Endurance (14 page)

Skinless stared a long while. Its eyes—no,
his
eyes—glistened until they ran wet down the pulsing horror of his cheeks. Then he turned and shambled away into the deeper darkness that was the rightful state of this place.

I stood, breathing hard as the meat reek vanished with the avatar's departure. My hands cradled my belly, smearing coldfire across my shirt, though the child had not stirred. Strangely, I was not even ill from the smell. Perhaps because it was familiar?

Skinless I could no more defeat in a fight than Mother Vajpai. But I had not been certain that I could talk him out of a course once he was set upon it. He was an avatar of the god Blackblood. A tulpa. He was a
part
of the god. If he could be softspoken away, then that meant Blackblood himself was not fully resolute.

The chilling, indifferent power of that languid youth still haunted me.

I turned, suddenly hungry, which seemed very odd, to find myself being watched from the open gallery ahead. Mother Iron stared from beneath her cowl. The Factor's ghost stood beside her. She had no face to read, just a deep pool of shadow with a hint of red glow guttering within; but he appeared both sorrowful and thoughtful.

I had not expected to see either again. Which was foolish, of course. They both dwelt Below. Proto-gods and ghosts of this city.

With a flush of mixed embarrassment and fear, I snapped at them. “Were you intending to restage our fight with Choybalsan? All we would need now are some pardines.”

The Factor seemed as if he would say something. Mother Iron, so very often mute, stood unmoving. Whatever they wanted, I would have no part of it. Not now. Sick of this city and all its plotting powers, I circled around the wider space and headed for the upper gallery that lay beneath the building site of the Temple of Endurance.

*   *   *

I climbed the rickety ladder to hear a great racket above me. Shouting and crying. A fight?

Just below the bright-lit opening at the top I paused. It still stood unguarded—which still seemed odd to me. Just because I had an understanding with the dark places and their restless haunts didn't mean anyone else was safe.

I listened for several moments. The shouting continued, and several dull thumps echoed. I smelled smoke. Something serious was afoot. Wary, I eased my long knife into my hand and scrambled the last half-dozen rungs as if my own clothes were afire.

No one was working on the temple foundations when I leapt up into their midst. To my right one of the tents was burning—the kitchen, I thought—with a handful of Endurance's acolytes working to beat out the flames. People screamed by the gate, and I saw a flash of blades. More folk tended several fallen alongside the wooden temple.

Wishing I'd moved a little swifter at the first, I raced toward the battle. Chowdry's people saw me coming, weapon in hand, and scattered until only half a dozen toughs with knives and staves remained to face me.

Reckless with anger, I did not falter in my charge. The attackers took to their heels. Feet pounding, I chased them out into Durand Avenue, screaming for their blood.

I only gave off when I realized their numbers, and turned back before they did the same. That I had not even laid a blow upon them felt shameful.

*   *   *

Within the temple grounds, Chowdry and Ponce awaited me.

“What has happened?” I demanded, feeling unaccountably winded for such a short sprint.

Chowdry shook his head. “One of my people is dead. More are being wounded.”

“We didn't even fight,” said Ponce. I realized he was crying. “It is not permitted.”

“You do not
defend
?” I realized then I had no notion of the theology of the god I had created. Somehow I'd assumed anyone who took me as a wellspring would know their way around a blade. But of course, all these happy, well-fed young acolytes did not have the look of hard training, or even rough-and-tumble play.

With disgust, I understood that Endurance was drawing the children of wealth to his service. I had never meant to serve
them
. People with family names and money needed no further protection. I glared at Ponce, and once more brushed my free hand across my belly.

“There is enough fighting in this world,” Chowdry replied sadly in Seliu. “I learned that from you, and from Utavi before you. We will not be taking up arms, or hiring others to do so for us.”

“Then you will not long keep a temple treasury,” I growled in the same language.
Idiots. Nonviolence never solved anything.
Then, in Petraean: “Who were they?”

Chowdry glanced at Ponce. The young man wiped his eyes. “Petraeans, not Seliu.”

That I had seen for myself, though the cowards had not stood to the test. And besides,
Selistani
was the people,
Seliu
was the language, but I did not trouble to correct him then. How did he not know this?

Ponce continued: “They came with weapons and demanded to see all the dark-skinned w-women. When one of the girls, Amitra, scratched at them, they killed her.”

“Me.” I was aghast. “They were searching for me.” And a girl had died for it. Who, though? Surali would have sent Street Guild, or maybe even the Prince's peacocks. The Interim Council would have dispatched men from Lampet's new regiment. My list of enemies was not
so
long—this left Blackblood. I made a serious error of thinking then, one that I have regretted ever since. I assumed that the god had made another play! Even while he'd sent Skinless for me. The late Pater Primus might have done such a thing, and I suppose in the heat of the moment I confused the priest's tactics with the god's.

I could see only my fear for my child, my fear of being taken by the gods, my revulsion at the death of an innocent in my place. I could not see what was really happening.

Thoughtless rage replaced my sick horror. I could feel it boiling within me. I was never giving this child up to
anyone
. Not if I had to carry her beyond the farthest horizon to keep her safe. Or kill everyone in this city.

“Yes.” Chowdry stared at the knife still in my hand. The tip was weaving in tight circles now, lusting for guilty flesh to plunge into. “You should find a different path.”

He was right. I could not simply fight my way out of this. Such a strategy had never worked so well in the past, though I was not ashamed of some of my victims. The Pater Primus, for example. Or the Duke himself. I had slain others for pride or for fear, rather than necessity or the greater good. Killing was an easy habit to fall into, especially if one's conscience had already been burned away.

I was a mother now. I needed to think differently. No longer could I just be a storm of swords. Resheathing my knife, I took a deep breath and prayed to the Lily Goddess.

I know You cannot hear me so far across the water. I know I abandoned You, and that You sent me away. But still You are a mother. I need a mother's wisdom now. Not an assassin's instincts. Please. Guide me.

When I opened my eyes again, I was touched with a deeper calm. Not the peace of the High Hills, but at least my boiling rage had leached away. I felt slightly sick. A weakness had taken my muscles.

“If you and the god Endurance will allow me to do so,” I said, “I would like to see to the dead. Her life was taken in my name.”

*   *   *

In fact, two lives were taken in my name. Spite, misplaced vengeance, or someone's idea of a warning, I could not say. And it did not matter.

Amitra was a young woman, barely older than I. Her skin was a rich and lovely brown much as my own. Her eyebrows were fiercely dark, a cloud upon her pretty face. When I reached to press her eyes closed, their deep amber was already tinged with a milky dullness. She was forever young now.

Ponce and the others had laid her out in the middle of the foundation project. The other girl, Nitsa, was placed next to her. Nitsa would have been a solid woman, already thicker-bodied than I, and with a paler cast of skin. Only a fool would have mistaken her for me.

The side of Nitsa's face was crushed and her neck broken, from the blow of a heavy stick swung hard. Or perhaps a mallet. I traced the wounds. The dark, thickened blood stained my fingertips. She must have died in the moment, for there was not so much of it.

Amitra had been struck down with a blade. Her shoulder was gashed open. That would be the first blow. I imagined the assailant, some brute with money in his pocket and a target on his mind. One of the old Ducal Guard, perhaps, who hadn't been taken up by Lampet's new thugs. It was rumored they were behind much of the street crime now. He'd followed up the first blow by stabbing her in the throat, probably to silence her screams. She'd died bloody, which meant slow enough to feel the pain and terror.

“I will wash the bodies now,” I announced. “I will need white clay and red.”

Chowdry knew what I was about, as would any Selistani who was from the eastern portions of our native land, or who had lived among the Bhopuri for a while. This was what my people did. I remembered just a little from my grandmother's funeral, before I was taken, and I had learned more during my time in the Temple of the Silver Lily at Kalimpura. The rest of Selistan considered us Bhopuri to be silly peasants, with our cloaks of bells and our sky burials and our huts amid the paddies, but this was the bottom of who I was.

Though I had laid aside my anger and the violence that quivered within its grip, everyone around me scrambled to my bidding as if murder were still in my eye. That was fine with me. I wanted obedience right now far more than I wanted argument.

First I removed Amitra's robes, and washed her body with a strip of linen torn from their hem. There were rites and blessings that should be said, though I did not know many of the words. But I knew that everyone needed to be helped from the world if they could. I had even made a prayer for my bandit, the third person I'd killed with my own hands, after Mistress Tirelle and the Duke.

It was only fit that I do far more here.

She had been lithe and pretty, this woman. Her skin was already cold and her body stiff. That spark which makes a person sensual or beautiful was fled from this cooling meat. Still, I could see her as she had been in life. I wondered if Amitra had come on one of the ships. Or if her family had lived here awhile as merchants. Traders perhaps?

I had no need to ask. The girl would tell me whatever stories she had.

Wordlessly I prayed to both Endurance and the Lily Goddess as I wiped Amitra's hurts and cleaned the grime of work from her hands and feet. She had tiny bruises along her breasts, lover's nips. I was glad she had embraced that part of life before she died.

When she was clean, I covered her over with her robes, except for her face. Then I took a bowl of white clay someone had laid down as I worked. It was already properly mixed with water to form a paste. I painted over Amitra's face, preparing her for whatever the white prepared a body for when the soul had left it. I had been told at the Temple of the Silver Lily that this was how the ancestors would know their own, taking her for the ghost she was. I had never been certain if this was a true belief or a jest at the expense of peasant ignorance.

The red I took to paint dots across her forehead, her nose and lips and chin. Drops of the blood of life, kisses of the gods, offerings to the demons to let her pass the gates of the hells unharmed. Again, the reason was of no matter. That was simply what was done.

Then I did the same for Nitsa. Her body was solid and hard, not so fat as I'd thought when I'd first seen her collapsed in her bloody robes. I could do little to hide her wounds, but I cleaned them as well. That took a great while. Her fingers were long and slender for a woman of her build, and strange little calluses on the pads made me wonder if she'd played an instrument. Had lovers danced to this one's music?

In time I covered her over and painted her with the white and the red. I used the clay to smooth the depression in Nitsa's temple, so her face would be even when she met her mothers.

There were no sky burials here. Endurance was in a very real sense a Bhopuri god, but Copper Downs had no such towers, nor the servant birds that came to clean away the flesh and polish the bones laid atop them.

I looked up to see that the day was almost gone. Several dozen people gathered around me in a wide circle. Chowdry, Ponce, faces both familiar and strange from my days staying here.

“Are you back with us?” Chowdry asked quietly.

Wondering where I had been, I said, “Yes.”

“You did not work alone,” he added in Seliu.

I looked to see a few stray lily petals scattered around me. The air smelled of wet ox. How great had my prayers been?

“The rite is not quite complete,” I told him. “I will need two white candles and two black. Bring me also paper, pen, ink, and a writing board.”

Someone had thought ahead, for these were produced immediately. Or perhaps, I realized with a wry twist, Endurance had made his will known again.

I placed the black candle to the left of each girl's head, and the white to the right. Then I took the board and with care drew out word-houses of the Hanchu script from the few that Lao Jia had taught me aboard
Southern Escape
when I'd first fled Copper Downs.

For Amitra I drew the word-house that meant “beauty.” As Lao Jia had said when teaching me, each word-house has little rooms of meaning. And so “beauty” was woman and the western sun and an eel swimming in a river.

For Nitsa I drew the word-house for “peace.” Those little rooms of meaning were sky and hearth and an open door.

I laid the papers down upon each girl's chest for a time, and prayed voicelessly once more. It was fit that a mute god such as Endurance should be met with silent prayer. As for the Lily Goddess, She had been close enough to hear me, but we did not have so many words to spare that I needed to speak aloud to Her another time this day.