The Temple Mother stood composed but tense before the altar. That was, as always, a great silver lily almost six feet wide, sculpted as a flower yet half-opened. Mother Umaavani who had banished me was dead, I had been told by Mother Vajpai. She’d been succeeded by Mother Srirani. As so often in the recent history of the temple, we were once more governed by a Justiciary Mother.
In the quiet that preceded what was to come next, I reflected on the machinations within the Temple of the Silver Lily. Our two most powerful orders were the Justiciars and the Blades. Those were also the two best known outside the temple walls.
The Blades, of course, were my own order. Women trained to fight and kill who used their skills to keep the peace. We were as close as Kalimpura came to the Petraean idea of a municipal guard or city watch. Peace was something you purchased for yourself in this city, if you could afford it. The poor hid themselves away, and most often made their own justice, much as their betters did.
The Courts of this city were Guilds, or trading houses, though they often maintained the trappings of law. The Justiciary Mothers served as mediators among the wealthy and the poor alike. They sometimes sat as judges in a fashion that even a northerner would recognize, though their courts were convened for a single purpose, and disbanded again once the affair was concluded.
Law itself in Kalimpura was a matter of custom and persuasion. Justiciary Mothers tended to be legalistic in their thinking, careful and focused of mind. In a sense, they were the opposite of the Blades, who often solved problems swiftly and irrevocably.