Madness of Flowers

by Jay Lake

"I'm asking you to work for me, not marry me!"

  She shook her head. "I'm not what you think I am, I'm not who you see me to be. I'm no traitor, just not the woman you know."

  "Who is?" he asked bitterly. "I was neither born nor raised a dwarf. Onesiphorous is a man without a mission now that his Slashed are no longer persecuted by law. Bijaz has been touched by the divine and wears it most poorly. Jason is dead, by Dorgau's sweet fig, yet skulks somewhere in the City wallowing in his sorrow. How are you different?"

  "Have you ever wondered why my back is crooked?" she asked softly.

  Imago suddenly wished he hadn't started this conversation. "I had always assumed a defect in your boxing."

  "No. I came out of the box as proud a dwarfess as a father might have hoped for." She rubbed her neck.

  "Then I must presume disease or accident." He was afraid of her answer.

  "I was hanged from Lame Burgess Bridge by a mob of students," Marelle said. "I have never fully recovered."

  Silence stretched. Finally he asked, "Are you dead?"

  "Deathless would be closer to the truth. And now, having given away my secret for the first time in more years than I wish to count, I believe I should depart." She reached into her robes and pulled out a set of keys. "The offices and cabinets, sir. It has been a pleasure to serve the City alongside you."

  "Wait," he said.

  "For what?" She pulled the door shut behind her.

  Bijaz

  He sat in the tiny watchtower atop the Rhodamine Abbey and stared across the City Imperishable. Morning mists still coiled around the low-lying areas. The gilded domes of the Temple District spread around him. He could see the hulking pile of the Sudgate far to the south, Heliograph Hill to his left, and the New Hill to his right.

  Smokestacks and factories and mansions and commercial buildings stood all across the City Imperishable, pointing the way toward the future. A future the City would only see if they did not fail now, with the dwarfs scarce and recalcitrant.

  Ashkoliiz would be the death of them all.

  This little watchtower was only a folly, but still the builder had half-walled it and finished the underside of the roof with slatting to keep the pigeons out. Bijaz had been forced to climb across tiles, but that suited him. He enjoyed the run of the Temple District, being the only deity of any sort to wander the City openly these days—though Three-Widows certainly got about—but that freedom came with the price of nearly constant attention. Sometimes he wanted to be alone.

  "I've got no room for prayer," he told the sky. "And the Numbers Men don't heed prayer anyway. But I've killed some men because of who I am. If they'd lived, that might have been worse. I would have healed them if I could."

  The sky had no answer, but someone else did. "Must you hide in these ridiculous places?"

  Bijaz looked around. Kalliope balanced on the ridge just behind him. She was dressed very traditionally, in the manner of her adoptive people—a rawhide vest, laced leggings, low riding boots.

  "Apparently not sufficiently ridiculous." He offered her a hand in.

  The watchtower was barely big enough for both of them. So close, he studied her. She had Jason's same storm-gray eyes and pale straw hair, but she was weathered. Her brother had still looked like something of a child to Bijaz, right up until his injuries. Kalliope had become one of those timeless women who'd left youth behind before arriving at age.

  "To whom does a godling pray?" she asked.

  "I don't listen to myself, but there's no one else to hear me."

  Kalliope ran her hand through Bijaz's thinning white hair, scratching his scalp in a way that made him want to sag to the floor. "It's not so different from being a sandwalker, you know."

  "Mmm?" He slumped against the half-wall.

  "What the power does to you, I mean."

  Bijaz gave a long, rattling sigh. "I turned a man's hand into a rosebush. Had he lived, he would have been a horror."

  "I have given life and I have taken life, more times than I can count without careful effort. Sometimes in error, or for reasons so trivial as to seem meaningless. Power subtracts something essential from us, and gives something else in return." She tugged him into the crook of her arm. "It is usually a poor bargain, my friend."

  "I didn't want this." He opened his free hand and a bat scuttled out of his fist, squeaking as it found its way into the daylight sky. "I am not safe, for myself or anyone else."

  "Safe?" Her voice grew tight and hard. "I killed my brother. Then he became a miserable revenant. Don't speak to me of safe."

  "No." Bijaz settled into Kalliope's chest, acutely conscious of his cheek just above her left breast. Her heartbeat echoed in his temple. "It scares me."

  "You never sought it," she said distantly. "You never planned the trade the power takes, or worked for it, or remade your life around it as I did. Your power was thrust upon you one day in the confusion of the City."

  He slipped his arm around her back and returned her hug. It felt good to lie so close. "Was it easier for you?"

  "No," she said shortly. "Just more expected." She kissed his balding scalp. "It is never easy for us."

  He turned his face toward her to meet her lips. "Ah," said Bijaz, who had not touched another human being in tenderness since being gang raped.

  Kalliope's hands slipped down his tunic, finding his chest. He pressed his face harder into her, lips mouthing across her breast beneath her Tokhari vest. She tugged at her lacings with her free hand, until he found the sense to help her. When they spilled free, her small breasts were as sun-browned and hard-used as the rest of her.

  He did not care. He closed his mouth around her nipple and began to suckle. When she tugged at his hair and asked him to bite, he bit.

  Later, Kalliope pressed up against the half-wall of the watchtower as he rode her from behind like a dog. She called him "father." Bijaz was far past minding as he spilled his seed into her, coming fountains as light streamed from his fingertips and he made flowers grow wrapped within her hair.

  They lay curled together. He tried to make wine appear, but it spilled in a sticky red mess. So instead Bijaz caused water to pour from his fingertips to rinse them both, to fill their mouths and wet their hair.

  She laughed at him. "Finally I see a use for gods."

  He smiled, though the pain was at the back of his thoughts. "It's a small benefit, to be sure."

  Kalliope stroked his cheek. "You're afraid of the power."

  "Yes."

  "Good. When I first asked to follow the sandwalker's trail, the master I approached beat me senseless."

  Bijaz stiffened, his arms sliding around her.

  "Heed me," she said. "I tell you this for a reason." She laid a finger across his lips. "When I recovered sufficiently, I asked my owner why this was. He said I was to ask the master. So I approached the master again. Again he beat me senseless.

  "This time it took me longer to recover. I resolved not to be beaten a third time, so I stole into his tent and waited behind a tapestry with a stout club in my hand."

  Bijaz giggled at the thought.

  She poked him before continuing. "He slit his own tent wall and grabbed me from behind. When I tried to hit him, the master took my club away. Then, instead of beating me, he asked me what I had learned. I told him I'd learned not to try to sneak up on him. He laughed and said he would take me in. I was the first aspirant in years not to prattle on about the many paths to power or something of the sort."

  "But there are many paths to power," Bijaz said.

  "Of course. That wasn't his point. My master wanted a student who understood that power is a path, not a goal."

  "It has been neither for me. More like a curse."

  She shifted to curl around him and pull him close to her breast once more. "A curse is an end, old friend. If you let it be. If your power is a path, then find its direction."

  He nuzzled. Though the morning was growing warm, and they were crowded tight in the little tower, her nip
ple swelled again beneath his questing tongue.

  Later they climbed off the roof. Once down the ladder through the attic, Bijaz and Kalliope were in the halls of the Rhodamine Abbey. The building was all but empty at this hour, monks and nuns out ministering to the needy. The floors were stained with age and generations of oil, the walls papered with castoff silk from the great houses of the city. It smelled of wealth gone to seed.

  They didn't speak now, just passed from room to room and down the stairs. Two old men scrubbed the flagstones in the receiving room as Bijaz and Kalliope entered. They pressed their faces flat.

  "I tire of that," Bijaz said. "Once I was a dwarf."

  "They do not bow to you in the streets."

  The two of them clattered out the great door and onto Upper Melisande Avenue right where it met Bentpin Alley. His old offices were just down the way, burned down and now being rebuilt. Bijaz had no desire to go look.

  "A few do," he admitted. "I meant to die, you know."

  "I know. Your tale is hardly the stuff of secrets here in the City Imperishable."

  "So if you know my circumstances, is there some special sandwalker wisdom you wish to impart?"

  "I already have."

  "What, don't try to get the drop on your master?"

  They both laughed. He stopped, took her hands, looked up into her gray eyes. "You have given me back something of myself today. My thanks."

  "Take more than I give," she said. "And be more than you are."

  "Be more than a godling?"

  She released her grip and spread her arms, eyebrows raised. "Be more than Bijaz." Kalliope turned into the traffic and walked away from him.

  Bijaz headed for the Rugmaker's Cupola. He wanted to apologize to Imago for his surliness of the night before, and see what could be set to rights. As Kalliope had said, he was in need of a direction. He'd been bereft of purpose since the fall of the Imperator Restored. It was time to find his way once more.

  The walk tired him, so at the New Hill terminus he caught the Cork Street car. That would take him across the Bridge of Chances all the way to the Hilltop terminus. From there it was just a few blocks to the Rugmaker's Cupola.

  The streetcars were a curiosity, for the most part. The two lines which had been completed were both paid for by the gaming houses of Cork Street. They didn't quite meet, with a gap on the north side of Nannyback Hill.

  He rode the car, paying little attention except to note the Winter Boy following ahorse. Eyes were never far away from him, especially after what happened in the Ripsaw. The Tribade probably had people watching as well, though children or the old were more their way.

  "It's you," said a big man in a heavy cambric shirt, with the canvas pants and high-laced boots of a lumberman. He sat on the bench next to Bijaz.

  "Excuse me?" Bijaz kept his hands close to his side. He glanced back to see where the Winter Boy was, but a beer cart was blocking traffic.

  "There's money on your head, dwarf." The man was of middle years, unshaven, drunk. "I aim to claim the price."

  "Please, I do not want to argue."

  "Them's as are little always want to reason."

  "If you know why people are angry with me, then you know why reasoning might be best for both of us."

  Bijaz's fists clenched, a rippling feeling within him. He stood to get off when the lumberman grabbed at his arm.

  "Let me go," Bijaz said in rumbling voice. The lumberman's fingernails bled as his eyes popped open, unnaturally wide.

  The dwarf jumped to the pavement as the man slumped on the bench.

  "Murder," someone shouted from the streetcar.

  People moved to look. He tried to slip through the crowd. A voice bellowed, "Where's that short-arsed bastard!?"

  Not again, he thought. Not another riot.

  The freerider picked him up with no ceremony at all and dumped him over the saddle. "To be going now," his rescuer said, tucking into the horse's gait as shouts rose behind them.

  Bijaz sat in Imago's office, feeling miserable. Enero was there, too.

  "Is there a better time," Bijaz began to ask, but Imago waved him to silence. The Lord Mayor was looking out his window. Finally he turned.

  "My pardons, gentlemen. Something I don't understand happened this morning, and it worries me. I may decide to be frightened later."

  Bijaz mostly thought that the Lord Mayor looked sad. Nonetheless, here he was. "I came close to another brawl today. Minding my own business, I might add."

  "There are being people to pay a price on his head," Enero said. "Friends of the dead, I am thinking." He looked unhappily at Bijaz. "The Ripsaw is having evidence of there being some great magicks."

  "I blew all the glass and ceramic in the place."

  "What I am seeing there anyone else can be seeing, too."

  Imago slapped his desk. "Then shut it down, or burn it out." He then stared at Bijaz. "I realize we said you were not to blame, but surely you know more than this about the art of subtlety?"

  "I do not control this power. It controls me." Bijaz felt ashamed. "I aim to change that," he added.

  "Then stay the hells away from people in the meantime," said Imago. "A strong case has been made for sending you out of the City awhile. Perhaps you could abide in the map room? And pick no fights with us?"

  Bijaz could think of worse things than being sent away. And Imago had moved some of that woman's archives to the map room. "I will go quietly. I ask you one favor."

  "Which is?" The Lord Mayor's voice was acquiring a dangerous edge.

  "Will you send Jason to see me?"

  "I am thinking the former Second Counselor is not wishing to be disturbed," Enero said.

  "I am thinking the former Second Counselor is not wishing to be dead," Bijaz snarled. "I have known him longer than anyone else. We are like family. Not close, happy family, but family. And I wish to see him. I will obey you regardless, but the favor will ease my mind. And quite possibly Jason's."

  "Go," said Imago. "And for the sake of all the brass hells, stay away from people. I need you."

  Bijaz went. He picked his way down to the map room without meeting anyone's eye. No matter, he thought. He needed time to contemplate the purpose of his power. A map and some histories should do nicely.

  He did wonder if he should have asked for Kalliope instead, but Ashkoliiz still hovered at the edge of his memory.

  Onesiphorous

  Out in the river delta, away from the shadows where a thousand ears listened, Onesiphorous asked Boudin the question which had troubled him all through the slow slide through green darkness. "You said she was you. All of you, the swamp people. Is she your ancestress?"

  Boudin pulled on his oars and looked thoughtful. Finally: "Hard to say."

  Onesiphorous noticed the boy had lost most of his swamp accent again. "She is not a person, in the usual sense."

  "People are who they are, ah. Some got feathers, some got scales, some got hands and feet."

  The boy was ducking the question.

  "I don't know too many people who fold up and slide underground."

  "She is she. Queen of Angoulême."

  Despite his initial impression, he was now fairly certain that the woman-thing hadn't been a goddess. He hadn't experienced that rubbery tang of the noumenal. He'd never felt in danger. "You said not everybody climbed down the same tree."

  Boudin smiled. "She is she, she is us."

  A creature of the swamps, with a woman's face when it was needed. He had seen stranger things.

  He looked past Boudin toward the tie-up at The Boot. Three of Borold Sevenships' men waited in their blue uniforms, carrying boathooks. They were burly and out of sorts, reminding Onesiphorous of bailiffs back in the City Imperishable.

  "The Harbormaster wishes to speak with you," one said as he climbed up to the dock.

  "I shall attend his convenience soon." Onesiphorous knew better than to try to step between them. Behind him Boudin backed water but remained close.
<
br />   "His convenience is now."

  "I see. Then lead on." Onesiphorous smiled brightly and cast one last glance at Boudin. The boy was already setting to his oars to scull away.

  They climbed three flights of wooden stairs bolted to the rock. Onesiphorous looked for evidence of an older structure beneath, but it was definitely a rock. At the third level, they crossed a rope bridge to Little Aneh, then back down to a cable ferry to cross the Aneh Race and join the main walkways leading to the Flag Towers.