Kalimpura

by Jay Lake

  * * *

  The next day, I wanted to go over the wall with Mother Argai, but Mother Vajpai forbade that plan. “After your little street festival, your name will be on everyone’s lips.”

  “Just as much tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps. But let it rest. Besides, you are still very much being chased. Allow them to spend themselves awhile in casting about as you rest to rebuild your own strength.”

  So I brushed out my borrowed blue robe and cleaned my leathers and tended my children and managed to feel generally useless. I tried thinking of ways to fight tigers, then tried thinking of how many houses or compounds in Kalimpura might even have tigers.

  As soon fight the tide, which at least appeared on a twice-daily basis. Tigers were hardly unknown, but they were notably scarce within the walls of most cities. Recent experiences notwithstanding.

  Marya was trying to crawl now, though Federo just watched her in amazement as she wriggled herself against the furniture and squirmed, squirmed, squirmed as she cooed. I wished mightily for an ox that she might play under, and my son also at her side. Still, I saw myself most in her ragged, unsteady persistence. A child determined to be more than she was.

  “You have no grandmother to love you, or for you to bury,” I told them both sternly. “And I have already sent a troop of shades to someday guard your way into the next life. So stay here awhile, and be the delights of my world.”

  They both burbled at me. I received a gummy smile from Federo.

  That was good enough for me.

  Mother Argai came back that afternoon with a sack of sweets, some new knives that had obviously been extracted from the temple armory, and another letter from Chowdry. Also addressed to me at the Temple of the Silver Lily.

  I supposed I should count myself lucky that Mother Srirani had not ordered them destroyed. Likely she was unaware of the existence of the missives.

  In my whole life, I had never received a letter. Now here were two in the span of a week. Not even troubling with choosing from among the new weapons yet, I took Chowdry’s missive and retired to a chair to read it while others played with the babies and the knives.

  Greetings to Green, from Copper Downs and now of Kalimpura.

  This place will never be settled, I am swearing on it. Councilor Jeschonek has come twice asking after the day of your return. I told him to wait until the phoenix drowns.

  Putting my words to paper is not so simple, and Sister Gammage advises me how to say things when the words are trapped. I am thanking you for your patiences and her for her hand in writing.

  The Mafic I told you of sails for Kalimpura. He knows about you and seeks you. I did not tell him anything. He also carries mystic weapons from the distant east that kill with a look by sending a thunderbolt.

  I have seen this once, and am thinking it magic, but I have been told there is an art to this thing, just like kettle ships are an art as well.

  In any case, it does not matter. This Mafic seeks you, he can kill with a look, and you must be on your guard. He also is seeking two named Firesetter and Fantail, though I am not knowing if and how they are bonded to you.

  Stay well. Do not let yourself be taken like the drowned phoenix.

  It is to be wishing you well.

  Chowdry, of Endurance

  I smiled a bit at the letter, then took it to Mother Vajpai to see what she made of the news. The words of my old pirate-turned-priest seemed clear enough. Chowdry had never been one to speak in riddles. I did not count him so clever as to try a code. And why should he bother?

  Mafic was coming, and he possessed those selfsame firearms that Lalo’s men had used aboard Prince Enero. I’d seen them close by. They were frightening. I wanted no part of such things here in Kalimpura.

  Unfortunately, the only people with the authority to forbid the weapons entry to our harbor, or confiscate them if they did come, were the Bittern Court. Their control of the affairs of the portside was close enough to complete, and well settled in the fragmented mass of customs and half-remembered wisdom that passed for the law here in Kalimpura. Besides, none of the other Courts would welcome the precedent of interference in their own prerogatives.

  For a long moment, I wished for Prince Enero back. Lalo close at hand might have been comforting, even more than Ponce’s warm, supple body had been in the night.

  Mother Argai handed me back my letter. “Firesetter,” she said. “If his name is carrying meaning, he might be easier to find.”

  So far as I knew, never having seen one for myself, Red Men resembled the coal demons that were paraded at so many of our Kalimpuri festivals. Usually caged statues, sometimes mummers or priests wandering free in makeup and a mask and stilts beneath upon their feet, they were human in shape, but terribly oversized and ridiculously wide, their snarling faces filled with sharp teeth.

  Not unlike larger versions of the tiny men passing out meat at the beginning of my festival. I tried to put those two ideas together, but could not make them fit. At least not right there in the moment.

  “Did you find any evidence of him?”

  She laughed softly. “Most of the merchant caravans from Shaggat, Malahar, and the westward extents are coming through the Evenfire Gate. Do you know how many little taverns lie within a few blocks of there?”

  “More than one woman could visit in an afternoon, I should imagine.”

  “More than a dozen women could.”

  Among the hulking, strange creatures sometimes found guarding caravans, a Red Man might not even be so immediately remarkable as he would elsewhere in the city of Kalimpura. Such a one could not simply throw a cloak over his head and shoulders and wander the streets freely outside an area like that.

  Unlike, say, me.

  “I would go with you tomorrow and check these places some more.” It was an effort to keep the urgency out of my voice.

  Mother Argai shrugged. “I cannot stop you. You might be covering yourself more, I am thinking.”

  The blue robe, of course. I wished I had my old Neckbreaker mask, but if I improvised a veil, I might pass that way. Covering the face was not a Kalimpuri tradition, but there were enough women from Sind and the other provinces to the west who did so that it would not be so especially remarkable.

  “I will be covered,” I promised her.

  * * *

  The next morning we slipped over the back wall before dawn. Together we found a teahouse and sat in the morning gloom until the brilliant tropical day had taken back the streets that, in truth, always belonged to the heat.

  The bitter brew steamed in tiny cups painted with flowers and birds. A plate of salted pineapple stood between us, along with balls of rice and honey. I loved the smells but ate sparingly. Though I did not expect to fight today, I wanted to be prepared.

  Besides, the knot in my gut would not have let so much food past in any case. And eating through the veil would be annoying at best.

  Mother Argai spent quite some time watching me. Finally, whatever had been bubbling with her came to her lips. “You are not so much the hothead anymore, Green.”

  I nodded, acknowledging her statement without committing myself to a reaction, or the words that tried to jump to my own lips.

  “Someday you may be wise. You will always be strong.” One hand gripped her tea tight, and I realized for the first time that her fingers had grown wrinkled and were even becoming gnarled. Time’s arrow slew us all, no matter how lucky we might otherwise be. “Be fortunate awhile, and you will be a woman to follow.”

  “I don’t want anyone to follow me,” I said truthfully.

  “It is too late for that.”

  At those words, we lapsed back into silence and waited for the streets to finish awakening so that we might carry on unremarked and unremarkable amid the endless crowds.

  * * *

  I’d managed to claim another pair of short knives from the cache Mother Argai brought back to the house the night before. Once they were in my possession, I’d spent some
time throwing them in one of the unused rooms of the house. Some of the carved wooden screens would never be the same again, but I once more possessed weapons I’d actually be willing to cast aside or leave buried in an enemy’s guts. Truly, the god-blooded blade was an amazing artifact, but my fear of losing it was beginning to cripple my fighting style.

  So today I moved through the streets wrapped in my slightly too loose leathers beneath my robe, the mundane short knives at each wrist, and the god-blooded knife in my thigh scabbard in place of the usual long blade I kept there. The entire affair, including the robe and veil, seemed heavy and hot, but I did not wish to pass unarmed through this city. Not with so many enemies. Even if I had a thousand friends, I had hundreds more who would kill me on sight. Any member of the Street Guild, just to start.

  One of the charms of the Evenfire Gate was that it stood far from the Street Guild’s usual haunts. The western boundary of Kalimpura was as distant from the waterfront as any other corner of the city.

  I had passed through those neighborhoods more than once, but these had never been my usual haunts, either. Walking there with Mother Argai, I had to revise my opinion of Kalimpura as a Selistani city. There were more foreigners here than down by the docks, many more. Quite a few of them were not particularly human.

  Copper Downs had its pardines, and the rare, stranger folk who strayed in by ship or over the wild lands of the Stone Coast interior, but most people there were Petraeans. Even the migrants, such as the Selistani community gathered around Chowdry and the Tavernkeep’s place, were still a mere smattering among a large mass of pale faces.

  Likewise the Kalimpuri waterfronts, where crews from dozens of lands might meet and mix, pass between ships, or drink and fight in the waterfront taverns. Few of them remained much longer than required to work another passage. Their needs were seen to by Kalimpuri who spoke more than one language, or sometimes just the language of money.

  Here, though … It was a bazaar of people and their practices. The Sindu, of whom I was making a pretense of being one myself, were numerous, but they seemed for the most part to be Kalimpuri with an odd taste in clothes. There were more of the very short men in red silk, passing intent on errands, a number of them with those long metal skewers that I realized could be used as a pike or other weapon, even against a man ahorse. Other hues of skin and hair and eye presented themselves, most of which I could not name by origin or country.

  More different were the three women I saw with rough-studded skin, like crocodile leather but almost lavender. Their eyes were narrow and gold with barred pupils, and each wore silver chains between their left hand and their neck, though their clothes were rich as any spice merchant’s.

  Slaves? Divine commandment? Marriage jewelry? I would never know.

  And stranger things than those women shambled through this part of the city. I found myself wishing I’d been more aware of the district around the Evenfire Gate when I was living in the temple as a Blade Aspirant. I might have passed many fascinating hours here.

  Likewise of interest were the shop goods, and even the shops themselves. I trailed Mother Argai at a bit of a distance with both of us on the lookout for places where a giant of a man with pepper-red skin might be found. That meant I was looking, truly looking, at what I passed.

  When one walks through a city, most of what one sees soon becomes something of a blur. This counting house here looks much like the next customs broker’s office. Bakeries and tea shops blend together. Spice markets and root markets are both full of stalls, wagons, shouting merchants, and their racing boy assistants. So you tend to see things in groups. It’s easy to pass over the details, except for the ones your own training and experience have focused you on.

  In that sense, I am always looking for bowmen on rooftops, regardless of whether I feel threatened. Likewise the flash of a blade. Persons with their arms out from their body, as if carrying a weapon. People moving too fast. Or with too much intensity. Signs of violence, signs of danger.

  I should imagine an ostler moves through the crowd noting the horses and mules. Their color and conformation would mean something to him. Likewise the height of each animal and its age, how it walks or stands, the yellowing of the teeth. To me those beasts are for the most part little more than mobile landscape, but to such a one as my imagined ostler, everything in traces or reins is a wealth of information.

  So we each look with the eyes that we have been given by our lives. I for one have never been able to set that sight aside, nor do I particularly wish to. Noticing weapons has saved my life a number of times. Even to this day such practices are part of my ordinary experience.

  That day, though, I was noticing people and their places. Oh, those places …

  Some were almost familiar. A fruit stall is a fruit stall until you attend to what is being laid out for sale. In Copper Downs, I would expect to see at the least apples, pears, cherries, and plums, depending on the season, as well as a dozen varieties of berry. Here in Kalimpura, pineapples, mangoes, papayas, guavas, plantains, and bananas would be the more usual case. Furthermore, our growing seasons were nearly year-round.

  But around the Evenfire Gate, I did not even have names for many of the fruits I saw. The cook in me wanted to stop and sample the waxy yellow gourdlike thing that resembled a nine-fingered hand. I wondered at the enormous fruits like giant, armored papayas covered with spiky bumps. Some I did recognize but only as rarities in my experience—pale fleshed lychees like overgrown strawberries fallen on hard times, for example. The scents were a barrage of the curious and the strange.

  I could have spent a productive hour there with a small knife and a good cloth, tasting. The chutneys and sauces and cold plates that would come from such an expedition tantalized me.

  The vegetable stands were just the same. Crowded walls of leafy greens I could not identify rose in bruised array as if defending the squirmy, fine-haired roots piled behind them. Long, purple stems like giant radishes reeked in so fine a fashion that I knew they must cook down to some other scent entirely. Cheerful peppers of dozens of different sizes and shapes dangled in strings or glowered in tiny baskets.

  And the smells of those …

  The fresh food had its own sharp signifiers. The cooked food being sold from carts and little trays and baskets and sometimes from outstretched hands bore the scent of more cuisines than I could name. I might have gained five pounds of weight that day if I’d allowed myself to stop and sample along the way.

  The meat stalls were a bit stranger. Cages of future meals barked, mewed, hissed, clucked, and whirred. Eyes ranging from tiny compound jewels to great, slow blue plates blinked at me from behind bamboo weavings or wire meshes. Disinterested goat heads stared down from hooks, while the beaks of a dozen kinds of fowl lay silent on chopping blocks. Oh, the meats.

  The wonders were found not just among the food, either. Everything was sold here that one might expect to find in a caravan marketplace. Goods I had no notion of lay in piles with their straps or buckles or woven cords. Leatherworkers bent industriously at their tasks next to stalls where a large animal might be shod or a small one collared. Painters and prayer-men and arbogasters mixed shoulders with the hungry and the hunted and the simply curious.

  It was a glorious place.

  I wondered how a Red Man would fit in here.

  Which of the food stalls might he eat from? I had no notion of what foodstuffs could be found in the Fire Lakes where his kind were said to hail from. It sounded like a district of thorns and rocks from both the name and the reputation.

  If Firesetter were here, someone sold him his dinner. No one hunted their own food in a city, and only the wealthy had gardens enough to pluck the harvest for their table.

  Eels writhed in a wooden bucket as I passed a fishmonger’s stall. That seemed an oddity to me this far from the waterfront, but I paused and looked behind his table to see an open-fronted shed filled with troughs and tanks.

  Here was a farmer of sorts, even i
n the midst of the city. Did my Red Man pluck these narrow, curious fish from their enclosing water and eat them whole?

  Rocks and thorns seemed more likely. That in turn spoke to me of small, hard fruits and lean game hunted over long distances. Not the rich lushness of our local ingredients here in Kalimpura. Nor the thin-sliced mixtures of Hanchu cooking, where chronic scarcity had been transformed into a sort of gustatory art.

  Someone here must sell narrow strips of sliced cactus and dried snake meat and other such desert fare. Of course, though I did not know it at the time, my Red Man ate none of that. He like me had been raised among strangers far from home, and found his comforts in ways that would have seemed alien to his own kin.

  In any case, I looked. And looked. And looked.

  Mother Argai slowed and let me drift to her side in a shaded little nook by the city wall. The roads in this end of Kalimpura tended to indifferent paving largely consisting of mud and muck punctuated by the occasional lonely cobble. She’d found a spot slightly built up, and not currently occupied by either a beggar or a merchant. That suggested to me that we were now standing on a trash heap, but as a longtime sewer runner, I did not find this thought disturbing. Neither did I mind the smell, though other women might have quailed at it.

  The wall here had lost some of its plastering. Gritty stone beneath had been exposed. Weeds and tiny flowers struggled from the cracks in the masonry, and some inept, badly spelled graffiti had been left there for public edification.

  All in all, a comfortable enough spot, and safely anonymous for a few moments at least. I squatted on my heels in the shade of the wall and wished I’d brought a waterskin.

  Peering up at Mother Argai, I asked, “How do you find anything here?”

  “You look.” She glanced along the street. “The gate itself is half a dozen rods farther up. Yesterday I passed through five taverns and never left sight of it.”

  I looked where she had. The structures here tended to be either large old stables and coaching inns—though surely they called them caravanserais here—that had been divided and subdivided into brawling little knots of business and residence and the Lily Goddess only knew what else; or else they were small sheds and shacks standing wall-to-wall in any patch of formerly open ground.