by Jay Lake
“I cannot say what possessed him.” Mother Argai was sharpening her long knife and not meeting anyone’s eye. Which was very unlike her.
“Our secrecy will not hold much longer,” I said, pointing out the obvious. “He will be missed. They’ll know from the other bodies what area of the city we are in.”
“They likely know that now,” said Mother Vajpai heavily. “But we can’t simply march out of here with weapons drawn.”
“Nor can we wait for forty of that poor bastard’s fellows to come pouring over the back wall and slit my children’s throats,” I snapped. I’d pulled something in my back digging the grave, and still felt oddly guilty about the killing.
“Soon,” she counseled, but I could see her words seemed weak, even to her.
There was little else to say on this. We all knew the arguments already. Perhaps to distract me, Mother Argai gave me another letter. Smeared with blood I trusted was fresh, it was of course from Chowdry. Though my old pirate-priest could not be replying to me yet. My own first letter to him would still be weeks in the travel. I had not yet sent the one I was writing now. I was not sure if I would send it, in any case.
The arrival of a new missive was either pleasing or alarming, depending on the view that I chose to take. I stared awhile at the sealed packet that she had handed me. A coarse, rough paper wrapped the outside, brown and speckled and strange, wrapped with string and sealed with wax blobs in several colors. Plus a spatter of some Street Guildsman’s blood.
Was the artistry an excess of creativity on Chowdry’s part? Or the marks of various couriers along the way?
“How did it arrive here?” I asked Mother Argai. We were in the kitchen, sharing cups of wine. I still had dirt under my fingernails, even after washing carefully. We would have to burn or bury the robe I’d been wearing.
“Friends in the temple passed it to me.”
Of course Chowdry had sent a letter for me to the Temple of the Silver Lily. Where else would he have known to send it? Our casting out was news that would not reach him for a while.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. After yesterday’s argument, I had been reminded all over again how difficult a line Mother Argai walked right now. She had not been ejected, but everyone would know she was here on Mother Vajpai’s behalf. One angry Blade, one overheard conversation, and the Temple Mother could with a few words extend our order of banishment to cover Mother Argai.
Or was that lack of pressure a form of cooperation from Mother Srirani? I was coming to understand much better how someone could be trapped in a course of action they neither intended nor approved of.
The letter beckoned me. My racing thoughts did me no favors, and there was small point in postponing reading this. Chowdry was never much for words, not as I had known him. Anything he troubled to tell me from across the sea was probably something I needed to hear.
I broke the seals and unraveled the string. The rough paper fell away from a torn sheet of creamy parchment. The Temple of Endurance had peculiar donations, I knew, but fine writing supplies seemed stranger than usual. I wondered whose hand had written it out for him.
* * *
Greetings to Green, once of Copper Downs and departed now to Kalimpura, it read in Petraean. The rest was in Seliu.
You have not been gone three days and already there is being a new stir in the city. Someone has arrived seeking the twins who so troubled you this past season.
A man has come to the Temple of Endurance asking after you. We have not said much, other than what is already known—that you have left. Everyone who cares to think of it can tell your destination.
His name is “Mafic.” I believe he comes from the Saffron Tower, the source of so much of your recent troubles. A tall man, and smoldering as if he carries a fire within.
I fear for you, Green. If this Mafic sails on toward Kalimpura to challenge you, that will lead to greater troubles even than those twins you fought against. And for your goddess there as well.
There is too much of this violence around you. If you would lay down your weapons, others would stop seeking you. I counsel on behalf of Endurance that you take up a long and peaceful life.
It is to be wishing you well.
Chowdry, of Endurance
The Saffron Tower. We had heard rumor of the apostate Red Man and his apsara. My need for them was much stronger now.
This had to be bound up in the taking of Corinthia Anastasia and Samma. Certainly Iso and Osi had been part of Surali’s plot before, as she worked against the Lily Goddess through Her now-slain sister goddess Marya. What I could not see was whether this Mafic was another part of Surali’s schemes, or if he was seeking a separate vengeance on the part of the Saffron Tower for the fate of the twins. Surali was acting through the Quiet Men now, it seemed, not through her erstwhile allies.
Perhaps the details did not matter. In either case, the outcome was the same to me.
“What news?” asked Ilona, having seen me lay down the sheets of the letter and stare at our empty counters and tabletops. Mother Argai watched me in shrewd silence.
“Chowdry writes of a new agent of the Saffron Tower pursuing the fate of Iso and Osi.” I sighed heavily as I described the import of his letter. Then: “I had thought their threat settled. Now another seeks them and through them seeks me.”
“We do not yet know the fate of the Red Man,” said Mother Argai.
“He would be a valuable ally.” I passed the papers to her—Ilona could not read Seliu, so there was small point in handing the letter that way. “I would give much to have an hour’s honest conversation with the Red Man and his apsara.”
Ilona reached into the heart of the matter. “What does this have to do with finding my daughter?”
“I cannot say,” I confessed. “But the Saffron Tower was bound up in the original kidnapping through Surali’s plotting. If this Mafic who pursues is cause or consequence, I cannot say. Chowdry did not know to tell me. My heart believes these things are connected.”
“Chowdry writes of events in Copper Downs, weeks’ sail away,” she pointed out.
“Mafic could have come on the same ship as this letter,” I replied. “Time and distance are not necessarily our armor here. If we knew where to find the Red Man, we might understand more of what we face in this Mafic. Through that, we would be better prepared to deal once and for all with Surali.”
“Yesterday you were hot to free my daughter. Today you worry about a man who is almost certainly an ocean away.” Ilona’s voice was bitter. “I see nothing actually being done to rescue Corinthia Anastasia.”
“Nor Samma,” added Mother Argai, passing the papers along to my old friend.
I reached for Ilona’s hand. She clutched my fingers tight, despite her doubts. The touch of her skin was like a balm to me, as always it had been.
“I do not yet know how to rescue them,” I told her. “But I will. Mother Argai and Mother Vajpai tell us we await allies. Now we also await an enemy, hiding from others who grow closer every day. The trick of the thing will be to gauge our stroke most effectively.”
“We’ve been gauging our stroke for months.”
I pointed at the babies sitting in the sun, cooing at each other. “It was time spent for what was needful.”
She began to weep. I was embarrassed for myself, and for her. And frustrated. Others were moving against us, and in doing so closing off our choices one by one.
* * *
I awoke late that night, my back still aching a bit and the scent of candles yet on me from my earlier praying over the Street Guildsman’s garden grave. The babies snored gently, each wheezing in their sleep. Checking close, their milk breath was refreshing. My children.
There was nothing about Ilona’s hurt that I did not understand completely. I had already stood firm in defense of my children more than once. She had no weapon but me. She could not raise a hand against her enemies, not a tenth part so well as I could.
A Blade served all women, not
just herself.
But sometimes a Blade had to serve herself in order to serve others.
Besides, I was sick of waiting. Sick of obedience. As I’d said to myself time and again, patience was never my way. Surely I could slip over the wall, learn what was needful, and slip home again with no one the wiser. Another night of enforced rest was likely to make me scream with frustration.
I gathered my sleeping children and took them into Ilona’s room. We had spread out in this large house, but she had taken a maid’s quarters. Whether the open spaces bothered her, or she just felt safer enclosed, I had not inquired.
She woke muzzy when I came in. I placed a child in each of her arms, so they snugged against one breast and the other. “Say nothing,” I whispered. “I will be back before the dawn.”
Ilona smiled for the first time in days, then hugged my children close. I was tempted to abandon my plan and slip into the bed with her. That would address a different frustration of mine, to be sure. Instead, I kissed her gently as a promise—unreliable though I knew that promise to be under the current circumstances—and slipped out as the three of them settled deeper into sleep.
It did not take me so long to don my leathers. My long knife went in my thigh scabbard. My god-blooded short knife was tucked into my right forearm. I had not yet replaced the left knife.
This would be simple, easy. Just a little reconnaissance. I might even be lucky enough to find what I sought. I knew nothing would go wrong, I had that much confidence in myself. Our secrecy would be preserved, and we would know more than we did.
More to the point, I would have taken action. Done something for myself, for Samma and Corinthia Anastasia.
For all of us.
Departing the house was no great trick. As I’d written to Chowdry, we were not prisoners. Not in the conventional sense. There were no locks except on the outer gates, and those keys we ourselves held.
Still I went over the wall, for practice and stealth both, and left my promises behind. Some needs were greater than others. I was finally listening to my conscience.
* * *
The Bittern Court also stood on Shalavana Avenue, near the intersection with the Gita, a ceremonial highway of ancient times long since converted to a city street. Their compound was a large complex even by the standards of wealthy property in this city. Where we had been sheltering in a great house, in the Petraean sense, the Bittern Court was quite literally a palace.
For all that Surali and the schemes of the Bittern Court had reached into my life so deeply, I had never set foot there before. I was out this night against my given word to learn something. Anything, in a sense, but most specifically the disposition of their prisoners of my conscience.
I ghosted along the little jig-jagging street that ran roughly parallel to Shalavana Avenue, serving as a sort of alley behind the great properties that lined that road. To my left loomed walls and gates and stable arches and little docks where carts could unload whatever the needs of the wealthy and powerful had caused to be delivered. To my right were rows of modest homes, all of them much smaller, that housed servants, guards, and lesser relatives, along with anyone else whose affairs required such constant closeness to their betters.
The silent walls of the wealthy bore me little threat. I was more concerned with watchful eyes from the windows of their retainers.
Still, as I had long known, there is an art to skulking. It largely consists of not seeming to skulk. I walked boldly in my leathers, whistling silently—not being a complete fool—for the air it gave me.
This would not be a case of rushing the front gate with weapons in hand. I’d done that before, most notably to Surali’s rented house in Copper Downs with the Rectifier at my back. My gigantic pardine friend was not here, however. More to the point, I did not want to draw anywhere near such attention to myself. Alerting Surali’s guards that I had trespassed their grounds would be more dangerous to Corinthia Anastasia and to Samma than almost anything else I could do.
My steps faltered with that thought.
Dare I?
The stillness was a torture of its own. Lying low served as a kind of defeat. Once I’d scouted, I’d be much better prepared to lead the Blade allies Mother Vajpai kept not-quite-promising me.
We would not go blind into this place. Yes, I assured myself, this was the responsible thing to do.
Over the years I have come to realize that most decisions are made in the absence of ratiocination, convenient facts being marshaled afterwards to support the deeds of the moment. That night may have been the nadir of such behavior on my part.
Still, even now, I would rather reason with forward momentum and sufficient force than lurk like a woman-spider in some web. The irony of this does not escape me, and the much younger Green in that alley would have laughed to see me now.
I approached the Bittern Court’s back wall with a confident stride. This would be roof work, and windows, along with subduing both guards and servants before they could spot me. If I found myself in a stand-up fight tonight, I would already have lost before the first blood was drawn.
* * *
The wall presented no great challenge. It was not so much defense as boundary. I scrambled up a stack of broken-down crates awaiting the wood cart and slipped over the top into the thick garden beyond. I had been certain of my destination thanks to the bushy treetops gleaming in the moonlight from above the wall’s height.
In this, I was not disappointed. The garden was another matter. Someone with sense had trimmed back the undergrowth so I had no cover beneath the papaya trees but night’s shadow. Much of what grew before me in the open ground beyond the trees had been planted in great iron or clay pots. The ground was largely raked gravel.
At least no one was out for a midnight stroll. The guards, wherever they were, did not seem to be in evidence here with me.
I crouched back into the shadows and studied the way the garden unfolded, and the buildings beyond. They definitely were buildings in the plural, I noted with no little disappointment. I had been expecting something like the great house in which we were sheltered.
Kalimpuri architecture was more idiosyncratic, less enclosed, than the run of buildings on the Stone Coast. Much less need to shelter from the weather encouraged creativity in the placement of walls, I supposed. But this place had been built as what the Petraeans would have called a folly.
A large central building dominated the land. It was quite tall, perhaps four storeys, with a swaybacked roof peaked at each end and long, sweeping eaves, all covered in tile that glittered pale in the night. The side I could see, the back, was faced with enormous pillars three or four rods high. In the shadows, I thought I could spy a pair of massively tall doors.
A hall, then. A throne room, in fact.
Almost a dozen lesser structures surrounded the central building. Some were barely more than pavilions; others had the thick-walled look of kitchens, storehouses, or barracks. Roofed walkways joined them together. Certain of those had screened or paneled walls; others were wide open. A few were elevated, passing across plantings, ponds, and other walkways.
This was like the open plan of our own hideaway house taken to an extreme.
It also made my scouting prospects very difficult indeed.
A series of structures laid out like this would not have convenient servants’ hallways running behind the main rooms, as so many houses in Copper Downs did. It was also quite unlikely that any system of underground passages connected them: even if Kalimpura’s limited sewers ran here—and I had no idea whether they did or did not—those tunnels would at most connect in one or two places.
I would have to do this the hard way. And hope everyone was very much asleep.
At least in sliding along the wall, I could keep to the shadows. I’d marked an elevated stone patio as my destination. It came closest to the boundary of anything in my line of sight, and seemed to be a jumble of furniture and potted palms, as if someone had hosted a banquet up there and
not yet gotten around to sending everything back to the storerooms.
I could work with the broken sight lines and jumbled shadows up there. At least no one had left torches or lamps burning the garden. The hall and its satellite structures were quite dark.
Once I was done with Surali, she would never sleep without lights again.
* * *
The west wall of the great hall was composed of ornately carved panels. On close inspection, I declined to climb it. Getting around the deep eaves at the top would be an ugly business. After that, well, what would I have? A roof difficult to get back down from, and a slightly better view than I already enjoyed.
Instead, I scrambled up to the top of one of the covered walkways and began to trot lightly along their length. I was interested in the second- and third-storey windows of the smaller buildings. Seeing who slept where seemed a productive pursuit. If I were lucky, I would find thick shutters barred from the outside. Then I would know where my prisoners were.
A brief fantasy of a swift, quiet escape flitted through my head. I envisioned myself sneaking Corinthia Anastasia and Samma back into our hidden retreat, simply allowing them to be discovered in the kitchen come morning, sipping tea and ready to tell of their misadventures.
That was just silly, and I knew better, even then. Girls dream of heroism and high accomplishments. Women do the job before them.
My job was to keep looking.
A creaking door caused me to halt and bend low in place. A walkway three rods to my left glowed with the bobbing of a candle. I remained still, a lumpy shadow, and watched an old woman shuffle along with a taper held close in her hand.
She walked like someone sleepy and safe in her own home. A servant or a mistress, I could not tell. I watched her pass through another doorway into a squat, three-storey building with several dozen windows. A twenty-count later, the shutters of one of the upstairs windows glowed briefly.
Sitting up with the sick? Or a servant at the long end of her day?
I crept awhile among the scents of frangipani and bougainvillea. There were windows to peer into, doors to watch. Paths to make note of.
