by Jay Lake
“Oh, this?” He dragged the spearhead along my forearm, raising a welt.
The Dancing Mistress bent her face close to mine. I could see questions in her eyes. They warred with regret. I could not tell her, though. Federo seemed to hear perfectly well even above the sound of his thunder. I did not even want to think about my intentions, for fear the set of my body should give me away like a fighter signaling her next blow in a bout.
So I lifted my neck and kissed her.
She kissed me back.
Good, I thought. Give him a show. Distract him.
I tried to hug her, but my arms were like clubs. Mostly I beat them against her back. She clasped me close.
Federo moaned. I risked a glance. He was not the Federo I had known. Whatever the god within him might be, it had taken him as the crab disease sometimes took those with the tumors inside their heads. All the worst of him remained, while the worth of him was gone.
Then the spear caught me a scrape across the ribs. I resolved that he would die tonight, or I would die trying.
My hands had come back to life. They prickled much as if I had been sitting on them awhile, but they were no longer half-dead vessels of pain.
Legs, I needed my legs.
I crawled back up to nuzzle her face. “Oh, please,” I moaned, “kiss my thighs.” My voice would have had the Lily Blades falling out with laughter, but Federo just echoed the moan.
He was as the rankest of boys.
Facing Federo as I sprawled on the floor, I ran my tongue across my lips. Mistress Cherlise had shown me a number of such little bits of playacting which would arrest a man’s attention.
The Dancing Mistress gripped my thighs hard and kissed me back and forth along the inner line of each leg, working down toward my knees. When she reset her grip to my calves and eased herself farther away, I nearly shrieked. Instead I rolled slightly to my left so Federo could see my right breast.
He wasn’t looking anymore. His eyes were closed, his back arched in his chair as he stroked himself very hard. Outside, thunder rolled almost continuously.
Now, I resolved, before he begins to think again.
I shoved myself to my knees and crawled as best I could toward the door and the satchels that had been dropped there much earlier. Mine, and Septio’s.
The Dancing Mistress rose to her feet to lean over Federo, occupying his vision a moment longer.
Catching at the strap of Septio’s bag, I spilled it open. A pair of small bottles, some spare stockings, breadcrumbs, a box of lucifer matches.
And three more of those paper packets of fire powder.
I had no way to know if these were smokers or exploders. I prayed for the latter as I shoved one into the brazier by the door, then crawled as quickly as I could to my left.
Federo began to call out sharply. Lightning crackled out of sequence to the rhythms that had so recently matched him at his pleasures, but what cut him off was the spew of red and black.
It had not seemed so prodigious out in the open.
The tent filled with smoke and a dry, burning smell. Federo threw the spear aside and jumped up. The Dancing Mistress tackled him from behind. I rose up on my knees and cracked Federo on the temple with my two fists clenched together.
That stopped him completely.
The smoke had become horribly thick. It cloyed at my stomach. Outside, the lightning stuttered and died with Federo’s fading consciousness. Nothing important seemed to have caught fire yet.
I was surprised to still be alive.
“Dress,” the Dancing Mistress hissed. Federo had brought her to me naked except for her chains, but she was already tugging at the tapestries and cloths in search of something to wrap around herself.
My clothes were stiff. I ached at the thought of having to pull them over my unwieldy limbs. Yet there was some chance we might escape, and I could see no profit in running naked into the night. My boots were with our satchels, so I slipped them on, then walked limping back to Federo.
Gathering my breath, unwilling to apologize, I leapt in the air and brought my weight down heels-first upon his chest.
I expected a wet, splintering crunch. Possibly some blood. Certainly a rough cough, followed by the bellows breathing of a man at the edge of death.
Instead I slid off him as if he were made of marble.
I fell painfully to the floor. The Dancing Mistress picked me up. “He cannot be hurt so. It is the aspect of the god upon him.”
“Federo would have had the decency to die,” I said quietly. “This is Choybalsan and none other.”
“Can you help me lift him?”
I did so, wondering how my blow to his head had affected him where the heels of my boots had not. Or was he like Skinless now, impervious to weapons but not to the hand?
We dragged him to the altar. She set about binding Choybalsan to the rough stone. Though we had little time, I had to know. I picked up the ridiculous spear, but could not drive it into his thigh. I stood close to him and pressed my thumbnail hard into the skin of his neck.
A red welt raised there as he stirred.
The Dancing Mistress was finishing her knots as Choybalsan came to himself. “Your death will be far worse now.” He almost spat the words. Thunder renewed outside in a rapid roll.
I leaned close to his ear, remembering the old words. “The life that is shared,” I whispered in Seliu, “goes on forever. The life that is hoarded is never lived at all.”
Nothing happened. This was how the death of the Duke had been completed, but the magic had hung in the balance longer than I thought possible. Sweat trembled on the tip of my nose.
Choybalsan just laughed. The braying shattered the moment. “You are so close to the secret, but you will never find it.” He thrashed his shoulders against his bonds, but seemed more amused now than anything else. “Foolish Emerald. When I finally take your heart, you shall wish you’d let me kill you sweetly tonight.”
Stumbling, I dragged another brazier close to him. The one by the flap, which spat red and black smoke, was too unhandy.
Amusement fled his face. “No fire!”
“I’m not going to burn you,” I told him. I did not know what the other two packets held. If it was more smoke, he might suffocate. If it was another blast, so much the better. “Stop the lightning,” I told the Dancing Mistress.
She boxed his ears, very hard. Choybalsan was stunned again. Outside the thunder rolled once more to silence.
“Now cut open the back of the tent.”
The Dancing Mistress nodded, took up the long haft of his spear and stabbed at the tapestries until she was through them and into the skins of her people. She sawed back and forth for a minute or so, staying as far away as possible from the pelts. Finally she turned to me. “Done.”
I threw the last two packets in the brazier next to Choybalsan’s head. Then I stumbled toward my friend and lover. She shoved me through the ragged slit and followed me into the night. We ran across the open ground to the ring of burnt ground plowed by the lightning forks. The camp gleamed and guttered before us.
The tent exploded with a dull thump that hurt my ears. I stumbled and turned around, the Dancing Mistress catching at my arm. A fireball curled into the night air. It was already spreading to ragged tongues of flame. Part of the tent had collapsed. The rest was on fire.
All around us, a roar of voices erupted.
“Run,” she said. We struggled through the crowd, which washed past us like the tide.
I have never understood how we survived the next few minutes. A storm of spears and swords glittered around. I am not so easy to overlook, unless I am hiding amid shadow. Given that I stumbled like a bandy-legged drunk in company with a pardine through that camp, we should have been bright as a tomato in an olive barrel.
Perhaps it was the hand of the Lily Goddess that covered us. She has never told me, and much has happened since to draw a veil over the moment.
We staggered into an area of fewer cook fi
res and more scrub. Both of us knew we must be full away from the bandit train before the hue and cry went up. I did not imagine we would live long, but I was willing to run as far as my weakened body would carry me.
In time, we found a stream. I dropped to my knees on round-stoned gravel to drink. The Dancing Mistress knelt beside me, looking as much like a hunting cat as I had ever seen her.
“Can you walk amid these wet rocks?” she asked.
“Of course—” I stopped. There was no of course about it. That I even still moved was amazing. Losing my footing in the dark seemed highly likely. “My apologies. I do not know.”
“It will help your trail. They will not be so fast following you.”
“Can you find me a good-sized stick?” I was ashamed to ask it, me who could leap from rooftop to rooftop like a bat on the wing. Still, such a thing might save my life.
She slipped away into the darkness. I could see lights swarming far behind us. Panic? Or the torches of an army setting out on the hunt?
I sat with my boots in the running stream and wondered how I might survive.
Though it seemed like an eternity, only a few minutes passed before the Dancing Mistress returned. She had a solid stick in one hand. A rabbit twitched broken-backed in the other.
Then it dawned on me she had said your trail. Not our trail. “Where are you going?”
“Higher into the hills.” She handed me the stick and the rabbit. “It . . . it seems to me we must not be together. Whatever Federo wanted, he thought he could get from the intersection of the two of us. Moreover, I must carry word of all this to whatever is left of my people.”
I wanted to cry. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to beg her to stay. I wanted to lie down in the creek and let the water race to take my life before the pursuing army caught me.
But I did none of those things. Instead, I said, “I will miss you.”
The Dancing Mistress leaned close and kissed me, then passed her rough tongue across my face. “Follow the water. It will take you to the sea, and the city there. I will make a trail that may keep them after me awhile before they discover their error.”
Then, before I could entrap her with either logic or love, she loped off into the darkness. I almost pitied any one of the enemy who met her this night, with her blood on the boil and god-killing still fresh on her fingertips.
This was what the Lily Goddess had feared. I had helped unleash a deicide, for the Dancing Mistress’ love of me. Better that we had never set out at all.
Distant shouting reminded me I must be moving. As I clambered slowly down the creek, the surf was joined by the rolling thunder of a storm. I looked to see a hilltop behind me crowned with jagged streams of lightning.
So we had not killed him. Things would never be so easy.
For hours I crept. Twice I slipped and fell, the second time striking my kneecap so hard, I feared it broken. A wounded ass could be managed, at least for a while, but losing my knee would have been death.
The joint held, though. I kept going. Torches swarmed through the darkness behind me. Some passed in the distance to my left. They followed the Dancing Mistress. Watching that, I slipped again. This time I slid down a chute and over a drop into the darkness of empty air.
Water smacked me in the face as the irony of this death overwhelmed me. Losing my grip on my stick, I went down into cold. Twisting in the depths, I could not find the surface. No light guided me, though the burning pressure in my lungs urged me on. I flailed until my foot met something. There I kicked off hard.
Air came to me just as I finally lost control. So did my stick, which slapped me on the head to remind me how foolish I had been. The wood was thick and fairly light, and would float. For a very long while, I let it do the work while we spun in the pool at the bottom of the little falls.
No irony. Just more pain.
In time, I dragged myself over a shallow bar and into the current of the Greenbriar River. Once again, I let the stick do most of the work. The flow carried me away into the night, only sometimes forcing me to pause and crawl over rocks or sand or logs.
Somehow I managed not to further strike my head or knees.
Even more strangely, I seemed to sleep a bit. I could still see the new moon, her fingernail a little wider this night. Lilies floated on the water with me. Each one opened to show me a face, then closed again. Some were Mothers of the Lily Temple, others Mistresses of the Factor’s house. A few I did not recognize.
Then I was drawn through another race of the current. Without taking my life, it spat me out into a much wider pool, where I was spun awhile until fetching up against the hull of a boat.
A small girl leaned over, then clicked her tongue. “Mama,” she said, “there is a woman in the water.”
I heard a muffled voice answer her.
“No, I think she is dead.”
Opening my mouth, I tried to tell the child I was not dead. Not yet. The silly fool screamed to see my lips move, and fled the rail.
Her mother was there a moment later with a boat hook.
“I am not dead,” I said, or tried to. Mostly, I gasped.
“Corinthia Anastasia,” she shouted, “you are an idiot!”
Something darker than sleep finally claimed me as they pulled me aboard.
I woke with the sense that a great deal of time had passed. How much I could not say.
Corinthia Anastasia sat on a little chair eating fish from a bowl and kicking her heels. The odor made my stomach lurch. I watched the girl a moment. Pale curly hair, pale eyes, pale skin. A normal child living in the company of her family.
I wondered what that felt like.
Around me was the main room of a cottage. A decent-sized fireplace, two wall beds just beyond that. I could see a few pots in the rafters, and a loft as well. Clean enough, but there was little wealth here.
The girl saw me turn my head. “Awake this time?”
“Yes.” I tried to puzzle out her question. “Have I been awake before?”
“No.” She chewed slowly. “You been talking a lot in your sleep. Some furrin speak.”
“I hope I did not bother you.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t care. Some might say you was a witch, but Mama, she’s too smart for that.”
“Good.” I tried to ignore the fish. My stomach was a clenched fist. It seemed unlikely to accept even a sip of juice right now—yet, strangely, I was hungry.
“You are the ugliest girl I ever seen,” Corinthia Anastasia offered up.
I had to laugh at that, or try to. “You’ll go far in life.” Then I realized I was lying on my back. My buttocks mostly itched. As opposed to, say, pain.
How long have I been out?
What had become of the Dancing Mistress? Choybalsan? His army?
I tried to get up, but could not. My limbs had no strength. “Where is your mother? I need news of the world, and must find my way to Copper Downs.”
“She says I am to tell you the world is still here, if’n you ask.”
Panic peaked in my voice. “What about Copper Downs?”
“Still there, too, I guess.” She grinned around her wooden spoon. “We ain’t.”
Arguing with her was not worth the trouble.
Eventually her mother returned. The woman was a larger version of her daughter, with filled-out curves and sun-darkened skin, wearing an orange dress of some coarse weave. Big farmer’s boots stuck out below the hem. Under other circumstances, I might have found her attractive.
“The dock at Briarpool has been burned,” she announced. “My boat with it. It was you that lot of swordspointers was after.”
“Most likely,” I said politely. “My apologies.”
“They set fire to enough else, no surprise.” Her tone was brusque, but regret tinged her voice. She sat on the little bed at about my waist and reached out to stroke my hair. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. “You’ve been badly used time and again, my sweet.”
“Some was my own
doing.”
“You might have held the knife in your hand, but I wager others drove you to it.”
“You could say that,” I admitted.
“Foreign girl,” she said. “From across some sea or another. I know what those out of the north look like, and you’re not one of us. But you talk as if you just stepped from a doorway on Whitetop Street.”
This woman had the authority of a temple Mother, but without the edges. I felt an irrational urge to trust her. “Someone in Copper Downs had the raising of me.”
“You ever know any teaching Mistresses?” Her voice was even softer.
The question startled me. “Y-yes.”
“I thought you might have that mark.” Turning to the girl, she said, “Go out and find me some windfall nuts.”
Corinthia Anastasia set the bowl of fish down and slowly stood up.
“And take your time about it!”
“Yes, Mama.”
Moments later, we were alone.
“I was trained up in the Peach Court,” she told me. “Perhaps twenty years before your time.” She touched her own belly where it sloped out a bit beneath her breasts. “I was a very pretty girl. You have to be, to find yourself there, but when my monthly bleeding came, my body wanted to put on more weight than I could work off, no matter how they pushed me. In time, the Factor cut his losses and sold me to a manor well outside the city. Wouldn’t do to have the world know they’d grown themselves a chunky girl.”
I would have described her as maternal, but I knew that in the young woman she had been then, maternal was not the desired impression. “Here you are.”
“Here I am. And I’m lucky they didn’t ship me somewhere I’d never return from.”
What happened at the manor? I wanted to ask, but this was her story. She would tell it as she saw fit. Or not. “I’ve been on a ship or two.”
“Of course you have.” She smoothed the covers over me. “You’ve been hurt bad. I’ve put what fluid in you I could, and dressed your wounds.”
Wrapped in blankets, I hadn’t thought how I was clothed. A simple cotton gown, from the feel of it. “Thank you.”
