by Jay Lake
More voices. Several men. Street Guild guards? Was the Azure Room behind this door? Or more likely their bivouac?
I thought a moment about the typical architecture of the great houses of Copper Downs. That could not be a conservatory-we were not on the uppermost floor-but it would be a ballroom or a gallery. Surali couldn’t keep prisoners in such a place. Too much space. She’d confine them instead. That was much more her style.
Stepping back, I tried the first door on my right. It opened to a dusty sitting room, drapes closed over the windows along the far wall. Furniture bulked awkwardly under white sheets. Even the paintings were covered over.
Not here. Unless they’d been stored as corpses. With that thought, I glanced at the floor. No sign of anyone being dragged through the dust, or walking in here.
Across the hall, I tried the other door. A bedroom that had been in recent use. The bed was stripped-I knew where these linens had gone-and the fireplace smoked slightly. The occupant had forgotten to open the damper.
“Idiot,” I whispered.
Back out in the hall, I was reaching for the next doorway when someone opened it from the other side. A Selistani clerk stepped out, clad in a well-tailored green silk kurta of a very traditional cut. He looked up at me in surprise as I thumped him hard in the side of the head with the butt of my long knife.
A man in the room behind him called out. I jumped over the body and charged, blade already swinging forward, only to meet another clerk.
This one yelped and tried to dance away.
I caught him a long, shallow slash to the arm that sent blood spilling widely. He drew a breath to shout, so I slapped him hard across the face. “If you want to live, be quiet,” I barked.
My words had been in Petraean, I realized, as he screamed, “Help, housebreaker,” in Seliu.
My next blow took him on the neck, right across his vocal cords. The clerk collapsed in choking surprise. I swept a dish of water-for soaking nibs and brushes-off the desk and dumped it on the one I’d laid out. “Help your friend breathe,” I barked into his unfocused face as his eyes flicked open.
Out in the hall I threw open the next door. Surprise was lost. My time advantage would be gone in seconds. Corinthia Anastasia was already beyond my reach. I’d need to find my Blade sisters quickly, or the entire run would be a total loss. The latest door yielded two men already moving to investigate. One clutched a fireplace poker, the other had his hands spread wide.
Not Street Guild then.
“Stay back,” I shouted. “Invaders, you won’t be safe.” I slammed their door and spun around.
The door across the hall opened. This time it was Street Guild, two of them with swords out. I hoped like the hells that my sister Blades were somewhere behind them, because I was about to be outnumbered.
Yelling wordlessly, and spun a kick that took the lead man in the side of the knee. I’d used a similar move on Mother Vajpai once, the first time I’d ever counted a touch on her-and the last, for quite a while after that memorable day. He collapsed with a howl. His fellow came right over him, leading with the point.
Long knife at the ready, I stepped back and right into the poker swung by the idiot from the other room. He connected hard enough across my shoulder that something cracked audibly. I felt the pain like a stabbing.
So much for the healing that Desire had bestowed upon me.
Spinning half to my left, I backswung my short knife into the fireplace enthusiast’s side. I caught him just below the entangling ribs. As expected, he had no parry, and fell away sobbing.
I completed my spin in time to sidestep a sweep of the long knife from the more capable fighter. “I’m one of you,” I shouted in Seliu, in hopes of confusing him.
He was not fooled.
Another of his brethren came out the same door. If that wasn’t the Azure Room, I was deep in the cesspit. I gave back two more steps and palmed my long knife to grab and hurl a nearby marble head at the swordsman. He dodged that as it cracked into the wall, but my short knife came right after and caught him in the cheek.
The man howled, then swallowed the point of my long knife. He vomited blood around my blade before collapsing with a puzzled expression on his face.
The next one was more wary, which was fine with me. Unfortunately the door at the end of the hall flew open as half a dozen more Street Guild raced pell-mell toward us.
I knew my exit when I saw it. Cursing, with no more knowledge of Corinthia Anastasia or my Lily Blade sisters than I’d had before, I snatched up my weapons and shoved through the door to my right before the mob could reach me.
***
This was another bedroom, double length for a suite. Four tall windows overlooked the patio and back lawn. Slamming the door behind me, I sprinted through the shadows for the glass. I intended to dive and roll, taking the fall into the arbors with whatever momentum I had and to the Smagadine hells with the splinters.
“Green!” snapped a voice in Seliu. The familiar tone caught at me. I swerved, bounced off the wall, and turned around with both blades bristling. Already they were arguing in the corridor about who would follow me through first.
Mother Vajpai sat up on the bed. Mother Argai was springing from the chair beyond her, on the other side of the bed from which I’d passed. Samma was not in sight.
I could have blessed a thousand goddesses in that moment. “I came for you.”
“Fool,” Mother Vajpai replied. Mother Argai just shook her head sadly.
“They’ll be on me in seconds. If you want to be shut of Surali, come with me now.” My sense of my own failure about Corinthia Anastasia gnawed at me, but I had no time to dwell on it.
The Blade Mothers exchanged a fast look in a familiar, unspoken negotiation. I turned my back on them and kicked open the window.
I was above the terrace. No pursuit was yet visible outside. Looking over my shoulder, I asked, “Are they more afraid of me or of you?”
“It does not matter,” Mother Vajpai replied. I realized she was still in the bed.
“I am coming,” added Mother Argai. They glared at one another-more silent argument-then Mother Argai dove out the window, tucking to land running eighteen feet below.
“Samma?” I asked.
Mother Vajpai shook her head.
The door burst open.
I flipped over the smashed windowsill backwards, knowing I had enough fall length to right myself. On the way down I remembered what pregnancy had done to my balance.
Thank the Lily Goddess Mother Argai spotted my landing, taking much of my weight and keeping me from pancaking into the tiles of the terrace.
“That way.” I pointed toward the back wall.
Stealth abandoned, we raced through the snow-choked garden, trying to outdistance the crossbow quarrels I was certain would be fired at any moment.
***
Twenty minutes later I stopped to breathe. Mother Argai and I had taken to the rooftops as soon as we cleared the Velviere District. Even that had been a project. Two women in dark, bloodied clothing were conspicuous, so we’d been compelled to stick to walls and alleys until I’d stolen a tarp off a wagon. After that we’d just appeared to be derelicts, homeless and wageless. Now we crouched in the lee of a water tank. The tiles sloped gently away from us, treacherous in the slick drip of the morning snowmelt. I watched smoke rise somewhere over near Lyme Street.
“What was that all about?” I finally asked Mother Argai.
She answered my question with a question. “How many did you kill?”
“One for certain, another if he is unlucky. I tried not to.” And three of my own left behind. Failure by any measure.
“Hmm.”
It wasn’t clear to me what that grunt meant, whether she signified approval or disapproval. Mother Argai had run with me, trained with me, bedded with me. Though I’d learned much from her, she’d never been one of my training Mothers. I’d not learned to read her so well as some of the others.
All
I could do was ask. “Tell me, what was that all about? Why were you staying in a room unguarded? Why did Mother Vajpai not rise from that bed?”
“Don’t you mean to ask where Samma is?” Mother Argai’s voice was soft.
Embarrassed at being caught out, I mumbled weakly, “That would have been my next question.”
“No, Green, it was not. We all are knowing how you are.” Mother Argai appeared sad. “But this is being your city, not ours. Mother Vajpai and I both realize how little of it we know. Not just a matter of buildings and streets. A matter of people and their discontents.”
“Copper Downs is not kind to strangers,” I agreed, “but neither is it so overwhelming and dangerous as Kalimpura. You do not know your way.”
“No. And you do. So to you we will heed, even against our judgment.”
“Then heed my questions. What took place back there?”
She glanced away a moment, embarrassed. “Samma is hostage. Mother Vajpai is wounded.”
“Wounded how?”
Mother Argai’s voice was flat with pain and anger. “Surali has cut off her toes. Mother Vajpai cannot yet walk.”
I was shocked out of my impending funk over losing the girl again. “Who could cut off her toes? Who could hold her down?”
“You do not know the powers at stake in this, Green.”
“No, I don’t. Not from Kalimpura.” I leaned close, growling. “But I know the powers at stake here in Copper Downs. Some of them have arms long enough to reach across the sea.”
“Surali did this to Mother Vajpai to punish us for your conduct. Samma is now held against the good behavior of the rest of us.”
Fighting down an urge to be sick, I glanced around our rooftop. “Which you have broken beyond question.”
“Mother Vajpai will say you forced me from the room. Samma’s life may be forfeit in any case, but I doubt quite yet.”
I made a leap of logic. “She is with Corinthia Anastasia.”
“The northern girl who is also hostage, yes.”
With those words, Mother Argai lapsed into her usual silence. I stared across the city awhile, trying to parse what this all meant, where my deeds and intentions would come into play. How much I might have betrayed those who loved me through unwise action.
None of what she had just told me changed my plan of action. At most, Mother Argai had deepened my sorrows. Those I had plenty of already.
I bent to clean my weapons. “I regret that man’s life,” I told her.
“Never regret a death that keeps you alive.”
“Perhaps.” I restored my weapons to their proper places. Long knife on the thigh for the running and the fighting. Short knife on the right wrist for close work, short knife on the left wrist for stealth. That was drilled into Lily Blades from the earliest years of their candidacy.
I looked again at the pall of smoke from the general area of Lyme Street. This was not yet the time for regrets, not with so much to be done. “Where are the rest of the embassy? I saw half a dozen guards and two clerks.”
“Most of them marched out under Surali’s orders to deliver a demand to your Interim Council.”
“It’s not my Interim Council,” I said reflexively. “Did Surali march with them?”
“She seems to be having some difficulty with her hands.”
I glanced over at Mother Argai, suspecting her of humor. Her expression was bland. “Well, there is at least one glimmer of hope here.”
“Her troubles have not improved her disposition.”
“I should think not.” I looked back out over the city. “We need to move on. I want to find out what is happening on Lyme Street, and I have business with the Interim Council in any case. Are you prepared to go Below and work our way through that particular maze?”
“You always did have a fondness for tunnels.”
That was all the answer I was likely to receive. I took that for a yes, and led her back down to the street. We dodged through the alleys until we found a hatch that would carry us both into the stygian depths of this city’s permanent, stone-walled night.
***
Mother Argai had never been a tunnel runner back in Kalimpura, and certainly not here in Copper Downs. I was not even sure she’d been off the grounds of the embassy’s rented mansion since first arriving. Nonetheless, she climbed down a beslimed wooden ladder without hesitation or question. This entrance was over a running sewer line, but as I’d hoped, the rungs led to a board that stretched across the tunnel.
“Mind your feet,” I whispered up to her. “Dead dark, you’re landing on an uncertain plank. Step toward my voice when you reach it. I am standing upon a narrow ledge. Sewage flows beneath everything just here.”
“Many thanks,” she muttered.
I scooped the small trace of available coldfire off the wall as Mother Argai landed on the board. It creaked under her weight-perhaps forty pounds more than my own, allowing for her squat, muscular build. Her hand reached out in the shadows as she took a step toward me, when the board gave way. She dropped another four feet into the stinking stream.
Leaning down, I held my glowing hand over Mother Argai to check that her face was above water. Well, above liquid.
“Cold,” she gasped.
“Snowmelt,” I said. “Makes even shit frigid. Don’t grab the glowing hand.” The slime would keep her from getting a decent grip, and she’d wipe it off in the process. We’d lose our light. “I’m reaching down with my off hand.”
“Understood.” She caught my grip.
“Side walls will be slimed but rough underneath,” I warned. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Trying to keep as much of my weight as possible back on the ledge, I grasped her wrist as she grasped mine. She kicked while I pulled, and scrambled up the edge of the channel. I felt myself leaning into her. To counter that I flattened back as best I could. “Have care,” I hissed, then pulled her up with me.
Mother Argai wound up lying on her side, stretched away from me along the ledge.
“It’s dangerous down here,” I said.
Given only the dimmest light of the coldfire, I could still read her reaction to that comment.
I got her up and moving as soon as possible. Below was not so cold as above, even in winter’s harshest grip, but it was still far too chilly and damp for anyone to lie about quietly in stinking, wet leathers. “Fifteen minutes to where we’re heading, and I can probably find us a warm spot to clean up in.” I was thinking of the bakery-kitchen behind my little teahouse.
Mother Argai followed me along the ledge until we came to a side tunnel that branched away in the general direction of Lyme Street. I knew this one. It was part of a series of cutoffs laid into Below by some builders with a fondness for arched brick vaulting. Also, and more to the point, the water flow in these tunnels was largely incidental.
Getting her away from the wet, chilly tunnel was sensible.
“I reek,” Mother Argai said quietly. Not quite complaining-Blades did not complain-but definitely unhappy.
“It’s a good masking odor,” I offered. “And besides, that was at least half snow.” Maybe. “You didn’t fall into the slaughterhouse runoff, for example.”
“One is always grateful for small blessings.”
That brought a backward glance from me. This time I definitely suspected Mother Argai of humor. Once again, nothing in her voice or in the ghostly-lit hint of her face cracked the least bit of a smile.
“Really, we should have run Below more in Kalimpura,” I told her.
“Our tunnels are not so extensive.”
“Even so, you learn much down here.” I held up a hand; we were coming to a larger junction that the Dancing Mistress used to call the Station. “Quiet,” I hissed.
We stopped so I could listen. No one was moving or breathing audibly up ahead, but some of the most frightening people and things down here didn’t make noise.
She needed to be warm, but I had to understand wha
t I’d seen back at the Selistani embassy. I’d been mulling all that over as I walked. Such knowledge might be critical to our own next moves. We were as safe as we might be Below, right here. And Mother Argai seemed to be in a talking mood. Turning back to her, I asked, “What was Surali thinking, to hurt Mother Vajpai so?”
“I do not know,” Mother Argai said, her voice very serious. “I cannot imagine what she believes will happen back in Kalimpura over this. But Mother Vajpai forbade me to interfere.”
What would happen back in Kalimpura was clear enough to me. If the Bittern Court planned to bring down the Temple of the Silver Lily and slay the Lily Goddess in the process, then there would be no consequence to injuring Mother Vajpai here and now. The point would be moot. “I don’t understand why Surali didn’t just kill her. Mother Vajpai wounded and angry is far more dangerous than Mother Vajpai dead.”
“She would have been forced to kill all three of us,” said Mother Argai flatly. “Even Samma.”
“A foolish girl,” I grumbled.
Something in the tone of her next words warned me. “Samma may be a foolish girl to your eye, and even to mine, but she is still a Lily Blade. As such, she is deadly in her own right to the rest of the world.”
I picked at the problem, still disbelieving. “And you stood by while she, what…? Snipped off Mother Vajpai’s toes with a hedge clipper?”
“As Mother Vajpai ordered.” Mother Argai’s tone was wooden now.
“Why?”
The words poured from her in a rush: “Because we have to live to return home and carry word of all this. If none of us Blades return, the tale will entirely be Surali’s in the telling. We who serve the Lily Goddess will be painted traitors and apostates and worse by the time that woman is done with us.”
