by Jay Lake
I still felt troubled, but less so. Comforted, even. Like a prayer, come the other way to feed my soul. Was this how it had been for the Temple Mother? To be a vessel, not for some priest’s lust, but for the Goddess Herself?
Looking at the sky, I saw that I had lost all but my last hour. I needed to be afoot and quickly. Stepping out of the park, I trotted toward the Temple Quarter and the Street of Horizons. I would meet Blackblood in his own house and tell him of the deaths of his priests.
You killed the Pater Primus, the voice said, but did he not conspire against his own god?
The tall metal doors of the pain god’s temple were drawn shut. There were no handles on the outside. Somehow, knocking did not seem to be the answer.
I stepped back and looked at the black-tiled face of the building. It was certainly climbable, but the rumor of war had put a number of people on this street looking for comfort or counsel. I did not wish to be quite so public as all that.
On the right, the temple nearly butted against a blocky tan building fronted by squat pillars, which looked older than everything around it. On the left, a slim gap separated Blackblood’s temple from a white stucco wall topped with a gold-colored pediment.
Promising, that. I slipped within.
The shadows showed two brick walls facing one another over a trench of shattered glass, broken furniture, and other refuse. A very strange midden. That was an opening I could climb, though, and so I set my back against the neighboring wall and my hands and feet against Blackblood’s wall to begin my ascent.
No wonder his sanctuary had lacked windows, I realized. Except for the roof, there was nowhere to put them. I had a bad moment with some iron gutters, but then I found myself staring from the outside at wide, short windows in the little hutch on the roof that was the clerestory.
I tried to recall the drop within. Thirty feet, even after accounting for the rise of the front steps from the street level. Banners hung there, so I had a way down.
On close inspection, the windows were hinged to open, perhaps against the summer heat. The wood was silvered and powdery with rot. No one had touched them with paint or glazing in my lifetime, at least. The problem would be prying one open without breaking the glass, or the ancient hinges making a horrendous noise.
With a silent apology to whatever cutler had originally made it, I slid the tip of my boning knife around the rim of one window. It caught hard in two places, so I moved to the next. I had to try four times before I found one that had not been frozen shut from the inside.
I worked very slowly to ease my chosen window out and up. The hinges resisted, then groaned and popped with a spray of rust. Silently cursing, I pulled the frame open past a right angle. I tucked the knife away, set the bell beside the opening, and propped the window with my left hand while I explored where to go next.
I crawled inward to a rafter spanning the gap formed by the interior of the clerestory. Below me, three men in street clothes argued next to the long pool of quicksilver.
Quietly I eased my bell in, then lowered the window behind me. When I looked down, the men were staring upward. One had a pistol in his hand; the other two were unarmed. I could see the question forming in their minds.
No time like the present. I tossed my bell toward the mercury and dropped knife-first onto the pistolier.
Thirty feet is a very long fall, especially toward an opponent who is no longer surprised by your appearance and has his weapon primed and ready. He discharged his pistol. Something slammed me hard in the left shoulder. I spun, forced into a tumble.
I landed on the priest but lost control of the boning knife. It skittered across the floor like a nervous chiurgeon. As I rolled over to fight him, my left arm gave way underneath my weight. Someone kicked me very hard in the wounded shoulder. I yelped, but swallowed it, and tried to curl into a ball. That earned me a pair of kicks to the spine. Then they decided to talk.
“By all the wounds of Martri, I think he’s killed Sextio!”
That was punctuated by a kick so hard, I felt bile surge in my mouth. I tried to ease past the corner of the pain that had taken my shoulder.
Another voice: “No. This is that girl of Septio’s again. Small wonder the Pater Primus is so afraid of this one.”
“Well, and crap. If Sextio’s dead, we’re even shorter handed, with all the others Primus took.”
“It will soon be over.” That one walked away, calling over his shoulder, “Throw her to Skinless. Let the god take her up if he can. Everyone should have a last meal.”
“I hate this,” muttered the kicker. He grabbed my heels and began to drag me. My pain multiplied. Then he dropped my legs to step away a moment. I had some swift fever dream of freedom, until the bell fell on my chest. It was beaded with dollops of mercury.
I saw my face distorted by the curve of each little mirror. My body bumped over flooring and a few steps, while my shoulder grew cold. My appearance seemed to change, become in one bit of quicksilver a farmwife like that wretched woman Shar, back on Papa’s farm. In another, I was a priestess standing before a glittering altar, my face tattooed with silver tears. In another, I wore a helmet of strange design and swung a sword that crackled with lightning.
On and on, like the faces in the lilies of my dream. I would become a hundred tiny imperfect copies of myself. Was this how the titanic gods and goddesses had felt when they splintered?
A slab of metal boomed close by. An iron door, some part of me realized. I looked up at the priest in his ill-fitted doublet with the pimple on his nose and murder in his eye. “You will all die,” I told him.
“Everyone dies.” He pushed me into a hole. I fell hard into darkness.
I awoke in deep night.
All is lost! I had not gone to our ambush even with my own little knife, let alone with Skinless.
Skinless. That name made the rest of my body as cold as my left arm. I knew it was there, for it pressed against me, but it might as well have been cleaved off by an angry girl with a boning knife.
Night, or a sacred labyrinth in a temple cellar where no one had bothered to set the gaslights burning.
Something was very, very close to me. Something that did not breathe. I tried to open my eyes, but they were already open.
Black, black as Below without coldfire. Black as a pain god’s heart.
A snuffling noise. Dampness close to my face. A smell like meat in a sudden, overwhelming wave as if my nose had woken up.
“Skinless,” I whispered. “You know me.”
Which was a lie, of course. I’d fought him as he’d dragged away the Dancing Mistress. Nothing had been right since.
A huge pair of hands closed on me as if I were a poppet. A rough tongue licked at the blood on my left shoulder, granting me new agony in exchange. This time I let myself scream. Why not? Nothing was left to hide. Not here, at the end of things.
We moved. Whatever Skinless required a theopomp for, it did not seem to need Septio today.
“I took him into my arms the day before he died,” I whispered. “Was he your friend?” My breath was ragged in my chest, though I could not say if this wave of pain was from my injured body or my wounded heart. “When death could be cheated no more, I gave him the gift of mercy.”
My thoughts were clearing. Hours on the rack beneath the whip had granted me a certain perspective even when my mind was under assault. There was nothing of pleasure about this pain, but I’d met such intensity before and kept my head.
We raced, twisting and turning and occasionally jumping. Whatever the path to the god’s bed, it was larger than the space that contained it.
Gods were always larger than the space that contained them.
No wonder Federo is mad beyond lunacy. Vessel for a god. Divine catamite.
I pitied him then, even his murdering madness. Did he crave his times in the city, when he could pretend normalcy even amid the scheming?
The Factor spoke up in my memory. “Peace,” he said, “and prosperity
and quiet streets at night, and silent gods who could not meddle daily in the business of men.”
Peace filled this quiet darkness. I wondered if Blackblood should have been silent all these years. People knew pain regardless of the god. They would know more pain under Choybalsan. He had burned much, for all that his farmers and bandits worshipped him. Choybalsan would do anything.
By the time Skinless laid my body down again, my resolve had returned. It vanished momentarily in the renewed pain of weight on my shoulder, but I knew how to find myself amid suffering.
A light flickered, forcing me to shut my eyes a moment.
When I opened them again, Skinless was fumbling with a bit of smoldering punk, moving from bowl to bowl, lighting the crudest sorts of oil lamps. I found it odd to see this shambling horror stepping to the task like some chambermaid preparing for her lord’s return.
The bell lay next to me, I realized. Most of the mercury was gone, but a few drops showed a throne on my other side. A small shadowed figure perched on the edge of the seat.
It took three tries, but I managed to force my head to turn the other way. My body possessed little strength.
In the guttering light of the lamps—which smelled like no oil I knew—I could see that the throne had been made of tiny skulls. Babies, perhaps, or monkeys. I could not tell. Blackblood sat on the edge, tapping his heels.
Where Skinless was a horror out of the depths of nightmare, the god was a child. He was robed, his head hairless. His eyes were filled with blood, as after a solid beating to the head. They glinted red in the flickering light of the lamps. Otherwise, he seemed almost normal.
“I see you have arisen.” Amazingly, I managed to spit the words out without howling the pain that racked my body.
“To my surprise.” He frowned. “Much has changed.”
“Even in the last few hours.” I had to stop, close my eyes, and let my heart race a moment. This would be a very inconvenient time for it to burst. At least let me say my piece, I prayed.
“You have seen my theopomp. Skinless smells him upon you.”
“I t-told your servant. He died in my arms, after I gave him a mercy. Choybalsan had w-wounded him beyond healing.”
The lights glittered with the tears that returned to my eyes.
Blackblood made a small noise. Then: “You are not one of mine.”
“No. I follow a distant Goddess.”
“Skinless smells Her upon you, too.”
“Soon, oh god, there will be no more for you. We were to fight Choybalsan today.”
He laughed. The sound was small, light, as the twittering of birds, yet it set all my joints to grating. I was lost in that wave of pain for a while.
When I focused again, the god looked pleased with himself.
“You do not understand time, little foreign girl. You are not of us. Your offering of pain is well enough done, but I cannot and will not take you up.”
Several kinds of hope bloomed. “What of Choybalsan? Will you send Skinless to fight him, if it is not too late?”
Blackblood leaned toward me, then slipped from his throne to squat barely a handspan away. I would not have touched him even if I could move, but here he was.
“Why should I?” he whispered.
This was my moment. “To preserve yourself.”
His eyes slid shut. He did not breathe, any more than Skinless did, but something rippled through the god’s body. Without looking at me again, he spoke. “You value continued existence differently than I, because you do not understand time. There will always be pain. There will always be me, or something in my place no different.”
“Even your priests have turned against you. The Pater Primus conspired with Choybalsan, and brought his brother priests along. You have little left. Is today the day you wish to die?” Then, thinking on what he had said, “Does Skinless miss its theopomp? Do you miss Septio?”
This time he giggled. Another wave of pain washed over me like the tide tugging at a body on the beach. “So asks the girl who claimed his life.” His smile widened. I wished I had not looked within his mouth. “You claimed his seed, too.” A pale hand stretched toward my belly. “I should not be so hard on myself, were I a woman in your condition.”
My gut roiled in panic. He could not mean it so. Not me. Not here. Not now.
Not Septio.
How could any woman be pregnant the very first time she ever lay with a man? Mistress Cherlise would have laughed to hear me say so. But it was too soon even to begin to suspect.
Unless the god had known from the beginning . . .
Blackblood brushed his fingers over my shoulder. The pain bloomed like one of his priests’ bombards, then left me. “You will bring my theopomp’s child to me in time. For now, go and do what seems best to you.”
I somehow expected him to vanish as the Factor had, but he hopped back upon his throne and sulked. When Skinless took me up again, this time carrying me as if I were the baby, I began to cry.
Moments later, with no labyrinth in our way, we were in the upper hall. Priests scattered, shouting. A pistol cracked. Skinless ignored them all, until it reached the outer doors. My heart thrilled to see that it was still daylight outside.
The avatar turned and stared back at the cowering priests who had rebelled against its god. Hefting me to its shoulder as if it meant to burp me like an infant, it closed the doors with its other hand. I peered around, away from my view of the knobs of its spine and the muscle of its back.
Skinless pressed its palm against the doors until they smoked.
When we turned away, the doors were bulged and cracked and brazed shut. Within, the screaming began.
The screaming began as well on the Street of Horizons as people scattered in wild fear of my new protector.
Skinless loped through the city. I discovered that I once more clutched my ox bell. The boning knife was gone, and with it the lives that weapon had claimed, but this reconstructed memory clopped in time to its footfalls.
In daylight, I realized how tall Skinless truly was—twice the height of a normal man, and closer to three times my own. I also understood it carried me for speed. My pain had lifted, especially the shattering in my shoulder. Even the older aches, ghosts of prior wounds, were banished.
Such a gift the pain god had given me.
Thank you, I prayed.
A great pale eye ringed with muscle fibers and little folds of fat turned toward me a moment.
Its passage left a trail of shouting and fear, but no one tried to follow. I even saw some of the Interim Council’s civil guards fleeing. Fewer people were about as we approached Lyme Street. The sun stood nearly at the appointed time when I glimpsed the Textile Bourse.
A mob roared before the temporary seat of government. Either the Factor or the Rectifier had done good work. Perhaps both of them.
Then I understood my error. He had said to meet at the cistern three fingers before the sun sets. The sort of powers the Factor could bring to this fight would likely not walk in daylight.
We would need to trap Choybalsan half an hour, perhaps longer, before our forces arrived. Even Skinless was not so powerful as all that.
It dropped me gently in front of him, then stood behind me with arms folded. The edges of the mob noticed the two of us. Their shouting trailed to uneasy silence.
I brandished the bell. That was foolish, but I had no weapon, and needed to raise a sign. “I am Green!” I shouted. “I am come to aid you in throwing down this bandit god-king out of the north.”
Some people jeered. The Rectifier and the Tavernkeep stepped to the front of the press.
“Welcome,” the pardine barbarian’s voice boomed like an explosion in the street.
Bell held high, we advanced. With my hand on the rim of the sounding cup, it did not clop, but still it was my standard. I tried not to consider that I was stepping into an unwinnable fight with the unwanted burden of life just beginning to take root in my belly.
I tried not to
think of children and what could happen to them in this world. I tried not to think at all. This was a time to stall for reinforcements, then fight.
The door to the Textile Bourse banged open. Nast, the old clerk, stepped out. Half a dozen guardsmen crowded around him and past him to fill the little landing at the top of the front steps.
They had pistols and crossbows in their hands, and swords across their backs. The council meant for there to be no rushing of their halls of state.
“The Interim Council takes notice of the fears of the people of Copper Downs.” His voice was reedy with fatigue and stress, but it carried. I noticed Nast did not even read from the paper in his hand. “We are making favorable terms even now with the tribes who have come among us. Return to your homes, put away your fears, and await a new day of peace and prosperity. Any who leave now will be pardoned, their faces forgotten.”
He looked around, his eyes widening at the sight of Skinless, then tightening once more when he saw me.
“Any who do not leave now,” he continued, “are subject to the full terms of the Riot Decree. You have ten minutes to disperse.”
I began pushing through the crowd toward the steps. Whatever had whipped them into a mob was fading. Too many edged away from Skinless, from the Textile Bourse, from so much trouble as all this had suddenly become.
When I gained the steps, Nast pointed me out to two crossbowmen. Though it made me itch as badly as any firevine leaf, I turned my back on them. If they shot me down now, the mob would re-form. Speaking out was my best protection.
“Copper Downs has been betrayed,” I called.
A shuffling murmur answered me. The edges of the little mob had stopped bleeding men.
“An agent has been in our midst, working against us.” This was not the moment to lay out my theories about how Federo had been possessed by the god. I prayed there might be a moment when such consideration mattered, but it did not seem likely.
“He has stood high in the halls of state, and made pretense of repelling our enemies, while secretly inviting them in.” I drew another deep breath. “He has worked to quiet the gods before they can speak, and put the Temple Quarter to silent shame once more. He has allowed trade to be driven from the docks, employment to be lost from the factories and warehouses, and fear to run upon our streets.”
