by Jay Lake
I was not the newest, either, for two little ones had come from the temple nursery. Ello and Small Rainai, aged four and five summers, were not much older than I had been when first taken to the Factor’s house. I spent time with them, trying to see the girl I had been in their little round faces. At first, they were frightened of my scars, but we became friends of a sort.
When one, or sometimes both, of them cried late in the night, it was my bed they came to. Samma would roll away from my shoulder with a grumpy sigh as the little girls squirmed in. Comforting them was more than anyone had ever done for me.
All I could learn of their history was that Ello had been a foundling at the Ivory Door. No one would speak to me of Small Rainai, but from scarce hints, I decided that she had been taken from a scene of violence. Our doing or someone else’s, I did not know, but I kept thinking of Mother Vishtha’s words about a father and his babe by candlelight.
We were ten for a while, until Rainai moved on. All I lacked was my last Petal, and the seasoning to follow it, before I could join her and Jappa in rooms kept by the Lily Blades—scenes of raucous riot and debauch, if the mealtime gossip from the Mothers of the other orders was to be believed.
Given how we passed our nights in our dormitory, I was become quite curious as to what it would be like to live among the full Blades.
One day Mother Vajpai called me out of a lecture on dockside rules and the etiquette of trading captains. This was the month of Shravana, which would be the beginning of August back in Copper Downs—even after two years here, I had to make a conscious effort to keep track of the Kalimpuri calendar. The day was brass-hot, much as I recalled from my earliest youth. Even within the Temple of the Silver Lily, where the architecture drew the warmest air upward, the air was beastly.
I’d spent more time aboard ships than everyone else in the lecture room combined, including ancient Mother Ashkar of the justiciars who was holding forth, but I knew that was not the same as bargaining with a captain. My experience lent me a sense of easy contempt for a subject that truly should have been interesting. That contempt, even in its wrongness, had mixed with the heat to make me irritated and distractible.
In short, I was glad enough to leave the little room and walk.
“Mother,” I said, folding my hands as initiates of the temple did to greet one another and honor the Goddess.
She returned the sign. “Green.”
Though some of the patience so carefully beaten into me by Mistress Tirelle had left me with my monthly flows, I still knew enough to follow Mother Vajpai and wait for her to speak.
To my surprise, she led me out a side door and onto Six Chariots Street. We moved into the currents of traffic. I contrasted what I perceived now with the mob I had seen on first arriving in Kalimpura. Then it had been all shouting tradesmen and lowing beasts and a great stream of people; now I understood them as threats, as powers, as problems and opportunities.
Here was a line of children from the Upper Sweeper caste, with their saltgrass brooms and brightly dyed sacks. Their caste had sole rights to the dung of certain animals, and these would not hesitate to shriek theft if some beggar made off with a handful of elephant scat. A trader from the Court of Herons passed, his silver bird clasp affixed to the crown of his hat to show his privileges in glass and food beyond three days fresh, with a brace of swaggering guards from the Street Guild following behind to protect the coin and papers on his person. Beyond him were a pair of fruit-sellers enmeshed in an argument concerning whose cart took precedence in the roadway.
In two years, I’d learned to read all these people, and almost everyone else around them. The foreign, the foolish, and the lost stood out to my eye like candles in a cistern. Much as I must have done to Little Kareen on my arrival, and to everyone who cared to look my way when I first passed the walls after he expelled me.
Perhaps this was what Mother Vajpai meant for me to see: that I belonged here among these people.
She led me by a wandering route down to the Avenue of Ships. That was the dockside leg of the route that otherwise circled inside Kalimpura’s walls. As always, it was lined on the seaward side with a thicket of masts and bowsprits and the occasional smokestack. The landward side was a mass of warehouses, office fronts, trading carts, booths, stalls, windows, and the everpresent throng of people.
“There is a ship in.” Mother Vajpai pitched her voice in that manner we trained for in the temple, which made us hard to overhear.
She had finally found the borders of my patience. “A hundred ships are in, Mother.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me which vessel is to be drawing my interest today?” she asked in her sweetest voice.
I looked carefully, letting my eyes rove quickly just as if I were picking a pomegranate from a tree in the moment of being unblinded. The secret to that had always been to let your sight do its own thinking, and judge afterward.
“Arvani’s Pier.” I wasn’t sure what I’d seen, but it was something. Then I realized that a pennant from Copper Downs rode among the masts there. “A ship from the Stone Coast.”
“Mmm.”
We walked on past Arvani’s Pier in silence. I hoped her quiet meant that I had found the truth, but with Mother Vajpai, it could just have readily been the opposite. A pair of foreign sailors, men with skin the color of liquid brass and a strange squareness to their eyes, lurched toward us with leers upon their faces, but three beggars drew them urgently off.
No one of Kalimpura would so much as spit on one of the Lily Goddess’ servants. Priests and their helpers were sacred in general, but the Blades were as widely feared as they were poorly understood.
“It is time for you to decide what habits you will make of your life,” Mother Vajpai said, as if there had been no lapse in our conversation. “A matter of the Death Right is being laid before us by the Bittern Court. It concerns a man of Copper Downs who killed two members of the Street Guild, and has refused justiciary mediation on the grounds that he is a foreigner.”
The Bittern Court concerned itself with the wharfingers and warehousemen and chandlers of these docks, as well as those affairs of the harbor that did not fall within the Boatmen’s Guild. The Petraean in question must have been directly associated with a docked ship, or the case would not have come before a Bittern Ear.
“Why has the Street Guild not taken their own action?” I asked. “They are quite pointed in their discourse, and Death Right would not seem to be difficult to argue.”
“The victims were not acting in a manner that reflects well upon their guild,” she said. “It is being a matter for the Bittern Court because of the killer’s ship in port.”
Which meant the unfortunate bullyboys had tried to roll a stranger who was far more dangerous than they’d realized. But the Petraean had not answered whatever summons he’d been sent by the Bittern Court, and so fallen in default to the sentence for violating Death Right without cause.
“Would it not be easier to send someone to convince him to speak before the Court?”
“We do not judge, Green.” Her voice was sharp. “The Blades do not advise, except in the narrowest matters of our art. Should the Goddess wish counsel dispensed, She will move one of the justiciary Mothers to go to this man.”
That I knew before I’d spoken. It seemed unfair to kill a man who did not even know he was under a death sentence.
“And me?”
“It is the season for you to take the last Petal. You are the only aspirant who speaks Petraean. This may be an advantage should you be spotted or questioned while at your purposes—you might be able to turn away suspicion for a key moment, where none of the other girls could.”
“Very few of the sworn Blades as well,” I said.
“You have the right of it.”
We walked on, then circled the statue of Mahachelai on his Horse of Skulls and began to pass the other direction down the Avenue of Ships. Arvani’s Pier was now ahead of us. The lane in the crowds opened for us as always
, though suddenly I was conscious of it in a way I had otherwise long since ceased to be.
“So, I shall make my way aboard this ship, find a man, and slay him for a crime he does not understand, as he believes himself to have killed in defense.”
“No,” she corrected me. “You shall express the will of the Goddess and the judgment of the laws and customs of Kalimpura.”
The whimpering pleas of the dying bandit had long since ceased troubling my dreams, but I still vividly remembered the crack of Mistress Tirelle’s neck. In our training, we had attacked each other, attacked straw dummies, wooden stands, squealing pigs, and dogs first defanged, then later with all their teeth. I had shed blood, spilled blood, and stanched it in myself and others.
Mistress Tirelle filled my imagination now—the spittle on her face, the damp slump of her body on the cobbles of the Pomegranate Court. Would I do this thing a third time? Would I make a habit of what had begun in fear and desperation?
Would I be a Blade?
Will I belong here?
“Who is this man, and what is his appearance?” I asked. For one brief, dizzying moment, I imagined that the Lily Goddess had somehow set me to kill Federo. That would either be the most satisfying vengeance, or murder of my oldest friend.
Both.
“His name is Michael Curry. He is a man of Copper Downs who is being a factor of House Pareides out of Smagadis, aboard the vessel Crow Wing as a spice buyer for the Stone Coast trade.”
I felt an immense sense of relief every bit as irrational as the concern that had preceded it.
She continued, her mouth flashing silver as she spoke. “He is a small man who keeps his head shaved bald, and favors dark velvets with puffed sleeves and leggings.”
“It’s called a Sunward doublet,” I said absently. “A style popular in the Ducal court a generation past.”
Mother Vajpai looked at me strangely a moment. “You may know him for certain by the iron key he wears on a silken thread around his neck. Its head is wrought as a snake’s, with an emerald for one eye and a sapphire for the other. This key unlocks his strongbox.”
“Am I seeking anything within the box?”
She hesitated slightly. “No. Bring the key, that one of the justiciary Mothers might present it before the Bittern Court as proof of justice done.”
That was far too easy to unravel. Crow Wing would stay tied up while the killing was disputed and discussed. Someone in the Bittern Court would make use of the key, I was certain. Had this Michael Curry asked too high a price for the cargo he’d sold here?
I wondered at her hesitation, and my own sense of disgust. “If I cannot fetch the key for some reason, will another proof suffice?”
“As the Goddess works within you, Green.” Relief stood in Mother Vajpai’s eyes.
What test had I passed? Or failed?
“When?”
“Now.”
Here was Arvani’s Pier. I nodded at Mother Vajpai and trotted up the stoneway as if I had every business in the world there.
There were no more rules now. Just as Mother Vishtha had once promised.
Crow Wing was the third ship moored to my left. I wondered what would happen if I stepped aboard and asked in my most formal Petraean to be taken back to Copper Downs.
Likely I’d be thrown into the harbor.
A deckhand idled at the bottom of the gangplank. Someone with that slouch and such a grubby shirt could not possibly be the purser. I made a mental apology to Srini, who had treated me so well aboard Southern Escape, and shouldered past the sailor to walk right up the plank.
“Oi, there,” he snapped in Petraean.
“Don’t you people remember anything?” I demanded in the same language, haughty as my very well trained voice could manage. “I’m back with an answer for Master Curry.” I winked. “One he’s quite anxious to hear.”
“Figured you dogs only spoke yer own yap here,” he muttered. “Go on then, boy, if old Malice is expectin’ yer.”
Patience, I thought. No Death Right penalty had been pronounced against this one, nor was the Right itself now in place for his behavior. I wondered how many dockside bar fights he had started and lost.
I trotted aboard Crow Wing. Another reason to send me on this job was that I knew something of the layout of ships. Curry would be belowdecks in the stern, near the captain’s cabin. All officers and important passengers traveled behind the mast. That had been pounded into me aboard Southern Escape.
Also, I was just as pleased to be a boy in the eyes of the oaf at the dock.
Stepping down the short companionway, the enormity of what I was about to do struck me like a blow to the gut. I staggered into the hot shadows of the corridor beyond and tried very hard to swallow down a heave. My mouth filled with bile, which I was forced to spit out upon the deck.
I was set to kill a man who did not know he was to die. Who probably did not deserve to die, truth be told. Especially not if someone in the Bittern Court was so interested in his strongbox key. The stink of politics was strong enough even for my indifferent nose.
Goddess, I prayed. Lend my heart strength to know the path.
The hot, close air within the rearcastle stirred. I heard for one moment the sharp peal of a child’s laugh. Was that meant to draw me on, or to send me away?
I walked aftward. No doors were marked, of course, but no one was about, either. The widest door at the back would be the captain’s, I supposed. I tried the one on my left, but it rattled, shut tight. An iron lock below the knob told that story. Stepping to the portside, I tried that. Locked as well. I heard a scrape within.
That was most likely him. I drew my bandit knife from the leggings beneath my robe and kicked at his door. It sprang open with a crash that was sure to draw someone to investigate.
My remaining time would be measured in seconds.
Curry was already rising to meet the threat. He was easy enough to recognize from Mother Vajpai’s description, though she hadn’t said that his eyes matched the eyes in his key—one was green, the other blue. He paused when he saw me, and the pistol in his hand drooped away.
“They send a boy?” he asked in Petraean, then laughed with the same cruelty that the Factor had, just before I slew him.
The capped well of my anger broke in a rush like lamp oil spilled over open flame. I would not be mocked.
Firearms were almost unknown in Kalimpura. Even those used on the Stone Coast were as likely to flash in the pan and blind their owners. Some of the best hand-built guns had another system of cartridges and shot, of which I’d been told by Mother Vishtha but had never seen for myself.
This pistol had no pan, so it was one of the new ones.
To cut my risk, I sprang straight toward the weapon. Mother Vajpai might have mentioned the gun, I thought, just as Curry and I collided. I snapped his wrist back, forcing him to drop the pistol as it fired. The noise slapped at my ears, but no bullet pushed me down. Curry tumbled over with a shocked expression, fetching up against a brass-handled cabinet behind his desk.
“You should have answered your summons,” I said through clenched teeth, using Petraean so he would understand me.
He glared as my bandit knife entered just behind his collarbone, striking downward. It took more pressure than I had expected—men had thinner skin than pigs, as I’d been told—but I knew when I’d pierced his heart.
In that moment, I learned I could kill at need, whatever my later regrets.
“You’re the one who . . .” he began. Then he was just so much meat.
“One who what?” I growled, but my words were moot. Voices rose in the corridor as I slid my knife free. Blood followed, but not in the rush it would have if he’d been still alive. I wiped my blade on his shirtfront, then tugged his key loose and slit its string of silk thread and pearls.
If I brought this home, whoever within the Bittern Court had engineered this man’s death would prosper. The law is the law, as they said. A Blade does not judge.
The window was slender and square, relieved with leaded glass in the manner of a ship’s stern lights. I swept up Curry’s pistol and smashed out the glass with the butt. The weapon went into the harbor. Being slender myself, I followed it. His eyes I clutched tight in one hand, my knife in the other. The key I trailed in my fingers, so that the water tore it from me when I splashed hard a dozen feet below.
Much as I had done in my earliest childhood, I kicked like a frog to swim away from Crow Wing. I could pass under Arvani’s Pier where the stonework was arched to let the tidal swells through. This was less a bridge and more a sewer, but it was enough for me. I slipped into shadow with the garbage and the flotsam. There my feet found stone to cling to amid the tidewrack stench. There I cried for the death of a man I’d never known.
Yet somehow he knew me.
I waited in the shadows. A great deal of shouting went on above in both Petraean and Seliu. Whistles blew, and at one point I heard a clash of sticks and fists, followed by someone being thrown cursing into the harbor. Eventually the combination of being soaking wet and the rank odors began to irritate me sufficiently to risk moving. Besides that, something had tried to nibble on my legs.
Tucking away both knife and eyeballs, I slipped out the far side and clung to the stonework as I clambered toward the footings of the Street of Ships. I was forced to pass two close-moored vessels as I did so. The first hull towered above me, rocking less than two feet from the stone of the pier. A shadowed wall of mossy barnacles threatened my skin. I tried not to consider what would become of me if a swell pushed the ship toward the dock.
The second such passage terrified me as well, but it was already becoming familiar. I could not just climb up. Too many people with official business were on the dock disputing recent events. Surely the Bittern Court would send its word. Though not, I realized, until I returned with my proof.