Green

by Jay Lake

  Copper Downs lay before me. The sea glinted beyond, showing an endless southern horizon. Choybalsan’s army was drawn up in the open lands outside the city where the first few wayhouses and stables and shanties had been overwhelmed by several thousand men and horses. The lightning fence was not crackling just now, but surely this force had not come without their god-king before them in glorious array.

  I had not arrived in advance of them. I had rested too long amid the orchards of the dead.

  Brushing that aside as unworthy, I studied the army awhile. I looked as Mistress Tirelle had taught me. And saw with eyes of history, eyes sharpened by maps and mathematics. I was never an expert on the disposition and application of massed forces, but I knew more than a little of logistics. The Pomegranate Court had trained me in part to be a chatelaine. That is a job not much different from quartermaster, except for the uniform.

  Here are the things I could determine:

  They had been before the city at least three days. I was beyond crediting that an entire army had marched past me in the night unnoticed.

  They had not come in a sweeping mass, or the roadway I’d been following would have been badly used in a manner I could have spotted even from a distance.

  They had not fought since before arriving. The outlying buildings and small villages overrun by Choybalsan’s bandits were still intact. No burning, no wrack. So no one had stood against them. Not in a body, at any rate.

  That meant that some in and around the city had welcomed the army. Neither did anyone within sally out. The profusion of guards were largely patrolmen and gatekeepers, not trained to stand against massed force.

  What was this army waiting for?

  Perhaps Choybalsan was not here. In which case, I might not be too late.

  Why would you conquer your own city?

  That was when I knew where the bandit-king had gone. And why there was no lightning. Somewhere in the city, probably in the upper rooms of the Textile Bourse, Federo was offering the Interim Council the desperate bargain he would report having made with the perfidious Choybalsan.

  He didn’t need to conquer the city. He just needed to arrange a surrender to himself.

  I sat amid some bayberry bushes and laughed quietly. Federo’s arrogance had a surpassing cleverness that my soul was just dark enough to admire. At the same time, I wondered how it was he could put godhood on and off like a cloak. It seemed a most useful trick.

  Had all the gods started that way? Was the Splintering nothing more than a metaphor for the way that the measures of grace and evil within any man could grow at the right touch?

  Septio had said everything moved in a cycle.

  Which in turn made me wonder who the Lily Goddess had once been.

  My path led to the coast. I met the Quarry Highway with its small river alongside. A log tangle gave me a ford over the water. Sheer nerve took me across the broken pavers of the road. Close to the sea, I had to cross the East Road, but there I was able to crawl underneath the trackway following a flood channel meant to drain the north verge.

  Here the stones of the city gave way to shale and gravel beaches. The littoral east of the city was too shallow for a harbor. Choybalsan’s horsemen rode their circuit all the way to salt water. Some of the men, and most of the horses, seemed afraid of the sea, though a few riders raced whooping in the foamy edge of the water.

  Clouds had rolled in to steal the warmth of the sunlight and replace it with a chilled gloom. I skulked among the low ridges with their sparse vegetation, cursing that I would have to go all the way back to the Greenbriar River and across before I found a decently unpatrolled way in. As I grumbled about my fruitless effort, I nearly fell into a muddy creek that had been invisible from farther inland.

  That was odd. I should have seen it bridged at the East Road. I followed the water’s lazy course alongside one of the graveled banks, staying low so I wouldn’t be spotted by a horseman atop one of the ridges. The bank crooked west, as did the stream, until I found a stinking little pond choked with water lilies.

  It trapped enough water to keep a busy stream flowing, but this pond had no inflow. I stared at the lilies awhile. They would grow in bad water. Some people said the plants even cleaned water, made it fresh again.

  More to the point, the Goddess had sent me a dream of water lilies, when the Dancing Mistress and I had been imprisoned together beneath Her temple.

  First I tied the wooden bell, muffled with some vines, to my waist. I did not want to lose it. While a good soaking was not ideal, water would not ruin it immediately. Then I hefted the boning knife and waded in. The pond had a muddy graveled floor, tangled with roots. My feet found broken junk and stones even through my boots. My nose found the refuse of a city. This was a drain for the water and blood of Copper Downs.

  Standing still, I tried to locate a current. That was not so difficult. The flow seemed to originate from the gravel bank somewhat below the calm surface. I approached, the water growing first waist deep, then chest deep, then neck deep. I was in danger of being swallowed up before I met the end. With my free hand, I explored.

  An outflow issued from an opening of worked stone.

  Water never ran up. From this very low angle, the bank towered at least fifteen feet above my head.

  Could there be a sewer tunnel underneath it? This entire stretch of twisting, angled banks and dunes might easily cover the ruins of some ancient quarter of Copper Downs.

  The mine galleries beneath the city were certainly far older than the traditions of the people who lived above them now. Anything was possible.

  Not admitting fear to myself—for I could not afford such a luxury as that—I took three great whooping breaths to puff up my chest and make my heart brave with quickened blood. I held my knife braced forward, ducked into the stinking water, and braced my free hand against the top lip of the outlet.

  Pushing inward against the current was difficult. The roof of the drain remained obstinately level as I waddled at a crouch, while the floor was slick with some slime that threatened my footing and slowed my pace. I kept my free hand above me, hoping for some vault or rise where I might find air.

  If this entire drain was filled with water, then that would be the last hope of my life.

  Goddess. You showed me Your lilies. I do not believe You toy with me. We both fear what might be here. Help me on my way, that I might free all from the tyranny that comes.

  Praying to the Lily Goddess from within a swirl of muddy water far across the sea did not seem likely to help me, but I needed to do something. Anything. My lungs stung. Reflex fought for breath, tempting my mouth to open despite the burden of water sealing it shut.

  I could turn around, kick with the current, be back out among the lilies.

  I could find blessed air and the light of day.

  I could walk another path—surrender, even—and allow myself to be taken in.

  I could feel the top of the drain suddenly curve upward.

  Straightening my spine, I followed the rising stonework. My hand found air before my face, but a moment later, I was gasping in the dank, moldy air of Below. The familiar taste was as much a blessing as water in the desert.

  After several deep choking breaths, I headed onward, looking to stand straight up. I could see nothing at all, for there was no coldfire here. My hands told me the sewer had a low vault. That must have ended at the outflow.

  In order to breathe, I was forced to walk slightly bent at the knees and hips, with my head tilted backwards to keep my mouth above the water. The position was painful, but not excruciating. I had nowhere to go but forward.

  My knife before me, I advanced.

  I was forced to keep my feet in shuffling contact with the slimed bottom for fear of encountering a pit or a grate, or even just broken stones that might trip me and pull me under. The current seemed to become more powerful. I was cloaked in fear that slowly tinged with panic when I finally stumbled into a larger space where the air sussurated with
echoes.

  It took three attempts before I could lever myself out of the channel and up onto the walkway. I lay there stinking wet and gasping miserably awhile before realizing I could see. A faint glow interrupted by ridges of darkness presented itself to my eyes.

  Coldfire. Over dressed stone.

  Never in life had I been so glad for a revelation.

  I stumbled shivering to my feet and pawed at the mossy stuff until I had a decent glowing lump in my hand. To hell with whatever might glimpse me coming. I would either kill it or recruit it to my cause.

  With a few more deep satisfying breaths, I set out to find the part of the city I knew. My sense of direction had been unseated by the sewer tunnel, but logic told me that I had to be facing close to west. That I would work with, until I found something familiar here in the Below, or a surface exit that seemed safe enough for me to spy out from.

  Away from the drains, I walked on damp stones beneath the city, wondering who might help me. Skinless could perhaps have been recruited to stand against Choybalsan, but Septio was dead. I would not even consider the matter of the Pater Primus. Him I could not trust the worth of a broken straw.

  I had a friend or two here. Mother Iron, in her strange way. The Tavernkeep. Chowdry with him. They were not warriors. I considered seeking out the Rectifier. Anyone who killed priests and wore their remains openly wouldn’t trifle to reckon with gods.

  But he was one of the Dancing Mistress’ people. I could not know their hearts. They seemed completely unable to oppose Choybalsan. Perhaps they could not fight their own magic. The pardines had done little enough against the Duke in his four centuries of rule, standing the whole time on their stolen power.

  A vaulted arch loomed over me, a shaft of cloud-dimmed daylight spearing down from what seemed to be a street-side storm grate, though it opened to no drain. Where to go? Whom to seek help from?

  The Factor.

  I had seen his shade, that day. I was sure of it. He of all people had cause to hate and fear Choybalsan. Federo had stolen his very existence in order to become the bandit-king, the nascent god. Choybalsan was searching for the missing pieces—the keys, really—he thought I’d held. Surely the Factor’s ghost was sustained by a shred of the same. Doubtless Choybalsan would attempt to extract that power from him just as he’d wished to extract it from me.

  Whatever passions held the Factor here might serve my needs as well.

  I stepped gingerly into the barred square of light at the center of the space. How did you call the dead? According to Lacodemus, with libations. I wished I’d asked the woman in the orchards what rite she offered. Perhaps that would not have helped. It had seemed she was harder pressed to quiet the voices in her high tombs than to set their ghosts to talking in the first place.

  This would be done the old way. Warriors had poured wine into graves to speak with their dead, but I knew wine was only a signifier for blood. That was the Law of Similar Substitution, for those who pursued such things, and such exchanges always weakened the effect.

  For a moment I marveled again at the education that had been forced upon me.

  That same education suggested that I must not seek him as the Duke. As the Factor, he’d cared for me, in a strange way. As the Duke, I’d slain him, in a strange way. The form of this summoning certainly would matter.

  I untied my bell from my waist. Crumpled wet vines slipped free from the clappers that dangled on each side of the hollow rounded cup. I set it at my feet, then opened a shallow slash on the inside of my left forearm with the boning knife. Setting down the knife, I took up the bell and swung it slowly so that it rang as if Endurance walked close behind me.

  The sound brought tears to my eyes. A saltwater benediction could hardly lessen the power of the blood.

  “Factor.” There was no point in shouting. His shade would hear me or it would not. Blood dripped rapidly into the little square of sunlight to hiss slightly as it struck the mossy stones. The words flowed as they would. “Factor, I summon you. I, Green, whom you named Emerald, whose life you stole, call you forth.” A chill shook my spine as I took a deep shuddering breath. “You called me in the broken yard of your house. Now I call you by that same bond.”

  I fell silent, though I continued to ring the bell. It clop, clop, clopped. The hair on my arms lifted. I began to feel as I had when I’d passed the lightning fence. With a rush of panic, I wondered if I had somehow summoned Choybalsan.

  A scent of smoke met my nose. At my feet, the blood was curdling to black. A presence loomed at my back more dangerous than blades, more frightening than wounds.

  There was not enough courage in the world for me to turn and look. I shivered, crying now, wishing I had done anything other than this summoning. My knees became soft, trembling fit to fold and swallow me to the floor. I considered casting myself on my knife.

  A spray of water touched me from above. A single lily petal floated in the shaft of weak sunlight. It caught my eye, and my fear. The Goddess, I wondered, or some careless flower-seller in the street above?

  Did it matter? Cycles and circles. They could be one and the same, after all. Miracles always worked best through the mechanism of the mundane.

  Courage found me after all. Setting the bell down, I turned. The wooden clop continued to echo from within the surrounding darkness another moment or two before it faded.

  The Factor stood there, grubby and grave-pale as I’d glimpsed him at the ruins of his house. He did not look like a ghost—no will-of-the-wisp or smoky aspect. He seemed as real as Mother Iron.

  His eyes, though misted and dark, were not dead. The rest of him most certainly was, but laughter and tears and much more lived in that gaze. The opposite of how he’d appeared in life.

  I felt an odd stab of hope at that.

  “My prodigal Emerald returns to me at last,” he said.

  Hope, indeed. The old arrogance of power had not been washed out of him by death. With a laugh that I did not have to force from my lips, I replied, “I am Green, grown to myself, come to call you.”

  “I know who you are.”

  Even though I understood his perfidy, I felt a flash of sympathy for the pain that crossed his face.

  “I know what you did to me,” the Factor added.

  “It was needful.” I believed that, but I realized I believed it because I’d been told to.

  “Truly?” Now his smile was sly. “Tell me. How many did I kill during my centuries on the throne? What wars did this city fight? Did coin shrink and the harbor traffic wither? Was there dread and fear upon the streets?”

  His questions took me aback briefly. “How should I know? I was not given anything recent enough for me to understand such things. I was educated as . . . as . . .” My voice broke off as I realized the miserable truth. Softly, I continued. “I was educated as a woman of the time of your youth. Nothing was told to me of the world since you came to the throne.”

  “The long years are very lonely,” the Factor said. “You would have reminded me of who I once was.” His hand reached up as if to touch me, then dropped again. There was no noise as he moved, reminding me that he was not truly present.

  A swell of bitter rage crested within me. His loneliness was the cause of all my own loss? “I would have recalled your youth until I withered with age. While you went on forever!”

  “You will age with or without me.” His voice was sad, his eyes watered with tears. “What is terrible about aging in a splendid palace with a great city ready to do your bidding?”

  “You were a tyrant!” I tried to hang on to the old arguments, but really, they were nothing more than what I had been taught. What did any child know but what they had been told?

  “I was a tyrant who brought peace and prosperity and quiet streets at night, and silenced gods so they could not meddle daily in the business of men.” He sighed, though I wondered how someone with no breath could do so. Or speak, now that I thought upon it. “My crime, my tyranny, was not to rule, but to live
beyond the years of ancestry and descent of entire families.”

  “Your crime,” I growled, “was to strip power from a peaceful people and bind it to yourself.”

  “How peaceful were those people?” Now his face flared with passion to match my own. “Do you know of the last war this city did fight? Under me, as a living man? We battled the pardines. In their time, they were terrible hunters and raiders. Others followed them, thinking by their appearance that they were wise and powerful. The shared path they have instead of souls lent them a strength in this world that could not be matched. Over a thousand men were lost wrestling them down. I took what they used to wreak the death of farmers and children and traders, stripped it from them, and made peace for Copper Downs. I even made peace for them!”

  I struggled against his logic. This man was the villain of centuries, yet to hear him tell it, he held the good of the city in his heart, and had delivered it.

  He was right. Hundreds must have died in the riots that followed the fall of the Duke. There were still buildings, even entire blocks, burned out and not rebuilt. The sea trade had diminished. The city lived in fear.

  As it had not under the Duke’s rule.

  A trick, a trap lay at the heart of this. I’d always known what it was. “You stole away the choices of generations. You stole away my choices. My freedom.”

  He laughed, bitter and hollow. “Freedom? To be a rice farmer’s wife? You should be on your knees thanking me, Green, for saving you.”

  “That was my fate!”

  Leaning close, the Factor said in that growling voice, “Then consider that I have changed your fate. You might rejoice in that if you were honest enough.”

  I took a breath and tried to fling his words away. I did not need his self-serving logic and the justification of his memories.

  What I did need was him.

  “We argue to no purpose,” I finally said, collecting my thoughts. “You are what you are now—”

  “What you made me,” he interrupted.

  “What you made yourself. You made me, after all.” I gave him the sweet, nasty smile that I seemed to be perfecting. “You are what you are; I am what I am. Choybalsan will gut us both to set himself in your stead.”