by Jay Lake
More to the point, was he deep in his cups now? Or perhaps he was just drinking as the merchants did, lightly through the day to avoid the illnesses in the water and keep the palate sharp?
“What brings you to my domain?” he finally asked. “Surely it is not my legendary hospitality.”
“No,” I told him. “Not hospitality. Rather, your legendary capabilities.”
“Legendary.” He laughed, hollow and tired. “For what?”
“For being a clever, brutal bastard who runs a string of sharp and dangerous boys.” There. If he knew Mother Vajpai, he knew we were Blades. Some flattery from our quarter might go a ways to improving his mood.
“We are shaking down peasants and harassing peddlers. Are you demoting yourself to small-time crime?”
“No, the biggest crime of all. I want to steal my way into Kalimpura, then steal the city from those who would claim it for their own.”
Another long silence. Then: “You do not dream in small doses. But then you never did.” He paused for one, two, three deep breaths. “Mother Vajpai, did you know I cast this one out for being too brutal? Too brutal, among my boys, is a mark of some distinction.”
Her reply surprised me. “The Blades found her brutal as well, but biddable.”
Now there was a lie, but I held my tongue. No one had ever styled me biddable. Not and kept their face straight in the process.
“And ambitious as well, it seems.” Something creaked—the gilded bench he used for a throne, though the gilding was stage paint and mostly flaked away even when I had been here before. “I run a string of pickpockets and sneak thieves. You will not find the rulership of the city on the board of a cart here outside the walls.”
“No. But we are pursued within.” I saw no point in not being clear with him about my immediate goals, as I’d already blurted the outline of my larger plan. “We must get to the docks, specifically Agina’s Pier, without being slain out of hand by the Street Guild, let alone captured. I have … small cargo to be removed from a ship there. And soon.”
“The docks are far from my patch.” Kareen wheezed. “There is nothing I can do. If the Street Guild is out for you, well … That I understand. Much against my judgment, you may remain here tonight for shelter as you need. It will be instructive for my boys to meet you. Some of the oldest still recall your last stay here.”
My fingers brushed Mother Vajpai’s elbow. Overnight was not what I wanted. I needed to feed my babies soon, or at least relieve the tension in my breasts. That would be ill-done here in a camp of boys, where I might find myself pushed to the ground by too many to fight off. And I needed to be back with my children.
Mother Vajpai grasped my wrist, squeezed lightly. “We thank you for your hospitality,” she said. “We will accept for this day. Perhaps tonight our discussions will bear greater fruit.”
“Perhaps,” said Little Kareen. “For now, go. Panjit will show you where to rest, and provide such as we have fit for august visitors like yourselves.”
I bowed, though I doubted he could see me do so in these shadows. We felt our way back to the flap. I glanced back as the light speared inward, but saw only a narrowing triangle of filthy rugs and one edge of his metal stove.
* * *
Evening brought boys large and small filtering into the camp. They appeared as the blackflies do, out of nowhere and suddenly all around in a flock. Panjit had provided us with sour milk and dried dates, and a shaded place to sit. Once the boys began returning, other provisions had come in with them.
There was a very careful buzzing and circling of us as they approached. Not fear, exactly, but wariness. Two women sitting at ease in this camp was unprecedented, I knew. Little Kareen had no use for the foolish and stupid, so I was not worried about being rushed or called out by these ones. At least, not unless he ordered it done.
After a while a delegation led by a boy surely too tall to remain here much longer approached. He spoke cautiously, but with confidence rather than trembling fear. “Ravit says we know you.”
“You might. I was here once.” In truth, I did not recognize him at all, but that was how children grew, I supposed.
“You are Green.”
“I am. And you?”
He seemed disappointed that I could not name him. “Penagut.”
That meant nothing to me, but it would not cost me to give him a boost. “It is good to see you again.”
He smiled shyly.
I realized then that I was seeing these boys as a mother would. Children, lost and lonely, enslaved to crime and near-starvation as surely as any child chained to a basin behind a tavern kitchen was enslaved to water and the filth of the men within. These youngsters were dangerous, would doubtless kill me in my sleep if they saw profit and believed that they would go unpunished. But they were also boys. They had suckled at a mother’s breast for a time, as Federo still suckled at mine. Someone had once held pride and hope and fear for them.
I found those emotions peopling my heart a little while, and for my own part wished with a bitter intensity not to ever have to fight here. Them I could not wound or slay. The tracks of innocence still haunted their young faces, whatever crimes had been committed this day.
A meal was called, a thick stew consisting mostly of lentils and millet. A few globs of fat floated for flavor, though I did not see the meat they might have come from. It certainly could have used some spice, but I had eaten worse. One could garner a full belly and night’s sleep from such fare.
Little Kareen did not come out and join us, but Penagut did. He proved to be one of the ever-changing crew of lieutenants.
“You make the boss nervous,” he said, chewing on a bit of flatbread. I saw no more of it, and had been offered none, so assumed that was one of the fruits of Penagut’s own labors.
“Nervous is how he survives.”
“Well, yes, but ain’t what I mean.” Penagut glanced around, apparently satisfied himself that all the boys nearby were among those he trusted, and continued. “He is more still now. No ambition anymore. You have stirred him.”
“The docks excite him?” asked Mother Vajpai. She’d kept her own counsel through much of the afternoon, though she seemed amused now.
Penagut’s voice sped up as he grew more animated. “The pickings there would be so much richer than anything out here.”
Those pickings were someone else’s livelihood, but I was hardly one to moralize. I would have been far more comfortable with potential allies who stole from those already burdened with too much wealth, rather than boosting a poor man’s last copper paisas, but these were who I had to work with.
“That is true,” I said carefully. “A beggar’s run against the docks would bring me to where I need to be, and provide you with opportunity.” The mother within me forced the next words out of my mouth against my better judgment. “But it will be dangerous. There are many men there, real fighters with serious weapons. Street Guild and others.”
“We can handle them,” he said boastfully. I knew a boy’s bravado when I heard it.
“You will learn much,” Mother Vajpai intoned.
After some inconsequential chatter, the boys drifted off. Mother Vajpai leaned close and whispered in my ear, “They will lose much, too.”
That struck at the heart of my own incipient guilt. It was one thing to set adults against one another. Life was risk, and if you played blade games, you accepted their consequences.
But this …
Still, they would get me to Marya and Federo. That thought made my breasts leak, and I muttered under my breath.
Just then Ravit trotted up. “Little Kareen will see you now,” he announced, as if offering some magnificent gift.
“We come,” Mother Vajpai replied. She grasped my hand and urged me to my feet. In a funk, I followed her through the night-dark camp to Little Kareen’s tent.
* * *
This time lamps were lit inside. The same rolled rugs that had kept daylight out also contained these
night-lights within. A curtain shrouded the door, so by entering we would not shout our presence to any watchers in the dark.
The tent was much as I had expected from before. Little Kareen, however, was not. He had grown enormously large, simply the most enormous man I had ever seen. His face was pocked with sores. The red bugge, or some disease much like it, ravaged him. Something else was wrong, because no one could eat themselves to that size, even on purpose, if their body was behaving only somewhat normally.
Huge, he overflowed his bench-throne. I saw that it had been reinforced by bricks. That explained the urine smell. I doubted he could rise and walk far enough to pee in a trench outside.
A handful of older boys stood as witness. Or possibly the threat of force, though I was not too concerned about whether we could defend ourselves. I could not attack them, though. Would not do so.
“What is in this for me?” he asked without preamble, as if we had not left the tent for so many hours.
Following Penagut’s lead, and feeling only somewhat ashamed of myself, I answered, “Richer pickings than you would see in a year of work out here. All in the space of an hour or two.”
“And the toll?”
I shrugged, more ashamed of myself now. Mother Vajpai spoke. “Some tuitions come at a cost. Those who return will be much the wiser.”
Little Kareen snorted. “And when the Bittern Court comes for me, will you shield me from those charges?”
“The Temple of the Silver Lily will stand for you.” If we win, I thought. I knew he heard the unspoken words clearly.
“Assault. Theft. Destruction of property. Public disorder. Even if no one dies, certain people will be very excited about such an excursion.”
“Certain people are going to be very excited no matter what I do,” I pointed out. “You can profit by it, or you can stand aside.”
One of the boys stirred at that, objecting perhaps to my lack of respect for his master. Little Kareen raised his fingerless hand to his lieutenant before addressing me again. “Protect me and mine from the law. We will handle the thugs in our own way.”
Again, I found this optimistic, but held my tongue.
“If we do this right,” said Mother Vajpai, “so many people will join in to the riot that your place at the heart of it will likely not be noticed.”
“Then make your plans, and I shall make mine.”
Soon, I thought. Soon. The ship would not await me overlong. As well the nightmare of Ilona, Ponce, and the babies being put over the side before I could return to them.
Well, we had two or three days, and I had not yet used even one. If only my enemies were even more lax in their diligence, I might yet prevail.
* * *
Later that night, Mother Vajpai and I sat on the ground next to a rather clever little stove consisting of an iron box filled with coals from the much larger stove inside Little Kareen’s tent. We were each wrapped in borrowed blankets, and had eaten a few more offerings of sometimes dubious food from the boys who continued to eye us. My breasts ached, and I discreetly expressed milk into a rag under the cover provided.
The night around us was noisy. I was not so sure why Little Kareen bothered to hide his camp, given how many men and animals seemed to be blundering about in the darkness. Kalimpura-the-city was surrounded by Kalimpura-the-town, a restless and churning community without doors or walls that was nonetheless very real. Also, it seemed odd to feel so crowded out here among the thornbushes and plane trees, when the streets beyond the Landward Gate were a dozen times more thronged at every step. Even at this time of night.
“I want to go into the city and scout our path for tomorrow,” I told Mother Vajpai. “We should strike at morning.”
“Green…” She sighed, as if gathering her wits. The Blade Mother had not been the same since Surali caused her toes to be chopped off. The amputation had stolen something of her spirit as well. “This is your mission. I have been cautious about advising you, and have not tried to order you at all.”
“I…” Words failed me, briefly. A denial had leapt to my lips, a swift vow of obedience, but we would have both known the lie. I was here to mount a rescue of Corinthia Anastasia and Samma, and to extract vengeance from Surali as well as her Bittern Court. Those deeds were not the will of the Temple of the Silver Lily. No point in making promises I would never keep. “We are cut loose from the temple,” I finally said, knowing the words to be weak and purposeless.
“From the temple, perhaps, but not from the Lily Goddess.” I heard more than saw the gentle smile in her lips. “Blades rarely act so, but we are priestesses. Consecrated to Her service. Our work is Hers. Our practices are Her rites. Mother Srirani can cast you out and mark your name anathema, but who is she?”
I waited a moment, then realizing that question was not rhetorical, stepped carefully into the answer. “She is a woman, as we are. She is sworn to the Lily Goddess, as we are.” Old lessons, some at this woman’s hard hand, came back to me. “But it is not for each of us to follow our own dictates. The temple functions as it does so that any can draw power from all.”
“The practice of hierarchy is much debated in every generation, believe me. Some decades we are rigid; some decades we are loose. But this, well, business, with the Bittern Court has deformed the politics of the temple. We are pulled from our natural arc.”
Ruefully I smiled, though I knew I was just a shadow to her eyes. “All of which is a long-winded way of saying that while I am not obliged to obey you, I would be wise to heed your words.”
Mother Vajpai snorted. “Indeed, Green. And here are the words I hope you will heed. Forget the docks. Rest, and dream on your children. This is not enemy territory or unknown land. All the older boys have been there before, and likely most of the younger. All we need do is direct them toward Agina’s Pier and be about our business aboard Prince Enero while the Street Guild is distracted. Beyond that … Well, let it be Surali’s problem. This is one fight we do not need to finish.”
My feet were twitching to be off. Quite literally so. “I am being discomfited to lie here in the dark while need awaits.”
“So sleep it off. How much more discomfited will you be if the Street Guild catches or kills you alone in the city? You know what sort of watch they must have on that ship by now.”
I paused to remove my milk-soaked rag and press another into its place. This being in milk was a tedious and painful affair that sometimes made me feel like a kept goat. And my breasts ached much of the time. “Afterwards? After we fetch my children?”
“There are safe places, even in Kalimpura. Before we left, Mother Argai and I each made some arrangements.”
That caught me short, but on swift reflection, I realized it should not have done so. “You knew what you might come back to.”
“The elevation of Mother Srirani was … contentious.” Her voice seemed more distant now. “Some of the senior Blades have sought other paths for a while.”
“Away from the Lily Goddess?”
“No! Away from the Justiciary Mothers, perhaps.”
She was talking about that pendulum of governance again, and how the path of the Temple of the Silver Lily had been bent aside by outside influence. I was tired of governance but in resolving my own problems, if I could resolve this, so much the better. “I will not overthrow another city,” I told her.
“Better to overthrow the evening in favor of sleep,” she said.
And so in a short while, each in our own fashion, we did that thing.
* * *
I was up before the dawn, brushing away tears. This was not a day to weep for my children. Who, at that moment, were far safer than I.
Ponce, Ilona, and Mother Argai did not have a backup plan. If Mother Vajpai and I were taken or slain, their best safety might well be in sailing on with Prince Enero. I tried to imagine my children fostered in one of the Sunward cities. At such a distance, Selistan would be barely a rumor except to a few far-ranging sailors.
That
would not happen, I told myself, and went for a walk among the thornbushes to avoid waking Mother Vajpai with my fidgeting worries.
The faintest predawn light lent a shadowless cast to the mists that clung to the bushes. These rose a good deal taller than my own height, their branches a crazed reach like dozens of bony arms scrabbling toward the sky. It was easy to see monsters or demons in the odd-shaped gaps, but I’d witnessed sufficient true strangeness Below in Copper Downs to render such phantoms of the senses laughable.
The ground was lush in some places, bare or trampled in others. I did not know enough of the lives of plants to say why, but I did treasure the pale flowers that peeked from among the clumps of wiry grass.
In the near distance, Kalimpura glowed above the predawn mists. There were always torches, lanterns, the business of the streets that never slept. On first arriving, I had marveled at the slow carts that circled the city streets, not stopping except to change teams of mules or oxen, wherein one could rent a bunk for a half paisa and sleep awhile. So many people so close together that one person must rise up so another might rest.
The Temple of the Silver Lily was truly a refuge. Much as the houses of the wealthy could be. Even the meager poor of Copper Downs had more space to themselves than most people here. That city had buildings standing empty. In Kalimpura, if you left a crate standing empty on a street corner, an hour later, it would be occupied by a family raising chickens for the market.
In this early morning stillness, I could hear the city as well, in a way that was not possible in daylight. The sound was a murmur, like the distant sea. Hooves and voices and squawks and shouting and barking and clattering all combined into that susurrus. Even the scent came over the walls in darkness, though from this distance it was largely woodsmoke and a generic gutter reek.
Someone approached through the darkness. I drew my god-blooded short knife and faded close to a tree, but then I realized by his footfalls that it was Penagut.
“Green?…” Anyone could have pegged him from twenty paces by the noise alone.
“Why are you here?” I asked quietly from almost behind his ear.
