by Jay Lake
“An army roams out there. Before, they were troublesome. Now they’re angry.”
“I didn’t manage to kill their god.”
A smile quirked her face. “That you even tried says much.”
“Th-thank you.” Catching her hand, I clasped it close. “I must get back to Copper Downs. I know Choybalsan’s secret, or part of it.” And he knows some secret of mine that I do not. Within whose heart had the Lily Goddess truly seen the danger?
It all made sense, if I believed the first principles. Federo had captured the Duke’s magic. Or quite possibly the other way around. Perhaps the original conspiracy had contained a layer deeper than I’d ever known. Whatever, however, he was missing something. I was a part of it, key for a lock he hadn’t yet found, rooted in the pardines from whom the power had originally been stolen. Which was why Choybalsan had been killing them indiscriminately.
In hopes they held the missing piece.
I knew his secret. More to the point, I knew he could be fought. If not killed, at least ground down. At least, I hoped so. The boundaries in that strange territory between man and god were unclear to me.
“I can show you the road right now if you wish,” she told me. “You’re not fit to walk. There’s scouts and raiders up and down it already. The city’s even sent out a few riders.”
“Under what command?” Half a dozen major forces of guards and watchmen roamed the city, but Copper Downs had not maintained a standing army in centuries. There wasn’t really anyone to fight.
Hadn’t been, until now.
“They’re raising the regiments. Old banners dangle in empty halls all over that city from other times.”
“An army of grocer’s boys and clerks is not likely to strike fear in anyone but themselves,” I said. There was the problem, of course. How to defend the city.
Is it my problem?
“Give your body a few days.” She squeezed my hands. “At the very least, wait until you can eat decently. Even healed of your wounds, you won’t have any energy until you do.”
“Might I have soup?” I asked, suddenly feeling shy. “Without fish, if possible?”
“I will make you some.”
She rose from the bed and set an iron kettle near the fire. I let myself be eased by the bustle of her cooking and tried to think what I should do.
Go home to Selistan, of course. But I had not done what the Lily Goddess had set me to do. Choybalsan was loose, free. Whatever danger she saw had to be bound up in him. Certainly he had some tie to the coils of the Dancing Mistress’ heart. He’d all but confessed to an old love for her. Besides that, his current rampage had written fear large across her.
There had been no major theogenies in recent history that I knew of. Gods and goddesses were a conservative lot. Jealous of one another’s followers, craving prayer and sacrifice. They tended to prefer not to have new competition.
Some moved, coming with waves of migrants or travelers. Some were born, from time to time. Some died, even, of neglect or abuse or assassination. Wars among the gods were stuff of legend out of the deepest shadows of time. In many tales, such infighting was given as the reason for the fall of the titanics.
Did She fear the rising of a new god here, or did She fear one who would go to Her with sword in hand?
Federo had been a traveled man. Choybalsan knew the way to Kalimpura. And he’d known I was there, somewhere, carrying the missing fragment of his powers. I had stolen his measure of grace.
The Goddess had sent me to Copper Downs to keep him away from Kalimpura.
The only way I could go home was to end this threat. Stop the god-birth of Choybalsan, or slay him outright. Except killing a god did not seem a path back into the good graces of my own divine patron.
Thinking was giving me a headache. The woman brought me a simple corn soup with a few flecks of cress floating in it.
“Try this. If you want something with a bit more substance, I’ll bring you bread.”
“N-no. Thank you.” I sipped at it. The smell was divine, but the taste was difficult in my mouth. A few swallows, and my gut felt full to bursting, as if I’d just eaten an entire solstice goose by myself.
“You are right,” I told her. “I cannot leave yet.”
“The city will not fall today, nor tomorrow,” she answered. “They are not even trying to bring an army to the gates yet.”
“Am I safe here? Are you safe with me here?”
“Yes, yes. I am not a fool.”
“No. You have not given me your name, or asked for mine.”
She answered with humor in her voice: “Your name is not needed. There cannot be two women on the Stone Coast with your face. My name does not matter.”
I mulled that awhile, until sleep claimed me.
Awake but still weak, I had Corinthia Anastasia find me a piece of wood about the size of a good ham. “A whittling knife as well, please,” I told her.
“I ain’t allowed big knives.”
“For me.”
She went away awhile. In time, she came back with a chunk of softwood and a decent-sized blade.
I set to carving. I was bored, and still fuzzy in my thinking, and wanted to do something with my hands. Something specific.
It took me two days of working through most of the sunlit hours, but I created a crude version of Endurance’s bell. I had to twist some scraps to make the rope for the clappers that hung on each side of the sounding cup. This one did not have nearly the tone of the bell Papa’s ox had worn, but even this echo of my childhood reached into my soul and fed some hunger there.
The day after that, I was able to pull myself out of the bed and go walk through the orchards. Corinthia Anastasia trailed behind me, seemingly unconcerned, eating a green apple.
“I need to go to Copper Downs,” I told her again.
“South of here.”
“I know.” This child was so very irritating. “I meant I shall set out.”
“You ain’t never been no prisoner in Mama’s house.”
“Here, let me explain this a different way.” I resisted the urge to grab the girl by her curly hair and shake her. “Please tell your mother I would speak with her about my leaving very soon.”
“All right.” She grinned and tossed her half-eaten apple away. “All’s you had to do was ask.”
I was a bit weak when I returned to the cottage. Even so, I sat in one of the three chairs around the small rough-hewn table. I had spent far too much time abed. Especially given who—and what—was afoot out there.
Corinthia Anastasia’s mother returned in time. This day she wore a well-patched dress, which had once been dark green velvet. She carried a bundle with her as she entered the cottage, and deposited it before me.
“You will need these soon.”
I tugged at the folded cloth, a cheap print of trees in a reversing pattern. Inside were my blacks, repaired. “Oh.” I looked back up at her. “Thank you.”
“There was help,” she said shortly. “Some in these hills are far more interested in speeding you on your way.”
That implied there had been other options. I wondered who had been debating me, but as I did not expect an answer, I did not bother with the question. Instead I unfolded the clothing.
Not just repaired, but well repaired. Even my boots had been worked on. New soles and heels replaced what had been worn by fighting, fire, and too much time in water. I ran my fingers over the tightly sewn rents in the trousers, then looked back at Corinthia Anastasia’s mother. “My thanks to whoever did this work.”
“There are no names here.”
Except the child, but there you were. “I understand. May I stay until the morning?”
Now something in her voice opened up again. “Of course, my girl. We will eat well tonight. A feast to send you off.”
“I would prepare it for you, if you’d like.” Suddenly I found myself shy.
She laughed. “Any woman of the Factor’s courts can cook for kings and princes.
Here I’ve been giving you corn soup and boiled grouse. I would be honored if you did so.”
The afternoon passed into evening as we worked together. The cottage had no separate kitchen, just the fireplace with its pot hooks, and a little wrought-iron rack where I might set a bread pan. The pantry was better than I might have expected, especially among the spices. We sent Corinthia Anastasia out half a dozen times. She grew more willing as the scents of cookery multiplied.
Eventually I produced a braised rabbit in apples, baked into a butter crust. We had little nubbins of late lettuce from the garden, along with honeyed carrots and a boiled wine that I had carefully spiced by hand. I would have prepared our meal in the Selistani manner, but she had no spices for that, nor the right foodstuffs. Even so, I could have dined on the smells alone.
I was happy, in a simple, satisfied way. If I could ever find the knack of not killing people, I realized I might like to be a cook. Open a little cafe in Copper Downs to serve Selistani food, or even better, a little cafe in Kalimpura to serve northern food. That scrap of dream distressed me, so I folded it away for another time.
Evening carried a chill. The woman and I went outside anyway, and shared a bench with blankets wrapped around us. Her thigh was pressed against mine for the warmth. Rested and well-fed, it was easy to imagine us as friends. Or lovers. I felt so safe that I did not even know where my knife was. In a sense, that relieved me.
Of course, it also worried me.
“I leave tomorrow,” I told her.
“Be well on the road.”
Somehow I had expected a protest. “Thank you for sheltering me.”
“I am not ignorant of your identity.” She paused, evidently choosing her words with care. “There are . . . versions . . . of your tale even in these hills. Especially in these hills.” She gave me a long, slow look. “Do you know where you are?”
“No.”
“Back when Copper Downs was a kingdom, before the Amphora Wars threw down the crowns of the Stone Coast, it was the custom of the city to bury the most important dead well away from the walls. I suppose they sought peace for their departed.”
The Amphora Wars? How far into the past was she looking? I had not read of that conflict. The Ducal coronet reached back at least a thousand years, which meant any kingdom lay deeper in time than that. Thinking of the Factor, I said, “It also cut down on the ghosts in town, I imagine.”
“You would not be wrong. There are long neglected tombs among these hills. Their inhabitants have not forgotten themselves, nor their city.”
“You are a necromancer?”
“No, no.” She smiled. “I speak with the dead—I do not summon them or bind them to my will. A necrolocutor, I suppose.”
“With all that ancient wisdom, you live in a one-room cottage among the apples.”
Snorting, she said, “Why do people always suppose the dead to be so wise, when the living are so foolish?”
I thought about that. Surely the wisdom of the ancestors was a truism. “I had assumed the grave taught patience, and lent perspective, if nothing else. For those who did not pass on along the Wheel, or wherever their gods sent them.”
“Mostly it makes them angry.”
“There are many I have sped out of this life. I . . . I cannot count the number anymore.” I was thinking of the thieves Mother Shesturi’s handle slew in the park. “If they are all angry at me, I must trail such distemper like a shooting star.”
“You are a weapon, my girl. Made so by the hands of others. Wielded by your own will now.”
“Mostly,” I told her. “Mostly.”
“You have a patron, yes? Patroness?”
“I do,” I admitted.
“Yet your hand is not guided, your will is not bent. Was this true in the courts of the Factor?”
“Not at all. Nearly every moment was driven for me, and I in turn driven before the passing hours. I ran a race toward womanhood.” I thought of Mistress Tirelle. The snap of her neck echoed still in my ears, when I let myself hear it. “I first killed there within the bluestone walls. Many more died because of me.” A sob I had not known was coming escaped from me, though I tried hard to swallow it at the last second.
She put an arm across my shoulders and hugged me close beneath the blanket. “I told you, I have known who you were since the first. You are well thought of among the tombs of old, at least by those ghosts with any sense of the world as it is today.”
“For sending so many to their deaths?”
“The city has its patrons. Its parents. Like any child, it journeys forward through time as they fall behind. You freed it.”
“For Choybalsan,” I said bitterly, hating the salt tears in my voice.
“Another step in the journey.”
“I’m tired of killing people.” Curled closer to her, I shuddered with a swallowed sob. “I’m tired of freeing cities.”
“You want to go home?”
“Yes!” I shrieked at that, and cried into her shoulder for a while. When I finally found my voice, I stammered, breath heaving, “I have no home.”
“Everyone comes home to the grave.” She stroked my hair. “The lucky ones come home to their hearts while they still can.”
I wept awhile longer. When I sat up again and found my eyes not so overwhelmed by tears, I asked her the question that had been hanging behind my tongue. “Do you know any who survived the fall of the Factor’s house? Any g-girls? Or Mistresses?”
She gave me a long steady look. I could see the questions in her own eyes. Finally: “One called Danae lives among the tombs high in the hills. She is almost a shade herself, but has not yet given up to lie beneath the flowers.”
“Mistress Danae?” Words leapt in my throat, to go see her, to speak to her, to ask after my younger self, but I held them. Something very wary was in this woman’s tone.
“Just Danae, I think. It took her a season to trust me within a stone’s throw. Even now we do not talk so much.” Sighing, she continued, “I bring her food and blankets, and sometimes tell her of high places where she might find shelter or needful things. She has been used past the point of shattering her spirit.”
“I would wish her well, but I will not disturb her peace.”
“Peace it is. Strange and fragile, but something called her here. I will not let her be unseated from this resting place.”
“Thank you.” I leaned over to kiss her cheek. I knew from that brief taste of her that in a different time, this woman and I might have been great lovers and friends.
Morning brought the gift of a new veil. My old one was long gone.
“How did you know?” I asked with delight. This was a metal mesh, faced with black silk.
The woman smiled. “No one betrayed you, but the tombs have been watching.”
I turned it back and forth, looking at the fine steel links, marveling at how light it was. “This is a grave good?”
“Yes. Freely given.”
I boggled slightly at the dead making an offering, but was pleased enough. “Now if only I had a blade.”
“I do not traffic in weapons,” she said seriously, “but if you would like the use of my gray-handled boning knife, I will not object.”
The kitchen tools hung near the fire from a wooden slat. I knew exactly which steel she spoke of. This blade was far smaller and lighter than the last two I’d carried, which had both been fighting weapons. Taking it down, I hefted the knife with an enemy in mind. I could fight well enough bare-handed, but others would not recognize the threat.
Is that why Skinless was immune to weapons but not to blows? Because no one here ever strengthens their hands hard enough to matter?
That question I put away for later consideration. The knife I put away for later use. The handle stuck out of my boot top and made me look the rogue, but the time for subtlety was past. Especially veiled and dressed in black.
Neckbreaker had seemed a good idea in Kalimpura. I was coming to understand how childish he was. Ev
en so, he was a safer person to be than the girl Green.
I took up my veil and marveled at how well I could move, even with the raw seaming of scars about my body. I turned to my benefactress and her daughter. “There is much I owe you, but right now, my best thanks is my absence. I will head downhill and south, and forget that I ever knew this place.”
Corinthia Anastasia darted toward me and hugged my waist hard. “Don’t be stupid,” she said earnestly.
Her mother smiled sadly. “Listen to my child.”
With my knife and my little wooden bell, I walked out into the sunlit orchard and away from them. The city awaited me. Choybalsan, too, and the Lily Goddess in Her distant temple. For all my dallying with gods, it seemed strange that my greatest blessing had come from a lone woman and her child.
Though the tombs could not have been much more than a day’s ride up the Barley Road from Copper Downs, it took me three days of walking to cover the distance. I traveled in the hills to the west, though they lessened with each furlong south. There were goat tracks aplenty, and odd mossy walls to shelter beside from time to time. Those could have been the remains of castles or cottages. I did not know, and did not care.
As I made my slow progress, I watched the road. Despite what I’d been told, it was largely empty. I did not know what the usual traffic here might be. Now there was only the occasional rider, always racing. They went both one way and the other.
Choybalsan’s army might be called bandits, but truly they were farm boys and woodsmen dressed like rogues. There had never been enough people or trade in this empty country to support raiders. That meant they would campaign like farmers and woodcutters. Slowly and without precision.
I would have expected scouts, in any case. Whatever was he doing? My escape was more than a week old now. Unless they’d gone hunting the Dancing Mistress, they must fall upon the city soon. There would not be enough to eat up there, and frost was not far away in the higher hills.
Being ahead of them pleased me well enough.
Then I crossed a wooded shoulder of a hill and heard the noise of surf ahead.
Climbing away from the road, I found a good spreading oak. I scrambled up that tree to look south.
