by Jay Lake
I knew why that would be, of course, for I was no man at all, but I was curious as to his thought. “What do you mean, sir?”
“Because someone will kill you for anger or in defense. Given your nature, they will likely be able to argue past the Death Right. If the question is even asked.” He pulled my bandit knife from beneath his thigh. “I release you, and suggest with some urgency that you leave the gate. Otherwise Ravi and his little friends might well choose to test the Death Right for themselves.”
I found that I sorrowed at that. The regret surprised me. This was the first time since leaving Endurance behind that I’d felt anything besides despair or anger. I savored the emotion like a rare spice as I reached to take the knife from him, hilt first.
“Indulge me in a question.” His voice was low with my closeness. “I have already guessed you were raised alone, across the sea. You are like a tiger born in a cage. You know nothing of hunting, or other cats, though your claws and teeth are mighty enough. But tell me this: Are you a boy at all?”
I stared at him, the knife in my hand. “Does the Death Right apply to women?”
“Well . . .” Little Kareen smiled broadly. “You may live awhile after all, Green. Oh yes, it does not apply to women of our city.”
The knife fit into my leggings. I tried not to let my stiffness from the beating show. Nodding at Little Kareen, I took up my satchel with my belled silk and walked into the crowd, striding purposefully toward the gate. I knew how to move through this mess now, when to swagger and when to slide quietly sideways. He was right—I did not want to meet Ravi again, not away from the bully-master’s protection.
A few weeks’ decent food had passed through my gullet, while a few paisas sat in my purse—not to mention I had a purse for my paisas. I even wore clothes fit for the endless heat here. All I lacked was a penis in order to be well set for life in Kalimpura.
The city within the walls was packed just as close as the mob outside. The pinch of the gate itself was gone, but the sheer mass of humanity beyond made up for it. In Copper Downs, people walked as if they expected a path before them. Here everyone pushed like water in flood, and lived within earshot of each other’s business.
Buildings were fanciful to the point of foolish, at least to my eye. A great number of people seemed to live their entire lives upon the street. I saw families on little mats surrounded by pots and bundles, as oblivious to the people around them as the surrounding crowd was oblivious to them. There were oxcarts here, too, of a type I had not seen on the road. They never left the city. They moved with a slow and aimless pace. A dozen little shelves were visible inside their open backs. Men of the poorer classes would hand the driver a broken sliver of a paisa, then climb within and arrange themselves for sleep.
These were hostels that roamed the city without ever stopping. Such a strange thing that was, yet curiously practical.
Animals, too. Chickens roosted penned in wicker baskets that took but a small square of pavement while towering dangerously high, so the birds lived in levels and shat upon one another. Dogs ranged free with patchy fur and missing ears. Skinny mules and haughty camels mingled with women carrying snakes upon forked sticks while people cast coins in buckets suspended from the bottoms of their poles.
All classes thronged, too, everyone I’d seen in the multitudes outside the gate and many more besides. Beautiful folk in diaphanous wraps, their trains supported by crab-scuttling servants. Tradesmen in their tunics followed by heralds crying their business with slates waved high—I soon realized an entire commodities market functioned amid the chaos. Laborers, clerkish sorts, men with bundles of scrolls, maids carrying armloads of someone else’s purchases, soldiers in studded harnesses and feathered turbans with swords strapped across their backs.
Everyone seemed to have a place, and know their path, but the signs they followed were invisible to me.
I let the swirling movement of the bodies draw me along. It seemed pointless to push in a direction I had no reason to pick anywise. I was dressed well enough like a Kalimpuri not to draw stares, even with my scarred cheeks and notched ears. My gaze was sufficiently fierce that the scuttling cutpurse children avoided me.
As for the smells of this place . . . I closed my eyes for a step or two, to let it into me. My nose found a curdling mix of the steam of tea, the tickle of curry, the damp darkness of cardamom, the sweat of men, the dung of a dozen species, the scent of fires. Where Copper Downs had smelled of stone and saltwater and fires of coal and hardwood, this city was redolent of food and traffic and the overwhelming concentration of people and their animals.
I followed, wondering what I would find that I could do with myself.
______
I circled the city in the course of that day. Two paisas bought me a roasted pigeon wrapped in banana leaves with a pile of reddish rice and a spill of some strangely orange pepper powder that threatened to burn my lips. I had been both overcharged and mocked, I knew, but I accepted it as the price of my education.
The road followed the wall before eventually meeting the docks. There the bizarre architecture settled somewhat, for there are only so many different ways a person can build a warehouse, no matter how creative they are. The docks were crowded with a mix of people, not all of them Selistani by any means. I saw Stone Coast folk, Hanchu, men with skin the red of a tomato, gangrels, massive shambling brutes, and fierce, compact, copper-skinned sailors who wore thin daggers slipped through flaps cut into the skin of their foreheads.
None of the Dancing Mistress’ people, though. Just every size, shape, and color of human, mixed through the brown shades of my countrymen like spice in a stew.
Though difficult to judge with certainty, the docks were close to twenty furlongs from end to end. There seemed to be more trade here than what I’d glimpsed in my two trips to the harbor in Copper Downs, which made me wonder why the Stone Coast considered itself the hub of commerce for this region of the world. Beyond, the street was narrower, uncrowded by local standards, though still a near-mob, as it passed before the towering homes of wealth and privilege wrought in the strangest forms of all—high domes and spiraled walls and things that looked like dreams made of ironwood and colored glass.
Once I found another city wall and bent inland, the city resumed its usual crowding. I passed four gates in all before returning to my starting place as dusk fell.
Half a day to make a circuit little more than fifty furlongs around. I felt a stir of amazement. With dusk coming, I tried three of the sleeping carts before one would take me on. I did not know where else it would be safe to rest. Every inch of ground not being actively trod upon here seemed to belong to someone, just as Little Kareen had held his patch outside the gate.
By the end of the next day, despair had returned. I was almost drained of paisas. I did not see how to rob people in here without raising a great ruckus. Besides which, it had become clear that the little cutpurses had been set to following me with purpose.
Someone was watching.
I considered seeking a ship, but my only nautical skill was cooking. I was uncertain I could maintain the deception of my gender for an entire voyage. Besides, where would I go? Not back to Copper Downs, where surely there were many who would be pleased to take my head if my role in the fall of the Duke had become known. Where else, besides? In the country of the red men whom I had just passed, I would be a stranger without language or purpose.
Here I had no purpose, either. But also, here I was not so utterly strange. I spoke the language reasonably enough now.
The old pilgrim’s words came back to me. Ask at the temple of the Lily Goddess for Mother Meiko. Perhaps they hired toughs there, to defend their altar gold and run the beggars away from the porticos. I thought she might have seen me for a woman. If I were to be exposed, a women’s temple seemed less dangerous than the open street. That Little Kareen had guessed my secret meant I had not hidden myself away so well.
Besides all that, I was beginning to feel
nauseated. Something stirred in my gut. The pigeon, perhaps, or an injury from my beating that had been awoken by my endless walking.
I began to inquire after the temple of the Lily Goddess. People ignored me, until one of the little cutpurses on my trail piped up. “The Silver Lily. Ahead, at the statue of Maja’s Boar. Turn there, and head north to the Blood Fountain.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m tired of you,” he complained. “You go to ground, and I can go home.” I knew better than to ask who had set him on me. Little Kareen had shown me well enough how that aspect of Kalimpura worked. Instead, I followed the directions, wondering what truly flowed in the Blood Fountain and whether it was sacred to the Lily Goddess.
Perhaps she is a patron I could follow, I thought. I had claimed the blood of two people now, not counting the dust of the Duke and his henchmen.
The Blood Fountain was so-called because the water ran over marble of a brilliant red. I paused before the thing, which had seven levels ascending and was covered with a myriad of carvings. Most of them had worn under the water’s flow until they looked like so many small, lumpy pillows.
It stood at the center of a circle where the endless traffic went round and round. Five streets radiating as spokes to head to other parts of the city. A number of buildings faced the center. Given the peculiar architecture of this place, I was at first hard-put to say which was most likely to be a temple.
I followed the flow around past an inn that seemed to be in a state of riot on the ground floor. After the challenge of crossing the traffic-choked streets, I found myself before a market that was closing up for the night. The place seemed to specialize in live animals, judging from the smell and the few cages still rattling and thumping next to stalls with their awnings being rolled tight.
The odors of the market revived the nausea I’d been fighting down since eating the spiced pigeon. I held my guts behind my teeth and moved on. Next to the market was a shop selling textiles and clothing. Another time, I might have tried to look. Crossing the next street, I found a more probable building. It was a pointed dome, like a gigantic clove of garlic. The upper reaches were cladded with silver. The lower portions had been built onto with timber and bricks in a haphazard way. Part of a grand marble stair in the same red stone of the Blood Fountain was still visible, though the impromptu walls intruded on its onetime majesty.
That seemed promising. I climbed the stairs, stepping over beggars. They slept clear of the top of the stairs, where the lintels bowed outward so that the entrance was almost round. There were no doors, just an opening to a dusky interior.
I passed within. The scent of incense was so heavy and cloying that I heaved to breathe it. I found myself on my knees on the cold marble, spewing beneath a little bench.
A woman in a pale robe approached and stared me down with a pursed mouth, looking more Hanchu than Selistani in the flickering interior light. She was of middle years, neither old nor young, with a well-bred appearance.
“Mother Meiko said you might find your way here,” she told me. “I should, however, have preferred a less spectacular entrance.” She helped me rise and gain control of myself. “What you lack in stealth, you have more than made up for in style, my dear.”
I woke the next morning in a narrow bed, beneath a tall, thin triangular window. Sunlight blazed in along with the squabble of birds. Mother Meiko sat on a low stool, leaning upon one of her sticks.
“Do not be eating so much of that orange pepper powder,” she said. “Hillman’s bonnet, it is being called. It will be the death of you.”
I gasped for air. My mouth felt like one of those towering chicken coops out on the street. “Not yet, Mistress.”
“Not yet, girl.” She paused, pursed her lips, then came to some decision. “You are a girl, whomever you have killed.”
Suddenly I was very awake. I did not even know where the door was, let alone the path out of here. I could run rooftops all I wanted, but not fit through a window small as this.
She tapped me with her stick. “Listen, you. I am not here for anyone’s justice.”
I tried for straightforward. “My thanks for the night’s rest, and the aid. I would like to move onward.”
“No, you would not.” Mother Meiko tapped me again. “You are being foreign, and though your face is as Selistani as mine, you are knowing far too little of this place to be safe alone. You bear a great burden, and strange skills.” Another tap. “Skills that are being difficult to find in most places. Especially for a girl.”
Even in Seliu, that word gave me a shot of anger. Clearly such a reaction would not serve me here. “Please call me Green, Mother.”
“Green.” She leaned on her stick again and watched me awhile.
I watched her back, but I was tired and did not feel well. Curiosity and fear were a potent mix. Finally I had to ask. “How did you know I had killed a man?”
“Hmm.” Mother Meiko studied me awhile longer. “A chit of your age has no business with that knife.” With her words, I shifted my leg to test that the weight of my blade was still there. It was. “On the road, you looked at it sometimes as if it were being a snake, and sometimes as if it were being your best friend. So I knew the blade had done you a great service. What service could a blade be doing a girl, but to save her life? Or possibly her virginity?”
“Both,” I admitted.
“You know of the Death Right?”
“Yes.”
“To kill once is hard. To kill again, easier. To kill a third time, a habit.”
It was strange to hear this woman who could have been my grandmother talk so casually of murder. As if that were a normal part of life. She was drawing me toward honesty.
“I have killed . . . twice.”
Mother Meiko seized on my hesitation. “Only twice?”
“Only twice.”
“Hmm.” Another long thoughtful pause. “How did you celebrate your misdeeds?”
“By vomiting copiously, then crying great tears.” I sighed. “I prayed for both their souls, though likely neither deserved my regret.”
She reached forward so far, I feared she would topple from her stool, then took my hand. “In that case, you still have your own soul. There might be a place here for you.”
“If I can kill a third time?”
Mother Meiko’s smile chilled my blood. My heart slid within my chest. “Yes. If you can kill a third time.”
“Wh-what of those who guard the Death Right?”
“My dear Green, who do you think we are?”
I wondered then if it was she the cutpurses had worked for. Even Little Kareen might have answered to this woman. Grandmother or no, despite her twinkling eyes and apple cheeks, she was as fearsome as any plotter of the Duke’s court back in Copper Downs.
In that moment, I feared her as much as I’d feared anyone. There was nowhere for me to run, I knew. Not from her. Not in this city.
I forced a smile, though surely she knew it to be as false as I did. “I am delighted to accept more of your hospitality, then.”
“Never seen them take one so old as you,” said the sharp-faced girl. Her nose was as thin as my grandmother’s. She’d mumbled her name so fast, I hadn’t caught it. She wore a pale robe and sandals, was perhaps a year younger than I, and seemed to have been placed in charge of me. I followed her through a curving hall.
“How old are they . . . we . . . usually?”
“I was a baby,” she said proudly. “Brought to the Bone Door.”
I was taken as a baby, too. But no one brought me to a secret entrance of a women’s temple. “I am twelve, close to thirteen.”
“Yes. You’re from the east, right? Bhopura?”
“Well . . .”
She shook her head. “I saw your belled silk amid your things. Only the peasants out there do that. It’s such a waste, but sometimes you see them on the walls of the great houses here. As if farmers’ wives could do art.”
I took an instant a
nd thorough dislike to this girl. “I’ve traveled.”
“Why would you do that? Everything worth having is right here in Kalimpura.”
Then we were in a chamber with a great alabaster bath set into the floor. The hatchet-faced girl slipped out of her pale robe and kicked away her sandals. She had no breasts yet, I saw, which made me ashamed of mine. “Come on, into the water with you.”
It took me a little longer to unwind the boy’s clothing I’d been wearing. When I kicked free of my sandal leggings and set my knife upon the floor, she whistled. “We don’t get metal like that until we’ve passed the Sixth Petal.”
“What?” The question slipped out of me. I didn’t really want to talk more than I had to with this awful girl.
“Tests. We have to hunt with certain weapons before we get better ones.” Her voice grew admiring. “You must have proved very well to someone.”
“Only in life,” I muttered. My arm drawn across the odd swell of my small breasts, I slipped into the bath.
The girl dropped balls of herbs and salts in with me before she followed me. The water was soon blessedly milky. She studied me for a while, meeting me eye to eye. “I saw your bruises,” she finally said. “Somebody really did it to you.”
I didn’t see how to avoid answering her. “About eight or ten of them.”
The girl leaned forward. “Did you make them sorry?”
“They were already sorry,” I said shortly. “That’s why they beat me.”
For some reason, this impressed her.
We sat awhile in silence. She obviously strained to fill it, but had acquired enough cunning to attempt entrapping me first. Finally she gave up. “I’m to wash your hair and give you robes and bring you to Mother Vajpai. I don’t think you’re supposed to carry your pigsticker around. None of the Blades do. Not inside the temple.”