Green

by Jay Lake

  I stepped back into the shadows and looked up as she loomed behind me. “My thanks, stranger,” she began, but I put up my hand for silence.

  This had to be the Ragisthuri Ice and Fuel bunker house on my left, and the Wheelwright’s Guild Storehouse on my right. A small haven was located in a shack atop the bunker.

  “Up,” I said, and began climbing the drainpipe.

  Once again, I did not need to look to see if she followed.

  She scrambled up behind me, then across the roof toward the little shack. I opened the ill-fitting door. No locks on this small haven. Inside was a collection of ladders and rags and buckets—stuff too difficult or worthless to bother bringing up and down for use whenever the roof needed cleaning or maintenance. Many of our small havens were as anonymous as this.

  The junk was out in four armloads. I opened a folded piece of canvas, then reached behind a loose board to find a pouch that would contain needles and thread and a few other healing essentials. There was also a clay water jar. The place reeked of old paint and moldy cloth, but it was quiet and hidden.

  The Dancing Mistress stepped inside with me. Together we filled the space. Small havens were for the most part, well, small. They were intended for one Blade to go to ground until help could arrive.

  I had just betrayed the location of this small haven to a foreigner. Not to mention their very existence.

  Putting that aside, I touched my face. After all our dodging and leaping, the mask was still on. My blood pounded in my ears, and I found I was trembling. I took a deep breath and tried to relax. “You nearly forfeited your life down there, Northerner,” I told her.

  “My thanks again, sir.” I realized her breathing was quite ragged. “That was very poorly played on my part.”

  She’d never spoken much of her people, but I knew they came from woodlands high in the mountains. Five was a crowd and ten a mob. I remembered how Kalimpura seemed to me when I first came, and I had not arrived during a festival. “You’ve never seen so many people in one place in your life.”

  I was not quite ready to reveal myself, not until I understood what it was she did here. The Lily Goddess had not pulled this woman all the way across the Storm Sea merely for my bedevilment. Something else was afoot.

  She sighed. “I have never seen so many people, even adding up all the days of my life. Now, who are you, please?”

  Think like a Blade, I told myself, and not a former student of this woman. “This is my city. You will answer first. Who are you, and what is your business here?”

  “I am . . . searching for something.” She took a long look into my veiled eyes. “A priceless emerald stolen several years ago in Copper Downs.”

  Me.

  A chill stole across my spine, counterpoint to the redness in my eyes and ears. Me. What did they want me back for? Enslaved, boxed up for years, then turned loose to kill, after all the use they’d made of me, after all the ruin they’d made of my life, why call me back now?

  Betrayal flooded me like bile in my sleeping mouth. “You will not find it here!” I roared in Seliu.

  The knife was in my hand now. She kicked me with those powerful hind legs—so hard, I slammed against the door of the small haven and tumbled out to land among the jumbled trash and equipment.

  My back hurt, my legs shivered, and the wound in my upper arm felt raw all over again. The Dancing Mistress leapt out of the little shack just in time to meet my arms coming up. I threw her past me, then followed to jump on her legs and scrabble for her neck from behind.

  She twisted, sloughed me off, then caught my right thigh with a handful of claws. I kicked at her, scooted backwards and onto my feet as I brought the knife out far enough to make her rethink her next lunge.

  We circled a moment, both panting. Neither of us had gone for the eyes or the throat. There were some rules here, then. At least until one of us discarded them. I would not let her kill me, and I would not let her take me back to Copper Downs.

  I had slain a teacher before.

  She spun on one heel, whip fast, but I knew that move from the old days. The Dancing Mistress had never taught me to attack, but she’d taught me to defend myself, and I still defended best from her. Shoulder first, I leapt inside the swing of her other leg and slammed into her chest. The knife could have gone into her gut, but I pulled the blow and scored a deep cut on her thigh.

  We separated once more.

  “You did not make the kill,” she gasped.

  “A mistake I shall not repeat.”

  We circled a moment longer, both catching our breath, before we met in a flurry of blows. I tapped her hard, half a dozen times, but she tapped me harder, twice on the side of my head so that she drove me to my knees.

  This time, the Dancing Mistress bore me down with sheer weight. She let the claws of her right hand extend for her kill as she whipped away my mask and veil with her left.

  The shock of recognition was written large and plain upon her face. “Green?”

  “Never Emerald,” I spat. A sob caught up with me then, overwhelming the red river of my anger.

  “Up,” someone said in Seliu. I looked to see Mother Vishtha leading a handle. Five women with swords out. One of them was Jappa, at that.

  I staggered to my feet. “You came just in time, this—”

  The flat of Mother Vishtha’s blade darted in and caught me on the side of the head, right on the bruise the Dancing Mistress had raised. I whimpered and dropped back to my knees.

  Her voice was hollow, and came to me from a distance I could not measure in that moment. “There is a riot below. Death Right has been cried. Worse, you have exposed a small haven to a stranger.” Mother Vishtha’s breath was hot on my face then as she leaned close. Even in my blow-addled stupor, I could read the fury in her eyes. “You have broken too many stalks today, Green.”

  They bound our hands and marched us to the edge of the roof, where we were lowered on ropes from one hostile set of hands to another before being taken away as prisoners through the roaring city. Every step was misery, every glance from the Dancing Mistress a murderous accusation.

  Soon enough, we were in a cell beneath the Temple. I did not recognize the room, though it was off the same damp hallway as our practice rooms. I had always thought the little door led to a closet or some such.

  I sat with my back to mossy stone. The Dancing Mistress sat facing me against the other wall. A large ewer of water stood between us, and a smaller metal bucket for slops. Some light flickered through the window relieved within the door, and beneath the crack at the bottom, but we sat mostly in red-laced shadow. I ached abominably, as after a very rough round of sparring. Which was unsurprising, of course. The Dancing Mistress winced also.

  For a very long time we just looked at one another. Even in the deep shadow, I could see that her eyes were tightened and her ears set low. That meant she was angry. I knew my own face must be hard as well. All the doubts that had flooded into me when she’d mentioned the word emerald were back, deviling me.

  I would not restart the fight with her, but neither would I treat with her. Mother Vishtha said I’d broken too many stalks. Quite possibly that was true, and a great pity besides. But where the Dancing Mistress had come from, I’d not only broken stalks, I’d set fire to the entire plantation.

  Whoever wanted me there, whatever they wanted me for, it could not be to the good.

  Everything was broken; everything was ruined. I did not fear the Death Right, but I was finished in this city. Even if I hid my face for a few years, whenever I reappeared, people would mark the scars and remember scandal and old disgrace. I knew how these Selistani were—tongues sharp as adders’ teeth and a memory for insult that could extend across generations.

  As for the traitorous wretch across from me, she had everything to fear from the Death Right. I’d claimed the life of one Stone Coaster who had killed in self-defense. My privilege, such as it might be now, was no shield at all to her.

  She could keep
her damned emeralds and phony stories about stolen valuables and the preciousness of whatever had been snatched across the sea against its will.

  They will kill her.

  “Green.” The Dancing Mistress’ voice was soft.

  That was when I realized I was sobbing. “Leave me alone,” I said in Seliu, barely able to speak through the tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied in Petraean.

  My heart roiled along with my gut. I took a few breaths to calm myself, then answered her in that language. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Well, you found me. More fool you.” Bitterness infused my voice.

  “No fool at all. The first hour I was here, I found you.” She smiled, lopsided with some pain in her neck or jaw. “As if my steps had been guided.”

  Perhaps they had, if the Lily Goddess’ hand was to be discerned. “Don’t be so pleased. You are about to be charged under the Death Right.”

  “I was attacked.”

  “You killed, without privilege.” I shrugged, which sent a stabbing pain through my old wound. “It is our way here.”

  She stepped across the cell and knelt before me. “Nonetheless, I am glad I found you. Such a fight you made. I am proud of you.”

  “Even though I landed blows on you?”

  “Especially because you landed blows on me.”

  I laughed through the bitter tears. The Dancing Mistress tore a strip off her toga and dipped it in the ewer. I wondered what she was about when she turned back and said, “Let me bathe your hurts.”

  For a moment, I wanted to send her away with my words and with my hands, but I stopped myself. Whatever she’d come for, it hadn’t been to push me once more into the confines of the Pomegranate Court. The Duke was vanished to dust, and the Factor with him. Mistress Tirelle was dead. No one remained to keep me in that place.

  I began to slip free of my blacks. “Why did you ask for an emerald? I thought you were here to take me into captivity once again.”

  “No, no, no,” she said, brushing my face tenderly with her fingers. “I needed to inquire cautiously at first. I did not know if you were alive, let alone here in Kalimpura. This was no more than where the ship I took brought me.”

  “You are a traveler very far from home.”

  “So are you, Green, for your home is lost to all but memory.”

  That she had the right of. We had much in common, the Dancing Mistress and I. The thought saddened me, so I bowed my head and tried to will myself toward peace as she slowly dabbed at my wounds. I was cut in a dozen places, and bruised in twice as many. Not to mention the hurts to my soul. My skin was marred with friction burns and smears of coal dust. Pains plagued me just as after the roughest workout, which the cool touch of the wet rag soothed.

  Her fingers were lithe enough, for all that they were stubby and broad. The caress of her hands was so gentle as the fur slid over my skin. I let myself be eased into the Dancing Mistress’ arms while she cleaned and comforted me.

  After a time, I realized that she was singing softly to me in some language of her people. I did not understand the words, and could barely hear them besides, but the sense of it seemed to be a chanson of peace and rest.

  When they came for us, her life could be at an end. Mine was likely in peril as well, depending on how many of Mother Vishtha’s stalks I’d broken. Here in the shadowed cold and damp of the cell was as close as I’d felt to cared for, at least since the night Jappa and Samma had helped me back to the dormitory. Possibly ever.

  I curled in the Dancing Mistress’ embrace. Her silvery fur was the softest of blankets. Her hands slipped over me like night wind through a garden. She traced the patterns of my bruises, giving me a little jolt of delicious hurt without it being so painful as to draw me to full wakefulness. I moaned so slightly at the touch, and so she did more of it.

  We were entangled a very long time. It never passed into the pounding sex I had enjoyed with the older Mothers. More like the early exploration with Samma. Nothing was pushed or opened or thrust within, but the endless circling of her hands, and then her tongue and tail, brought me to a wet, wishing tremble all the same.

  I wanted to stir myself, to wash her, to stroke her fur and tickle her back and find a way to return the jelly-legged feeling she gave me, but the Dancing Mistress was too giving, too kind, too gentle as she folded me closer into her arms and laid her head across my shoulders.

  What came next was a dream, I supposed later on. Or possibly a visitation from the Lily Goddess. She was not shut of me, nor I of Her, for all that we had so tenuous a connection. She is an autochthonous deity, as Septio explained to me later—meaning that she is rooted in her place and time. Even Bhopura to the east within the same lands was beyond the purview of such a goddess, let alone the doings of a girl across the Storm Sea far to the north.

  Yet there are those who ascribe much to the tales of the Splintering of the Gods, the so-called theogenic dispersion, the birth of the gods in the First Days when the course of suns had not been laid in the sky and the plate of the world was silent as any table the night before the feast of life was laid upon it.

  Mistress Danae might have said that the Lily Goddess was a splinter of one of the titanics in the leviathan times before, one of Desire’s children. As a nephil-daughter of their shattering, She would have sister shards in other times and places.

  I stood in a rainfall. Not the straight, warm rain of the Selistani monsoon season, but a whirling bluster of cold water and dissonant wind as autumn might bring, back in Copper Downs. A city lay in ruins around me. It stretched beyond the horizon. Most buildings were rubble and foundation posts, but a few stood higher and nearly unharmed. One of those was the Ragisthuri Ice and Fuel bunker. Another was a looming bluestone fortress, which might have been the Factor’s house.

  Plants grew around my ankles, rising from the soil even as I noticed them. I looked up again to see the ruins being strangled. Already the works of generations were being lost in a curling jungle. The leaves were broad and shaped like hands, with a low nap of silver fur on the underside and a pale, fleshy aspect above. They moved, their fingers wriggling, and each showed me a silver lily before the rain washed the flowers away.

  In time, I stood alone atop a rock amid a wind-tossed lake. The city was gone, but for the bit beneath my feet. The twining vines had become roots for plants that floated like water lilies. I was amid a sea of hands. They began to curl one by one, then all of them, to the horizon, forming fists that reached for me.

  I awoke with a sharp gasp, unaware that I had been dreaming. My head jerked back and jammed into the Dancing Mistress’ jaw. She mewed in pain, but hugged me tighter.

  “I am sorry,” I mumbled in Seliu. “Was there a wind within our cell?”

  She stroked my hair. “I cannot understand you, dearest, when you speak the tongue of this place.”

  Though I did not want to leave the circle of her arms, I sat up. The stone floor was cold. I pushed my blacks beneath me for a seat and leaned close to her from the side, as friends will.

  “Nothing came as I slept?” I asked in Petraean.

  “Nothing and no one.”

  “Mmm.” I hugged her closer. “I am sorry that we hurt each other.”

  She whispered in my ear, her left hand on the skin of my right thigh. “You have learned so much.”

  “And more I would show you, if times were different.” We both giggled at the tone in my voice. “Now that you have found me,” I finally said, “will you explain what it is that drove you so far from home to search for me?”

  She folded her hands and stared at the floor a little while. Embarrassment or simply lost in thought, I could not tell. Then she looked up. “These are dire times in Copper Downs. Much that the Duke had bound away was loosed when you struck him down. Trouble has unfolded on trouble. Some . . . some of us . . . feel that your part in the fall of the Duke might give you powers of both resistance and attack in the p
roblems at hand.”

  My heart skipped. “Some of who? Only you and Federo even know of my role, yes?”

  “There are others. Septio. Mother Iron.”

  “Septio and Mother Iron sent you across the sea?” I was baffled. “What did Federo have to say about it?”

  “Federo does not know.” She took a great shuddering breath. “It may be that he stands at the center of these difficulties.”

  Then I realized she was weeping. I drew her head into my lap and began to stroke at her cheek, her neck, her little round ears. The Dancing Mistress did not cry, exactly—I do not even know if her people can cry as humans do—but she was a knot of fear and sadness. I knew that mix well. Even though these troubles were not mine anymore, my heart opened to her.

  I held her close, kissing her head and calling her sweet names in Seliu. In time she sighed and drew me down, and we kissed mouth to mouth. Her breath was no worse than any other woman’s, and her arms were familiar.

  For a while we managed to forget what was soon to come.

  When the door banged open, the Mothers were angry. The Dancing Mistress and I tried to untangle, shielding our eyes against the invasion of brighter light. They became angrier.

  “Get up,” barked Mother Vishtha. She had Mother Argai beside her, the other woman with a crossbow in her hands. I could see several more Mothers in the hallway beyond. Had they expected me to grow violent and give battle to them all?

  I stood, all too aware of my nakedness. Both these women had many times taken me into their beds, but now the revulsion was plain upon their faces. The Dancing Mistress found her feet beside me and slipped into a fighting stance that would let her use the immense leverage of her hind legs.

  “Where is it written that you should lie with animals?” growled Mother Argai.

  Mother Vishtha waved her to silence.

  “She is not an animal,” I told them, speaking urgently to overcome the glittering danger of the moment. “This is my best and oldest teacher!”