by Jay Lake
“Come. I will have someone send you up some kava and a northern-style sweet roll. Sit with your children awhile, perhaps wash the battle-stink from you.”
“They should be upstairs.”
We walked up the unusually clean steps of the Temple of the Silver Lily and into the vestibule where I had first encountered Mother Vajpai five years earlier. At my current place in life, I realize how ridiculous this seems, but at the time it felt as if half a life had gone by between that first meeting and this moment. I am convinced that our age changes the way we see time more than anything else can possibly do.
She went around to the Kitchen Stairs; I trudged up the Pink Stairs to the Blade dormitories on the third storey. The temple was quiet, with so many of our number still at the Bittern Court or out on the streets of Kalimpura.
I wasn’t sure where they would have gone, exactly. I guessed at Mother Vajpai’s suite first. Whatever Mother Srirani’s machinations, none of the other Blades would have dared occupy the Blade Mother’s rooms unless and until they themselves had been named to the post in her stead. And more to the point, accepted that nomination.
Winding through the deserted hall, past a dozen doors, I found and heard no one. It was eerie. The place was as empty as if my vision of a temple full of women without a goddess had actually come to pass. Though at the moment, it would be more accurate to say that this was a goddess without a temple full of women.
Mother Vajpai’s door was ajar. I pushed it open, curiosity sparked despite my dullness of mind. The children were starting to crawl, and could pull themselves alongside furniture or a wall, but surely they had not yet come to the point of opening doors?
It bumped against something. I slipped inside to find Mother Argai slumped on the floor in the darkened room. No lamps lit here, of course. Why would there be?
My heart hammered in my chest as everything seemed to grow cold and dark. Ilona was dead, Mother Argai here. Where are Ponce and my children?
Swallowing a screech of rage and grief that threatened to bubble up inside me despite my sense of deadness, I dropped to my knees beside her.
Her lips were swollen almost beyond recognition. Her breath choked. I knew from her eyes that she was dying.
“They’re here,” I said.
Mother Argai gave me a jerky half nod, then wheezed for a smidge of breath through what was left of her swollen mouth and throat. Some poison I’d rather not have known about. We always favored blades here for good reason.
Mafic or Surali, it did not matter. This murder was not done by one of us.
Had no one swept the temple for them as we’d all raced off to the Bittern Court? Idiocy? A late, traitorous partisan of Mother Srirani? Or concealment through Mafic’s own spiritual powers?
It did not matter. Mistake or deception, the killers were loose in the house of my goddess. Where my children were.
I kissed Mother Argai with that thought, though my lips stung as well, and stroked her hair. Her hand spasmed. She was trying to direct me toward the inner chamber, I realized. This was Mother Vajpai’s office, though it was unusually neat—she had not occupied the place for months, after all. Dust layered over the clean, idle surface of her desk, her leather chair, the two smaller wooden chairs for unlucky visitors.
Beyond would be a sleeping room. I’d been in there two or three times on errands, but could not recall much besides a narrow window, a narrow bed, and some chests.
Now, my children and whoever threatened them. As if I did not know my own reward.
Dead in the great hall fire, indeed. I would not truly believe that of Mafic even if I had seen the body. Surali, too, was likely to have some last fatal trick behind her fan. I wondered which of them it was. Or perhaps the Quiet Men, come for me at last through the doors of my heart.
Shouldering my resolve, I stood weaponless from Mother Argai’s death agonies and did as she told me, pushing open the inner door.
* * *
My children were on the floor huddled next to Ponce. He clutched them tightly. Both Marya and Federo had their fists crammed into their mouths, faces purpled with silent screams. Ponce was wide-eyed and silent, his face bruised.
Mafic sat drawn up on the bed. He was pale and shaking, though the long gun pointed at me was held steady enough.
Most important, Surali stood behind Ponce and my babies, my other god-blooded knife in her hands. The one I’d cast aside back in Copper Downs. Mafic must have carried it across the sea.
“You have forgotten something, have you not?” Her voice was a sneer.
“It is over.” I was too tired to fight even them. All I wanted was for these two, my greatest enemies, to see the pointlessness of this last gesture, and just walk away. Still, even below that dull feeling, I could feel the iron bar of my rage returning. Surali had found the one key to overcome my disgust at myself and reignite that fatal fire within.
As for Mafic, there was no purpose in fighting him. Even less in killing him. The Saffron Tower would simply send another assassin in his place, just as he had followed Iso and Osi. Though I might have shredded his flesh and danced on his corpse if I could, vengeance against him was not my luxury.
Not here. Otherwise, all that had passed this day would be wasted, and have to be fought over again at an even greater loss.
Besides, I was sick of the taste of violence.
“Just leave this place,” I added, answering their silence. “Go. I will not pursue you.”
Mafic shook his head, sweat pouring down his face. I saw the blood staining his yellow robes and recalled that I had stabbed him. Then he had been struck by the thunder of one of his long guns back in the sanctuary. As I’d just come to realize, he had never even left the temple. I knew only some of that art of passing through wards and guards, whatever portion Iso and Osi had been willing to teach me. Mafic must be a master at such techniques.
“You do not need to pursue me,” Surali said, leering at me. She shot Mafic a quick glance. “We still have the strength to defeat you.”
We?
I looked at Mafic again. He did not appear strong. In fact, he appeared as if he were dying. “Go home,” I told him gently. “Find some other quarry. Your tool Surali has failed you. The power of women stands on its own here. The plate of the world is vast. You and your brothers can turn your energies elsewhere.” I flexed my hands, wishing for my own knife back. “Otherwise, you and all of yours will die as Iso and Osi did. One by one. At the hands of women. Degraded. Unmourned.” I lowered my voice to almost a hiss. “Unclean.”
“You will never understand,” he croaked, trying unsuccessfully to smile through his pain.
“No. I understand far too well.”
Surali opened her mouth, seeking the upper hand, but Mafic’s crooked, pain-filled smile broadened. I jumped aside, though not quickly enough. The thunderbolt from his long gun slammed me back against the wall like the hammer of a goddess. My right side dissolved into a hot well of pain. That arm flopped useless and beyond my control.
At this, the children began to wail. Ponce clutched them closer as Surali leaned down to grab his hair and expose his neck.
Firesetter burst into the room—drawn by the noise, I thought, through my red haze—bellowing in some eldritch language. Mafic fumbled with his long gun as he tried to insert another thunderbolt. The Red Man fell swiftly upon Mafic, the rushing attack making the firearm useless. He grappled closely with his old master as if to crush the man. The bed began to smolder.
“Do not kill him!” I croaked.
“Too late,” Surali answered. Ponce slumped, blood pouring down his chest. She had grabbed up little Federo and awaited only my attention before slaying my son.
Groaning, I pulled myself to my feet. I could barely stand. Her smile grew increasingly feral as she drank in my pain. “That’s right,” Surali whispered over the crackling of flames from the bed. “Come a little closer.”
My baby shrieked and wiggled as I staggered toward them. Ponce rose t
o his feet behind her, skin now pale as a Selistani can ever be, blood sheeting down his neck and chest. With a puzzled look on his face, he drew the hem of his robe over Surali’s head. I lurched forward and jabbed a clumsy left arm handstrike into her throat. My baby fell and I could not catch him with my useless right hand. Surali and Ponce both collapsed. I tried to pick up my wailing child, but could not, so once more I broke the fingers of both of Surali’s hands with my boot heel as she lay choking in her own blood.
At least she would die in pain. It was all I could do for my children. I collapsed next to them as they squirmed away from the blood and tried to gather both of them in my good left arm.
Behind me, Mafic’s screaming finally trailed off.
Firesetter sat next to the monk, a crackling orange aura fading from the two of them. Mafic was slumped, oddly boneless. The bedclothes smoldered; the flames were gone. At least the room was not afire.
Clutching my children as best I could, I croaked a question. “Will he live?”
The Red Man shrugged. “I have broken him on the wheel of his own power.” Great satisfaction echoed in that huge, deep voice.
“H-hold my children,” I told him. “There is something I must do.”
Giant red hands reached down gentle as spring rain and scooped the babies up, Federo in his right, Marya in his left. They whimpered, but something in his touch seemed to ease them. It was more than I could offer them at that moment.
One-armed, I dragged myself to the bed and began to slit Mafic’s robes open with the knife that had just killed Ponce. I was not so careful about whether I cut the skin below or not. When I reached his groin, I exposed his penis. It was shriveled from pain and stress.
I had been willing to let him go, but that was before he’d shot me with the thunderbolt, before his pawn Surali had tried to claim the life of my son. Forgiveness was lost now.
Still, it was not enough to simply kill him.
“You,” I whispered, “will never be a man again.” I gelded him then, made him as much a woman as a man can be. As with the killing of Iso and Osi at the hand of Marya’s women, this was the greatest pain I knew to cause him, given the peculiar, misogynistic beliefs he followed. He needed to suffer in both body and spirit.
I took my time, drawing the knife slowly so Mafic would feel every moment of the pain. Stealing his manhood should foil the male magics of the Saffron Tower. A cross I cut in his tip for him to remember me by. He bled a great deal, so I dragged some of the smoldering bedclothes across the wound and pressed hard enough to make the monk gasp in renewed pain.
There I waited, my increasingly blurred vision focused on my children, until more of the Blades burst into the room. Minutes too late, a lifetime too slow, I thought in my own agony.
Consequences
MEMORY IS BOTH a blessing and a curse. Without it, we would not know who we were and what we stood for in this life. With it, we know all too well what we have done to betray those ideals.
Does anyone live long enough to meet their own standards? That is a question I have never been able to answer. The best I can settle for is the knowledge that no matter how miserably one has failed, one can only keep trying.
I slept over a day, I learned later. When they tried to rouse me with a tincture of choraka, I refused wakefulness, until the Caring Mothers despaired of my condition and sent for Mother Vajpai and some of the Mothers Intercessory.
My old teacher was one of the wisest women I have ever known. She sent for both of our belled silks and for my children. It was their cries that finally drew me from twisted dreams of fire and water, earth and air.
Awake was no better. My body had understood what my mind did not want to confess, even to itself. Ilona, whom I had loved, was dead by my poor choices. Ponce, who had loved me, was dead by my mischance. Mafic was not dead, when I should have simply killed him for mercy’s sake. Surali’s death did not bother me at all, but that very uncaring in turn bothered me. Her I would never light the candles for.
But they had all been someone’s children once. Every single one of them. As were the others I’d slain in our sacking of the Bittern Court after Ilona’s death.
Not an honor guard for the soul of my sweet friend, but ranks of shame.
Clutching my children close, I realized I was sick of death. I could not leave them here alone. What had happened to me as a small child was lesson enough. And though she hated me with good reason, I would not leave Corinthia Anastasia, either. I owed Samma much, as well, for all that she suffered through my deeds and misdeeds.
So I sat up and allowed the Mothers to give me pigeon broth, and change the dressings on my chest, and pray over me with hot water and stinging herbs. The poppy salve that the Caring Mothers kept putting on me was said to stem the pain, but you could not have told that by me.
Pain of the body, I could handle.
Pain of the heart … Was this what it meant to grow older? I had too many ghosts following me to count, my own handle of the dead peering over my shoulder. Judges, should I ever be found in the scales of life. I wondered if a Quiet Man would come to the temple some hour of the night and speed me on to that fate.
For a time there, I would have welcomed such.
So I ate, and wept, and tended my children. My milk was gone, shocked from my body by my injuries, but they brought me goat’s milk and a sop to feed my babies. Their eyes focused so well now. Their little voices cooed and babbled. I kept listening for some wisdom from them. The first words of a child must mean something, after all.
* * *
A week later, I could walk a bit. The pain of the gun wound had lessened to a sort of ache that in fact never went away completely and bedevils me to this day. For the most part, I stayed in my bed with the window shaded and slept when my children slept. I refused visitors, I refused news of the world, I refused everything but food and healing care until Mother Vajpai came back to see me.
“I have two presents for you,” she said.
Turning my face to the wall, I ignored her.
Fingers brushed my shoulder. “You must come back sometime, Green. Now is as good as any other day.”
I shrugged her off, but she did not go away. Rather, the woman just sat in a chair next to my bed, waiting quietly. Soon enough, the children began to fuss awake. I could not simply hide in pretended fatigue.
Mother Vajpai leaned forth and helped me with the two, for managing twins with one arm is very nearly impossible. The Caring Mothers were apparently avoiding me for however long my visitor was here.
Once they’d been fed and put down to crawl a bit, I finally looked Mother Vajpai full in the face. She was drawn, tired, but her eye twinkled a bit.
“What is there to be happy about?” I demanded.
“Life goes on. And I have presents. As well as a request.”
“You do not ask much, do you?”
“No, Green.” Her smile echoed my sadness. “I ask too much. But then, is that not always the way?”
I snorted at that. She of all people understood. Perhaps only the Dancing Mistress, now lost to me, knew even better than Mother Vajpai. “I’m sorry about Mother Argai,” I said.
“We lost more Blades that day than in any day in our temple’s history.”
“Well, the Lily Blades were never intended to be an army. I should not have used them as one.”
She touched my hand, and I took her fingers in mine until we held each other’s grip tight. “You did what needed to be done. Kalimpura’s troubles are already receding, though plenty of new ones swiftly spring to life in their wake. Of the more ordinary sort, thankfully. Mother Srirani had been worrying more about the temple monies than about our spiritual place in the world. Foolish, perhaps, but she was no thief. Though our treasury has been impoverished, much as we’d suspected it might be. Amazingly, the Bittern Court’s account books have been salvaged, which has already shed further light on some of those machinations.
“Moreover, without Surali and the Saffron
Tower conspiring, I believe things will go more easily in Copper Downs as well. That our bodies and blood should be spent, it is best we be spent well. On matters of the spirit rather than matters of coin. Green, you spent us well.”
“Too many died.” I was thinking of not only my friends, but also all the people I’d slain in the Bittern Court. None of this was worth the price we paid.
“We had to burn your leathers,” she told me. “The gore was too much.”
“Is that your idea of a gift? Such news?” I wanted to roll and turn my face toward the wall again.
“No, this is.” Mother Vajpai reached into her robes and pulled out a silver chain. A dull lump of metal depended from the end in a twisted silver mount.
I did not recognize it at all. “What is this?”
“The bolt from the thunder-bow that Mafic shot you with. The Caring Mothers removed it from your body.”
“Ah.” I took the token of my death from her with my free hand and awkwardly tugged the chain over my neck. It sat heavy between my shrinking breasts and cold upon my skin. “My thanks. I suppose.”
“It seemed fitting.”
“You mentioned another gift.”
Mother Vajpai rose, stepped carefully over my children, who were patting their pudgy little hands together, and opened the door to my small room to wave someone in.
It was Ponce. His neck was swathed in a bandage. I pulled myself from my bed and stood to hug him. “You live,” I said in Petraean.
He nodded and pointed at his throat. His breath rasped, but no words came out.
“Mute?” I asked in horrified realization.
Another nod, and tears spilled from his eyes.
“Yet you serve a mute god,” I said quietly. “I cannot help but think there is some design here.”
A final nod, and Ponce clutched me close. I let him hold me a bit too long, then sent them both away.
Chowdry—
I am afraid I have done a great wrong to your acolyte. He still lives where others do not, but his throat was badly hurt and he will never speak again. He communicates by writing and making signs with his hands. He indicates that he does not wish to go home to Copper Downs. Not as he is. I cannot be keeping him in the Temple of the Silver Lily. This is a house of women. I think Ponce plans to build a shrine to Endurance here in Kalimpura.
