by Jay Lake
“So you are ready to give up the last of my power.” I could still see Federo, but he was filled with the overwhelming largeness of the god. His voice echoed in the bones of my chest, though to my ears he spoke as an ordinary man.
“You may try to take it from me.”
“You must give it.” His voice grew lower, as if rumbling through stones.
“No.” So this was the point of contention. He had somehow hoped to use the Dancing Mistress to persuade me to this, back at the camp before we escaped. “I will not give you the last key to the locks of your power. Any more than I will give you my life.”
Beside me, Skinless quivered. I nodded.
My allies fell upon the god. The Factor swept in, acting for the first time like a gibbering ghost of legend, followed by his trail of servant-shades.
Though I stood so close to their violence I could have reached a hand in like a trainer stopping a dog fight, I did not move back. I needed to see what happened next.
Lightning arced once more, but now it leapt from roofpeak to roofpeak down the length of Lyme Street. Sheets of sparks jumped across the width of the street. Balls of fire sizzled and rolled along the cobbles. The thunder became one rippling roar that faded as my hearing gave out.
This was like watching a pack of curs. These tulpas of the city hated the new god. They tore at him, butted him, grabbed him. Mother Iron’s hands glowed red as she scored Choybalsan’s skin with scorched furrows. The Thin Woodman rained blows upon him that would have cracked the bones of a mortal. One of their fellows, a shambling green mound that might have been the avatar of rot, extended a film of slime over Choybalsan’s head. Skinless simply pounded him with giant naked fists.
The god subsided. He dropped to the pavement, first on his knees, then curled on his side. The lightning sizzled to a stop. Cool evening air blew across me in a sudden breeze. I thought the fight was over.
Skinless reached down to tear Choybalsan’s arms off when the god rolled onto his back and opened his eyes. Now he showed wounds-not of this fight, though. Horrible burns that wept red and pale fluid.
I realized this damage had been inflicted when the Dancing Mistress and I had blown his tent apart. They seemed fresh even now, which made me pity Federo’s agony, wherever he was beneath the wrappings of the god. He showed his true aspect.
We were winning. The god was down, and his powers were sloughing away. I actually smiled at the Factor, who stood on the other side of the fight with a grim expression on his spectral face.
When Skinless began to tug Choybalsan apart, the god flexed his muscles to shatter the avatar’s forearms. It screamed, a thin, high keening like a frightened rabbit, and fell back. Choybalsan tucked forward and leapt to his feet. He grabbed at the shambling green thing and shredded it, scattering the bits. He broke the Thin Woodman in half and threw him over the rooftops toward the next block. He bore Mother Iron into a hug that made her wheeze like an overworked ship’s kettle, then slammed her to the pavement so hard the cobbles shattered.
Finally, he turned to me. Lightning returned, dancing on the rooftops, setting the iron fences of the little garden beds aglow.
Despite my brave words earlier, I knew I could not fight him again. His divine aspect was full upon him.
How do I defeat a god? No priests were here to kill, and he had an army of worshippers outside the city. That was what they were here for-not to overrun the city, but to maintain the fervor of their newfound faith in Choybalsan.
He had prayer. I had anger. But my anger drove only me and those close by me to battle. The god had just struck down the most powerful beings I knew to throw at him.
What would Endurance do? What would my grandmother do?
Patience. They each in their way would have counseled patience.
His hand reached toward me. The fingers were smashed, I saw, held together by the main force of his will.
A series of questions flashed through my mind.
Why had the explosion hurt him? That was not a thing of my hands.
Why had the glass hurt Skinless, who could not be touched by weapons? Because the glass had been hurled by a god.
What god had set the fire and storm in Choybalsan’s tent? The god that was him, his sliver of grace within me.
I dropped heavily to sit on the cobbles. “Stay your hand, Choybalsan. I shall release what you seek.”
Even through the rolling thunder, he heard me. His hand drew back and a smile that was something of Federo crossed his ruined face.
A long, narrow shard of cobalt blue glass lay near me. I picked it up, moving with the deliberate pace of ritual while I tried to think past the next few seconds.
Such power as made Choybalsan a god now had first been stolen, or taken, from the Dancing Mistress’ people. That was a power of woodlands and meadows and the turning of the world’s life.
The Duke had held the power next. To hear the Factor speak, the Duke had thought himself a force for preservation, even renewal. He had never called lightnings or made war the way Choybalsan seemed all too ready to do.
Then I had snatched the power away and set it free. It was a cruel strength-the pardines hunted and had once made war; the Duke in turn had been ruthless in his rule-but that was the cruelty of the natural world. Not the deliberate goading and betrayals of Choybalsan. Even the Duke had been more like a farmer extinguishing weeds and scavengers among his crop.
Patience. The world was patient.
I slit my left forearm again with the glass, careful not to cut the vein. As the blood began to flow, I cast the glistening shard aside and took up my little wooden bell. I held it from the top this time and let the clappers swing as the blood fell on the stones. The bell echoed with its wooden clop as it had underground.
Goddess, I prayed, send the least of Your servants to me. I offer up my own blood, and through me a part of the blood of the child within me, to carry the last measure of this grace which was never mine, out of my body and into Your servant.
The gods in this place were silent, or were barely roused, but I knew that the Lily Goddess was fully clothed in Her power across the sea. However great or small She might be measured against Choybalsan, She attended me.
I rang the bell awhile, but nothing happened. No flash of light, no creaking of the Wheel, no manifestation in the street. Just me, a foolish girl with a little wooden bell, which I finally dropped.
“Thank you for your offering,” Choybalsan said. Even gods could be sarcastic. He bent down to stroke his burned fingers in the blood.
That was when I realized the bell still echoed.
The god heard it, too. He glanced at my own bell, cast aside. He looked past me. Something changed in the set of his body.
Clutching closed the wound on my arm, I stood and turned.
Endurance walked slowly down Lyme Street. Though I knew him to be dead and gone, he approached with the steady pace I remembered from the first days of my life. His bell, his real bell, clopped in time with the fall of his feet.
My grandmother sat astride his back. She was wrapped in her cloak of bells. Except my grandmother was never so tall.
I looked carefully and saw a tail sweeping away from the hem of the cloak.
The Dancing Mistress.
I opened my mouth to cry gladly, then shut it again. A stream of pardines came out of alleys and side streets, so that in moments a crowd of her people followed behind-far more than I had ever seen. Dozens. Scores.
The three who had fought with me-the Rectifier, the Tavernkeep, and the tan woman-rose from their hiding places and stepped quickly to stand beside the ox. Chowdry followed them, drawn perhaps by the familiar costume my teacher wore.
What had she done?
What had I done?
The lightning died. Choybalsan stood tall, beside me now as the two of us stood together to meet the coming challenge.
The Dancing Mistress slipped off her cloak of bells. I saw this was not my grandmother’s belled silk, that I had mi
staken it so only because she was astride the ox. Endurance’s eyes gleamed as he pitched his head toward me, ringing his bell again, but he did not seek to call me back.
She handed the silk to Chowdry. Though it seemed he could move only one arm, he took the cloth and gathered it close as best he could, before giving me a long look of mute appeal.
“Federo,” the Dancing Mistress said.
“Choybalsan,” the god corrected her.
She slid from the back of the ox and walked toward us. “You have something that does not belong to you. Something that was never meant for men.”
“Whoever this power might once have belonged to, it is mine now.” He flexed his ruined fingers, then pointed to a building down the street. A single bolt of lightning struck the roof, breaking off shattered bricks and smoldering splinters.
“That trick grows old,” I found myself saying.
He looked at me with a set of his eyes that chilled my blood once again. “You are both here. Together you are the keys.”
“No.” The Dancing Mistress was at arm’s length now. Her people had followed close behind, the ox Endurance with them.
I did not hear the wheezing bellows of his breath as I had always known them. That was when I understood that I had succeeded in reaching out to the divine. My measure of grace had spoken, my piece of the Duke’s power. Endurance was not a sending so much as he was a calling.
A quiet, voiceless god of patience, if he survived long enough to grow as I understood that gods could do.
The Dancing Mistress went on: “There are no keys. You are a flawed vessel. Like a water crock into which someone has poured the red iron of the forge. You were never meant to hold this power.”
The Factor stepped close. His shade flickered. I could see the pardines disturbed him. “Release the power, Federo,” he said. “This has mastered you rather than you mastering it.”
“No.” Choybalsan began to quiver. I could taste metal in my mouth once more. “No, I will not let go!”
The Dancing Mistress’ claws came out. “You cannot be touched by weapons, but I have a hundred of my kindred behind me. I assure you that we can lay claws on you until you are nothing but a ribbon of blood in the street.”
Patience. Every time this dispute came to blows, somehow affairs grew worse. I had the habit of killing people, but this was both more and less than that.
We did not need to kill this god. We needed to persuade him to lay himself down.
“Please,” I told the Dancing Mistress. “Please let me try.”
I took Federo’s hand as the god within him raised his other arm to call down more wrath. He tried to snatch it away, but somehow could not. Instead he turned to look at me.
“You came to claim me, thirteen years ago.” I gripped his fingers close, as if he were Papa and holding tight could have saved me back then.
“That was the man Federo,” he rumbled in the voice that made my ribs ache.
Ignoring him, I went on. “I hated you for it. You were kind enough, and spared me good words, and fed me better than I had ever eaten in my life. Sometimes, for a child, that can be enough.”
His eyes held a distant, almost lopsided look. “You were a wise girl.” I heard the man inside the god.
“Now I have come to claim you back. Whatever love you hold for her ,” and with that word I cast my eyes toward the Dancing Mistress, “whatever love you hold for me, let that be enough for you to follow me as I once followed you.”
“I do not know how to let go,” Federo whispered. Sparks crackled within the god’s eyes. He shoved me away. I owe my life now to the fact that it was the man who pushed me and not the god, for I merely fell to the stones of the street instead of skittering half a block to the sound of shattering bones.
A stampede erupted. I curled tight as dozens of clawed feet pelted past me in a sudden burst of movement. For a panicked moment, I closed my eyes. I was too cowardly to face my death.
What came was not the shredding of my body, but the tearing noise of lightning slashing the air. I tasted metal yet again. All the hairs on my skin stood like spikes. Thunder clawed at my ears until only a heavy, smothering silence remained, though the stones beneath me carried the sound to my bones, echoing much as the god’s voice had.
Goddess, I prayed, a mercy on us all.
I opened my eyes to see the divine Endurance standing over me, much as the ox had once done in my father’s fields. Just beyond his front legs was a terrible roil of spark and flame and fur and claw. Pardines exploded under the stabbing bolts of lightning, flesh and blood and pelt shredding in arcs leading away from the violence.
My eyes were driven toward blindness from the glare, much as my ears had been from the noise. I capped my hand over my brows and tried to look only at feet.
That was bad enough. They clawed, fought, climbed. Skinless’ great muscled legs passed my view. Lightning flashed and glared off the blood slicks on the cobbles. My whole body felt a bruising from the ripping electrick bolt, the buffeting of the wounded air.
Then there was no more. The lightning had stopped, along with everything else. Even in my deafness, I could sense that a hush had descended. I crawled out from beneath the ox, and with my right hand on his flank, got to my feet.
Carnage. Dead pardines everywhere. Skinless lay shattered, still as any anatomist’s worktable project. Only Endurance and I stood.
The Dancing Mistress lay before me, coiled with Federo. She’d managed to bang his head into the cobbles sufficiently for reason to leave him. With his thoughts fled, the lightning had ceased.
It was indeed Federo. The aspect of the god had drained away.
The Rectifier loped up to me. He had a slender stone knife in his hand. I saw his triangular mouth flex as he said something to me that I could not yet hear; then he bent over to slice off Federo’s fingers.
I launched myself at him, slipping on a slick of blood. Though my attack was wild, and he far, far larger, I took the Rectifier in the side of the leg and staggered him two paces away from Federo with the corpse yet unmutilated.
He whirled on me with the knife held low, then pulled his blow when he realized who his attacker was. The Rectifier bent, the knucklebones in his fur jiggling. He asked me a question. This time I heard his voice as if from a long, hollow tube.
Pointing at my ears, I tried to say, “Leave them be. I will see to them.”
The Rectifier stood his ground, then tossed his head toward Federo. The meaning was clear enough. You go first, then, and good luck to you.
I looked to Endurance, then stepped over to my two fallen. The Dancing Mistress still breathed, though her ears were torn off and her face was a burned mess. I could not see that Federo still breathed.
The god had definitely left him. Where was Choybalsan? For a moment, I did not care.
Kneeling beside them, I wept to see their wounds. All of us seemed set one against the other as a matter of bloody, violent course.
The shake of Endurance’s head, the clop-clop of his bell, brought me back. I turned to look up at my first friend in life, and I knew where the god had gone.
The ox was surrounded by the avatars and sendings from Below. Lightning danced in Endurance’s eyes, illuminating a knowing squint I had never before seen.
Patience. I had called a god of patience. Who had no voice to rally armies and suborn priests. Who had no hands to direct the lightnings he might pull down from heaven. Who could stand quietly and watch over the angry spirit within him, centuries of human power and pardine loss compressed to the rumble of a ruminant’s complex gut.
I had placed the greatest threat seen for generations into the tulpa born of my father’s ox.
Even better, I had slain no gods.
Laughter bubbled up inside me. It roiled like the tide through rocks, spilling out through every part of my body, my soul, my voice. I fell beside the Dancing Mistress and Federo as the waves broke into tears. This could not be what the Goddess had meant for me, for all
of us.
I slumped to a seat on the cobbles of the road and cried. My heart flooded into the world, tear by tear, sob by sob, and left nothing within my chest except a hollow beating. Finally I looked at the Dancing Mistress. Her eyes were open now. The left was filmy with the lightning burns that had scarred her face. The right looked at me with a tired curiosity.
I stared back at her and smiled, mouthing, I think we won.
The Rectifier knelt beside me again. “Can I take his fingers now?” the big pardine asked, tugging at my shoulder. “He is no longer using them.”
“No!” I shouted. “Let Federo die decently.”
“Death is never decent, human. We reclaim what is ours.”
The Dancing Mistress’ burned hand shot up to grasp the Rectifier’s wrist. Her fingers were tight in his fur, shaking the stone knife he still held.
The Rectifier said something in the sibilant language of their people. She spat an answer, then turned to me. “I was… wrong. Do not… allow him…”
“Do not allow him what?”
“Do not let him… take it… back…”
Her eyes closed again as her hand fell to her side. I reached out to touch her lips-still breathing.
Thank you, Goddess.
When I looked up again, the Rectifier was slicing off Federo’s fingers. “No!” I shouted. I scrambled to my feet and tried to hit him, but he knocked me away and continued cutting. I scrambled around in the street among the bodies until I found a dropped spear. Hefting it, I ran toward the Rectifier.
This time he jumped up and grabbed the head as I rushed him. He was fast. I knew that, often as I’d sparred with the Dancing Mistress.
The Rectifier snapped the weapon out of my hands. I had to let go to avoid breaking my wrists. Then he came for me claws out. This time he was fighting for real.
“What are you taking back?” I shouted. I needed to change this game, for sparring with him would surely kill me.
He circled. His legs were nearly twice as long as mine, so matching me step for step, he covered twice as much ground. I received no answer.
I looked around for another weapon as I backed farther away. The Rectifier moved faster than I could track him, and launched a disemboweling kick. Sliding sideways to avoid the blow, I tripped and lost my balance. I went sprawling.
