by Jay Lake
Five minutes went by, then five more. Nothing whatsoever happened other than some low, distressed clucking from my own yard next door. I hoped the chickens had not gotten free. The hassle of catching them would be more noise and trouble than the birds were worth.
* * *
With a hiss of breath, I startled awake. I had not realized I’d fallen asleep. Too much strong drink, too long a day. I quietly cursed my loss of time, and thanked whoever among my various gods that might be listening for a continued lack of tigers.
I lay there a few more minutes and tried to sort out how long I’d been asleep. The stars were visible now, but being for the most part fixed and unchanging in the sky, they were little help. No moon only meant it was still fairly early, as the moon currently rose about midnight.
Enough, I thought. Up and moving before someone finds you here and proves you to be the fool you are currently acting the part of. I rose to a crouch, quietly stretched, then sprang for the wall dividing this property from ours.
A brief search for the chickens was fruitless. The little beggars had escaped after all. A problem for another time. No one should mind that so much, I realized. They had both been hens and were thus unlikely to set to crowing with the dawn.
I slid through the shadows of the rear expanse of the property, careful not to walk too openly where there were sight lines from the neighboring houses. When I finally sidled into our kitchen, I found six pairs of eyes glittering at me.
Everyone was up waiting for me.
“Hello,” I said, at a sudden loss for further words.
“Thank you for the chickens,” Mother Vajpai replied solemnly. Her expression was far more grim than her words.
“I … I am sorry.” Suddenly my feet were quite interesting, but I would not play the child. Looking up again, I said, “I have a great deal to confess.”
Ilona stepped forward and handed me Federo. Ponce followed a moment later with Marya. Both of them looked at me sourly. Then the four adults drifted to our circle of chairs by the fire, where the smokeless oil stove Mother Argai had managed to secure was positioned.
I followed, balancing two squirming, gurgling babies. “It has been quite a day,” I began, but Mother Vajpai raised her hand.
“Mother Argai attended a festival near the docks today,” she announced.
“Ah.” Once more I was at a loss for words.
“She learned much there.”
Mother Argai nodded along to those statements. Ilona sighed and studied her own hands. Ponce just appeared sad, and confused. But then, he generally did of late.
“Wh-what did she learn?” I finally asked.
“Amazing things,” Mother Argai said. “That you are commanding the waves. That you fight tigers. That you have slain the entire Street Guild to a man. That you plan to slay the entire Street Guild. That you are secretly being a northern goddess come to twist the heads of our children.”
“Amazing, indeed,” I echoed, keeping my voice careful. I rather wished the floor would open up and swallow me whole.
Mother Vajpai spoke once more. “Mostly we have learned that you are in the city again, and that you are seeking to right the wrongs done against you. Every beggar and errand boy and scullion in Kalimpura knows this by now.” She leaned forward, hands on her knees. I saw her fingers tremble. The knuckles stretched tight and white. “What were you thinking?”
I started to defend myself, then broke off. What was the point? I had been wrong to leave. I had been wrong to stir trouble at the palace of the Bittern Court. Though I had certainly never intended all that had taken place, everything that had happened this last day, for good or ill, rose from those two decisions.
“It does not matter,” I finally said. “What is done is done. And I have learned much.”
“What?” shouted Ilona, almost ready to explode. Her anger seared my heart.
“I have learned that we will not take Corinthia Anastasia and Samma from the Bittern Court by stealthy force. The place is too large, and complex, to sneak into as a half handle of searchers and hope to profit anything. We must apply guile, and negotiate.”
A long, contemplative silence followed my statement.
“Negotiate?” Mother Argai finally said. “You are Green. You have never negotiated in your life.”
“On the contrary, I do it all the time.” In an eruption of self-honesty, I pointed out, “I’m doing it now. Besides, going in low and hard with one’s weapons bristling is just another form of negotiation.”
That drew a grunt of surprised amusement from Mother Vajpai, which she quickly covered with a glower.
I sighed. It was not that they didn’t know me. It was not that they didn’t have the right to be angry with me, each of my friends for their own reasons. But there was no point. The argument would be lengthy and without purpose, because we would wind up back where were right in that moment.
“Listen. I was wrong to leave. I knew that when I did it, and I know that now. But I understand more than I did about the problem to which we have set ourselves.” I also understood I would be much happier if I avoided the waterfront for a while. And tigers. Definitely avoiding tigers. “I would rather expend our energy on sorting out our next plans for Samma and Corinthia Anastasia than on criticizing our past actions.”
“Your past actions.” Ponce spoke up in Petraean. He must have followed enough of the discussion in Seliu, then.
“Yes,” I snapped. “Mine.”
“And what happens when they come here for us?” Ilona asked softly in the same language. “I am no fighter. Even I know our protection in this house is secrecy. Not walls, not force. Just secrecy.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Which you broke! My daughter is lost and perhaps never coming home. She could be dead now. Will you lose yours as well, for the sake of your stupid, stupid pride?”
Ilona began to cry in earnest. With my babies in my arms, I could not comfort her. Even if she would have me. Ponce leaned close to her, taking one arm fondly. I felt a stab of jealousy.
Jealous?
Me?
Of what?
Not of either of them, I told myself scornfully.
“Stop.” Mother Vajpai’s voice was cold and quiet. This was the old Blade Mother. Commanding, dangerous. Maybe coming home to Kalimpura had revived her spirit. “You are all fools,” she went on. “Green is right. What is done is done, and cannot be unmade. Are we worse off for Surali knowing her enemy is close? Probably, but then Surali already knew us to be in Kalimpura. Are we worse off for Green being a hero in the streets? Probably not. For the moment, at least, we have a thousand eyes and ears.
“And it does … not … matter.” Now her tongue lashed us like a whip. “We are in the midst of a mission. Green’s mission. This is her run. She has made errors, errors that may prove fatal for some or all of us. That happens. All we can do now is choose to continue to follow where she leads, or back away and leave her to find her path alone.”
That speech was greeted by another silence broken only by the gurgling of my children and the faint ticking of the oil stove’s metal shell. I realized from the scent of mustard seed and saffron that they had been cooking, which in turn stirred my hunger.
After a little while, waiting to see if anyone cared to add to Mother Vajpai’s outburst, I spoke once more in Seliu. “We will never find our lost ones by stealth. The grounds of the Bittern Court hold two dozen buildings. They are connected by bridges and walkways. We could search all night, and have the girls moved just ahead or behind of us all unknowing the entire time. Without our temple’s backing, and the full force of the Blades, there is small purpose in even trying those walls around Surali.”
“Trying those walls again,” Mother Argai put in.
“Trying them again,” I said, staring at her unashamed. “I was wrong in how I went about it, but I was not wrong in what I did.”
“And the tiger?” asked Mother Vajpai.
“It was not my tiger,” I pointed out. “You never t
aught me how to face one of those, but I survived anyway.”
Another amused snort greeted that remark. I took this as an invitation to continue. “If we can find the Red Man and his apsara, they may be able to tell us more of what the Saffron Tower was about. They may even have been in on some early portion of Surali’s schemes and know more of what she was about. But more important, they are the only string we have to pull that she is not aware of. The woman is no fool. She knows full well that Mother Vajpai will seek to turn the Blades away from Mother Srirani. She understands we will seek her out ourselves if need be.
“Hidden strength is the greatest power,” I concluded, quoting the Stone Coast military philosopher Chard Lindsley. “And those two are our greatest hidden power.” Of course, Surali had a hidden strength of her own in her contract with the Quiet Men, about whom even Mother Vajpai knew very little—when we’d talked aboard the ship, all she could say was that they were rumors, perhaps private agents to the highest houses and courts but outside even the street-level justice of the Lily Blades. Dangerous, yes, but not necessarily our enemies.
Not until now.
However I was trying to rally my half handle, not discourage them, so I said nothing of this thought. Instead, I glanced at Ponce and Ilona to see how much of that they had understood.
He did not look puzzled. Ilona cradled her face in one hand, the other twined finger-to-finger with Ponce. That sight made me feel very strange. It should have been me who comforted her. Still, to my considerable relief, she was no longer sobbing.
Both Mother Argai and Mother Vajpai appeared thoughtful.
I shifted the weight of my children. Had they somehow grown over the brief time I was gone? Such large little things they were. Two pairs of eyes—one blue gray, the other brown—stared back at me.
Each small forehead seemed to beg for a kiss, so I planted one on first my daughter, then my son. That was better than thinking about Ilona, which would only lead me to brooding and anger. Clutching the babies close, I continued in Petraean, which I reckoned Mother Argai could follow enough of. “Without the full backing of the Temple of the Silver Lily, we do not have the power to force Surali to negotiate. Picking at her secrets, unraveling her plans, even her old plans, may give us that leverage in another form.”
“We are working on the problem of the temple,” Mother Vajpai said almost grudgingly.
“I know. And you shall solve it quite well. But now I know my own best path will not work. I cannot be a large enough storm of blades against them. Not as we are constituted today.”
“What of that cold tide?” Mother Argai asked.
That caught me short. “My pardons, what?”
“The people on the docks are calling the water swellings cold tides. Either you are summoning them, or they are following you.”
“Yes,” I breathed, wondering if I could possibly give her a worthwhile answer. Almost certainly not. “In any case, Surali has not been obliging enough to place herself at the waterfront. If I could somehow pull the tide to the Bittern Court’s palace, it would destroy half the city.”
“The ocean is in love with you,” Ilona blurted.
We all stared at her. Once again, I felt that I’d missed an important turn in the discussion. “The ocean, well, it just is,” I finally said.
“Oceanus was one of Desire’s brothers. One of the titanics.”
“Yes.” That much was true. “But the titanics are long gone from the plate of the world.”
“Not Desire.”
“No…” Despite the best efforts of the Saffron Tower in that regard, either. Or perhaps not their best, not yet. I still had to meet this Mafic about whom Chowdry had written me in such haste. “Not Desire.”
“It reaches out for you,” Ilona persisted. “We both read Goddes ande Theyre Desyres back in our days at the Factor’s house. You know the lore. Perhaps too well.”
“It’s lore. And old lore at that. Not law. The ocean weaves through the plate of the world, an endless braid of salt water. If Oceanus is still walking the Earth, he cannot possibly focus on me any more than he could focus on a single grain of sand along one of his beaches.”
“Desire has focused on you,” she persisted.
“Through the lens of the Lily Goddess, and lost Marya!” At the sound of her name in my raised voice, my dozing daughter stirred and coughed.
“Through the lens of Desire…” Ilona’s voice trailed off. She seemed ready to drop the question.
“It does not matter,” I told them. “I cannot control that power, no matter to whom it might belong. The tide is not mine to raise. The Red Man is mine to seek out, though. He is all of ours to seek.”
“There was talk today,” Mother Argai said into the silence that followed. “From your street festival.”
“Of the Red Man?”
“Yes.” She tapped her fingers together. There was no point in urging her to continue speaking. I waited to let Mother Argai frame her thoughts, as was her way. “Word has been that he is off in the high, hard country of the Fire Lakes. But today some said they had seen a Red Man drinking in a tavern near the Evenfire Gate.”
“Well, that seems appropriate,” I muttered.
She shrugged. “I do not know. But we can search here with some hope.”
“Surely you were not thinking of haring off to the Fire Lakes yourself, Green?” asked Mother Vajpai in astonishment.
Actually, I had been thinking exactly that, but the prospect was grotesque. Besides the logistical issues, such an expedition would take me too far from Samma and Corinthia Anastasia. “No,” I lied cheerfully. “We have a lead to follow here. Find them, and we have strength as well.”
“I will inquire quietly around the Evenfire Gate,” Mother Argai said. “One such as he should be difficult to hide.”
“Good.” I finally sat to ease the strain on my back from standing and pacing with both babies in my arms. They needed to be fed in any case, and I desperately needed to feed them. “Now that we have an oil stove, I will cook a chicken for dinner. Ponce, will you please go kill and dress one of the hens I brought?”
He murmured some dejected assent and left. Which nicely got him away from Ilona. Hopefully I could tempt her into helping me with dinner. Kitchens were always a place for propinquity.
Setting that thought aside, I placed the babies at my feet, opened my robe, and unlaced my leather tunic to release my breasts. It was time to feed my children. And baring myself in front of Ponce when he was touching Ilona … It had felt just wrong.
* * *
The chicken turned out well, for all that I could not coax much heat from the little stove. Nor from Ilona either, unfortunately. A simmer is as good as a roast, if one is patient. It felt like real cooking to work with fresh meat and the increasingly improved larder provided by both Mother Argai’s rangings about town and our own continued careful searches of this house. Spices, for one, were now in relative abundance.
Working alone despite my best intentions, I shredded the meat, soaked it awhile in sesame oil with red peppers chopped in, then set all in a pan of small beer to cook slowly while I worked with fresh vegetables, fruits, rock salt, and paprika to make a medley that crossed half a dozen flavors into a tangy, blended whole. There was enough Stone Coast cooking in my blood to make me wish for bread in the absence of the rice we would have trouble preparing over the weak fire.
Still, it made for marvelous eating, albeit quite late. Afterwards, the children sleeping once more and hopefully for the rest of the night, I sat outside with Ilona. She’d recovered herself enough to be willing to hold my hand in the dark. Whatever they meant to her, Ilona’s fingers twined in mine were water in the desert of my love.
“She is still alive,” I whispered after a while. Nighthawks peeped overhead, and occasionally a bat would whir by in a staggering flitter of small, leathery wings.
“I cannot know.” Ilona’s voice hitched. “When you went there, they might have taken their s-swords to her.�
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“They did not trouble to carry your daughter across an entire ocean only to put her to death at the first sign of difficulty.” I doubted the same could be said of Samma, given the old enmities in play here, but that did not bear speaking aloud. Not in this moment.
“You stirred their nest.” Now her words were so small, they barely fit into my ears. Like catching dust motes.
“They knew I was here even before we stepped off the ship.” That sounded like an excuse, though I did not mean my words as such.
“I know.”
We lapsed into silence awhile, but she did not release my hand. Something larger and slower swooped overhead—perhaps one of the flying foxes that lived among the papaya trees.
“Green…”
“Yes, dear?”
“If she is … is … is no longer here to be rescued…”
“Yes?”
“I do not think I can go on. Or go back.”
“Leave it be,” I said, squeezing her hand. “There is so much trouble to be had here already. We have no need to borrow more.”
After a while she rose, kissed me on the cheek, and drifted indoors. Wishing mightily that I could follow Ilona right into her bed, instead I stared at the night sky and the treetops. At the least, I should be grateful that this house and its surrounds were laid out such that we could find a place to sit outside that was not within sight of the neighbors. Not to mention the noisome, nosy Street Guild that clattered through the city searching for me.
I was alone now, as alone as anyone ever managed to be in a place so crowded as Kalimpura. I found I did not like this so much. So I took myself to think upon my dead awhile, clinging to that ritual of candle and prayer that released me from their ghosts.
When I tired of my thoughts, I went to sew my bells, then sleep beside my children. Ponce snored in my bed with them. I did not roust him out, for company seemed better than not. Even if he had been sniffing after Ilona. When he awoke later and embraced me, I let him. I did not even move his hands away from where they wandered, though I did not open myself to the firmness of his need.