by Jay Lake
I walked swiftly past the quiet argument at the loading dock and up the steps that led into the kitchen’s vestibule and mudroom. Beyond the crowded space of cloaks and boots—some of the undercooks and scullions had walked through ash and muck to reach their work this morning—was a familiar space of clanging pans, roiling steam, and smoky odors.
Home, the thought came unbidden. Home, where they were having poached eggs and spinach for breakfast, from the smell. And rice stew, of course. Always rice stew, for those who did not have time or privileges to sit in the refectory.
I slipped in with my basket and headed for the cool room to deposit the fruit. It was a prop, but that was no reason to waste what I had brought. Fondly I imagined taking a turn at the stew pot. Some of the papayas I’d brought could be cut into it to render a meal more suited for daybreak, but that was not my purpose here. I’d practically been living in a kitchen for the past weeks, but except for our tiny oil stove, we’d made no decent use of it at all.
No one met my eye, which seemed odd. I’d never been in a large kitchen where a stranger was not instantly visible. These people worked arm in arm every day from dawn till dusk, and overnight as well for some of them. I glanced around and realized that no one was looking at me at all.
If one had looked down from the gallery, one would have seen me passing through the kitchen in a little pool of invisibility and silence.
They were ignoring me with an elaboration that spoke volumes.
I slipped into the cold room, which was empty at that moment, and set the papayas on a higher shelf. They’d keep well enough not to need the space closest to the precious troughs of straw-covered ice below the shelves.
My basket I left there as well, and my gray cloak. Here inside the temple, I would be a Blade, by the Wheel. Woe to anyone who challenged me on that. I checked my weapons, then stepped back out into the kitchen. Silence followed me past the chopping tables and the baking ovens, right until I reached the podium where Mother Tonjaree surveyed her domain.
She stood there now, one of Sister Shatta’s fresh sweet rolls in her hand, and smiled down at me. I slowed my stride and smiled back. The sweet roll descended and I took it from her without stopping. We exchanged a final nod; then I passed out of the kitchen like cook-smoke, up the back stairs that would take me to halls running behind and between the dormitories. There I might find a quiet, friendly ear and learn more.
* * *
I knew from what Mother Argai had told us that there was much sympathy for me and Mother Vajpai among the Blades. In our banishment, their honor and pride had also been reduced. Mother Srirani had trod too heavily on everyone’s oaths of obedience.
Besides which, we were sworn to the Temple of the Silver Lily and to the Lily Goddess Herself. Not to the Temple Mother. She was, after all, merely the chief among servants.
This in turn meant that if I managed to avoid the Justiciary Mothers as I moved about the temple, I was far less likely to be called out or turned in. I would not fight my own Sisters here, but neither would I allow myself simply to be quashed.
Nor would I skulk. Here, architecture was my friend. The sweeping, curved lines of the temple, which some wags both in and out of our Sisterhood had likened to a woman’s sweetpocket, meant that there were very few interior walls that ran straight and true. Rather, everything curved or angled. This in turn meant short sight lines, multiple turnings, and a number of odd little spaces that were often used for art, storage, or other miscellaneous purposes. When I had been an Aspirant, we’d played hide-and-find among these halls with chalk-tipped sticks to mark our “kills.”
Today I would be no one’s kill.
Instead, I slipped up a curving staircase into the second-storey back corridor. The central space of the sanctuary was behind the wall to my right. A layer of rooms wrapped around it on the outside of the building. The sanctuary narrowed more rapidly than the exterior lines of the building, which meant the layers of rooms grew wider and more complex level by level.
The second storey was mostly offices and portions of our temple library. I highly approved of quiet little rooms stocked with books. For one thing, I might find a senior Blade Aspirant on her sixth or seventh petal in here studying against the chance of some quiz from a teaching Mother.
Assuming, of course, that Mother Srirani had not halted the Blades’ training progress along with her banning of their runs.
Insanity, I thought. Who would hold the Death Right if we did not? Only an arrant fool would give that power to the Street Guild.
A servant trotted down the corridor in the other direction behind an armload of linen. I stepped aside to let her pass—not an ordinary courtesy in caste- and class-conscious Kalimpura, but something we practiced among women here within our walls. There were no male servants, or men resident of any kind. Only a few visitors on sufferance for needed errands or important business.
“Thank you,” she muttered, then glimpsed my face and stumbled to a halt.
I am distinctive. Deeply so. In Copper Downs, it was as much for the color of my skin as for anything else. Here in Kalimpura, the scars slashing my cheeks were like a banner advertising my identity. Not to mention the healed wounds in my nose, courtesy of the late, unlamented Councilor Lampet. There might be a thousand young women in this city with my build, but there was only one with my face.
“Hello,” I said quietly, reaching for this one’s name and utterly failing. Touching a finger to my lips, I added, “This is a quiet visit.”
She nodded vigorously, a gleam in her eye. That encouraged me. To ask silence for a little while was one thing. To request conspiracy was another. Still, I had to start somewhere.
“Have you seen or heard word of Mother Vajpai?”
“No, Mother Gr— No, Mother, I have not.”
“Thank you.” With an answering nod, I moved on.
Three book rooms and an empty office later, I was at another stair. I’d never known its official name, or even if the stair had such a name, but when I was an Aspirant we’d called this one the Pink Stairs, for the rather unfortunately suggestive color of the marble used to line the walls.
Up toward the dormitories on the third storey? Or around to the next swath of offices? If memory served, there was one more book repository, then several small chambers often used to meet with officials from other temples, Guilds, or Courts. The Justiciary Mothers had their formal hearing rooms on the floor below me, but they sometimes came up here as well.
None of them would hesitate to cry me out. Not with one of their own standing at the altar as Temple Mother. I knew they were wrong, but it was reasonably possible that they themselves did not understand the situation fully.
Up the stairs it was.
I drifted into the spiraling rise, listening for voices or the squeak of footsteps. Nothing. The Pink Stairs leaned inward as they ascended, so to speak—that is, the shaft had the same curve as the outer shell of the temple. This meant that there were odd angles of view both up and down, but they were not consistent.
So long as no one lurked for me above I was safe.
At the third storey, I stopped just within the opening to the corridor beyond. There was no door, just a doorway. I let myself be flat against the wall as voices passed close by. I did not recognize either of them, which meant they were probably not Blade Mothers.
“… we’ll have to wait for word.”
“Yes, but will she?”
The first woman, the back of her head now visible to me, grunted in apparent dissatisfaction. They proceeded along the corridor and out of sight. Justiciary Mothers, from their layered white robes.
To my left was an Aspirants’ dormitory—or at least it had been the last time I lived inside the temple. Past that, a bathing room and a privy. Then a larger sleeping room shared by some of the junior Blade Mothers. I would head there.
My luck broke badly as another Justiciary Mother stepped out of the privy just as I passed by the entrance. She was adjusting the fall
of her overgarment, and so did not see me immediately. I ducked my head to step past as she looked up smiling and said, “Oh, please…”
I had been recognized.
Throwing my silent self-promises to the winds, I shouldered her back into the privy, knocking the wind from her shout in the same movement. The two of us were crowded into the small closet with its raised wooden seat. I jammed the door closed behind me, then grabbed her by the hair to tug her head far back, exposing the throat.
“Either you believe Mother Srirani, and I am a dangerous apostate,” I growled. “Or you do not, and I am being slandered.” My breath was hot in her ear, I knew, and I watched the whites of her eyes widen. “Which do you choose to believe?”
“I do not know,” she squeaked.
“Well, at least you’re honest. Unlike too many of the rest of your Sisters in the Justiciary.” I slammed her down onto the seat of ease, then sliced away several strips from her hem. It was a terrible thing to do to good silk, but time was not on my side here.
“Stay quiet for an hour,” I warned her. “Half a candle, if you count that way. I’ll be gone by then.” Or captured. There was small purpose in confessing that fear of mine to this one. I backed out, slipping the latch from the outside—that was a childish trick that all the Blade Aspirants knew, and therefore so did all the Blade Mothers.
The Justiciary Aspirants were too prissy to play such games, or so I’d always thought. With this one, I’d be lucky if she remained shut up and quiet for twenty minutes. If nothing else, someone would eventually force her way in here after banging on the door and hearing no reply.
I knew I wouldn’t be here long, no matter what. Swiftly I darted into the first of the dormitories.
Three young women—no, girls—whom I did not know leapt to their feet. They saw my leathers and bowed briefly, as Aspirants are trained to do on meeting a Mother for the first time in a day. Several smaller children hid behind them. All the Aspirants were wearing the knee-length gray dresses and undertrousers we’d favored when not actually at our training. The room was achingly familiar with its upswept walls, narrow windows admitted daylight through frosted glass, and the double row of beds each with its small chest for personal belongings.
“Do you know me?” I asked, perhaps more fiercely than I meant to.
Two of them exchanged a glance. The third spoke up, her eyes bright with excitement. “You are Mother Green.”
“Well, yes.” The not-quite-fully-earned honorific still bothered me, even though it was literally correct. “Do you know why I am here?”
The girl who’d spoken up now looked to her fellow Aspirants for support. Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if Mother Srirani were in the far corner of this room. “They said you would come for Mother Vajpai.”
Ah … “They who?” This was an important question.
“Th-the other Mothers.” She was unsure of herself now.
I grinned. “They are right. Uh … and just where is Mother Vajpai?”
“Down in the practice rooms,” said the spokesgirl.
That would be the temple’s basement, which unlike the upper levels was quite rectilinear. Also, three levels below me. Getting there would involve some fast moving. Still, there was nothing too surprising about the location. The practice rooms tended to have padded doors that could be barred against interruption or stray weapons in either direction.
If one wanted to keep a prisoner under guard here in the Temple of the Silver Lily, those basement chambers were some of the better places. Also, it was sufficiently out of the way to cut down the passing of too many women who might ask questions of the guard.
We among the Temple of the Silver Lily might be sworn to obedience, but we weren’t very good at it.
I touched my finger to my lips again. “Silence, then, along with my thanks. And, well, I was never here.” I winked before slipping back out into the corridor.
The Pink Stairs would take me down to the first storey, just above the kitchen. From there I’d have to either go back through the kitchen or make my way around to the Little Stairs to get into the basement level where the practice rooms lay. We had more storage down there, including both the root cellar and the fruit cellar, along with the curing room and some of the other, slower annexes of the kitchen.
No time like the moment. Even as I planned my route, I slipped back into the Pink Stairs and softly padded downward. Voices echoed above me, a burst of laughter, as several Mothers passed in from one of the floors farther up. I paused, then matched my descent to theirs, so I would never pass into the sight line. I thought I recognized the voices, Mother Shesturi’s, at least, whose handle I used to run in. After our experience at the docks with Mother Surekha, I was not willing to risk myself to another’s goodwill just yet. Not without need.
They seemed to be coming all the way down to at least the first storey. I was reluctant to slip through the kitchen again—I did not want to risk the Mother Tonjaree’s safety by making her seem my accomplice.
I stepped out instead and headed for the Little Stairs. That would take me past one of the side entrances to the sanctuary. Not one used for services, generally, but rather to carry in votive supplies, altar greens, and other requirements of the Temple Mother and her services.
The handy part was that the several other doors in that area opened into storage. I would not risk much here. That thought in mind, I trotted around the curve of the corridor for the Little Stairs. They lay almost at the great juncture of the front corridor, this back corridor and the anteroom to the sanctuary, where we often gathered when a group needed to meet that was too large for the classrooms, but not full enough for the refectory or the sanctuary.
A buzz of voices began to lift just as I reached my target. I saw the backs and shoulders of several dozen women, a mix of our temple’s orders. Ducking my head, I walked quickly down the steps. From behind, I was just another Blade Mother on an errand.
* * *
Down in the basement, things were quieter. Corridors spoked away in three directions from the bottom of the Little Stairs. A Justiciary Mother sat before a doorway about five rods from me along the rightmost corridor.
I’d been disgraced here before.
Thinking quickly, I ran toward her. “Upstairs!” I shouted. “Mother Srirani, she needs you.” It was no trouble at all to put a realistic gasp in my voice.
She jumped up, tipping over her wooden chair. “You’re not— Where’s Mother Akkarli?”
“With Mother Srirani,” I said, glancing up then right back at my feet again. This would have been more convincing if I’d been dressed as an Aspirant. “Hurry,” I added. “I’ll wait right here for Mother Akkarli.”
The Justiciary Mother took a step toward the stairs, then paused to stare at me. “You,” she began.
By way of rejoinder, I smacked her in the side of the head with my fist, then eased her to the floor. There was no point in hurting the woman further.
I threw aside the bar that had been so obviously installed in haste on the outside, then pushed the door open.
“Mother Vajpai?”
“Green.” Her voice was tense, and she looked tired, but not as if someone had been trying to hurt her. She squatted against the far wall. Waiting. For me? The sputtering lamp by the door lit her face so oddly, I could not make out her expression.
“Come on,” I told her. “We’ve only got a minute or two. I came to find you and see whether we could raise the Blades or not. Our time is running out for Corinthia Anastasia and Samma.”
“It will not work.” The fatigue in her voice worried me.
“Fine. Then you come with me, at least, and we can deny Surali one more of her prizes.”
She rose and stumbled toward. “Your feet—?” I asked in horror.
“Just that it is damp down here, and I was not permitted a blanket.”
I tugged open the door to face three big Street Guildsmen with crossbows in the corridor beyond. Behind them was a gaggle of Mothe
rs—very few Blades in this crowd, I noted with a dispassionate sense of observation somewhere deep inside me.
Mother Srirani stepped close, but still behind her crossbowmen. “You will surrender your weapons, Green.”
“I am Mother Green,” I said quietly, so quietly that the others had to lean closer to hear. Technically not true, given that I’d never taken final vows, but my point stood. “Could you not find a Lily Blade to stand guard within our own temple, Mother?”
“You are banished, and no longer a Mother,” she said, but I caught the quaver in her voice.
“I will not fight you,” I announced. The knot of women behind her seemed to sigh. The smile on the faces of the crossbowmen was far less comforting. “But I will not surrender my weapons except to another Blade.”
After brief confusion, Mother Surekha stepped forward.
“So how are your runs now?” I asked her.
She looked as if she might cry, but held out her hand for my weapons.
Very slowly and carefully, I unsheathed my long knife and handed it to her, hilt first. Then the ordinary short knife. I was very reluctant to pass over the god-blooded knife, but she would know I had it. Instead, I stopped before that one and waited to see what Mother Surekha would say. Mother Srirani would be less likely to know what was I was supposed to be carrying.
Mother Surekha’s mouth opened and shut twice, but whatever words she had for me failed. She turned away and nodded at the Temple Mother.
“Lock them in,” announced Mother Srirani. “We will deal with this sordid affair as soon as possible.”
As soon as possible sounds good, I thought as the practice room door swung shut. I turned back to Mother Vajpai, who squatted once more against the far wall. “I could not rush them all,” I said. “And would not do so to my own Sisters, in any event.”
“You cannot rush history, Green. We have lost this struggle.”
I stomped around the room, kicking at the wood chips and straw that were all that remained of whatever target dummies and weapon mounts had been in here before.
