by Jay Lake
I’d meant only to take myself away. That was why my cheeks and ears still stung like hot coals, their wounds a horrid itch that intruded on my thoughts. In spoiling myself for the Factor and his patron Duke, I had ruined their plans.
But a life.
It made no difference that she had been awful to me. I was slave and animal and work to her. Never a real girl. Never a person.
Then I’d killed her. That had made me real, at least for the span of her last moments.
We moved quickly for being Below. The passages were close-walled and low-ceilinged, slimed over as happened mostly near the surface. The Dancing Mistress held a snatch of coldfire in her hands, which was enough for me to follow. Beyond that, I paid no heed to anything but my own misery.
She stepped through a doorway into some larger gallery. I followed, only to have someone clutch at my arm. I shrieked as I was startled out of my reverie.
The Dancing Mistress whirled. Whatever had been on her lips died there.
Mother Iron held me pinched in a grip that seemed tight enough to shear pipes. I looked into her eyes. They gleamed with the orange white of the hottest coals.
“So it begins.” Mother Iron’s voice was rusty as a grate. Her breath gusted like a wind from a great distance, and reeked of stale air.
“We move swiftly,” the Dancing Mistress answered softly. “To stay ahead of the hunt that is even now being summoned.”
The old woman-thing—I was mindful of Septio’s sleeping gods—squeezed my arm again. “Be true and hold your edge,” she told me. Then Mother Iron was gone, vanished like mist before breaking sunlight.
The Dancing Mistress took my hand. “I had not expected that. Are you well?”
I tried to answer, but could only laugh.
Her eyes narrowed to gleaming slits as she shook me slightly. “Stay away from that clouded place in your mind, Girl.”
That sobered me quickly. “My name is Green,” I snapped. Hot, hard anger filled my voice.
“Green, then. I see that you are back.”
Our flight ended with a climb of a wooden ladder screwed to a brick well. The Dancing Mistress led. I followed, stewing in anger rather than lost in despair.
How dare they snatch everything away from me? I knew my thoughts held no logic at all, but I cherished the burning spark. Guilt and fear lay not far behind it. I would much rather have my path lit by fire than wrapped in gloom.
We emerged in a large half-empty building. A bit of moonlight leached in through wide windows set high on the walls to make solid, silvery shadows of stacks of crates. I glanced around the room, seeing as I had been trained to do. Eight of those windows on each side, some accessible by climbing the stacks before them. One end was swallowed in deep shadow where a dozen horsemen could have waited invisible. The other end gleamed with the cracks of a large doorway lit by gas lamps outside.
A warehouse, of course.
“What is in the shadows?” I asked, mindful of the Dancing Mistress’ earlier words about the hunt being called.
“What do your nose and ears tell you?”
I closed my eyes and sniffed. Dust, wood, oil, mold. The scent of the two of us. No horses. No sweat-stink of soldiers. Likewise the noises. A cart rumbled past the other side of the doorway, paced by the clip of hooves on cobbles. Within were only the sounds of an old building, wood settling and the whistling scurry of rats.
There might be a lone, quiet person in the darkness, but no more. I said as much.
“There might be anyone, anywhere,” she agreed. “Here in this moment, we are probably safe. Now we hide some more.”
The Dancing Mistress began climbing an array of boxes toward one of the grease-smeared windows. I followed her. I wondered where we were going, but did not ask. She reached the window, then stretched tall to touch the ceiling above it. A section of slats slid away to the noisy squeal of wood on wood. I winced at the sound and looked back down for our mythical assassin.
No one was there. Above me, the Dancing Mistress hauled herself into the ceiling. I followed to find us in a much darker space with another ceiling so low that I nearly struck my head.
The roof of the warehouse, I realized: a very low-angled attic. The texture of the shadows suggested that this space was used for storage. Objects bulked dark within deeper darkness. A single window gleamed at the far end, barely brighter than the shadows, as it was so obscured with dust and grime.
“The stairs were torn out fifteen or twenty years ago,” the Dancing Mistress said. “They widened the doors to admit heavier cart traffic with a turnaround, and were forced to give up this space in the process.”
“A waste.” I was focusing on the trivia of where we were.
“Everything has a reason. Right now we are in a hidden location above a building that no one has ever seen us enter. We are safe while we consider what should happen next.”
“Safe?” The panicked laughter began bubbling up within me once more. “I will never be safe again. I will always be trapped by what I have done. I—”
She smacked the top of my head as my voice rose. “Whisper. Even better, think before you speak at all.”
Anger rushed back fast as flame on oil. Mistress Tirelle hit me constantly. Now the Dancing Mistress did the same. Who was she to raise a hand to me?
“You must eat, then sleep,” she continued. “Your fears and regrets are carrying you away.”
“I am afraid of nothing!” I shouted.
Her voice was so soft, I had to strain to hear it. “Right now you are afraid of everything. Or at least you should be.”
I flopped to the floor. Finally still, I realized how badly my body ached. The slip coming off the wall of the Factor’s house had bruised my hips and jarred my back. The run had stretched and warmed my muscles, but here we were quiet and I could feel myself cooling down already. My foot stung where it had clipped Mistress Tirelle’s chin.
“Everything hurts,” I told her quietly.
“Then sleep.” She offered me a piece of crumbling cheese and a wad of leaves.
I took them. The cheese had a deep ammoniac scent, overlaid with salt and the veining mold of a blue. The leaves were dry-cured kale with lard smeared amid the rolled layers.
It all smelled like paradise to my rumbling gut. I ate quickly, then just as quickly was starved with thirst.
“There are water barrels near the window,” the Dancing Mistress said. “They are filled with rainwater collection, and might taste of the roof.” She bent close again. “I must go out and be seen. There can be no suspicion that I am part of what is still happening in the Factor’s house. Will you remain here and keep absolutely quiet?”
“Yes,” I said around a mouthful of kale.
“No matter how angry or despairing you may feel, do not stamp your feet or throw things. Men will be working downstairs on the morrow, and they may hear you.”
I looked at my hands, full of half-eaten food. Mistress Tirelle would never eat again. “No, Mistress.”
“When I can safely do so, I shall return. Probably tomorrow night. Federo may be here as well.”
My heart leapt at that; then I wondered why. Even my friends were trouble for me. “I will remain silent.”
“As best as can be hoped for.” She ran a hand through my hair. “We will do what we can to see that you are well-served. I am not sure how much is left to us, though.”
“Good night,” I said, and then she was gone.
Sleep brought only the memory of death. My relationship with my dreams continues uneasy to this day, but that night was the worst I have ever known. I don’t recall my dreams when Federo first stole me away from Papa. The dreams of small children are said to be as unformed as their thoughts, but that cannot be true. My thoughts were well-formed even then. I knew what I wanted and did not want.
Later I dreamed of the past, Endurance and my grandmother and my little life among the ditches and fields of Papa’s rice. Those were about loss and regret. As I grew older a
nd my training became more complex, I often dreamed of the sorts of things one does then—endless loaves of bread spilling from the oven, or reading a book that bred new pages for itself faster than I could turn them.
That night, though, all I could dream of was death. Perhaps I had once killed my grandmother. How had my mother died? Mistress Tirelle’s head spun away from my kick over and over as her neck snapped. The scent of her voiding her bowels as she died. The way her body collapsed, as if she had already stopped trying to protect herself the way any living person does, with or without training.
How many ways were there to kill? How many ways were there to die? Those questions chased me through the sick regrets of that night, until finally I awoke with the answers ringing in my head.
There are as many ways to die as there are to live.
There are as many ways to kill as there are killers to try them.
My body ached as if I’d been trampled by one of the Factor’s horses. The pallet on which I’d slept was kicked aside, and I was lying on the old wooden floor. I didn’t feel much like a killer, but I knew I was. I also knew that someday I would die. Possibly very soon, depending on whether and how the Factor’s justice caught up with me.
I climbed to my feet, swaying with fatigue and an overwhelming sense of weakness. Last night’s fear and rush had taken their toll.
Morning arrived amid a vague silvery light that struggled through the round window at the end of the attic. The filth on the glass looked to be at least a generation of neglect. I knew exactly what a maid would do to cut it down.
This room was huge, though a tall man could stand only in the center, where the peak of the roof ran. The low edges were filled with odd equipment—the frames from old looms, mechanical devices for which I had no name. All was covered in deep dust.
Finding the rain barrels, I drank from a little tin ladle there. The water tasted of tar and sand. Even at the edge of foulness, it was refreshing after breathing the dry air all night.
Otherwise I had nothing to relieve the itching of my cheeks and ears, and the mix of feelings in my heart. No food, no distractions, nothing.
I spent a long time simmering in my anger before Federo appeared. He surprised me in climbing through the floor in the middle of the day.
“They are at their lunch below,” he explained to my unspoken question. He looked worried, and was dressed like a common laborer of the city. “I have stood the warehousemen a round of ales down the street once a week for quite some time. No one wonders at me in this neighborhood.”
“You are not unusual anymore.” I recalled my lessons at the art of the swift eye.
“Precisely.” He pulled a paper wrapping out of his pocket. “Here is some salt beef with cold roast potatoes. It is the best I could do right now. I will be back with the Dancing Mistress tonight. We need to think on what to do with you next.”
“You will do nothing with me,” I told him coldly. “I will decide what to do with myself.”
He looked unhappy, but retreated beneath the floor.
They would not use me. Not the Factor, not the Duke, not this little conspiracy of child-stealer and rogue Mistress. I spent the afternoon imagining ways to flee, directions to run in, but I knew nothing practical of the city or its surrounds. If I could go back to Endurance, I would, but all I remembered of the way home was that I should cross the water.
At that time, I did not even know the name of my birth country, let alone the village where Papa’s farm lay. I had no money or maps or practical experience of any sort.
I realized that I had done nothing more than exchange one prison for another. This one was far less comfortable and more dangerous. My anger rose once more like a burning tide. I might be free of the Factor, but my choices continued not to be my own.
Why had Federo and the Dancing Mistress guided me toward a sense of my independence? I wondered. Would I have not been better off in ignorance? I could have grown into a lady and lived the life that had been bought for me.
They would have no satisfaction of me either, I resolved.
My rescuers came back that night with several sacks. I assumed these contained provisions. He was once more dressed like a common laborer, while she wore the same loose tunic as usual. The Dancing Mistress pushed their sacks to one side of the cleared space of floor that marked our area; then she and Federo made up a little table of two crates and three lengths of lumber. She produced a hooded lantern from one of the sacks while Federo found smaller boxes for us to sit on.
Soon we were gathered around a little table with knobby carrots, a string of sweet onions, and a handful of small brown rolls to share for our dinner. Both of them had been silent through this process. I was determined not to speak first.
“We are civilized,” Federo finally said. “People at table with food before them.”
“The shared feast is a tradition of my people,” the Dancing Mistress added.
Both of them spoke in the tone of someone desperate to return a bad moment to normal.
I said nothing. Instead I simply glared at them both.
They looked back, Federo seemingly puzzled, the Dancing Mistress with a blank-eyed indifference that I was not sure how to read upon her nonhuman face. We all stared awhile.
My resolve broke first.
“She was a cow,” I said in my language.
Federo rubbed his eyes. “Within two more years, we could have had you inside the Duke’s palace.” He suddenly sounded terribly exhausted.
The Dancing Mistress sighed. “We should have known.”
“Known what?” I demanded.
Federo stared at me. “Stop talking like a barbarian,” he snapped. “This is Copper Downs.”
“Barbarian?” I bit off a shout. “You are the . . . the . . .” I didn’t have a word for barbarian in my language. Certainly I’d no reason to know it when I was a tiny child. “Animals. You are animals.”
“That could have been changed,” he said. “With your help.”
The Dancing Mistress gave me one of her long, slow looks. “Please, speak so I can understand you. Or we won’t get far.”
I begrudged her the words, but I recalled that Petraean wasn’t her home language either. “Very well,” I muttered, knowing my own poor grace for what it was.
“Emerald,” Federo began.
“Green!” I slammed my fist into the planks of our table. “My name is not Emerald. You may call me Green.”
The Dancing Mistress waved toward Federo in a shushing motion. “Well, Green,” she said. “Federo had always thought you might have the heart-fire to hold your spirit true against the Factor’s training. You—”
“You did,” Federo interrupted. His voice had a note of pride, even now. I hated him for that. It was as if he’d made me who I was, merely by being clever enough to buy me in the market.
“Too much heart, perhaps,” the Dancing Mistress went on.
“What of it?” I demanded. “Was I to be your creature instead of the Factor’s? I am a person of my own, not some thing to be shaped by him or you or anyone else.”
The Dancing Mistress’ claws drummed on the raw wood of the table. They sent splinters flying. “We are all shaped by life.”
“Indeed,” said Federo. “And there is much you do not know. Am I correct in thinking you read nothing more recently published than Lacodemus’ Commentaries?”
“Yes.” What did this question signify? Lacodemus had been fascinated with men risen from the grave and people who lived on their heads, speaking by the motions of their feet. I hadn’t taken him seriously. The world obeyed a certain order. Just because a tale came from far away did not mean that common sense could be cast aside in judging it.
“Then know this little bit of recent history here in Copper Downs.” He leaned forward and pressed the palms of his hands flat on the rough wood. “There has not been a Ducal succession in four centuries.”
“Mistress Tirelle told me as much. She did not say it so clearly.”
I thought of the Factor’s dead eye, sullen and fatal as that of the sea creature that had tried to take me so long ago. Lacodemus had been right, in a sense. “This city is ruled by immortals.”
The Dancing Mistress laughed, her voice soft and bitter. “Immortal, no. Undying? Well, yes . . . so far.”
“You meant for me to kill the Duke,” I breathed, barely lending sound to the words. Killing the Duke would cause the Factor to lose his power. Women . . . girls . . . would be safer. Even a new tyrant could hardly rebuild the power of this Duke’s long rule with any speed.
“That was one hope, yes,” Federo admitted. “There were other plans. We had played at a game of years here.”
I gave voice to his unspoken conclusion. “Until I tipped over the board and set fire to the rules.”
“Well, yes.” I could see a smile flirting with his face despite himself. “That spirit of yours rose up, I think.”
My fingers brushed at the itching scabs upon my cheek. “For all the good it has done me. What now of your plans?”
They both stared me down. Dust flecks and wood shavings floated between us. Eventually Federo’s face fell back to his recent dismay. “If you can escape detection by the patrols roaming the city right now, and survive the substantial bounty that has been placed upon your head, you are free to flee Copper Downs and find a life of your own elsewhere.”
The Dancing Mistress slipped a claw-tipped finger across her own furred cheek. “But you have made yourself too distinctive for safety, I fear. Easily recognized should there be a hue and cry.”
I thought of Endurance’s great brown eyes, and of my grandmother’s bells ringing for the last time beneath the hot sun. What would my grandmother have wanted from me? Or Papa? What did he want? Endurance, I knew, wished only to call me home.
What did I want?
To go home.
But even more than that, I realized, I wanted never to see a child sold to these terrible people again. Not to the Factor and his Mistresses, not to Federo and his charming ways. This trade in thinking, talking livestock must end.