by Jay Lake
A strange smile crossed the Dancing Mistress’ face. “It will be a test of your ability to pass.”
I nodded and set to dressing. Sometimes I still missed my belled silk, but I’d tried to remake it so many times that the cloth seemed to exist only as effort, not as a reward.
With my face covered, I climbed back to the deck and stood by the rail. We approached Copper Downs in the watery gray light of a lowering rain.
Even with the weather, I could see much of the city as we edged into the harbor. My memory of the bells proved true—buoys, other ships, warnings ringing from rocks, welcomes sounding from the shore.
All that was missing was the clop of Endurance’s bell. The ox was so far away now, dismissed from my dreams along with everything else from those days once I’d gone back and found the misery in which my papa lived. The sound of the harbor reminded me of how much I’d missed them when Federo had first brought me across the sea almost thirteen years ago.
I had few tears left, but the rain made my cheeks slick all the same.
Copper Downs spread before me. Metal roofs gleamed in the rain. Masts bristled along the docks, though not half what I was used to seeing at the Avenue of Ships in Kalimpura. Many moorings were empty as well. Some of the warehouses had burned and not been rebuilt, though judging from the waterfront bustle, that fighting was long since settled.
Two years settled? I wondered.
The Dancing Mistress found me again as Lucidinous slowed to dead in the water just off the docks.
“Srini gave me a chit of our accountings for the voyage.” She passed me a pair of papers folded together, which I slipped within my blacks. “I have written a note requesting the disbursement.”
Making a new port was one of the busiest times for a purser. That Srini had found any moments to spare for her was good. Well, good and the captain’s orders. “Where do I go?”
“The treasury is in the Ducal Palace—the only place with strong rooms not serviced from the payroll of some trading house or great family.” Concern edged into her voice. “Will that sit well with you?”
I felt a rush of memory. “The palace is just a place like any other.” Untrue, but it was also what I must say.
She blurted her next words. “Find the Spindle Street entrance, and ask there for Citrak or Brine. They will know my hand and sign.”
“What surety will they require from me?”
“My note should be sufficient. If they ask, your name is Breaker.”
Bells rang from the poop. The kettle belowdecks shrieked as Lucidinous crept to her tie-up. The rail was lined with sailors and passengers. Copper Downs might as well have been the vessel’s home port. Longshoremen and dock idlers crowded the quay—crowded in the northern sense, at any rate—while vendors and prostitutes and others of the usual dockside sort waited close behind with their colored rags and bright slips of paper.
Once we were secured to the bollards, a plank went down. Srini and two burly hands stood there to watch who and what came off and on. As I understood it, they would first let the crush of people clear, then release those hands that were to take leave in this port. After that, the dockside cranes would bring out the cargoes. Lucidinous might be on her way by tomorrow.
I had a few hours to fetch money back. Shouldering through the crowded deck, I nodded to Srini. He returned the nod; then I set foot once more in the city of my long captivity.
Perhaps I expected the heavens to open, or the Lily Goddess to speak, or ghosts to rise from the stones. In truth, three paces after clearing the plank, I was the same woman I’d been three paces before. The crowd was simple to thread through after my time in Kalimpura, while my air of swaggering menace came back to me easily enough. All my costume needed now was a weapon to back up the implied threat.
I was Green. I was back in Copper Downs. So far, no one had noticed.
Spindle Street was not difficult to locate. I followed it away from the harbor and through a succession of neighborhoods.
Copper Downs was infected with a furtiveness I did not recall from my glimpses of street life in prior years. Our night runs from the Pomegranate Court had been among people laughing, drinking, following their business through the darkness. From Federo’s hidden attic, I’d observed a city of tradesmen and laborers hard at work. There had been no sense of desperation. People did not spend their time checking over their shoulders, or hesitate to round corners.
Here, now, they did. The only ones who walked with confidence were swordsmen, and the few protected by such guards. Ordinary people—baker’s boys, mothers leading their children, clerks, carters, and messengers—seemed fearful.
Of what? I wondered. The riots were several years past. The Dancing Mistress had not mentioned attacks in the street.
My concept of the geography was still sketchy, but I knew the temple district was off to my right, and the Dockmarket behind me, not far east of the Quarry Docks. The old wall rose some distance to my left. Beyond it lay a district of quiet streets and iron gates, where the Factor’s house stood. That was one place that riot could have claimed and I would not have mourned.
I crested a low rise where Spindle Street bent slightly west of north. The Ducal Palace rose before me six storeys tall, not so much a castle or a fortress as a manor house grown impossibly large. As I recalled, there had been no wall, just a garden. That had become a flowered overgrowth in the cool climate of the Stone Coast. A wooden gate of obviously recent construction stood open where Spindle Street met Montane Street running alongside the palace grounds.
Here was the Interim Council’s treasury.
As I approached, I found my stride slowing. I had exited the palace at this point the day the Duke fell. Could I locate the window in the Navy Gallery through which I’d slipped? From there, I might even retrace my steps. I wondered who was inside besides Citrak and Brine and whatever toughs protected them.
Instead I marched through the wooden gates and up a muddy path to a doorway that had once served the palace as an ornamental entrance to the garden. There I found a young man in poorly tanned leather armor, chewing on a reed. He seemed unconcerned, in contrast to the fearful state of the rest of the city.
“I am looking for Citrak or Brine,” I announced.
“Mikie’s gone off to his mum’s for grub.” The young man’s eyes were hazel. He was as pale as a fat man’s belly, just like the rest of his countrymen. In a few days, they would come to seem normal to me, but not yet. “Brine’s over at council chambers on a hearing.”
“I have urgent need of funds.”
“Ain’t we all, boy, ain’t we all.”
I leaned close. “The Dancing Mistress has returned across the Storm Sea and must buy her passage off the ship Lucidinous.”
“Who?”
Holding in my next words, I showed him Srini’s chit and the letter from the Dancing Mistress. His lips moved as he traced the words with a grubby finger before giving up after two lines. He looked up at me. “You’ll want Citrak or Brine for this, boy.”
There was no reasonable reply to that. So we waited in shared silence for Citrak to return from his mum’s.
When the man did come back, he was annoyed to find me waiting. He was annoyed at the guard for making me wait. He was annoyed at the counting-men within the building for waiting.
I soon realized Michael Citrak was annoyed at everything. He even looked annoyed—slim and fussy with a pursed mouth and frantic eyes that never quite rested their gaze on anyone or anything. His clothes were fussy as well; a maroon cambric shirt that had been pressed to creasing with a flatiron, over tapered wool slacks in a pale gray without a speck of dust on them.
“This is enough money to find you trouble,” he told me. “I know she’s good for it. You lose it, someone will have your head. Probably mine as well. Trusting such a sum to a foreign boy, I don’t know.”
“I shan’t lose it,” I said in my snootiest voice.
He gave me a small velvet purse stitched quickly shu
t with a silvered thread that had been finished in an ornate knot, then sealed with a lead slug and a wax stamp. Clearly it was not for the likes of me to open such a precious burden.
I tucked it away and bowed once. “A wasting upon your goats, and flux on you and all whom you love,” I told him pleasantly in Seliu.
“Foreigners,” he sniffed.
Grinning, I walked out through the garden, past the guard, and down Spindle Street once more. I was fifteen minutes from the ship. There I would be free of my burden.
Four men, rough-faced and thick-bodied with middle age, dropped off a wagon tailgate as I approached. They didn’t even bother to flank me.
“Give it up, boy,” the one with the thickest beard said. “Whatever you came up this road to fetch from the palace. We don’t got time for foolery.” He held a cudgel. The man to his left was armed with a short knife, similar to my lost bandit blade. The other two flexed their hands like stranglers.
“Are you with Choybalsan?”
“Huh. Smart one, are you? We’re making a living here. You’re losing one.”
“No. I don’t think so.” I took a step back. This would have to be quick, for I needed to return to Lucidinous before Srini thought me a deserter.
“Pound the kid,” the leader said in a tired voice. “Break whatever you want.”
Rushing three steps toward the knife-wielder, I took a high, showy leap. I crashed into his face with my elbows. He was fat and slow on his feet, and tumbled back. My weight went with him to drive his head into the cobbles. I snatched his knife up and turned in one motion to bury it in the gut of their spokesman.
“Good luck making that living,” I snarled. His eyes were wide with shock as he swayed on his feet. Yanking the knife free, I swiped it clean, left and right across his leather shirtfront, then pushed him over with a tap of my fingers.
The other two backed away. I saluted them with the blade, then trotted off to bring the money to the Dancing Mistress.
It was obvious now what the people of this city were afraid of. They didn’t need a bandit king here in Copper Downs when they had each other.
The rain had picked up by the time I returned to Lucidinous. It bore the sharp, dark scent of the ocean. The Dancing Mistress waited at the ship’s rail with Srini. Having a knife in my leggings once more made me happier, though this one was not balanced as well as my old blade. Energized from the mugging, I walked on the balls of my feet.
I might have killed one or both of the two I’d tangled with. Only if the others didn’t fetch some help for their friends, though. In this city, I could be the terror that both the Dancing Mistress and the Blades had trained me up to be.
Stopping next to the base of the plank, I tossed the sewn purse up to the Dancing Mistress. She seemed surprised as she grabbed it out of the air. I scanned the crowd, now mostly sailors and laborers as the debarking passengers and their natural predators had moved on to other business. The Dancing Mistress and Srini counted out the funds, murmuring together. Then she came down the plank followed by Chowdry, who carried a ditty bag he must have cadged from among the crew.
She looked me up and down. “What happened?”
“Someone tried to make trouble.”
“And? . . .”
“And I made trouble for them.” I grinned manically. “Let us be away.”
“Green . . .” Her voice trailed off. She and Chowdry followed me off the quay in silence. The Dancing Mistress plucked at my arm. “If it is your aim not to be known, perhaps you should be discreet.”
She had the right of it. I could have outrun those oafs easily enough. Simply sprinted the other way, then dodged down a cross-street or taken to the roofs. It had felt good to stretch out and really work. I hadn’t cared to play the victim.
“As may be,” I said.
She let it drop and so did I. We stood in the street, Chowdry close by.
“You do not want to go to the Council yet,” the Dancing Mistress finally said. “We have landed almost without notice. What would you do instead?”
I’d given that some thought aboard Lucidinous. Wandering streets almost unknown to me wasn’t a worthwhile way to learn anything of value. While the empty halls of the Ducal Palace had certainly been tempting, I knew my earlier logic about venturing there held true.
“Let us visit the Pomegranate Court,” I told her. “Look over the Factor’s house. See some of the city. Then if we find nothing, go Below. You told me time and again that the underground was the dreaming mind of the city. Let us learn what Copper Downs thinks on now as it drowses.”
Two years of running the streets of Kalimpura had taught me something of how to read a city and her people.
“We will need to settle Chowdry first,” the Dancing Mistress replied. “I know a tavern where he can work the kitchen, sleep beneath the tables in the mornings, and be out of harm’s way.”
Turning to him, I said in Seliu, “You are ashore now. Will you cook in a tavern for a time, to stay hidden?”
“I—I will.” His voice was stricken. “I did not know we came so far. I shall never go home.”
Clapping him on the shoulder, I felt in his sorrow an echo of my own despair. “We will see you settled for now, and return in a few days’ time to figure a better arrangement.” My attention back on the Dancing Mistress, I added, “Is this tavern peaceful, or full of brawls?”
“Oh, very peaceful,” she said. “Let us both take him there, so you can explain to the keeper. Then we will go on together.”
The place she had in mind was run by one of her people, mostly for her people. The inn had no sign, and it stood off a quiet alley near a district of breweries. Chowdry was made welcome with little fuss. I met the first man of the Dancing Mistress’ people I had ever seen.
He kept the bar, though in this place, that did not mean quite what it did elsewhere in the city. Scattered tables held deep stone bowls filled with scented waters. It felt welcoming. Like returning to a home I’d never known.
The bartender, whom I was to know only as the Tavernkeep, stood taller than the Dancing Mistress. His shoulders were no broader than hers, but he was rangier, with longer arms and legs, and larger hands and feet.
“You are she.” He studied me. My costume meant nothing here. Besides, I was fairly sure these people saw almost as much with their noses as with their eyes.
“I am who I am. I am also responsible for this sailor far from home. He believes he may already be in the land of the dead.”
We settled the former Selistani pirate into a very quiet house after some small chaffer. I gave him his duties in his own language, made sure he and the Tavernkeep knew one another’s look—and smell—and then we were back out into the rain. That had turned from the earlier curtains of mist to a vigorous shower, a cold cousin of Kalimpura’s monsoon.
Together we passed through streets vacated by the rain. Another difference: in Kalimpura the traffic barely changed for the weather, except in the face of the occasional full-on typhoon. Here we might almost have been alone in the city.
We passed close to the remains of the old wall with its cap of strange wooden structures, then into a neighborhood of wider streets that showed little sign of regular use. A district of wealth. Finally we found a street with a very familiar block of town houses. A bluestone wall rose on the other side. I drifted to a stop and stared upward.
“I should think we may use the gate now,” the Dancing Mistress said.
“Perhaps. That somehow seems less fitting.” I sprinted for the drainpipe at the far end of the block and swarmed up, much as I had on our night runs long ago. She was half a dozen heartbeats behind me.
On the broad walkway atop the outer wall, I looked down into the yard next to the Pomegranate Court. Whatever tree had stood there—I could not remember now—was gone. Even its base had been torn out. Weeds thrived in the jumbled pile of soil and stone where it had once grown.
Copper had been stripped from the roof beneath my feet. The exposed
beams sagged, covered with rot and mold.
Something inside me fell. “This place is empty,” I whispered.
“Which is why we could have used the front gate.”
“Still . . .” I don’t know what I’d thought to find. Girls in captivity. Perfidy. Bandits living in the rooms of my youth. This was almost as bad as seeing Papa in his hut, Endurance dying in the mud beyond, while that desperate woman Shar looked on me as the thief who would steal her tiny, tiny future.
I had learned cooking and dance and the stories of old here. The swell of regret was surprising.
With dread I stalked down the wall toward the Pomegranate Court. I didn’t want to compass the strides. Rather I wanted to remain safely distant, closed off from whatever had happened there.
You left the place with a corpse cooling behind you, I thought. What do you expect now?
My home had burned. My tree was shattered, spread across the court to rot. The horse box still stood, fairly intact and apparently spared from the fire. The building below my feet was a total loss. There was no body in the yard, at least.
The Dancing Mistress folded me into her shoulder. I was the scourge of this city. I had come to defend, to attack, to right wrongs—not to shed tears for a hated youth from which I had struggled to escape every minute I’d spent here.
“Wh-what happened?”
She hugged me tight, then set me at arm’s length. “His men mutinied.” Her voice was quiet. “The day you met the Duke, once the spells were gone and the word flew across the city on wings of rumor, the guards slew the residential Mistresses. They raped the older girls to death. For their beauty, I suppose. A few of the younger girls escaped. A handful of the visiting Mistresses were trapped as well. Of them, I believe only Mistress Danae emerged alive.”
I was on my knees, heaving as I had done the night I killed Mistress Tirelle. Oh, Goddess. All I had meant to do was find my way out, not call down death on a house full of women. The girls were innocents, just as I had been. Even the Mistresses . . .