by Jay Lake
Which meant the unfortunate bullyboys had tried to roll a stranger who was far more dangerous than they’d realized. But the Petraean had not answered whatever summons he’d been sent by the Bittern Court, and so fallen in default to the sentence for violating Death Right without cause.
“Would it not be easier to send someone to convince him to speak before the Court?”
“We do not judge, Green.” Her voice was sharp. “The Blades do not advise, except in the narrowest matters of our art. Should the Goddess wish counsel dispensed, She will move one of the justiciary Mothers to go to this man.”
That I knew before I’d spoken. It seemed unfair to kill a man who did not even know he was under a death sentence.
“And me?”
“It is the season for you to take the last Petal. You are the only aspirant who speaks Petraean. This may be an advantage should you be spotted or questioned while at your purposes-you might be able to turn away suspicion for a key moment, where none of the other girls could.”
“Very few of the sworn Blades as well,” I said.
“You have the right of it.”
We walked on, then circled the statue of Mahachelai on his Horse of Skulls and began to pass the other direction down the Avenue of Ships. Arvani’s Pier was now ahead of us. The lane in the crowds opened for us as always, though suddenly I was conscious of it in a way I had otherwise long since ceased to be.
“So, I shall make my way aboard this ship, find a man, and slay him for a crime he does not understand, as he believes himself to have killed in defense.”
“No,” she corrected me. “You shall express the will of the Goddess and the judgment of the laws and customs of Kalimpura.”
The whimpering pleas of the dying bandit had long since ceased troubling my dreams, but I still vividly remembered the crack of Mistress Tirelle’s neck. In our training, we had attacked each other, attacked straw dummies, wooden stands, squealing pigs, and dogs first defanged, then later with all their teeth. I had shed blood, spilled blood, and stanched it in myself and others.
Mistress Tirelle filled my imagination now-the spittle on her face, the damp slump of her body on the cobbles of the Pomegranate Court. Would I do this thing a third time? Would I make a habit of what had begun in fear and desperation?
Would I be a Blade?
Will I belong here?
“Who is this man, and what is his appearance?” I asked. For one brief, dizzying moment, I imagined that the Lily Goddess had somehow set me to kill Federo. That would either be the most satisfying vengeance, or murder of my oldest friend.
Both.
“His name is Michael Curry. He is a man of Copper Downs who is being a factor of House Pareides out of Smagadis, aboard the vessel Crow Wing as a spice buyer for the Stone Coast trade.”
I felt an immense sense of relief every bit as irrational as the concern that had preceded it.
She continued, her mouth flashing silver as she spoke. “He is a small man who keeps his head shaved bald, and favors dark velvets with puffed sleeves and leggings.”
“It’s called a Sunward doublet,” I said absently. “A style popular in the Ducal court a generation past.”
Mother Vajpai looked at me strangely a moment. “You may know him for certain by the iron key he wears on a silken thread around his neck. Its head is wrought as a snake’s, with an emerald for one eye and a sapphire for the other. This key unlocks his strongbox.”
“Am I seeking anything within the box?”
She hesitated slightly. “No. Bring the key, that one of the justiciary Mothers might present it before the Bittern Court as proof of justice done.”
That was far too easy to unravel. Crow Wing would stay tied up while the killing was disputed and discussed. Someone in the Bittern Court would make use of the key, I was certain. Had this Michael Curry asked too high a price for the cargo he’d sold here?
I wondered at her hesitation, and my own sense of disgust. “If I cannot fetch the key for some reason, will another proof suffice?”
“As the Goddess works within you, Green.” Relief stood in Mother Vajpai’s eyes.
What test had I passed? Or failed?
“When?”
“Now.”
Here was Arvani’s Pier. I nodded at Mother Vajpai and trotted up the stoneway as if I had every business in the world there.
There were no more rules now. Just as Mother Vishtha had once promised.
Crow Wing was the third ship moored to my left. I wondered what would happen if I stepped aboard and asked in my most formal Petraean to be taken back to Copper Downs.
Likely I’d be thrown into the harbor.
A deckhand idled at the bottom of the gangplank. Someone with that slouch and such a grubby shirt could not possibly be the purser. I made a mental apology to Srini, who had treated me so well aboard Southern Escape, and shouldered past the sailor to walk right up the plank.
“Oi, there,” he snapped in Petraean.
“Don’t you people remember anything?” I demanded in the same language, haughty as my very well trained voice could manage. “I’m back with an answer for Master Curry.” I winked. “One he’s quite anxious to hear.”
“Figured you dogs only spoke yer own yap here,” he muttered. “Go on then, boy, if old Malice is expectin’ yer.”
Patience, I thought. No Death Right penalty had been pronounced against this one, nor was the Right itself now in place for his behavior. I wondered how many dockside bar fights he had started and lost.
I trotted aboard Crow Wing. Another reason to send me on this job was that I knew something of the layout of ships. Curry would be belowdecks in the stern, near the captain’s cabin. All officers and important passengers traveled behind the mast. That had been pounded into me aboard Southern Escape.
Also, I was just as pleased to be a boy in the eyes of the oaf at the dock.
Stepping down the short companionway, the enormity of what I was about to do struck me like a blow to the gut. I staggered into the hot shadows of the corridor beyond and tried very hard to swallow down a heave. My mouth filled with bile, which I was forced to spit out upon the deck.
I was set to kill a man who did not know he was to die. Who probably did not deserve to die, truth be told. Especially not if someone in the Bittern Court was so interested in his strongbox key. The stink of politics was strong enough even for my indifferent nose.
Goddess, I prayed. Lend my heart strength to know the path.
The hot, close air within the rearcastle stirred. I heard for one moment the sharp peal of a child’s laugh. Was that meant to draw me on, or to send me away?
I walked aftward. No doors were marked, of course, but no one was about, either. The widest door at the back would be the captain’s, I supposed. I tried the one on my left, but it rattled, shut tight. An iron lock below the knob told that story. Stepping to the portside, I tried that. Locked as well. I heard a scrape within.
That was most likely him. I drew my bandit knife from the leggings beneath my robe and kicked at his door. It sprang open with a crash that was sure to draw someone to investigate.
My remaining time would be measured in seconds.
Curry was already rising to meet the threat. He was easy enough to recognize from Mother Vajpai’s description, though she hadn’t said that his eyes matched the eyes in his key-one was green, the other blue. He paused when he saw me, and the pistol in his hand drooped away.
“They send a boy?” he asked in Petraean, then laughed with the same cruelty that the Factor had, just before I slew him.
The capped well of my anger broke in a rush like lamp oil spilled over open flame. I would not be mocked.
Firearms were almost unknown in Kalimpura. Even those used on the Stone Coast were as likely to flash in the pan and blind their owners. Some of the best hand-built guns had another system of cartridges and shot, of which I’d been told by Mother Vishtha but had never seen for myself.
This pistol had no p
an, so it was one of the new ones.
To cut my risk, I sprang straight toward the weapon. Mother Vajpai might have mentioned the gun, I thought, just as Curry and I collided. I snapped his wrist back, forcing him to drop the pistol as it fired. The noise slapped at my ears, but no bullet pushed me down. Curry tumbled over with a shocked expression, fetching up against a brass-handled cabinet behind his desk.
“You should have answered your summons,” I said through clenched teeth, using Petraean so he would understand me.
He glared as my bandit knife entered just behind his collarbone, striking downward. It took more pressure than I had expected-men had thinner skin than pigs, as I’d been told-but I knew when I’d pierced his heart.
In that moment, I learned I could kill at need, whatever my later regrets.
“You’re the one who…” he began. Then he was just so much meat.
“One who what?” I growled, but my words were moot. Voices rose in the corridor as I slid my knife free. Blood followed, but not in the rush it would have if he’d been still alive. I wiped my blade on his shirtfront, then tugged his key loose and slit its string of silk thread and pearls.
If I brought this home, whoever within the Bittern Court had engineered this man’s death would prosper. The law is the law, as they said. A Blade does not judge.
My knife popped his odd-colored eyes free of their sockets, one after the other. I severed the optic nerves, then slit a length of velvet from his sleeve to roll them tight in my hands. I then tore down the drape behind him. A porthole, as I’d hoped. I would not have to fight back to the dock, where a man was even now shouting Curry’s name.
The window was slender and square, relieved with leaded glass in the manner of a ship’s stern lights. I swept up Curry’s pistol and smashed out the glass with the butt. The weapon went into the harbor. Being slender myself, I followed it. His eyes I clutched tight in one hand, my knife in the other. The key I trailed in my fingers, so that the water tore it from me when I splashed hard a dozen feet below.
Much as I had done in my earliest childhood, I kicked like a frog to swim away from Crow Wing. I could pass under Arvani’s Pier where the stonework was arched to let the tidal swells through. This was less a bridge and more a sewer, but it was enough for me. I slipped into shadow with the garbage and the flotsam. There my feet found stone to cling to amid the tidewrack stench. There I cried for the death of a man I’d never known.
Yet somehow he knew me.
I waited in the shadows. A great deal of shouting went on above in both Petraean and Seliu. Whistles blew, and at one point I heard a clash of sticks and fists, followed by someone being thrown cursing into the harbor. Eventually the combination of being soaking wet and the rank odors began to irritate me sufficiently to risk moving. Besides that, something had tried to nibble on my legs.
Tucking away both knife and eyeballs, I slipped out the far side and clung to the stonework as I clambered toward the footings of the Street of Ships. I was forced to pass two close-moored vessels as I did so. The first hull towered above me, rocking less than two feet from the stone of the pier. A shadowed wall of mossy barnacles threatened my skin. I tried not to consider what would become of me if a swell pushed the ship toward the dock.
The second such passage terrified me as well, but it was already becoming familiar. I could not just climb up. Too many people with official business were on the dock disputing recent events. Surely the Bittern Court would send its word. Though not, I realized, until I returned with my proof.
I found a series of rotten grates in the wall below the street frontage. Clearly I was not the first to pass this way, for two had been twisted open. Figuring on the tunnels they covered being stormwater outflows for the streets beyond, I slipped in the first and followed the pipe at a low crouch. If I had been given to fear of tight places, that one might have panicked me, but in less than two hundred paces, I was inside a catchment. I knew from the distance and direction to Arvani’s Pier that I must now be under the Plaza of Broken Swords. With a deep breath, I found my bearings. There would be an access in the little park just north.
Once among the mango trees, I squeezed what water I could from my robes. I looked beyond disgraceful, but I still knew how to carry myself. Slipping out into the street, I slunk toward the Lily Temple. A few people stared. Most knew better.
When I passed a fireseller’s cart along the curb, I stopped. She was a woman of middle years, plain-faced and worn with the effort of her life. She was also visibly frightened at my appearance.
“I would have a black candle and a white one,” I told her. “And some punk or matches to light them. I… I have no money with me, but can leave my good steel knife as surety. The Temple of the Silver Lily will stand for it.”
“N-no, Moth-… sister…” Her fright deepened. Hands fluttered like birds as she began pushing candles at me. “Take what you will. I offer to the Goddess.”
I opened my mouth to thank her, but a whirlwind overtook my words, and left something distant and calm within her eyes. I nodded, claimed the box of lucifer matches and two candles that suited me best, and stepped into the next quiet alley.
Three boys rolled a drunk there, while a thin dog tied to a drainpipe barked weakly.
“Out!” I roared. Their sneers broke as they saw my face, and they fled. The dog whimpered as it tried to hide behind the pipe. The drunk just moaned.
I knelt in the stinking slime that scummed the bricks. There I scraped clean a patch with the edge of my hand and set out the two candles. I placed the sorry, ragged mess that was Curry’s eyes before them.
The black candle I lit first. “H-he violated the Death Right,” I told the alley. Curry’s shade as well, should the man still be listening. Perhaps his gods heard me, if they were not resting silently far away across the Storm Sea.
His surprise loomed large in my memory. Curry had not protested his death. Rather, he had thought to find it at a different hand. Perhaps there were games played here that went beyond strongboxes.
I found that I did not care. Curry and I had played but one game: the game of life. He had lost. So have I.
Then I lit the white candle. “His debt to the Death Right is settled.” That did not seem to be the sort of kindness that should be said to send a man’s soul back onto the Wheel. I knew nothing of Michael Curry but his contempt for me. Like the nameless bandit whose life I had claimed, he must have had at least one grace. “Surely his mother loved him.”
I threw up once more, filled with the awful sense of having done something beyond retrieval. When that finally settled, I reclaimed the packet of my victim’s eyes. Then I stood and wiped my hands against the ruins of my robe. The drunk stirred. “Lost a friend of yours?” he mumbled.
“Yes,” I said. “Though I knew him only at the last.”
Heading back for the temple, I wondered what would be done with me.
Mother Vajpai took the crumpled mess of velvet. She eyed it with speculation, then looked me up and down. I stood before her in one of the belowground practice rooms. We were at little risk of being overheard or interrupted there.
“Did the Goddess guide your hand?” She chose her words with care.
I did not feel up to liturgical games. “She guided me in my progress, at least. I struck true. He did have a pistol.”
“Mmm.” She turned the ragged bundle over to inspect it from all sides. “I am sorry we did not know to warn you of that. What of the proof demanded?”
“You will find a blue eye and a green eye within that,” I said. “Also, I need to deliver a handful of copper paisas to a fireseller on Longspear Avenue.”
She waved that aside with a flip of her hand. “I’ll send a girl. You should not go back out for a while.” Then Mother Vajpai opened the damp, sticky bundle. She looked at the eyes crushed within, then began to laugh. “Green, my child, you have the makings of a Mother Justiciar.”
“I did as I was asked, Mother Vajpai.”
“Di
d you find the strongbox key?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“What became of it?”
My feet suddenly became very interesting to me. “The Goddess snatched the key from my hand as I escaped Crow Wing. She sent it to the bottom of the harbor. Alongside Michael Curry’s pistol.”
“And you?”
“I am here.”
“After being aboard a ship that could have carried you back to Copper Downs,” she whispered softly.
“I will never return to Copper Downs!” Tears welled, my chest hurt, my body ached, and I was covered in slime. “I go to the baths.”
“Go, Green, and take my blessing with you.”
I stormed from Mother Vajpai’s presence in search of some way to clean my hands. The stain on my soul would be much harder.
In the baths, I poured the water as hot as the boilers would make it, until my skin puffed shiny and pink. Blood still stained my hands, crusted under my fingernails. None of the body brushes would clean it off. I was crashing through the little mop closet in search of something stiffer when Samma came in.
“Green, Green!” she shouted, and tugged me away from my effort. When she saw my hands, she shrieked. “Come with me, now, please. Jappa said this might happen.”
I raised my hand to slap her away, then stopped myself. “What does Jappa have to do with this?”
“Sh-she said you might…” Samma sniffed, swallowing her next words. “Please, dearheart, just come with me.”
Glowering, I allowed myself to be led. I was wet and naked, and shivering despite the heat. The pain in my hands was the only thing that mattered. Maybe that would cleanse me.
Samma dragged me down a hall, shouting for help until Ello came. “Get Jappa, and have her meet us in the small practice room below,” she told the little girl. Her voice broke.
“Are we to f-fight?” I asked.
“No, no, sweetling.” Samma stopped pulling me to kiss my forehead a moment. “Something else. Completely else.”
Jappa somehow found the small practice room before we did. I stumbled in, shivering cold, to find a fire in a glowing brazier. We never had open flames in these rooms. They were underground, and any blaze that escaped was too far from water to fight easily.
