by Jay Lake
Ovens, too, fires banked now. No evidence of cooks or scullions. No handy open sewer pits in the bakery.
Pantries. Tool rooms. Maids’ dormitory. Guards’ dormitory. Room after room, none of them filled with what I needed.
Finally I took a mattock, rather too heavy for me, and dragged it back to the laundry room. The ceiling was getting hot, and I could hear the fire roaring. At this point I might not be able to depart by any other route.
The edge of the tool allowed me to lever the grate off. I stared doubtfully into the darkness. How far down did this reach? Did it branch or split, or drop straight into a sewerway? There had to be a tunnel to the street, at least, as the mains didn’t run directly under most buildings.
Below was complex enough from within. I’d earlier deliberately avoided using that as a path. Guessing a route from above…
Outside held fire, archers, killing cold, and by now, a dearth of my allies. I’d been too long within the house. Taking a deep breath, I uttered a formless prayer and began to hack at the stonework edge supporting the grate.
The flags came up with quite a bit of strain on my part, peeling away to reveal a somewhat fatter pipe than the grate had implied. Straight down about six feet from the look, then opening into a horizontal run.
And wide enough to send a boy down to clear the drains as needed.
Plumbers’ boys did not usually work pregnant. Unfortunately, I did.
I dropped the mattock down the drain. It thumped rather than splashed. That was fine with me. I took a deep breath, slid feet-first into the hole, and prayed again, that the horizontal run crossing below was large enough for me to continue. Otherwise I’d spend the very short balance of my life cowering under this house while it burned down over my head.
Halfway down I got stuck. The blessed thing narrowed. I almost cried, then cursed, then raged in fear. Wriggled. Moaned. Cursed again. Sucked my gut in, pressed my already-burning arms against the walls, and lifted, before I dropped a handspan or two. Something slipped. Something else caught. My pants?
Another heavy breath out, another sucking in, another lift and drop. The baby didn’t appreciate it, I could tell. “You won’t enjoy being rump roast, either,” I whispered.
I pushed again, feeling my hips scrape even through the canvas trousers, and my belly crushed. Panic closed in on me, darkening my shadowed vision and pimpling my skin. I was going to die here.
Then I slid the rest of the way down in one ragged slump, nearly turning my ankle on the mattock and landing on my ass in the circle of light from above. Everything hurt. I’d slowed down too much, and my exhaustion was catching up to me. My gut was aching, my throat burned with the need to throw up.
Instead I grabbed the mattock and stumbled in the direction of the street, under an arch so low I had to either bend over or duckwalk. Two stout iron grates later, broken open with my trusty mattock, I was Below, safely beneath Richard Avenue, and away from that damned fire.
Operating only on faint hope and dim instinct, I headed toward the docks. I left the mattock behind. Still I carried some poor bastard of a guard’s bloodied sword.
***
I emerged beneath the Mendicant’s Well in the Dockmarket. A narrow tunnel opened into the shaft just above the water level of the cistern that supplied the well. A roof overhead blocked the night, but the wind howled just fine.
Up, into the cold. My entire body cramped at the thought. I was so tired I wanted to vomit. Every part of me felt bruised, some bits broken, and I was leaving a bloody trail as I walked. I didn’t know why something large and hurtful hadn’t already climbed out of Below and claimed me.
Up, up.
What was I chasing?
Up!
I don’t know who spoke, but I could hear her voice.
The climb was so difficult, I almost didn’t make it. My hands shivered on each rung, my arms stretched like clay. It’s only water below me, I thought, and envisioned falling into that cool embrace.
Then I thought of Ilona, and kept climbing.
Over the lip of the well and into the little shelter where it stood. This close to the harborfront, the wind was biting, toothy and vile. I’d lost my furniture covers somewhere, and had no idea what had become of my comfortable stolen robe.
March on, march on.
An awning flapped nearby. I paused to cut it down, wrapping myself in blue and gray striping.
March on.
Even the waterfront taverns were shuttered. Though the storm had faded to clear skies, still no one was out in the raw, blustery weather. All we lacked was more snow or rain to complete my misery. The wind-driven spume along the docks was freezing in place. Ships creaked dark and ominous at their moorings, a few faint lights showing even lonelier than deepest shadow would have been.
No barking dogs, no whores’ come-ons, no drunken singing. It was as if the entire city had been frozen into its grave. Copper Downs, brought to this. Though I’d be willing to bet things were quite warm inside the Selistani embassy.
That thought made me giggle. Giggling turned into laughter, and the laughter very nearly turned into whooping hysteria. I had to stop and sit on a pile of cargo nets until my breath ran out and I could rediscover my sense of purpose.
A few more ships farther down, stumbling under the starlight, I saw a vessel lit up with the pale orange-yellow flicker of bottled lightning. The steam kettle thrummed. She was making ready to sail. A few figures moved along the dock. One of those big drayage wagons was just pulling away.
Surali.
The Selistani embassy.
Corinthia Anastasia.
I tried to run, stumbled, slid on an icy patch and fetched up hard against a barrel. Climbing to my hands and knees, I staggered on. There was no running left in me.
Could I call them back? I opened my mouth and croaked. Damn me for carrying a sword but not a torch. These people would want me, if they knew it was me coming for them. I couldn’t fight a sick chicken in my current state, but I could catch up. Later I’d find a way to escape with the girl.
The dockside figures withdrew up the gangplank, weapons still at the ready. In careful order. A rear guard. Watching for me.
If only they knew.
To all the hells with staggering like a drunk. It was time for one last run. Time to catch them. I took a deep breath, lurched forward graceless and heavy as I had ever been of late, and was caught up in massive hands. Screaming, I turned to look into the face of Skinless.
He shook his head, no. One massive, meaty finger touched my lips for silence.
A bell clanged. Water churned as the ship slowly backed away from the dock. I didn’t even struggle. What would I have done, except be a prisoner? And who knows what Surali would have trimmed off of my body, the way she’d taken Mother Vajpai’s toes?
Still, I strained to retrieve the girl. I wept, until the tears froze on my cheeks; then the lumbering giant carried me away through the crystalline spaces of the winter night.
Defeat, and Another Sort of Triumph
To my surprise, Skinless took me not to the temple of Blackblood, or even the Temple of Endurance, but rather to the Tavernkeep’s place.
“How did you know?” I asked as the avatar gently placed me swaying on my feet before the door.
He shook his great, flayed head as if to deny any complicity, then lumbered once more into the darkness.
I was standing. Barely. For a moment, I was tempted to simply walk away. But that I could not do. I had allowed a child to be stolen to Kalimpura, home of the same child trade that had once sold me away. The two Blades who should be in here now were my key to following Surali, following that ship, and retrieving Corinthia Anastasia before… what?
I did not know.
So I staggered into the firelight.
My entrance was marred by my stumbling at the threshold. I hit the floor once more. This time I just stayed down. Something I’d never done. I felt too heavy to even move.
Strong hands-furr
ed, as well as homey Selistani brown-picked me up off the floor. I was carried to a flat spot. A table?
Noises of crowding and moaning and the sweaty, bloody smell of recovery. Flickering light. Someone pouring pardine bournewater down my throat. Wincing as fingers probed for broken ribs.
Eventually I cried.
When I stopped crying, Ponce from the Temple of Endurance was holding my hand. “You need to sleep,” he said softly. “And perhaps to eat as well.”
“I need to know.” Then, one of the hardest things I’d ever asked: “Sit me up.” I had to see.
With the help of one of the acolytes, he propped me up, then they slid me into a chair. I looked around. Crowded, indeed. Rough-furred pardine Revanchists stalked among Selistani refugees with broken noses and bandaged wounds.
“Where is Mother Argai?” I asked. “And Mother Vajpai, and Samma?”
Ponce shrugged. “I am not certain.”
He slipped off, to find me food maybe, leaving me to wonder if he meant he did not know who I meant, or he did not know where they were.
No one else I knew well was close by. I half-recognized most of these people, though in my current state of fatigue and confusion, I might have thought to recognize anybody. Or no one at all. But where were any of my people? Corinthia Anastasia was gone, lost to me. My fellow Blades should be here somewhere. The Rectifier with them. Of course, the last I’d seen those three, they’d been leaping into a fiery night, while Mother Argai had been stumbling wounded in the street.
Even the Dancing Mistress, alien and alienated as she had become to me, would be a welcome sight.
Have I lost them all?
The thought chilled me. The idea that I might have only the gods for company now seemed more than I could bear. I rolled onto my side and curled up with my arms cradling my belly. When had I grown so large?
Ponce came back with a bowl of dhal, Chowdry in his wake. The priest wore an apron spattered with grease and sauce-he’d been cooking, then.
Was there a better ministry for him? I wondered, though, who stood with the god, and wished mightily that I might spend more time in his kitchen.
Me. I’d stood with the god most recently.
My mind was wandering, I knew it was. I forced my attention back.
“You are being alive,” Chowdry said in Petraean.
“You don’t have to sound so damned surprised.” I didn’t mean to be peevish, but the words came out that way.
He glanced at Ponce. “I am not being surprised. You are never surprising me.” Then, in Seliu, so the whitebelly could not understand us, “The embassy is gone. Little Baji went with them. So did some of the regulars here.”
“Spies,” I hissed in the same language.
Chowdry nodded. “But at least they are fled.”
“The girl hostage is with them,” I growled. “I have failed.”
He smoothed his apron, dirtying his hands in the process. “I am not thinking you have failed so much. This could have been a far more difficult night.”
“The gods live, but my sister Blades are missing. A child is stolen across the sea.” I briefly closed my eyes, blinking out my tears. “I cannot name this a victory.”
Chowdry took my hand. “Accept what success you can.” With a nod to Ponce, he turned back toward the kitchen, pushing through the crowd.
I realized that as we spoke, pardines had begun to surround me. A momentary stab of fear traced through my heart, which I laid aside. These were practically my own people. Even the Revanchists held little terror for me now.
The Dancing Mistress stepped between a pair of tall, furred shoulders to approach me. Her water-pale violet eyes glinted as she stared. I sat up to meet her, though it cost me much to move thusly. Back and belly protested.
“Where is he?” she asked.
That was not what I had expected. “Who?”
Her voice was hard. “The Rectifier. You gave our heart’s treasure away, but you have mislaid the bearer.”
I realized the room had fallen quiet. The Dancing Mistress’ ears were stiff, her tail flicking back and forth. “If you wish to punish me for losing track of your people’s greatest warrior,” I said, “lay into me and have done with it. I did not send him away or put him to sword. And he has two of my own with him.”
Where can the Rectifier be? With my missing Blades?
My gut flopped. What had happened?
She shook her head, sighing, and for a moment was my old teacher again. “Green, I will not strike at you. Not now, not ever again.”
A strange promise, I realized, but held my tongue.
The Dancing Mistress continued: “Much stands at risk here, missing.”
“I know that. If I could search for them, I would.” Instead, I could barely move. I did not then realize how much one is tied to children, whether they are in one’s belly or at one’s side.
“Where might they be?” she asked softly.
Not the Temple of Endurance or Chowdry would have known. With Blackblood? He was a god of men, not women. Besides which, Skinless would not have borne me here if my people had been lying in his god’s temple.
The answer came to me. “Archimandrix,” I whispered. “They are Below. With the sorcerer-engineers.”
“Ah.” She turned swiftly away from me. I heard the door crash open and then swiftly slam shut again a moment later.
Better she than me, I thought. Ponce came to spoon dhal into me until I could take no more. I asked for a room, and they let me rest.
***
Daylight glowed red against my gummed-shut eyes. Someone had opened a shutter. I blinked, but it was too bright.
Closing my eyes again, I realized my belly was swollen and painful even beyond the pressure of the child within me. Too many tumbles onto my face. One hand strayed to stroke my skin there, trying to send comfort to the baby. I was still over two months from my due date, though it felt as if she wanted to emerge right now. When had I grown so enormous? I was unwieldy as any clay oven, potbellied and thin-legged and never the right temperature.
“Green,” a voice said softly.
I tried opening my eyes again, just a squint. I didn’t recognize the room-small and spare, with words painted on the plaster wall in some script I could not read. The smell of Selistani cooking told me I was above the Tavernkeep’s place.
Ilona sat beside me. She took my other hand in hers. Her face was red and swollen, puffy with tears, with grief.
“I…” The words would not be said.
“You did so much,” she whispered.
“Not enough.” My own tears poured forth. “C-Corinthia Anastasia, th-they sailed away with her.” I began to sob, to blubber as an ill-trained child might. “Sh-she’s gone…”
“Green.” Ilona gripped my hand tighter. “She’s been gone since they took her from my cottage. We will find a way to get her back.”
“That’s my promise to you,” I almost shouted, my voice mounting in anger.
“It is.” Ilona leaned close and kissed my forehead, then my tears, then my lips.
That quieted me a little. But not for long.
“Where are my sister Blades?”
“Those terrible women in black?” Humor rode in her voice.
“Yes. They were with the Rectifier. Th-that big pardine warrior.”
“Your Dancing Mistress brought them here this morning.”
I gave fervent thanks to the Lily Goddess. “Where are they now?”
“Both are recovering.”
Both? “I had three sisters here.”
Her face fell. “Two came in. In the arms of brass apes that followed the pardine woman.”
The next question made me very afraid. “Which two…? And, and… where is the third?” Dead?
“I don’t know their names,” she said. “One could not walk. Something was wrong with her feet.”
“Mother Vajpai.” I was unsure whether I was relieved or disappointed.
“The other would not w
ake up. A woman who had been hit about the head.”
“A woman, or a girl? My age, perhaps?”
“No, much older than you.”
Panic tinged my thoughts. I could not keep anyone without losing them. “Then where is Samma?”
“I don’t know, Green.” She leaned close to kiss me again, but I turned my face away.
“Don’t be too near me. You will suffer.”
Ilona slid into the bed. “I already have suffered.”
I let her curl her body around my back, and her hands clasp me just beneath my breasts; then I slept awhile with her breath warm upon my neck, safe in the circle of her arms.
***
Later I awoke again. At first I was too stiff to move. The light held a golden tinge, like honey glaze on a fresh-baked bun, suggesting the day was nearly at an end. Ilona was gone. I was alone.
No matter how much my body ached, I had to pee. I pulled myself from the bed, at the cost of no little pain and some lumbering misbalance, and found the chamber pot. Water came pulsing out of me like a countryman spitting durian seeds, urination so hard and deep that it was painful. How long had I lain there?
Pissing left me parched and hungry, but not so weak I couldn’t walk. Someone had removed-or cut away-my ruined clothing. I was naked. I found a tattered robe on a hook behind the door. Left for me, surely, for no pardine would need such a thing and especially not in so small a size.
Slowly, carefully, I stumbled into the hall, then crept down the stairs that opened into the back of the tavern. I kept one hand on the rough-carved rail. I could no longer see my feet, nor tell where they touched down. This pregnancy was like being aged, or ill. How did women stand it over and over?
The common room was much quieter, almost normal. Gaming tiles clacked, voices murmured, a fire crackled against the winter chill. I followed the sounds and smells to find Ilona sitting in close conversation with Chowdry and Mother Vajpai.
Most of the pardines were gone. Among those remaining, I saw none whom I could identify as Revanchists.
