by Jay Lake
What there lacked was any sign of a block of cells, or a heavily guarded building, or a desperate note from one of my missing lodged in a window shutter. Even mugging a servant or a guard was unlikely to be helpful here, given the complexity of the place. Besides, where would I find one right at that moment?
All too sadly quiet, in other words. Both in the back of the property and around to the front.
The Rectifier and I had braced Surali’s rented mansion in Copper Downs more or less single-handedly, helped by the limited entrances and exits, and the relatively compact structure. This place was a warren. An entire army of Blades could become lost here, chasing themselves around.
How am I going to accomplish this?
With help, of course. With lots of help. Exactly as Mother Vajpai had been counseling me.
I’d needed to come look, regardless. At least now I knew.
Back to the rear gardens and over the wall, then. I wondered if I could conceal my little excursion completely from Mother Vajpai and Mother Argai. Probably not, unfortunately.
I sidled across the patio, moving irregularly among the shadows of furniture and potted palms. Once I was down among those bushy papaya trees, I would be on my way back, cover or no cover.
The first crossbow quarrel sliced the air by my ear with a noise like torn cloth. It spanged off a rock not far in front of me, implying a high angle from the bowman.
Stealth abandoned, I sprinted for the back wall. This was no place for a fight, especially not if they could identify me in the process. A pair of guards loomed up in front of me, spears forward.
I was in no mood to charge braced shafts. Instead, I swerved rightward and scrambled up the east wall. That would put me in the neighboring yard rather than out in the public street, but, well, I could always send a note of apology later.
Over the top and I was down into someone’s banana trees. They crashed loudly, broad leaves ripping. Several of the shallow-rooted trunks toppled with squelching noises.
By the Wheel, that was not good. This would raise the house guards here as well. I kept running, breathing a little hard now and wondering both how to look like a mere burglar and what to do next.
* * *
Crashing through the brush near the back wall of the neighboring property, I heard shouting behind me. No other crossbow quarrels had come close yet, but I did not doubt they were being loosed as well. Torches flared, too—that I could tell by the changing shadows around me.
I pushed through a stand of tall ornamental sedge and bounced off something large. Large and warm. Two glowing spots about a foot apart loomed in front of me. Hot, meaty breath blew and I heard a slow rumble amid the unmistakable rankness of a very large cat.
My legs warmed as I wet myself. This was a tiger. Loose in someone’s yard. Looking at me from less than an arm’s length away.
Cover already blown, I screamed and milled my arms. The tiger took a half step back, becoming shadow in deeper shadow, then rose. No, it was on its haunches. If they hunted like housecats, this one was about to leap. I glanced down at a pale paw as big around as my face, then leapt forward myself, shoulder first, to plow into the tiger and roll across its back.
It spun. The tail whipped at me, but I was already sprinting for the wall that loomed only a rod or two away. Behind me a roar echoed, followed immediately by the distant laughter of men.
They thought they had me, the bastards.
This wall was smooth stone, close-set without convenient mortared handholds. I slid to my right, running, hearing the tiger move behind me. I didn’t want to fight it, I didn’t know how to fight it, and if I spent more than few seconds doing so, those crossbowmen would find me in the dark just by the noise.
Unless Surali’s men have been warned not to shoot her neighbor’s tiger …
That thought caused me to juke to the right again. I turned hard on one heel and raced directly toward my human pursuers. Grass crackled behind me as the tiger paced.
He was a cat. He would play before he killed. Fine, I told myself, play with me just few seconds longer.
I was out on the broader lawn now. Half a dozen men with torches approached, talking loudly. I knew this brag. It was how they nerved themselves to face something they were afraid of. Me, an armed shadow. The tiger, a quantity they possibly knew all too well.
Racing toward them out of the darkness, I shouted, “He’s got the poor bastard!” I glanced over my shoulder to see that yes, I was still being pursued.
Crossbows came up and swords were lifted. I’d faced both of those before. Head down, god-blooded short knife out, I bowled right into them. I heard at least two sets of strings twang, followed by the bellowing roar of the tiger and a strangled yelp from someone.
Then I was gone and they were screaming.
I ran so hard, I burst into the back of this house. It seemed to be laid out more like our own a few blocks away. Taking heart from that, I raced down a wide hallway lined with small sculptures on narrow plinths, into an open room covered with rugs, and toward the tall doors to the front.
The men were shouting close behind me. My shoulders itched for the strike of another bolt from a crossbow, but then I realized that these fools were no longer chasing me. They were running from the tiger, too. Which roared again.
Bursting out the front door, I skidded down a set of marble steps with a banister carved like a naga and sprinted all the more swiftly through the formal front garden. By now, lights were flickering from various directions.
This was an utter disaster.
I hit the tripled front gate and went right over the top of the central entrance reserved for the master of the house and the most important guests. They boomed a moment later as the knot of frightened men literally ran into the wood. I heard scrabbling for the bar, followed by meaty thumps.
That business was between them and the tiger. Someone screamed from inside that house as well, loudly enough to be heard outside the walls. For my own part, I legged it hard down the Gita. I was looking for a cross-street. I could not possibly lead these men to our hideaway. Not where my children were. That would be execrably foolish.
Away. I needed to be away. More shouts behind me only told that story all the more.
Run, Green, run.
* * *
I raced through dark, unfamiliar streets. Copper Downs had gas lamps in various parts of the city. Kalimpura provided no municipal lighting, though some streets, and even a few entire districts, were studded with cressets on poles, funded by the local families and merchants.
And I did not know this city as I knew Copper Downs. We had run often as Blades, of course, but on set paths for the most part. And never in these wealthier quarters where private guards were the norm and our armed presence was unwelcome.
If I could just pull far enough away from my pursuers, I could stop running and attract less attention. Some of the markets were open all hours of the night and day, and the areas around the waterfront and the various gates were always busy.
I needed to be off these quiet streets.
Another side road beckoned. This part of the city was too monied for mere alleys. I slipped into the deeper darkness and pulled myself swiftly to the vestigial roof of a small gatehouse.
Half a dozen men ran by a few seconds later. They wore two different uniforms, and seemed more a mob than an organized pursuit. I could see several more passing by in the larger street. Somewhere nearby the tiger roared once more, but it did not sound as if it were at the chase as well.
Right now I was more afraid of the tiger than I was of the men. The big cat had a nose.
After a short while, the clattering and shouting had died down. Occasional calls still echoed, people walking the streets, but there were no longer packs on my heels. I slipped down off the gatehouse roof and walked quietly into the deeper dark.
At almost the same moment that I heard a twanging snap, a crossbow quarrel grazed my cheek without actually burying itself in me.
By the Wheel, they are trickier than I credited.
The only way to defeat a bowman was to rush him. I sprinted forward into deeper shadow with my short knife before me. To my horror, I realized I had not counted the number of weapons on the men who’d passed me heading this way.
I met the first of them by burying my short knife to the hilt in his breastbone in nearly total darkness. He gasped. Something swished near my head. I could hear the clicking of a crossbow’s pawl.
The street behind me was serving a backlight, I realized. Dancing hard to the left, I crouched and swung low. Thighs, groins, butts—it did not matter. I needed to slow them down more than I needed to kill them.
One of the men began shouting for help, which was enough for me to find his throat. Knife still in, I grabbed his thrashing arm and swung us both around in a gavotte.
The clicking stopped and another quarrel buried itself in his chest, right in front of me. This time I found the bowman by dint of thrusting his friend’s body forward. I could not follow up, for someone else clouted me in the head with the flat of a sword.
I could not stay enmeshed in this.
Slightly dizzy, I dropped and rolled three times, slashing ankle tendons on the way, right through leather boots. This god-blooded blade was something I could certainly get used to.
Then I scrambled to my feet, slipping on body fluids, and fled the keening of one or another of my wounded. More men entered the side street behind me, flickering torches held high. That was fine with me. Everyone’s night vision but mine would be ruined.
Two or three streets later, I loped into an area where a few other people passed furtively. People who were not hunting me, more to the point. The lights of a market burned ahead. I saw the obelisk and realized it was the Munchatti Market, which supplied foodstuffs and textiles to those households wealthy enough to buy well but not large or monied enough to contract their own jobbers directly.
Fortunately, that meant more people. A lot more.
Unfortunately, that also meant guards and armed retainers. The sort of men who might not look hard at me in my Blade leathers, but would definitely respond to a shouting, bloody-handed pursuit by some of their fellow men-at-arms.
Fortunately, the Umagavanai Fountain there drained through a grate that led into such a Below as Kalimpura did possess. From there the tunnel led toward the waterfront. There it met up with two others beneath the Rice Exchange building.
If I could get down Below, I could lead my pursuers in circles or simply ambush them myself.
Either way, I was farther and farther from my children with every passing moment. That was what I wanted right now.
I strode firmly through the market past the stalls with the early morning eggs and the first of the fresh vegetables. Let them wonder why a Blade was walking alone—something we rarely if ever did. My leathers would not show the blood of others, much, though I could do little to stem my bleeding cheek.
They would remember me. That was too bad. Surali surely suspected, but when she heard the word from the Munchatti Market, she would know.
Mother Vajpai’s likely observations already rang sharp in my head. I can critique this disaster just fine all by myself, thank you, I told my mental image of her.
The fountain was just ahead. As always, its water ran rusty and slightly brown. Unlike the folk of Copper Downs, no one was foolish enough even in this city to ascribe healing properties to what was only bad plumbing. The grate was clear, but getting down it unremarked would be a neat trick, indeed, given that there were now several dozen people within convenient earshot and eyeshot.
My problem was abruptly solved for me by a loud roar. Or more to the point, by the sudden screaming panic that erupted at the appearance of a bloody-mouthed tiger along the market’s edge.
I dropped to my knees, slipped my fingers into the grate, and levered it up. Sliding in, I was pushed down by a trampling stampede that nearly smashed my fingers for me. I dropped to the floor of the conduit, which was quite small here. There I began waddling in a painful crouch toward the Rice Exchange.
Surely I had not been so much smaller the last time I passed this way?
A minute or two later, some man splashed cursing behind me in the tunnel. I still had not shaken them off.
At least that wretched tiger was not going to follow me down here.
My pursuer hadn’t brought a torch, and neither had I. But I would put my abilities at moving in the dark up against any human being in Kalimpura. Besides that, the bastard behind me was backlit now, from the glow of the grate’s shaft.
I crouched stock-still, mouth open, barely breathing. My short knife I held forward, point first. He literally walked right into it, catching the point somewhere in his face before pulling back with a yelp. I leaned forward, mindful of my enemy’s blade and slid my own deeper into whatever it had caught upon.
A bubbling whimper was good enough for me. Let his comrades get by him in this cramped tunnel. I turned and scampered away, aching to stand taller.
* * *
Somebody was too blesséd smart for my own good tonight, and it was not me. There was a knot of men—well, people, but I rather assumed they were men—in front of me where the tunnels met under the Rice Exchange. Whoever was leading this pursuit of me had thought ahead. Not only that, but they were also smart enough not to be showing torches. The only reason I knew they were there is that a handful of men with weapons at the ready are not quiet.
Women truly are much better at this, I thought with a grim smile.
But right now … My choices were a bit limited.
I could go back. I could go forward. That was about the extent of my options.
At least I knew how to do both those things.
The short knife weighed heavily in my hand. I considered throwing it, but was appalled at the thought of losing the weapon here in the dark, either to sheer obscurity or to a quick-thinking enemy. If I rushed them, they would hear me coming and simply shoot me down. Even this pack of fools could pump arrows and quarrels into a narrow tunnel. Whoever had been smart enough to put them down here would also have been smart enough to arm them correctly.
My only ally was the intense darkness. That and my superior knowledge of the layout.
I lowered myself slowly into the running water. It was cold and smelly, but it was not sewage. After a minute of listening to large men try to be silent, I began to slither forward. I was careful not to dam the flow. Surely even these fools would notice that.
My nose very nearly met a boot before I realized I was upon them. The water had dropped as well, spreading out shallowly into a larger space. I sat still, listening to them breathe and clank.
How many?
They had to be lucky only one time, and in this dark I would not see the blow coming.
Taking a long, slow, very shallow breath, I leapt to my feet in an explosion of rust-scented water, screaming at the top of my lungs. Four or five voices screamed back.
I didn’t stop to fight, just slammed through them shoulder first, caromed off an arched wall, and splashed away in the darkness.
* * *
Exhausted, I rested in a pit beneath a closed-over well. Dull gray flecks above me testified to pits and cracks in the wood and the predawn light behind them. I’d heard some shouting and splashing, and more than once spotted the flicker of torches, but they’d never found me.
This was below the Plaza of Seven Stars, I was almost certain. If so, I was only a handful of blocks from Street of Ships and the waterfront, should I dare to show my face. My arms shook a bit, as they did sometimes after a fight. I was cold. I was hungry. I missed my children. My breasts ached with milk.
Most of all, I was alive.
To my surprise, I began to weep.
Such a mess I’d made.
It had been stupid of me to go out like that. Without permission, without backup, without even a simple, stupid plan. And everything had gone wrong, then more wrong. Surali knew beyond a doubt that I
hunted her and her prisoners—the woman was no fool, whatever else I might think of her. Mother Vajpai and Mother Argai would be confronted with my unplanned absence, at least until they asked Ilona. Or even just looked closely at her. She could hold her tongue, my sweet Ilona, but her heart traveled on her face.
And my children. They would not know, they were too young, but I would not be there to feed and hold them. I wept some more, until I slept awhile, standing up with my back against the curving wall of the old well shaft.
* * *
I startled awake, afraid. The usual racket of the city went on not far above me. It was probably the firecrackers that had ripped me from uneasy sleep.
Mother Vajpai and Mother Argai had been counseling caution, but with me gone, would they heed their own advice? That was my new worry. That others might do something even more foolish in my absence than I had done myself.
Above, someone whistled sharply. A hunting call. The noise of the street changed a bit, too. Were they still looking for me? Admittedly, Surali could turn out the entire Street Guild should she have a mind to do so, but at some point they had to go back to their petty thievery and shakedowns. Or simply sleep.
Those men did not share among themselves the loyalty that the Lily Blades held for one another; I was certain of it.
Little else presented itself but to wait for evening. With my scarred cheeks and nose, and notched ears, no one would mistake me in daylight. Under the cover of night’s shadow, earlier in the evening when the streets were still crowded was my best bet. In time, I dozed again.
Desire came to me in my little, dim shaft. She was a whirlwind of all women everywhere, as She had once before manifested to me. I did not hear Her voice, only Her words, somewhat like how Chowdry reported Endurance’s will.
Green, She said, or did not say. Those you seek are safe for now. Every table must have its stakes. Leave them in play.
“You are no god of gambling,” I murmured. Disrespect was not intended, only truth.
The god-killers. The Red Man and his little sprite. Seek them instead. They are the keys to break open this lock. The wager that will sweep the table.
