by Jay Lake
I stifled a shriek. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” He glanced up at my little fire, which was burning merrily. It seemed the flaming leak was going to be the answer, as nothing had exploded yet. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to smoke out Iso and Osi.”
“They have gone to the Temple Quarter. Apparently this was an auspicious night for them to challenge your Blackblood.”
I was in the wrong place!
Everything was at risk. As he fell, so fell the Lily Goddess in time. “By the Wheel, I need to be there.”
One enormous hand lay heavily on my shoulder. “Have a care.” Claws pricked, even through layers of my leather vest and canvas shirt. “I do not think you should walk alone.”
“I have you,” I said recklessly. Behind me, one of the barrels went “whoosh.” The Rectifier’s face was suddenly a study in glare and chiaroscuro.
He shook his head. “Can you call your ox god? Or one of your friends Below?”
Sighing, I turned to look back on my act of pyromaniac vandalism. The barrels were burning ever stronger, the warehouse door was smoldering, but the wind was whipping both the flames and the spilled oil away faster than they could spread.
Apparently it was time for me to open a restaurant, because my two barrels of lamp oil weren’t even serving as a distraction. Let alone as the opening movement of any attack I might have intended to pursue.
“I will call Endurance,” I said. “But I do not know if he will respond to me.” The ox god had already given me his blessing, after all. Had always protected me. Would he not now? I was too far from the Lily Goddess. Besides which, I would not dream of exposing Her to these two.
“Where will you do this?”
“Nowhere. Here. Now.” I sank to the cold tile, wondering how long I’d last freezing my buttocks. “Watch over me.” Blinking, I looked up at him. “Oh, I did sell you to the Revanchists, in a manner of speaking.”
“Mmm?” His voice was a rumble that struck deep into my bones.
“I told them they could have the Eyes of the Hills back so long as the gems remained under your control.”
There was a long, strained silence. Then the Rectifier snorted. “You trust me?”
“Yes,” I said simply, then closed my eyes and began to pray.
***
The ox god was never my god, but he was first and foremost my ox. Always. I did not try to imagine Endurance in his temple as a marble statue hung with prayers and ringed with incense. Rather, I took myself in memory to my father’s fields, the mud-filled wallows of my youth.
Insects buzzed first. Despite the intense cold, I had no trouble recalling the warmth of the sun. Selistan was an oven, this place an icebox. Somewhere in the world lay a land at the pleasant midpoint between the two.
Mud. Rice. Flowers. Fruits. A great, patient ox, standing close on tall legs, brown eyes rolling to follow me. Always overhead, always a presence, always my anchor to call me home.
Was it any wonder I’d placed Choybalsan’s power in the ox god?
“Are you with me now?”
The great, long face turned in my direction. The eyes were deep, deeper, the deepest things I’d ever seen. Wells of glossy brown light fountained forth.
The god was with me.
“Bear me forth to meet those who would slay my patrons.”
The ox shifted toward me. He shook off the flies around his ears and eyes, tail flicking. I slipped over his back, to ride him as only the dead had done. And once, the Dancing Mistress.
A jangling weight settled over my shoulders. I opened my eyes again to find the Rectifier arranging a length of belled silk across my shoulders. I sniffed at the cloak-it was mine, indeed, from the temple. Mine, and yet also my grandmother’s in a very real way. No stranger that the god should bring his relics with him than that he should appear himself.
Endurance lurched forward into the cold, cold night. My grandmother’s bells jingled, the cloak wrapping me in an envelope of warmth brought with the god from some other realm.
I gave the ox god no directions, and he asked none. We simply plodded through the silent, frozen streets. The Rectifier padded close at our side.
What, I wondered, was in all of this for him? Not loyalty, surely. Interest, perhaps. Or possibly the idea of a herd of unattached priests running about in the panic sure to follow a divine battle featuring Iso and Osi.
Cradling my belly in my hands, I wondered if I was bringing my child where she needed to be in this world. Surely this was not the path.
***
The Street of Horizons seemed even colder than the rest of the city. It was broad, almost a plaza in its own right, with fewer windbreaks. The old sacrificial pots lining the roadway did not host so many trees as to deter the cold knives of the air.
We plodded toward Blackblood’s temple. Each strike of Endurance’s hooves was the dull tolling of a muffled bell. My cloak shook a gentle counterpoint, a silvered rain. I could see the twins standing before the steps of the temple. They flanked a brazier balanced on a tripod and were casting something… what?
Did they care about Blackblood at all? Or was this all part of the larger plot against Desire and Her daughter-goddesses? It didn’t matter. In either event, they had to be stopped.
I did not know if the Rectifier would draw blood for me in this matter. I did not know if that would make a difference. Endurance and I would face these men down, though I had no plan anymore. I already knew I could not slay them out of hand without releasing great, destructive power. What else could I do? The gods of this city, of whom I was going to some trouble to shed myself though they stuck to me like spilled honey, deserved better than what I’d helped bring down upon them.
“If you are not safely born here in Copper Downs,” I whispered to my belly, “you will at least be safely dead with me.”
The twins turned to look at us. The light of their fire caught at their faces, twisting them from sallow, foreign men to leering demons. Their saffron robes seemed to glow. The cold didn’t billow from their mouths in little clouds, or redden their skins. Rather, it encased them, bejeweled them, armored them distant from me as the uncaring stars.
This would never be solved at swordspoint, even if I’d been moved to bare blades against these two. But I knew from the warehouse fight they would be a difficult match. And too dangerous to kill, besides. Pregnant and freezing, I would not resort to arms.
All I had was a god between my legs. And a priest killer at my side.
“I bid you good evening.” My voice whipped thin upon the chilling wind.
They glanced at one another. Then, out of one mouth, “More of a foul evening, Mistress Green.”
The other: “Come to see justice done?”
The shared smile that passed across their faces was deeply unpleasant.
“Yes,” I declared. “It is time for you both to return to an honorable retirement in the Saffron Tower.”
The Rectifier slipped away to my left. One twin’s attention turned to follow him. The other’s remained focused on me.
“A remarkable theory,” that one said. “But alas, of little interest to us.” He turned back to the fire while his brother stared off in the shadows, a slightly puzzled expression on his face.
This was it. My bluff was being called. All I knew was violence. There were no other tools ready to hand.
I could pray to Endurance, but the ox god had already manifested. This one would never take the attack. He stood beneath me, defending me by his very presence, but he had no fangs or claws or flaming sword.
Mother Iron? Her power was women’s power, if she’d begun to fit properly into the role Desire wished of her. The example of the Lily Blades notwithstanding, women’s power was like water. It flowed around obstacles, it did not shatter them.
Blackblood himself? He’d promised to take my child. My misguided overreaction to that threat-serious as it was-had started the chain of events that had led us here. His templ
e was dark and silent as a cenotaph on this frozen night. The building loomed high, offering little more evidence of occupation than such a cenotaph would have.
I trusted the Rectifier was up to something worthwhile, but I could not count on miracles from him. The only person I could count on was me.
Always back to me.
And my child.
Well, ever was I trained to be a sacrifice to this city’s need. The oldest lessons were the deepest.
I slipped from the ox’s back. If only I could seize the power I’d held when I’d stood against Choybalsan.
And so what then? These two knew how to fight that particular power.
My belled silk rang as I walked toward the fire. The twin who wasn’t scanning the dark-Osi, I thought as I drew close-looked up at me again. “If you will not be gone, we will make you go,” he said, as if speaking to a troublesome beggar.
“I will not depart.” Hopefully the cloak, an artifact of the divine, would protect me from whatever blast his hands could unleash. Or Skinless? Where was Skinless now?
“Do not disrupt our rite,” Iso said, turning away from his study of the Rectifier to glare at me.
Their fire flared. Osi held a cone of powder that he trailed into the brazier even as he bandied with me. Iso wielded a small, silver knife-a ritual implement I would not have used to peel a pear.
I reached for the brazier’s tripod with a jingling swipe of my arm. Iso swung around behind his brother, flowed into a motion so smooth and fast I could barely see it, and launched a cobblestone that struck me in the chest. That forced me to stagger back, all air in my lungs lost as pain radiated with a starburst of cold, miserable sharpness.
It took almost a dozen, deep, whooping breaths for me to begin to recover. My cloak rang faintly with each gasp, distant silver rain. The twins paid me the insult of ignoring me. Iso scanned the darkness, seeming vaguely worried. Osi had begun to chant. The night air curdled, a mist being born around us.
I longed for Endurance’s envelope of warmth. Looking back at the ox god for comfort, I saw those great, brown eyes shift as he tossed his head to call me back to safety.
Trying once more, I made a run at Osi. One, two, three swift steps and a leap into a knee-breaking kick. My misbalance on the icy street again marred my attack, but even so, Iso was faster. This time the cobble took me in the pelvis, just below and to the right of where the baby rode.
I crashed onto my chest in a cacophony of music, scraping my hands and chin on the road. No time to think of it now, no time to worry about what that had done to my child. I was up and moving, spinning in the dark even as another cobble whipped out of his hand. As if they’d ever needed my rescue that day in the Dockmarket.
This stone I managed to dodge. But I could not both defend and attack. And something was wrong with my right leg. That last missile had injured me to the point that I could no longer move with my usual strength and purpose.
I’d known I couldn’t fight them, but I wasn’t even trying now. I just wanted to disrupt their ceremony before that curdling darkness came completely into being, focused on the chalk marks on the steps of Blackblood’s temple, and subtracted another god from this city.
Let alone what these two will do to the Lily Goddess in Kalimpura.
That thought roused me once more. I had to win a different way.
“Women’s power,” I whispered. Slipping to my knees, though I nearly toppled from the weakness in my right leg, I prayed to Desire, to the Lily Goddess, to Mother Iron. “These two have stolen much from You, and threaten so much more. Bring me a regiment of women to oppose them.”
Out in the darkness, the Rectifier growled. Something murmured. Both twins looked now, the rhythm of their rite on the verge of being broken.
Did Archimandrix’s brass apes approach, despite my orders?
No.
A light sparked.
My prayers, being answered.
Then another light.
In moments, a thousand candles, lanterns, and torches were aglow despite the plucking, grabbing wind. A thousand female faces stared at me-no, not at me, at the twins. I turned my head. They’d filled the Street of Horizons from both directions. Desire’s women. Marya’s women. Mother Iron’s women. Ragged. Wealthy. Thin. Plump. Young. Old. Pale. Dark.
Acolytes of Marya-traders’ wives and maids from the great houses and fishmongers and whores and animal trainers and midwives and chiurgeons and mothers and daughters, Copper Downs women of all walks of life gathered to stand against the masculine, jealous power of the Saffron Tower in the form of Osi and Iso. I could sense Desire there as well, and Mother Iron, not in a direct manifestation, but through the breath and body and words of their followers.
Like the sea, women surged forward.
Now not even Iso’s cobbles could stop me. Finally I had my way. Women’s power, indeed. An elderly lady in the dress of some great house of a century past handed me a white candle. An angry, muttering Hanchu child offered me a black candle. Funeral rites. The only death magic I knew, the simplest one of speeding a soul upon its way. So I lit the two wicks from the fires gathering around me.
Then I waited for the tide of women to sweep toward the twins.
No cobbles flew this time, but Iso and Osi stood close about their fire, their rite abandoned in the moment. Not even they could slay a thousand women at once. I let myself be pushed forward until I was an armspan from them, candles burning in each hand.
“We choose life,” I said, mindful of the Rectifier’s warning about the cost of slaying them out of hand. “Not vengeance and death. Embrace us.”
They both bolted up the steps toward Blackblood’s door.
The tide of women followed, some pushing in to each side of the stairs, the rest flowing up, still buoying me along. Iso turned with two last cobbles in his hand while Osi banged on the iron doors.
“You will not live to regret this,” Iso snarled. He took aim at my head.
Skinless reached out through the door, tearing the metal, to crush Iso’s cocked fist in his own much larger meat-fingers. The other hand trapped Osi by the neck. I closed on the twins, whispering my thanks to Blackblood’s avatar, and drew my two adversaries into a close embrace beneath my belled cloak.
Their kicks and blows were as those of angry children, while the avatar held them both trapped. The women behind me reached beneath my silk to touch as the twins’ hands and feet slowed. Iso said nothing, but Osi began to keen in a thin, anguished voice.
“Know the power of women,” I told them.
Skinless released the two. I twisted with them, handing them down into the crowd. A mob now, female hands clutching at the twins’ saffron robes, tearing at their skin, prying their fingers back, clawing at their eyes. These two ascetics, for whom the touch of a woman was the ultimate unclean filth, were passed shrieking down into a seething female mass. They vanished as the murmurs of the mob rose to shouts and then thundering prayer.
The ox god was there with me, at the top of the stairs, and I slid beneath his belly and let him shelter me while death stalked the crowd below.
What one woman could not do, a thousand could.
Whatever power was bound into the death of twins was diffused by the touch of the divine and shared murder by a myriad of hands.
Eventually I cried.
***
Later, the Rectifier came to me. I looked up. The moon was strongly westering, but sufficient light flooded the Temple Quarter for me to witness a scene filled with the debris of a crowd-dropped scarves, hats, a shoe. The women were gone. Two sodden lumps lay unmoving in the middle of the Street of Horizons. There was no sign of their brazier or their rites. Behind me, Blackblood’s temple was silent.
Also, Endurance had vanished, as had my cloak of bells.
“Hello,” I said absently through chattering teeth.
“Your work is not complete, I do not think.”
No, there was a whole different battle being fought elsewhere in the c
ity. Still, I had triumphed sufficiently to assure some safety for the Lily Goddess.
Why doesn’t it feel like victory? Another lesson I did not want to learn. In time I would, but not that night.
“Have you any word from Archimandrix or Mother Argai?”
His expression wrinkled oddly. “How would I? They do not answer to me. They do not know me.”
“Then I should leave.” I stood, profoundly exhausted. My hip joint felt ready to fold. “I could use that mount now.” The joke fell very flat, even to my own ears.
“Here.” The Rectifier offered me his arm. “I will aid you.”
He led me stumbling down the steps, then up the Street of Horizons to Pelagic Street and on toward the Velviere District. I could not imagine going Below in my current shape. The wind had died, at least, leaving the night crystalline cold and still somewhere the far side of miserable.
I wondered if Corinthia Anastasia was safe. If Mother Vajpai and Samma yet lived. If I had done the right thing. Should I have gone to the embassy first and freed the prisoners? Who else would have found a way to remove Iso and Osi from this deadly game?
Except it wasn’t me. It was Mother Iron and Desire. They could have done the very same without me.
Wrong, wrong, I’d guessed wrong again and again. How many lives had my error cost?
The night was too cold for self-pity. I needed to concentrate. At least in holding on to the Rectifier’s arm, I was able to find my feet. Feel almost a little balanced.
Our first idea of how things were proceeding came when a team of heavy horses cornered from Richard Avenue ahead of us, running too swiftly. They towed a large drayage wagon, one of the dockside haulers. Selistani men hung off the sides with bared swords.
A motley mob of more men and three or four armored figures-no, brass apes-appeared behind them at a dead run. It was a small riot, fast-moving.
Some of the embassy were escaping.
I looked at the Rectifier in panic. There was no way I could halt four big horses. “Can you stop them?”
“Get out of my way,” he growled, then stepped into the center of Knightspark Street. Arms wide, claws out, the Rectifier roared at the oncoming team.
