by Jay Lake
We had not been left with so much as a bench. “Did they feed you, at least?”
“No.”
“Not since yesterday!” I was outraged.
“Green. Please. Sit down.”
After a little while, I did that thing.
* * *
“So, what happened to you?” I finally asked, at the end of a period of sullen silence.
“Exactly as I feared.” She sighed, long and slow. “I came openly to the temple and began consulting with my Blade Sisters. Mother Srirani arrived and made a show of arresting me.”
“With Street Guild?” There was another outrage, armed men—our longtime enemies, at that—within the temple walls, and the Blades enjoined from action.
“No. She had Mother Surekha and Mother Padmatti with her.”
Mother Surekha I already knew about. She was not so much older than I. Padmatti had still been an Aspirant when I left the temple several years ago. “So none of the senior Blade Mothers will stand against you?”
A small smile of satisfaction quirked Mother Vajpai’s face, though it was nearly an illusion in this flickering light. “None of them would accept appointment in my place as Blade Mother. Mother Srirani is furious about that, or so I’m told.”
“Good.” My anger began to cool a little. “Has she simply sold us for high bid?”
“Nothing so venal, I’m afraid.” Now Mother Vajpai was frowning. “Mother Srirani cooperates with Surali. Not for anything so cheap as profit.”
“Why? The woman is a killer and a cheat and a plotter against the very existence of the Lily Goddess.”
“Green. Who knows this for certain besides you and I? Think on how much effort Mother Srirani has put into undermining the worth of our word. She cannot back down now without admitting she has been wrong all along. That would be difficult for her … continued leadership, let us say.”
“Surali cut off your toes. This is not so difficult to prove.”
“Only to those who wish to hear the message. Most of the Justiciary Mothers and many from the other orders are caught up with the idea of making peace with the Bittern Court and the Street Guild. They tire of the struggle.”
“I would struggle myself, between calling them traitors or branding them cowards.” If I contrived to escape again, there would be many among my Sisters here who would swiftly come to regret their foolishness.
She sighed, again my teacher, with me once more the obstreperous student. “You are a Lily Blade. You face down the consequences of violence every day. So we have trained you. Who among the Justiciary Mothers must do that? Or the Mothers Intercessory? Or any of the other orders? Of course they are tired and frightened. Mother Srirani offers a solution that eases the threat of force and disruption.”
“Only by selling us to the very people who first came calling at sword’s point.” I jumped up and resumed my stomping around the empty room.
“And what of it?” asked Mother Vajpai softly.
“And what of Surali’s dealings with the Saffron Tower? Where is our precious peace if those lunatics succeed in slaying the Lily Goddess out of hand as they did with Marya back in Copper Downs? Then we will be nothing but a gaggle of women in a gilded barn of a building, under no protection at all. We must stop her!”
“Who, Green? Surali? Mother Srirani? She is the Temple Mother: she speaks for the Lily Goddess.”
“And she is wrong. No one is infallible here. Not even the goddess Herself.”
Mother Vajpai laughed, swinging somewhere between bitterness and astonishment. “Nor you, nor I. Something it might do you good to recall.”
“If we were infallible,” I admitted, “we would not be stuck here.”
“I didn’t have to be, you know.”
“Have to be what?”
“Have to be stuck here, in our little not-a-dungeon.” Mother Vajpai grimaced. “When she found me, Mother Srirani offered to release me from my temple punishment if I knelt to her and acknowledged the new role of the Blades.”
“The much-reduced role of the Blades,” I said.
“Well, yes.” She spread her hands wide. “As you might have gathered, I did not kneel.”
“So who is in the wrong now?” Despite myself, I started to giggle. “Are we two the only ones in the entire temple who are in the right?”
She giggled with me. We sat like two madwomen in the damp straw, our shadows leaping in the guttering light of the lamp. Everyone’s fate was out of my hands, for now.
Especially my own.
* * *
We were fed, finally, and our lamp replaced before it burned out completely. No one was foolish enough to linger in here refilling the oil on our old lamp. No one wanted to make of themselves so much a target.
A fresh bucket was left behind as well, which was helpful for the inevitable.
After a time, my milk began to ache. I had to express some more. It seemed a waste to put the fluid in the bucket with our piss, but what else was I to do? My children would be safe enough where they were. Mother Argai and Firesetter were formidable. Ilona and Ponce would care for the twins, keep them fed on goat milk and pabulum.
As for Corinthia Anastasia and Samma, I set them aside in my mind and heart. I could do nothing for them until I could get out of this place.
So we waited amid flickering shadows. After all the time we’d spent together, we knew each other’s stories. Such as they were in my case. Though I would have much resented being called this at the time, I was still too young to have enough to say. And a great deal of what I could say could not be said. Even then, I understood that much.
Finally I convinced Mother Vajpai to work out with me. She could not spar so well with her feet maimed, but there were still many moves we could practice. Plus the activity warmed her up.
Throwing each other and wrestling, it occurred to me that I had not seen her work so in a long time. Aboard Prince Enero, Mother Argai had been my sparring partner. Since then, well, there had not been so much sparring for any of us.
Mother Vajpai was out of shape and off balance, but still far more canny than I. This woman had not so long ago been the deadliest person in Kalimpura. In maiming her, Surali had made a statement far more powerful than a simple killing would have.
My Blade Mother had been depressed, I realized suddenly.
I drove her hard, then, goading her with both words and actions until her eyes lit up with a fury. She knew well enough what I was doing. She followed me anyway. We worked for hours, until we were slicked with sweat, bloodied in more than a few places, and had both nearly broken bones in our falls without any of the room’s usual pads and straw bales.
Finally, we slept close together, as if we might have been lovers once, though we never were that.
* * *
The next morning they came for us again. At least, I thought it was morning.
I knew we were both grimed, Mother Vajpai and I, and grubby from our fighting the day before. Still, we grinned like loons when the door banged open. Half a dozen crossbowmen this time, all Street Guild, and another squad with drawn swords out in the corridor.
Mother Srirani was taking no chances with us. Least of all having us guarded by our Sister Blades. Let her send these men for us in the heart of the temple, I thought. It will only make her weakness more apparent to my Sisters of all the orders. Even some of the Justiciary Mothers must be feeling a pause at letting such masculine force loose among our own.
Mother Vajpai walked more straight than I’d seen in a while, though she still limped. Her spirit was restored, at the least. That might be all we had left—spirit—but I was proud of her. As for me, I retained my god-blooded blade up my right sleeve. Thus far no one had been fool enough to search me directly. I promised myself that I would not bare steel in the sanctuary of the Lily Goddess, but it might yet serve a useful purpose.
I did not expect this day to be dull. Not in the slightest.
They shoved us roughly through a side door of the sanctu
ary, so we stumbled into the nave under the view of most of the Mothers, Sisters, and Aspirants of the Temple of the Silver Lily. They filled the rising galleries above us with a hubbub of chattering rumor. Malice, too, I was certain of it, but far more just curiosity. The swordsmen lining up behind us were certainly a subject of comment.
The Temple Mother awaited us before the altar, which itself was like her dressed for a high service. With her was a smiling man of gentle aspect, his skin ocean-tanned so that he might be of almost any paler race, head shaved smooth as glass. He wore the same saffron robes in the Hanchu style that I’d once seen on Iso and Osi.
This was Mafic, then. Our enemy. Firesetter’s old slavemaster. The man Chowdry had warned me about, with his magic weapons and his ancient hatred toward all things female. How must it feel to him to be here amid a temple filled with women serving one of the Daughters of Desire that he and all of his were sworn to hunt down and exterminate. He would be here to somehow claim me and take me away; I was sure of it.
Good luck and bad cess to him, then. I smiled sweetly and let him see the full beauty of my hatred.
Mother Srirani raised her hands to call down silence. She then began to invoke the Lily Goddess’ blessing on this day, this service before the temple assembled. From the stares and mutterings above I guessed that it had been some time since She had manifested. Given who was here now, and whom Mother Srirani had been cooperating with, I could hardly blame our goddess. She knew what these people were, even if Her servants, my Sisters, pretended not to.
“How long has it been since the Lily Goddess has appeared or spoken?” I whispered to Mother Vajpai.
“Months before we left for Copper Downs,” she answered. The satisfaction in her voice was unmistakable. So was the slap to my head by the studded leather glove of the Street Guildsman behind me.
I could have snapped his neck for his troubles, or slit his throat right there, but I knew it was far more important that I hold both my temper and my fists for now. Instead, I consoled myself with a backward glance, murder in my eye that even the most boorish pig of a guard could not mistake.
That smirk would be the first thing I would slice from his face.
Mother Srirani continued her invocation. She sounded tired. Even I could call upon the Lily Goddess with more success than this. Had She turned Her face away from Her temple here? The Blades certainly seemed to have been abandoned, bereft of the cloak of Her regard.
If She was gone, perhaps I could call upon Mother Iron, or even Desire Herself, so that we were not, as I had predicted, just a swarm of women in a building too large for us.
More to the point, if She were watching over us but ignoring the Temple Mother’s call, perhaps I could put paid to that.
In time, the prayers ran down. The gallery sighed as one woman. They had been hoping against hope—sparked by my return, perhaps? I had performed a memorable summoning once before in this very place, while on trial before the altar under the stern eye of Mother Umaavani, the previous Temple Mother.
In any case, Mother Srirani was done with the invocation. “Sisters,” she called. Her voice was clearer, more strong, now that she was firmly back on political ground instead of the treacherous terrain of the spiritual. If only we had been a Court or a Guild, this woman might even have led us well. “Green is before us once more. She is here in violation of the terms of her banishment. Rather than subject her to temple punishment that she will not heed or serve the terms of, time has come for us to hand her over to the proper authorities.
“The Bittern Court has graciously agreed to try Green for her crimes both here in Kalimpura and in foreign places across the oceans, where she has also wronged them.”
That incited a buzz of mixed anger and confusion. Mother Srirani raised her hands for silence once more, waiting for the last whisper to die away before she continued. “As many of you know, I have worked diligently to end this pointless feud with the Bittern Court and the Street Guild.”
Behind me, one of the guards snorted. A small smile chased itself across Mafic’s face. It occurred to me that from their current position, the guards had the Temple Mother under threat of their blades just as much as they had me.
“Setting Green before their justice will do much to right the wrongs of the past. I have also been asked by the Prince of the City to help stem our temple’s provocations against the peace.”
What? Still I kept my mouth shut, though it was becoming torture not to leap up and shout against her lies. The shocked silence from the gallery confirmed that I was not alone in my reaction.
“The Lily Blades have already suspended their runs at my request, to reduce pressure during these troubled times. By agreement of the senior Mothers of all the orders, our Blade Sisters will be standing down permanently from their duties outside the temple walls. Most of them are in contemplative retreat now.”
“She has overreached,” I hissed with glee, just under my breath so only Mother Vajpai could hear me. Besides which, I was certain no senior Blade Mother had agreed to such terms. It was simply not possible.
The rage that had been flooding me passed away as swiftly as a summer wind. I found myself in a place of calm, thinking furiously. Above me, angry shouts and arguments were breaking out all around the gallery. Let them argue. It bought me time to consider.
This city had even less governance than Copper Downs, though more by design than by the accident I’d inflicted upon the Duke across the sea. And let them try me for that! But what governance there was here was all in the balance between many different forces. The Bittern Court was upsetting those old balances, in the service of their own hunger for power. In the process, the Lily Goddess would be reduced or eliminated.
Nothing about this situation served Her interests, or those of the temple and the women of this city. Mother Srirani was no traitor, I believe that even now, but it was clear that she had been played for a fool and more than a fool by Surali. Great wrongs were only being made greater through her acts.
One did not bargain away one’s own strength for the sake of peace with a stronger enemy. Sooner open the doors to their soldiers directly. As, indeed, Mother Srirani had also done.
What did she think she was doing? Did this emerge from some notion of fairness? Surely not all the Justiciars were such fools as this.
The Temple Mother still had her hands up for silence, but she was being ignored. Some of the senior Mothers of the orders might have been behind these maneuvers, but their own constituents had not been informed; that much was obvious. The temple was hardly a democracy. Even so, forcing the power of high office was never a way to accomplish anything of consequence among my Sisters.
Mafic just smiled, silent and intense. I could see where Firesetter had gotten the habit of sitting statue-still.
What was he doing here? What was the man waiting for?
For that matter, what was I waiting for?
I stepped forward, out of the shadows where the witness bench at the base of the well stood, and into the light of the altar. Every woman in the gallery could see me.
That silenced them, as the Temple Mother had been unable to do. I shared my sweetest smile with her as well. It was just a brief glance, but one I knew she would read.
“Sisters.” I did not call loudly, for their attention was already upon me. The shape of the gallery was intended to concentrate the voice so that listeners even in the highest benches could hear what transpired at the altar.
Besides, a quiet tone commanded far better than a loud one.
Two hundred pairs of eyes glittered down at me.
“I am returned.” Beside me, Mother Srirani stirred, making a signal to the Street Guild guards. It was a calculated gamble that she would not simply have me slain in front of the congregation. “Despite the efforts to silence me.” I pointed at my guards, half a dozen hard-faced men with their hands on their sword hilts. “Would you have these men, our enemies, dictate who might speak among us?”
That r
aised another buzz, mutters of denial and anger. I passed over the question of whether I had a right to speak at the altar. As a Blade Mother of this temple, whatever rights I did have certainly trumped the force of the Street Guild and their masters in the Bittern Court.
“I will now call upon the Lily Goddess to bless us with Her presence.”
Surely Mother Srirani had seen me make this same play before the altar with Mother Umaavani. She leaned close to threaten in some wise or another, but Mother Vajpai called the same bluff I had and stepped into the circle to grasp Mother Srirani’s arm.
“Not now, Rani,” she said quietly. That carried, too. A smattering of applause was her response from the gallery.
I might be well regarded in some circles of this temple, but Mother Vajpai was held in the utmost respect by virtually everyone. And she was the Blade Mother.
Bowing my head, I began to pray. Not a braying invocation to demonstrate my piety or authority, as the Temple Mother had done, but a personal conversation with the Lily Goddess, as I had experienced perhaps too often before.
That the gods would use someone who had before opened herself to them was an incontrovertible proposition to me. I’d fenced around that idea with Iso and Osi, with the Rectifier, with Chowdry. Certainly I had already touched and been touched by more gods than most people encountered in a lifetime of contemplative prayer. Like a tree on a hilltop draws lightning strokes from the heavens, I seemed to attract them. Often with just as much fire and pain.
Goddess, I prayed. I know You hear me. You always have, even when I have not meant to call upon You. Your affection for me in this world is ever a mystery, but I welcome Your attentions.
A breeze began to stir. It smelled of rain.
Your house is in great disorder. Your enemies have overtaken the wits of Your servants here. The city that shelters us all comes under greater threat by the day. It is possible the very walls here will be pulled down around us, and we will lose everything that has been built up in Your name over the generations of women who have served You here.