by Jay Lake
I decided to lay the problem bare. “You went to some expense to bring me back here where I never wanted to be. The Dancing Mistress is nearly dead of it.” I drew my knife and slammed it flat onto the tabletop. “What is it you want me to do?”
“If I might,” said Mohanda.
Federo waved him on.
“We think you may be in a position to judge whether Choybalsan is little more than a canny bandit chieftain, or whether he is in some fashion heir to the power that built and sustained our unlamented Duke.” The secret priest pressed his hands on the table and leaned forward. “You might imagine this is of great interest in the Temple Quarter.”
I’ll bet.
Mohanda went on. “If the Duke’s spells are broken and gone from the world, why have the gods not awoken fully and retaken their rightful—rather, the place they claim for themselves at the heart of this city’s life? If the Duke’s spells are still in the world, claimed and trammeled perhaps by an enterprising hilltop warlord who is still unfolding their powers, then the gods are at risk of being lost once more to long silence.
“As you are intimately familiar with the magic that had bound the Duke to this world, and you might recognize the scent or texture of it if you saw it on another man, well . . . You can imagine what value we could find in that.”
I digested his words a moment. It seemed the path I might follow to pursue the Goddess’ fears. Whatever could put a god to the silence of years, or rouse them again, was a powerful threat. A large step toward god-killing, which seemed to be a problem in Copper Downs as well.
As Septio had said, when a god dies, He is gone forever.
“How is it that I shall find this bandit when the leader of this council cannot?” I gave Federo my sweetest smile. “Old friend, I always thought you could winnow out anything. That was your main occupation for so many years.”
“We have a priest,” said Federo. “I believe you know him—Septio of the Algeficic Temple.” I shot Mohanda a glance, but the man was smiling like a grandfather with his descendants before the solstice hearth. Federo went on: “He is clever and thoughtful. We would have the two of you travel together as ambassadors of one of our temples, asking to make terms with Choybalsan before he enters the city.”
“He is known to be interested in gods,” said Mohanda.
“I’d be, too, if I fancied myself one,” muttered Kohlmann.
“We believe he will receive you,” Federo finished smoothly.
“I am no priest,” I told them. Which was not exactly true. There was small distance between an aspirant of the Lily Goddess and a priest. However, those people did not need to know my history, especially not the Pater Primus. “I will not be convincing.”
“Follow this Septio,” Mohanda urged. “Be his silent acolyte. His claim to speak for the temples will bear credibility because he is known widely as a priest of Blackblood. Your purpose will be to look and to listen.”
“To see what may be seen of this vanished power.” Federo, again.
“Why not send the Dancing Mistress, or another pardine?”
Federo shook his head. “Choybalsan slays them where he finds them. There is one rumor that does not seem to have its opposite being whispered alongside. The pardines of Copper Downs certainly believe it.”
I retrieved my knife and studied the blade a moment. My eyes looked back at me from the murky reflection. Kohlmann was visible just above the point, as if I held the largest of swords underneath his jaw.
“If I go, and find nothing. Feel nothing . . .” I waved the knife for emphasis, and almost giggled to see Federo duck away from me. “Nothing is there. I can already say that. These past days, I could not taste it in the city. Locating more of it in some hill camp seems unlikely. When I return, will we then be quit?”
A complex web of glances passed around the room. “We will be quit,” said Federo in their wake.
Good, I thought. I had no intention of running straight home, not until I understood the Goddess’ fears a bit better, but I wanted to be free of the Interim Council. “Stand me a purse for my fare home, and a worthwhile consideration for my time. Give it to that man Nast outside. He would provide a receipt for his own grandmother, I am sure of it, and know years later on which hook he hung her. Make that thing happen, and give me your word that we’ve a sealed bargain. Then I will go looking for this wild goose of yours.”
“Aye,” ran around the room like a ripple.
“So recorded.” Kohlmann scribbled in a tally book. “Five in favor and one not present, we carry the proposal.”
“That was it?” The Courts of Kalimpura could take half a season to agree on whether the sun rose at dusk or dawn.
“You’ll note there are no attorneys on this Interim Council,” Jeschonek said dryly.
Mohanda’s grin was positively feral. “Accidents will happen.”
“So?” I demanded
Federo took my arm as if he planned to escort me into a grand ball. “So now we go tell Mr. Nast to write you a bond for fare and expenses for an amount we can both find satisfactory.”
We stepped out in the hall. Several clerks stood there, looking through a stack of papers in one’s hands, but at the sight of us, they moved off. Federo shut the door.
“Green,” he said, his voice low. “I am sorry I do not have more time now. How is the Dancing Mistress?”
My face burned. “She might be dying, but I am ashamed to say I do not know.”
He sighed. “It has been almost four months since I have heard from her. We disagreed, then she vanished. We had spoken of searching you out, and quarreled where we should not. I have been praying she had gone for you.” His smile was crooked with sadness. “My prayers have been answered. She did not fall victim to Choybalsan’s bandits. But her return is at such cost. What was she about?”
“The Dancing Mistress fears for the city.” That was certainly true, though how much her concerns aligned with Federo’s I could not say. Obviously they had been at odds over me.
“I am glad you are here.” He made as if to embrace me, then changed his mind in the middle of the reach.
That, at least, seemed genuine. I wondered if the shadows and deceptions I glimpsed within him were just the product of being responsible for so much. As the Factor’s man, he had had immense tasks, but not ultimate authority. Now he sat in the Duke’s seat without the centuries of experience and adamantine confidence the old ruler had possessed.
“It will be good,” I said. “I cannot but think this Choybalsan is a storm that will pass.”
“We shall see,” he answered grimly.
“Oh, yes.”
As he called for Nast, I considered the Goddess’ words. Federo and the Dancing Mistress were certainly entwined. Was it those coils of the heart she had warned us of? If my old teacher were to become distant and distrustful, she might perhaps betray this man and so lead him to a failure before the coming of the Bandit King.
I hoped that my role might be to reconcile them, and settle the confidence of the city’s rulership.
Nast came. We made a chaffer about transport costs and guarantees and expenses. The old clerk finally wrote out a bond promising the cost of a cabin passage to Kalimpura as available from the three best ships in port the month I claimed it, plus triple that same value paid out as compensation for my services.
It did not seem to me to be so much money for the treasury of an entire city, even one in troubled times, but to see Nast and Federo argue, the terms of the bond might have been the last copper paisa to feed a starving family.
“I must go back to our session,” Federo finally said. “I beg your indulgence. If you and Septio find some intelligence, do not hesitate to bring it straight to me. Ask here at the Textile Bourse. Nast and the privy clerks always know where I am to be found.”
This time I did hug him. Something was wrong, some strange distance, but I thought now I knew what it might be. He returned my hug, stroked my hair, and murmured some vague apology
before slipping back into the meeting room.
There was much running about thereafter. A scrivener with a good copperplate hand was made to come write out the final agreement on a length of vellum. Nast made me countersign the bond, which he gave me a receipt for. He then took the bond back and filed it with the bursary clerk to hold against a future payment demand, and gave me a receipt for that. I told him the papers might not survive my trip to the uplands, so he took the demand receipt and filed it with the council’s privy clerk. I refused the last receipt, for I reckoned we had already made more paper than I’d ever have need for. Nast sniffed and slipped it into an inside pocket of his coat.
“Have a care, Mistress Green,” he said. “I should not like to see you fail to return and thus be unable to reclaim your wealth from the coffers of this city.”
That I did not even try to untangle. Instead I bowed. “I shall miss you as well, Mr. Nast.”
The front door was not so hard to find, and so after resetting my veil, I showed myself out. Septio stood across the street, dressed as an ordinary working man and eating fried fish from a folded paper cone. Despite my manifold irritations, I smiled to see him and went to ask after the Dancing Mistress.
We ate fish together and walked slowly toward an ostlery on Shandy Legs, as that street was known. He told me what I sought to hear, though it did not all please me.
“I brought that great pardine brute to the temple.” Septio took a large bite and gulped it down without much chewing. “We protect much there, as with any mysteries, but I was not so worried.”
“More fool you,” I told him quietly. “I was worried. Do you know what those bones were on his chest?”
“He said. Priests’ knuckles.” Septio grinned. I realized he was still as much an overgrown boy as he was a man. “I should like to see him try some tricks in our halls.”
“Did he?”
“No. He looked at the large scrying pond and called up a shadowed forest.” Despite his laughing demeanor, Septio grew very serious. “I have never seen an outsider do that. Even our priests have trouble with the pond.”
“The long puddle of quicksilver at the middle of your sanctuary?”
“Uh . . . yes.” He seemed surprised that I understood that secret.
“What of the Dancing Mistress?”
“When I took her from the god, I put her in the Hall of Masks. It is not so good a place for visitors, but also is sheltered from the . . . eccentricities, I should say, of the divine. She was in no position to respond.”
“Why could I not go there?”
“I said, it is no place for visitors.”
My hands began to tremble. “You took the Rectifier within.”
“He is a spirit warrior of his people. And not human, besides. The eyeless faces would not trouble him. Even if they did, he would shed the disturbance as a teal sheds water.”
Eyeless faces. “So what is her state?”
“Her injuries are not life threatening, though she should spend a week or two abed, the Rectifier says. He fears far more for the state of her soulpath. He told me to imagine a human whose spirit has been shredded and scattered. Then the Tavernkeep arrived with a healer of his people, and a little mob besides. They seemed ready to fight. Her wounds were treated, and she was bathed in the manner of their people.”
I stopped walking, close enough to our destination that the smell of horses was rank in my nostrils. “I would see her before we set out on our journey.”
“The Pater Primus has forbidden it.”
The hair on my neck prickled. “He does not control me.”
“No, no,” Septio said. “He has sent word that the Dancing Mistress is to be kept under the protection of the Interim Council.”
I did not like that much, but I did not see an easy way around it without looking like a fool or, worse, a child. I had accepted a task from the Interim Council. Having the Dancing Mistress recovering under Federo’s watch might give them a chance to grow closer together, when their rift had been because of me. Following the path I already pursued was best for everyone.
Though it sounded good, I didn’t really believe that. Something was still wrong here. In that moment, I couldn’t say what with sufficient conviction to turn around and go back to the Textile Bourse with a demand to see her, and I was mistrustful of my suspicions.
Now I wish I had listened to myself, but at that time, I did not know my friends from my enemies. So I followed Septio into the ostlery and mounted a horse for distance for the first time in my life.
______
Whoever conceived of the horse as a form of transport must have been a man with no feet. Though I’d been educated in the details of harness and tack, presentation and points, and had sat atop a mincing mare trained within an inch of her life, that had all been at the Pomegranate Court, where the distance to be ridden was less than a stone’s throw, and everything was for the sake of appearance.
The substance of being perched high on the bony back of a cantankerous nag with poor digestion and a desire to put its head down every time it rushed toward the bottom of a slope was quite different. I sat far too tall for my sense of balance. The horse paid no mind to my efforts at control. Even with the leather trousers and boots the ostler had provided me, the pressures of the saddle raised aches in muscles of which I had never before been aware.
Septio laughed to see me stagger bowlegged as I dismounted at the end of our first afternoon’s ride. “My thighs shake a bit after riding over country,” he said with a grin, “but you have the Vitus dance.”
“If you hold still, I’ll be happy to kill you,” I growled.
Instead he unslung a blanket, then cleared some stones to lay it down. “Here. Lie flat a bit. I’ll care for the horses.”
I did as he said, and found myself most relieved not to be attempting the vertical for a while. My horse’s head swung over me as Septio turned it away. I swear the wretched beast was laughing. The aches would pass, I knew, for every part of my body had ached at some time. I was not so sure about the smell.
Give me a ship, any time, or the two feet with which I had been born.
Septio pulled loose the bags we’d found waiting for us at the ostlery, then unsaddled the horses. Once they were freed of their burdens, he watered them, brushed them, then staked them out to crop at the thick grass that grew along the edge of the stand of trees in which we camped. A stream just between the boles explained why the grove was here, in a rising valley with mostly low bushes and scrub grass.
I continued to lie still as Septio arranged our camp and made a fire. He drew a small packet from his satchel and shook some powder over the sticks and bracken. When he set a lucifer match to it, the fire flared like a war among the insects.
“What is that?”
“Much the same stuff that is used in pistols,” he told me. “Also festival crackers. It does not work so well when it is wet, but dry it is wonderful.”
“I did not realize that people carried that about.”
“Few do.” Septio grinned. “An amusement among the temples, though it has serious uses as well.”
He tended his fire a little while to make sure the flames were true. Once satisfied, he unpacked the saddlebags. I continued to watch him until he began wrestling with the problem of boiling some water.
Groaning, I sat up. “I will cook.”
“That is not only a woman’s duty.” He looked down at the small pan before him.
“Dolt, I’m good at it. You manage the horrid beasts, I’ll make dinner. We each have done our part that way, yes?”
He nodded.
Septio is not so bad, I thought a while later as I cut riverbank shallots into the developing stew. He was taking care of our situation.
“Tell me,” I said. “What did you mean about the sacrifice being taken up?” This was not an issue I wanted to visit too closely, but I could not just let it go.
“When people are very sick or injured . . .” His voice was slow, thoug
htful. “When they are in great pain, and there is only poppy to be given them by the healers at the Temple of Caddyce, sometimes a family will bring their father or son to the Algeficic Temple.”
“Because of the pain?”
“Because of the pain. Instead of a suffering, a wasting of body and soul, it can become a sacrament. Some good may be found.” He idly rearranged the firewood as he spoke, choosing his words with care. “As I told you, pain is part of life. A god such as Blackblood guards many doors for the people. Those who worship him, as well as those who pretend he does not exist. Even those who have never heard of him.”
“So this man or boy suffers on your altar?”
“He suffers before the god arrives. Blackblood takes this up, takes him up. Sometimes . . .” Now I got a long, slow look, almost pleading. “Sometimes the pain is taken up, but the man or boy remains.”
I felt a chill down my spine as the drawing dusk stole the light around us. “What becomes of him then?”
“He lives to serve the temple.”
Ahh. Like the Bone Door on the alleyside of the temple of the Lily Goddess, only much more difficult to pass through. “As you did once,” I said, my voice very soft. My heart flooded with pity for him.
“As I did once.”
“Do you remember your family?”
“A small bit. Some recall more than others.” Septio looked troubled. “If a fever is on the blood or brain, there may be little left of the former life. If it is the crab disease within the gut, the memories may remain complete as the seat of reason remains untouched.”
“Most are taken up.” I hated that idea. “How sad for them.”
“No, no, you mistake me. Blackblood’s priests? The Pater Primus, Tertio, all of us?” The sadness in his face deepened. “We are the sacrifices he rejected. We serve him in life because we were not wanted as part of his substance. Each of us seeks to find his way back to the god.”
What a miserable theology, I thought. The victim blames himself because his pain was not good enough. “What of women who hurt? Or girls?”
“I d-don’t know.” Septio’s voice was quite small. “They die in pain, I suppose.”
