by Jay Lake
Not so this one.
He was even taller than the Tavernkeep, and broad-chested in a way that made me immediately think of some rangy tomcat on the prowl. He wore no robe, carried no sword, only a small satchel woven of tight-plaited leaves. The fur of his chest was matted into little shapes—squares, hexes, more irregular patches—each drawn up into a clasp that I recognized as knucklebone. The net of skin this exposed showed both the shifts of supple muscle and a goodly number of scars.
His eyes were feral, too, a deep liquid gold where the Dancing Mistress’ were like water flowing on a summer day. His ears stood a bit larger and longer than hers, ragged-edged as if they’d been shredded by fighting.
Claws out, he flicked open one hand. A flower was crushed within. For a moment, I thought this another sending of the Lily Goddess, but it was an orchid. Likely one of the pale blossoms of the highest forests.
We studied one another. Where the Dancing Mistress flowed through the people of Copper Downs, the street avoided this one. Few stared, and no one tried to meet his eye, but everyone knew he was here.
“He is from the Blue Mountains,” Septio said quietly. “Somewhere high in the ranges, where they still keep the older ways. Such a one rarely comes to the cities of men.”
The pardine answered in the Dancing Mistress’ language. I recognized the sounds, but could say nothing in reply. Perforce I used Petraean, though I doubted he spoke it. I made my words slow and clear.
“I have urgent need of a healer of your people. The Dancing Mistress is at the edge of life. Can you render aid, or do you know one who can?”
He stared at me a moment longer, unblinking. This is like talking to a bullock, I thought.
“She is the one who sits on the Interim Council?”
I could not keep the startlement from my face. His accent was a bit off, but his command of the language was perfectly clear. “Yes.”
“I was told she had gone across the sea.”
“She came back. Now she is in great pain, at risk of dying.”
“Risk? We are all at certainty of dying.” His face split open in what I knew had to be a smile, though several people passing by broke into a run. “Where is she?”
“The Algeficic Temple,” said Septio.
“You will show me.”
I was torn. I wanted to follow him, to see her over his shoulder as the Pater Primus would not let me go myself. I was certain I must still find the Tavernkeep, and pass the word among those of her people for whom this city was home.
“Will you go with this priest?” I asked.
“I find priests delightful,” the pardine said. His voice was a deeper rumble than I’d heard before. His claws plucked at several bones knotted across his chest. “I keep my favorites very close by.”
“Take him to the temple,” I told Septio. “Once I find the Tavernkeep, I will go to the Textile Bourse on Lyme Street. Seek me there when you are done.” I jabbed his gut with my finger. “Send word of whatever becomes of her, if you value any goodwill from me ever again.”
Septio nodded, then looked up at the pardine.
“I am the Rectifier,” the big cat said, then showed his teeth again.
It was just as good to be away from them. In the course of time, the Rectifier would become a great friend, and there was something of the rogue in him that I liked even then at the first, but I was so distracted in the moment of our meeting, I did not pay sufficient attention to his words. His friendship is like the friendship of fire to a man—it will burn a house down as readily as it will warm winter stew.
If not for his kindly nature, his killing ways would have made a terror of him.
As is so often the case, I eventually discovered the Tavernkeep where he belonged—in his tavern. I passed breathless through the front door for what must have been the dozenth time. He held my paper before him with a thoughtful expression.
“You are back!” I shouted. “We need a healer! Well, needed. I have found some help.”
“I am pleased you located aid,” the Tavernkeep said mildly. “I can seek more at need, but whom did you send?”
“Some great brute of your people. He is called the Rectifier.”
The Tavernkeep’s ears stood up tight, in a manner I recognized from arguments with the Dancing Mistress. “You sent the Rectifier into a human temple?”
I paused at his tone, and thought on what the huge pardine had said about the bones woven into the fur of his chest. Not that I had any great loyalty to the Pater Primus and his little band of finger-choppers, but I had not intended to send violence into their house, either. “Was that ill done?”
“Possibly.” The Tavernkeep seemed divided between alarm and amusement. “It will be a day for them all to remember.” He folded my note. “What is the nature of her injuries?”
“She was battered badly in a fight with a sending of the god Blackblood. It then dragged her some distance. I fear both the breaking of a hard combat lost, and damage to her soulpath for being taken into the depths of the Algeficic Temple.”
He frowned. “I will fetch Healer and several others, that we might run together at need. Are you coming?”
“No.” I hated saying that. “I am charged to go before the Interim Council, in part as a requirement by the priests before they will release the Dancing Mistress. If I go back to the temple, I will not have filled that commitment.”
“Go, then. I will have what is needful to her within a few spans of minutes.”
“Tavernkeep? . . .”
He paused in his busyness. “Yes?”
“Will the Rectifier hurt her more?”
“No. Yet his help may not be what she wishes for most.”
I fled. Regret warred with shame in my heart. I should have stood by the Dancing Mistress. Could have. Except now I did the bidding of two deities. And what she wanted, of course. I had to hold on to that idea. This was what she wanted.
From the nameless tavern to Lyme Street was a quick enough walk. I passed out of the warehouses of the brewing district and through a few blocks of crowded houses before I made it onto the street. There had been tanneries there once, before they moved out to the eastern edge of Copper Downs. Some of the huge old buildings now held coach barns and stables. Others had been made into mercantiles for lumber and other goods that needed space.
Beyond them, Lyme Street was home to cobblers, tailors, and weavers, as well as to several felt works. The Textile Bourse, unlike many guild buildings either in this city or Kalimpura, was proudly close to its roots. I had not been within, and we had not passed by during our tours of recent days for fear of being called in, but the Dancing Mistress had pointed to it from a distance several times.
A facade of carved granite seemed intended to provide gravitas to the trade. The stairs were flanked by a statue of baled wool on one side, and a stone replica of a felting vat on the other. Someone had planted flowers in the vat, though now it was mostly weedy stems and dead leaves. The banner of Copper Downs hung from the roof, blocking the central windows—a copper shield in four parts, with a coronet and a ship. As I had been so carefully taught to read such symbols, more properly it was quarterly, in the first, on a field tenné a ducal coronet surmounting a ship on the sea proper; in the third, a field tenné; second and third, a field sanguine.
Somehow I was surprised they had not stricken the coronet.
A pair of guards stood before the entrance atop a half flight of steps. They wore the same raw leather as the fool at the treasury had, and each held a pike. As I walked up, one dipped his weapon to stop me.
“Ain’t going in, boy. Especially not with that there mask on. In any case, they’s busy.”
I could hardly pick a fight here. “I am sent for.”
“Now you’re being sent away.”
They both chuckled.
“Federo wishes to speak to me.”
The chuckling stopped. The pikeman’s eyes tightened. “And you are being certain you wish to speak to himself? Ai
n’t no great treat, I don’t reckon.”
I thought of the certain pleasures of feeding him to Skinless, but held on to my rising irritation. “I won’t know until I go in.”
He took a step back and banged on a door featuring stained-glass images of the wonders of felt. An elderly, dry-faced clerk looked out.
The guard pointed at me. “This one say’s ’e’s for Federo.”
The clerk looked me up and down. “I do not believe we sent for a boy assassin. Surely you belong on Lobscouse Street among the music halls.”
I undid my veil and showed him the scars upon my cheeks.
“Perhaps I am wrong,” the clerk said smoothly. “I see the rumors of your arrival did not overstate the case.”
“Thank you,” I told the guard sweetly.
The blacks were good enough for Kalimpura, where it seemed that there were as many modes of dress as there were people. Here where the costume was native to the stage, at least, I just looked strange. Veils were not in fashion especially, nor masks.
Now that I was in the Textile Bourse, there was little need for more secrecy. I tucked the veil away in my satchel as I followed the clerk through the doors.
The hallway within had once been grand. Today it was mostly crowded. Shelves and cabinets and desks were shoved in roughly squared arrays across the marble floor. Maps had been strung up over the portraits of long-dead bourse presidents. People trotted back and forth with papers in their hands, scratched with fountain pens, or met in little knots of two and three. Customs duties and the licenses of trade and guild had not stopped simply because a throne had fallen.
“As you see,” the dry clerk said, “we are quite occupied. We find it efficacious to place the tax and fee work here, where public complaints can be met. Please, come with me.”
I followed him through an irregular path threading across the room in twists and turns. The place was noisy, in a way that oddly reminded me of Below with its whispers and distant echoes. We mounted a grand staircase, now mostly a document repository, complete with little notes pinned to stacks of paper and ledgers. Once we’d cleared the wide turn that swept away from the tax floor, things were much more quiet.
The clerk paused at the top of the flight. “You are the girl, of course.” His voice almost seemed to click. “I am Mr. Nast.”
“My name is Green, Nast.”
“And my name is Mr. Nast, Green.” His smile was more of a mobile wrinkle on his face. “I expect we shall be the dearest of friends.”
I could not help but laugh at that.
Mr. Nast led me down a hall of offices that overflowed with more people at their work. A few were women, but most were stout, older men. The walls here were stacked with paper as well. A large door at the end held another square of stained glass illustrating even more of the wonders of felt. An argument could be heard within.
Nast rapped sharply on the door.
“We are in confidential session!” shouted a voice.
“Sir,” the old clerk called. “The girl Green is here.”
Silence fell. Behind me, the bustle of the hall died. I looked back to see pale faces peeking out of doorways. A young woman stood with an armload of folders, hand covering her mouth.
“You may enter,” the old clerk told me. “Best of luck, young lady.”
I pushed open the door and stepped inside to finally meet Federo once more.
Five people were seated within. I scanned as I would facing any threat, eyes leaping to their weapons, the exits—for a moment I was a Lily Blade on the point of action. Then I met Federo’s gaze, and I was once more just a girl beneath a pomegranate tree, waiting for my secret friend to return.
Those feelings swept over me like waves crossing a bar. They passed as quickly as they came, and once more I was fully and only myself.
Federo’s yellow-brown hair was darker, except where it was shot through with gray. His face was seamed as well, as though he’d worn the years far more heavily than I. Even his eyes seemed to have faded.
For a long second, there was a hard look upon him; then his face split into a great smile. “Green!” he shouted, leaping up from the leather chair in which he’d been sitting. He raced around the table, saying in Seliu, “Welcome, welcome back,” just before he collided to hug me close.
That felt real, at least, though I wondered at the passing hardness. When we pulled apart, I said in the same language, “I am honored to be in your home,” using a formal register that emphasized his possession. Then, looking past him, “Do they know of all my deeds?”
“Only the least bit.” His eyes flicked away like birds on the wing, giving his words the lie. “What is needed, nothing more.”
My heart filled with sadness that he should begin our reunion with untruth. The Dancing Mistress had mistrusted something in him. I could already see why, if not what.
“Meet the Interim Council,” he said in Petraean. Three of the four I did not recognize, but last was the Pater Primus of Blackblood’s temple, dressed now in a formal cutaway with a bloodred waistcoat beneath. He now far more resembled a banker than a fruitier. Without his cowl I could see his hair was that rare and strange northern orange, blond alloyed with copper. He nodded slightly to acknowledge my recognition, but did not invite me to greet him.
Puzzled, I allowed Federo to lead.
“This is Loren Kohlmann,” he said, pointing to a rotund gentleman with no hair on his head or eyebrows. Kohlmann was dressed in an anonymous gray suit, which could indicate any of the monied professions. Pale like the others, the man had dark eyes. His fat did not hang in folds, which suggested hidden muscle. “Loren speaks for the warehousemen and commodity brokers.”
Federo then pointed to the man to Kohlmann’s left, sandy-haired with the burnt-brown skin and rough leanness of a sailor, though he was also in a suit. I might have trusted the set of his eyes had I met him by a dock somewhere. “This is Captain Roberti Jeschonek. He speaks for the shipping trades, and those who work ashore in their behalf.”
The next man was the Pater Primus, of course. “Yonder sits Stefan Mohanda. He represents the banks and bourses of Copper Downs.” Mohanda nodded again, challenging me with his smile. Now I understood the masks and cowls, though I wondered why he had shown himself to me back in Blackblood’s temple.
“Our last councilor is Mikkal Hiebert. He speaks for the carters, the laborers, and all the building trades.” Hiebert grinned at me. Overdressed in brightly colored robes, he had the look of a man who enjoyed life far more than most.
“The Dancing Mistress speaks for those who are not Petraean by birth or tribe,” Federo concluded.
I wanted to ask who spoke for the poor, for children, for women, for the tens of thousands of people in this city who had no voice in this room. I held my tongue, not being a fool. In their way, these proud northerners had reinvented the Courts of Kalimpura. I could not resist a twitting, though. “I am surprised that your renascent gods do not have a voice on the Interim Council.”
Another shadow passed across Federo’s face within an eye blink. “The Temple Quarter has ways of making its requirements known.”
At least he managed not to look at Mohanda. Could this be what he was hiding? It would fit—a sending of Mohanda’s god had come for me and the Dancing Mistress, then struck her down. This removed her from the situation and left me to rely on Federo. The man who had stolen me away in the beginning of my life.
“Have you yet received the story of what befell the Dancing Mistress this last night?” I was not above a hard look at the priest who hid himself as a banker.
“Word came this morning,” Federo told me solemnly. “She was wounded saving you from attack in the Below, then a young priest took you both to safety. I have heard she recovers within the Algeficic Temple.”
“Yes. That cult is well connected, it would seem.”
Everyone laughed, including Mohanda. When the smiles had died, quickly enough, I pressed on to the true point. “I have been dragged bac
k across the Storm Sea to aid you in your defense against a bandit in these hills. I have heard he is a man, I have heard he is a rising god. I have heard he burns all in his path. I have heard he takes farms and villages into his protection. I expect I’ll soon hear he has fangs a yard long, but is also toothless.” I looked around. “Have any of you met Choybalsan?”
They all turned to Federo. He appeared uncomfortable: genuinely so this time, not another lie folded a moment too late. “I have followed him through these hills in every season of the last two years. I have spoken with his lieutenants, even walked among his armies. He is often gone, always when I have come to treat with him.”
It sounded idiotic to me. “How can a man roam the lands north of here for two years, complete with a fearsome army, and never come close to the city?”
Kohlmann cleared his throat. “Two years ago, his army was less than a dozen riders from the Karst Hills.” He looked around. “Or so we were told. He burned a few stables and raided a manor house up in the Snowmarch River valley. A season later, he was on the road with two score younger sons who might otherwise have taken ship or joined some guard here in Copper Downs.”
“The army, in the sense you mean it, is an artifact of this summer season,” Jeschonek said gruffly. “He was first a raider, a rouser of unsatisfied country rabble. Now he has too many men and must find a city to house and feed them.”
I looked back to Federo. The former dandy seemed so careworn. I wondered what plan he and the Pater Primus had in motion, and who would be betraying whom. Federo smiled. Fatigue was plainly upon him.
“You went looking for this man when he was riding with a dozen spears, bothering vineyards?” I asked.
“In fact, yes.” He sighed. “That was the first season of this Council’s rule. We’d heard of burnings out in the country, which seemed ill-omened, given how recently riot had ended here within Copper Downs. I went up to see, and came upon Syndic Alburth’s manor an afternoon too late. So this trouble has been slipping my fingers from the first.”