by Jay Lake
His brother picked up the thread again. “This hermetic tradition has prevailed since the time of the titanics. For even now one or another of the oldest, deepest gods may sometimes emerge into the workaday world.”
I almost spoke of my meeting with Desire in the ruins of Marya’s temple, but held my tongue in the face of their unfortunate views on women. Instead I offered, “Choybalsan was a new god emergent on the strength of an older power requiring a vessel.”
Osi nodded gravely. “Hear this, one of the greatest secrets, a secret so great that it abides in plain sight for any who wish to pluck at its wisdom. All gods are the same, beneath even their bones.”
Iso: “There are magics and magics in the world. You already know this, in your life. You have told us of petty miracles, finding lily petals in the wake of a great moment.”
His brother continued, “Or the small readings the arbogasters perform in the market for a bent copper tael and a handful of beans. Their price may be mean, but their power is no less to those who scrimp to purchase such seeings.”
“I understand something of these matters,” I protested. “There are layers in all the world. This does not surprise me. How could it, unless I were a fool? There are layers in this city. Layers of class, layers of politics, layers above and below the streets.”
“Do you understand,” Iso asked, “that all those layers are but the same? As if you folded a piece of silk, and looked at each fold separately, but then spread it flat again.”
Osi added, “The gods worshipped in the temples of the city are to the titanics as the avatars of those gods are to their temple masters.”
“Tulpas,” I breathed. “The ghosts below.”
Iso nodded vigorously. “You already know something of this lesson. But even the great titanics themselves are as the ghosts below to the Urges who first made the plate of the world and directed the string of suns in their course across the endless sky.”
“All layers,” his brother said. “The silk folds endlessly ever upon itself.”
As silk did, ringing softly with the voice of thousands of bells. I could see in memory my grandmother’s silk flowing down her shoulders, her last voice in this world. Each bell like a little god, planted in the folds of life?
Still, coming from the twins, the words seemed to border on sophistry. Yet at the same time, their description resonated with much of what I had experienced firsthand. “You ask who made the garden in which Father Sunbones and Mother Mooneyes first waked the birds and beasts of this world?” Desire, when She’d manifested to me, had been so large. Even a fraction of Her emotions, Her grief and pity, had threatened to batter my soul to shreds. “So you say the gods are all the same at their bones, as with this unfolded sheet of silk. In your conception, there is no difference but that of degree between the Urges and the titanics and the gods of a city and the ghosts that haunt the high graves or the dark sewers.” Like bells of different sizes, ringing together.
“Precisely,” the brothers said in unison. A shared expression of smug triumph passed across their faces. I wondered what point it was they thought they’d scored, beyond sharpening a small facet of my education.
Yet, even though the idea appealed with a symmetry that was pleasing to my mind, and echoed nicely with my own memories, it could not simply be so. Otherwise, what was the purpose? That everything turned upon itself, and was the same, again and again?
Osi spoke, as if turning aside my question as yet unasked. “If you comprehend this hierarchy among the gods, and how it is not so much rungs on a ladder as points on the grade of a hill, then you understand the gods and their relationships to power.”
“A ghost, or a weak avatar, survives on his own power,” I said slowly, setting aside the larger question in favor of their example. Now I was thinking of the two ghosts I was personally acquainted with. Both the Factor, whom I knew well, and Erio, whom I barely knew at all, had been mighty persons in their life. In the case of the Factor, his continued presence seemed to have been driven more by strength of purpose than sheer, simple birthright. Or any supposed place in some divine order of the world. I knew nothing of Erio’s rule or his life history, but the arrogance of his tomb suggested much.
The twins nodded in time with my thoughts.
Fine, I knew how to follow a lesson. I considered the hierarchy. “An avatar, a strong one at least—” Here I thought of Mother Iron and Skinless. “—survives from energy of place or purpose, usually lent by a god. Or perhaps a modest following of their own. People might offer small sacrifices. While a god, for example, Choybalsan or Blackblood, must have the prayers and pieties of priests and a congregation. But a god writ large enough, a titanic such as Desire, lives off the strength of other gods.” As wolves live off the strength of deer? “Urges would be an expression of the strength of the entire world taken as a whole. Do I have the right of it?”
Osi stirred, but Iso spoke. No look passed between them, but as so often was the case, I felt as though I’d witnessed a shared thought. “A fair summary. In your terms, the worship of men falls at what seems to us the midpoint of the scale. We can glimpse larger forces as we see distant storms on the horizon. We can take smaller ones almost in hand as if they were aspects of the natural world, like morning mist or shells on a beach.”
I tried to imagine taking Mother Iron in hand. Their model of the universe certainly did not account for every possibility. Which was all the more of a pity, as it possessed a certain elegance of form.
Osi: “The titanics are mostly departed. Sundered, shattered, lost to us back in the time when the lands on the plate of the world were first peopled with men and beasts.” His voice slowed, as if he thought carefully to see forward through his words. “Yet you mentioned Desire.”
His interest in the mother-goddess bothered me, though I could not yet say how. “I was raised for a time in the Temple of the Lily Goddess, who so far as I understand these things is a daughter of Desire. She was the first titanic who came to mind.” I reached for another example, from the stories I’d read. “We are all slaves of Her brother Time, for example, but I do not treat with him, or do his bidding.”
Iso quirked a smile. “Every one of us does time’s bidding. You are not exempt, Mistress Green.”
“As may be.” I resolved to change the subject, for this conversation had gone far deeper into the seductive trappings of theory and principle than I’d intended. Certainly I would not be discussing Desire’s manifestation with these twins. Not until I understood their fascination better. “I am here today to seek very practical advice from you in the matter of Blackblood. Surely he is a splinter of some titanic god, but I could not name his theogenitor. He makes a claim upon the child I carry, a claim that I deny as false. I would deter him and avoid his scrutiny. That would be a great gain for me. Can your hermetic knowledge teach me to protect and shield my child?”
Could it serve to cloak me in divine benison, like my belled silk?
The twins exchanged another glance. This one was long and slow, and I received the impression less of a shared thought than of an entire extended dialogue passed wordless right before me.
Their sheltering warehouse bulked large and silent, and this morning, cold. The rain outside was a harbinger of the increasingly foul winter weather of this city, though autumn was not yet completely fled from the rooftops and gutters and ragged-leaved trees. A storm or two from now and the very air would be worrying at the building’s corners like a dog gnawing a bone. Today it was merely a cloak of wet and stolid quiet, tingeing the harbor-scent of the wind and undermining my own hopes.
Finally Osi spoke. “Our rites are our own. You know that we share little with women.”
Iso sounded embarrassed as he added, “Never in our pilgrimage have we before experienced the least temptation to open our wisdom to any female.”
“Never before now,” his brother added. “You are different.”
“We will show you some of the ways of shielding yourself from t
he eyes of a god.” Or goddess, I thought, as Iso went on: “And we will think on how to turn aside this Blackblood’s thrust of divine will.”
No one would claim my child. Not Blackblood, not Desire. No one but me. Even my claim as mother was only proxy on my daughter’s eventual claim upon herself.
* * *
I spent several productive days with Iso and Osi. Even now, after all that later took place, I recognize that they stand among the greatest teachers I ever knew. Before sundown I would leave them and find quiet corners in which to sleep about the wintering city. The warehouse district offered possibilities for protected rest among untended burlap sacks or just above the musty warmth of stables. I was just as glad I’d placed my silk in Endurance’s care for a little while. It was bulky, delicate, and not always so silent as I required.
I did not need to seek out food, as the twins were kind enough to provide for me, though we never shared directly. In regard to my being absent from the affairs of Copper Downs, it suited me that Mother Vajpai and Samma and Surali might think me plotting against them with hidden forces. Sadly, I had no such forces, but the fears of my enemies were ever my allies. As for Chowdry, he could manage Little Baji on his own. Whatever the pardine Revanchists were about did not concern me until they chose to make it my affair. Which they would, soon enough, if Samma’s theft of the Eyes of the Hills and subsequent loss of them to me were to become known.
This education was different, more focused than what had taken up earlier years of my life. Instead of spending my days fighting, or learning the finer points of some household art, I labored at understanding the mechanisms and foibles of the gods. While this warehouse was neither the Pomegranate Court nor the Temple of the Silver Lily, I was back in the schoolgirl’s seat again by my own choice.
I enjoyed the process immensely.
Iso and Osi taught just as they spoke—with shared voice and overlapping movement. Again and again I was struck by their almost eerie closeness, and wondered how they would have fought, if their rite had called upon them to be so trained. I resolved that if I should ever have the raising of children beyond my own—a possibility, given my eventual ambitions in Kalimpura—that I would school them much as I had been, across a broad range of skills and interests, save without the bondage and petty cruelties. And I would pay very special attention indeed to any twins who came into my care.
Gods tended to settle into their temples and places of power. That was obvious enough. The mechanisms were not so clear. Newborn, drunk with the energy of their creation, as both Choybalsan and Endurance had been, they could walk the world. Older gods like barnacles became not so much senescent as sedentary. Their miracles grew quieter. Here I thought of the Lily Goddess and how She spoke to the Temple Mother back in Kalimpura. Much like the difference between a maple seed spinning on the wind and a tree rooted and grown large.
“But,” I asked, “a god cannot grow into a titanic, right? They were possessed of the power of their place and time at the morning of the world. This gradient of rank you speak of does not flow smoothly in both directions.”
Iso smiled at me, the broad, quick grin of a teacher’s pleasure in their student. “The world changes. A flower cannot grow on hard rock, or salty sand. In these later ages, the plate of the earth no longer offers fallow soil rich enough for titanics to take root.”
“So only those titanics such as Time”—and Desire—“who survived from before the sundering of the gods are still about.”
“No one raises temples to them,” Osi said quite seriously.
“They are woven into the fabric of this crowded world.” I wondered what those words of mine said about the titanics. Was stifling your siblings from returning to their power blessed foresight or the worst sort of betrayal?
Iso frowned. “Fair enough. For now.”
We continued to pursue related matters. How worshippers affected a god. Why altars might be broken, and even a little of how; then far more of why not and how not to do such things. What the true role of priests was—not intermediaries for divine favor, as I’d always understood, but serving to shield people who might follow the god from the raw force of divine regard. Which explained some of Chowdry’s behaviors. He had been changing. Even the diffident, reluctant pirate Chowdry I’d met aboard Chittachai would have thought it the height of idiocy to leave a gate unguarded, or at least unbarred. The new Chowdry infected by Endurance’s almost overwhelming mute nonviolence had done exactly that.
“Gods are like an ague or a grippe,” I argued. “A plague of faith spreads about a place. It rages early and strong. Soon the people most subject to be taken by it have been infected, while the rest make their accommodations. In time faith subsides, mostly affecting travelers and newborns and those with a sudden change of circumstance. Priests carry faith the strongest. They spread the complaint, while also shielding the worst of its effects.” I wondered how this explanation squared with, for example, the betrayal of Blackblood by Pater Primus and his hierarchy.
Osi shook his head. “I would not have thought to explain it so, Mistress Green, but it seems that you have a grip upon the question.”
“So the gods need us to carry them through the world, as fleas need the rats who carry them from ship to ship and port to port. What do we need them for?”
“You of all people should be able to answer that,” Iso replied sharply.
In the course of our instruction, I’d told them more of my own history and the various events that had brought me to this point. Judiciously edited, of course, to protect the guilty. I also continued to avoid any reference to my encounter with Desire. I’d come to appreciate that while these two did not have personal interests in the disputes of Copper Downs, they certainly had purposes that might not be fully aligned with mine.
Choosing my words carefully, I ventured a reply. “We need them for protection from ourselves, I suppose.”
“Go on,” Osi said.
Somehow, in my readings this question about our need for gods had always been assumed to be a basic condition of humanity. “Blackblood is a pain god. He relieves suffering, in a sense. That is his rite and sacrament. I know there are temples in this city devoted to the rites of death, and others to healing. There are gods for sailors and shepherds and to watch over women. But such a view renders our gods into little more than guildmasters, parceling out skills and favors for those who petition correctly at need.”
“Some gods are small,” Iso replied. “To meet small needs.”
“Faith,” said Osi, “any faith, charts a course through life. Sets a purpose. If one’s life has enough room in it to look beyond another meal and a safe place to sleep, one begins to ask questions. Questions faith, and a god, can help answer.”
I thought of Shar’s unquiet desperation on my father’s poor sliver of land back in Bhopura. Her life had no room to look beyond her next starveling meal. By contrast, the Temple of the Silver Lily was packed full of fractious, well-fed women who asked questions all the time. And demanded answers. Was it fair to say that we there had faith and Shar did not? “Not so much faith,” I answered, finishing my thought aloud, “as a framework for living.”
Iso pounced. “Consider that the Urges gave a framework for the titanics, and the titanics gave a framework for the splintered gods, and the gods give a framework for their avatars.”
“And people give a framework for the entire spectrum of the divine,” I pointed out. “This is a circle, not a slope. If they help us with our purposes, surely we help them with theirs? How else will a sailor’s goddess know that the sea is her domain if sailors and their widows do not bring her their prayers?” Surely drowning men saw someone.
“Yet some purposes are higher and deeper.” Osi again. “And stand outside the small needs.”
“Our rite is such a one,” Iso added. “We pursue a map of the dispersion. In doing so, we seek to redress an ancient wrong so that the world might be better balanced.”
But they would speak no mor
e of that. Foolishly, I let the matter drop.
* * *
In the course of three days we ranged across theory, practice, and purpose. Along with the rest of my abbreviated lessons—such a syllabus, to cram into so few words and scant hours—they showed me how the view of a god into the world is colored by his worshippers and his purposes, and thus how one might hide oneself away from a god’s eye with crafty misdirections. A certain symbol scratched upon a wall might draw aside the mystic power present in a place. The one who placed it there could pass through unobserved. A prayer or rite, if known, could be turned in on itself and to a degree the effects would be reversed. A gathering-in of both the spirit and the body, following certain signs, could make one as silent and small as a shadow on the wall. Walking in curves provided no angles to reflect the attention of the divine.
Strange and useful lore, much of it with applications in the more mundane world of Blades and runs and street violence. Further proof to my thinking that the gods were not so different from us. Just … more.
We also talked directly about how to thwart Blackblood in his purposes, given the manner in which I understood them at the time. Or at least we did so as directly as Iso and Osi ever spoke of anything. “Even gods may be trapped, stopped.”
Killed, I thought, recalling Marya, and Desire’s grief amid Her ruined temple. Who would cry so for Blackblood should he depart the world? The fall of Choybalsan had not riven the city both because he was so new, and because his power had been preserved in the form of Endurance. In a sense, this was true of Marya as well: The grief of the titanic Desire served to focus Her attention, likely providing the energy that kept the death of Marya from echoing far more widely. Who would hold Blackblood’s place in matters divine?
I knew from my readings in my younger years that the cost of god killing was high, not necessarily to the killers, but to those who lived on after. Nothing Iso and Osi had said now led me to believe otherwise.
At that price, would I be willing to strike Blackblood down if he did not give me and my daughter his leave to pursue our lives as we would? This is what my newfound teachers hinted at.
