Endurance (18 page)

Alone, I had no check upon my foolishness or my ambitions, either one.

Alone, I was, well, alone.

Still, it helped me to lay things out as if explaining them to a fellow Blade or one of the teaching mothers. That habit has stood me in good stead ever since, just as it served me then. The problem of the raid upon the Temple of Endurance still loomed. Stuck in a line of reasoning that was later to prove foolish, I continued to believe Blackblood responsible, more by process of elimination than through any positive evidence. The attack certainly would have been the style of the old Pater Primus. And the Temple Quarter was stirring. The gods of Copper Downs had awoken in the time since the Duke's death. That was part of the lifting of the magical hold he'd placed on the entire city. Gods being who they were, I could guarantee they were becoming fractious. Having personally spoken to four gods, slain one, and birthed another, I was sadly an expert on this topic that no sane person would wish to understand too well.

Then there was the assault on the Temple of Marya sometime after my departure for Kalimpura four years ago. I knew very little about Marya as a goddess, except that she seemed to be a local equivalent to the Lily Goddess—watching over women and girls, and possessing mostly a soft kind of power. The Blades notwithstanding, this was as far as that went in Kalimpura. We were a secular force in the service of the goddess, not a divine aspect. Most cities would not tolerate an order of armed and dangerous women, charged with righting wrongs and fighting crime. It would make life too difficult for men.

Marya had no Blades serving her. Only prostitutes and working women and perhaps some of the wives of this city. So when—who? Someone had come for her, bearing whatever power it took to strike down a goddess; if rumor was to be believed, the goddess had resisted.

Even if Marya had fallen, after a time another would have risen in her place. That was the way of things among the gods. Trouble might come between, however, especially for those dependent on the goddess or her successor for protection. Those were never easy transitions.

I'd read enough theogeny during the days of my forced education to understand something of how the divine settled upon the world. Much like lightning stalking beneath the storm, divinity was power that sought grounding. I had no idea if the stories of Father Sunbones and Mother Mooneyes and their garden before time held any literal truth, but the figurative truth was undeniable. Male and female principles filled the world with the same energy they drew forth—from sex, from death, from flowering trees and falling leaves and the spume of rivers. And most of all from the hopes and fears and thoughts and prayers of the men and women of every race and kind and species in the endlessly long plate of the world.

What we people provided for the divine was a channel. A concept. A mold. Blackblood manifested as he did because his followers expected it of him. Pain was real enough, and those who suffered sought a focus for their need. Likewise my own Lily Goddess. She manifested as the regiment of women who worshipped Her could best see Her. One of us. Just vaster, wiser, deeper. As the ocean is to the dreams of a raindrop.

But as to the question of who
could
even attempt to throw down a goddess, I didn't care to contemplate it overmuch. I knew all too well what was involved in such a task, and I had been supremely fortunate in my endeavors. Whoever the god killers had been, they were gone. I was here now, my divine patron mute as I had made him. On my own, for most purposes.

As for those purposes, mine were not so clear to me at this moment. The Selistani embassy complicated things further. Especially since it had drawn the Dancing Mistress and her Revanchist associates down from the Blue Mountains in search of the Eyes of the Hills.

I believed my old teacher's claim that Matte had foreseen the gems returning to Copper Downs. The gems must have traveled here through the agency of Surali and the embassy. No other explanation made sense.

But I could see no way to tie this problem to Blackblood's moves against me.

What did occur to me was that the Revanchists being in Copper Downs was a threat of another sort. As with the Prince of the City and his retinue, they were an embassy. An inimical power with designs that would undermine Copper Downs if carried forward. I could not imagine this Matte's obsession with the Eyes of the Hills leading to a sudden outbreak of peace and quiet.

As much as I hated to do so, I needed to carry this matter to the Interim Council. I'd been avoiding Loren Kohlmann since our ill-fated visit to the Selistani embassy, but that could not continue. Such as it was, their authority constituted my greatest protection here in Copper Downs. Besides which, I had to know what their response was to Mother Vajpai's attack on me. I would lay the matter of the Dancing Mistress and the Revanchists before them—she used to sit on their council, they could hardly dismiss her significance. I might also discuss the matter of Blackblood's attack on the Temple of Endurance.

I did not particularly expect wise counsel, or even worthwhile solutions, but these were civic matters. Civic authority ought to solve them. The Interim Council had already tried to push the Prince of the City onto me once and failed.

We needed a better plan.

Scaling back down to the alley on the next block, I headed through the brewery district at a boy's loping pace for Lyme Street and the Textile Bourse.

*   *   *

Today the Conciliar Guards were having none of me. As soon as they saw me heading for the steps and realized who I was, both of them stepped back, while one tugged the door open.

I paused before I passed inside and looked more carefully at their uniforms. Though I could not recall perfectly, these certainly resembled the old Ducal Guard.

Waste not, want not.

Never above pricking a man with a weapon in his hand, I gave them my best feral smile. “You boys part of one of the militias?”

A panicked glance passed between the two hulking brutes. The one holding the door said, “We be the Conciliar Guards.”

“Lampet's Lads,” the other guard added helpfully. He was slightly smaller than standard issue, merely overheight but not monstrous. I could not recall having seen him before.

“Ah, yes. Councilor Lampet.” As Councilor Kohlmann had said. The thought of that horrid little man in command of a few dozen—or hundred—men under arms was appalling.

The old days really were better, in this case. The tension between city guards, the dormant regiments, and private forces had functioned in a very loose balance. Which had distinct advantages for both the law-abiding as well as the more freelance-minded such as myself. The idea of an oiled weasel like Lampet controlling a meaningful portion of the swords in Copper Downs seemed a very poor way to
keep
the system in loose balance, even without worrying as to the councilor's own personal priorities.

Perhaps I should convince Chowdry to start a chapter of the Lily Blades under Endurance's blessing. For protection.

“I see,” I told the two guards. “Carry on.”

One saluted, the other did not. I pushed within to the crowded foyer.

*   *   *

Mr. Nast was upstairs conversing with some of his senior clerks. I nodded at him and strode to the council's meeting room. Their chairs empty, which disappointed me. Early afternoon on a Thursday, not a feast day or a temple day. It occurred to me that I had no idea what the Interim Council's work schedule was. They all had other jobs, or least other responsibilities, to which they attended.

On the other hand, I had plenty of ways of making people pay attention to me. I plopped down in Jeschonek's seat and began tossing my short knife in the air. Practice with the weapon was never misplaced, and sooner or later someone would find the courage to try yelling me out of the chamber.

Simple enough.

The chief clerk did not disappoint. Within about ten minutes he peeked from behind the stained-glass door at me. “Shall I take it as given that we have argued about your occupation of this room, and good sense has not prevailed?”

“It would save some trouble, yes,” I admitted. “Quite thoughtful of you.”

“I'll have a girl around with some water and fruit,” Nast replied. “And I've already sent for Councilor Jeschonek.”

“A happy coincidence then that I'm in his seat.”

His face assumed a pained expression—surely deliberate, if I knew this man. “You
could
make an appointment. As most people do. They generally have an agenda as well, and sometimes even keep to it.”

“Mr. Nast, have you ever known me to do as most people do?”

“I am sure that iconoclasm is one of your greatest charms, Miss Green.”

With that, he withdrew. I impatiently awaited water and fruit, which arrived soon enough. A delicate Hanchu bowl, porcelain and painted with bamboo and plum blossoms, featuring three crisp apples and a soft peach, along with a tall carafe of water with chips straight from someone's icehouse. My stomach seemed willing to tolerate these things.

After I ate I commenced to carving my name in the mahogany tabletop with one of my short knives. It was a horrible abuse of such a decent weapon, but I wanted to motivate the council to respectful haste.

If not this time I called, the next.

*   *   *

Councilor Roberti Jeschonek arrived before my boredom had become dangerously destructive. He was disheveled, and seemed to have run from the docks to the Textile Bourse. I said as much.

“No, 'twas a horse, but the docks did not have an easy morning of it.” He sat down in Kohlmann's chair and apparently couldn't decide whether to glare or smile at me. “Two foreign crews mixed it up and we nearly had a riot.”

Which was, of course, the Harbormaster's problem. Except when it wasn't. Rather like Kohlmann, and much unlike Lampet, I could readily imagine Jeschonek wading into a dockside brawl with both fists, risking himself to bring it to an end before serious blood was shed. “You did not take any hits, I trust.”

“Oh, a man always takes hits. The secret is giving back more than you get.”

I laughed. “A policy that has served me well thus far in life.”

A moment later one of the junior clerks darted into the room with a mug of kava for Jeschonek. The young man shot me a cautious look that in turn disguised a wink, then slipped out again.

The councilor took a long, careful sip before glancing down at where I'd been defacing his table. “That will not so easily be sanded out.”

“Consider it a reminder.” I dropped the knife from a foot above. It landed point-first in the wood and stuck upward, vibrating.

“No one is at your beck and call, Green. Especially not this Interim Council.”

“Perhaps I could arrange the bad news to arrive at your convenience?”

He leaned forward. “What bad news?”

I tapped at the top of my knife's narrow hilt as I listed off what was on my mind. “You already know of the Selistani embassy's attempt to imprison me. They nearly fought with Councilor Kohlmann. There was another attempt upon my person yesterday, in which two innocents were killed.” At the surmise in his eyes, I added testily, “
Not
by me.

“Today I find that zealots among the pardines are come to Copper Downs in search of an ancient treasure stolen from them by the late Duke. Those are an even more dangerous embassy than the Prince of the City and his little collection of fops and assassins.” A stronger tap made the knife quiver with a metallic noise. “All of which ties back to a warning I received during my stay in the High Hills.”

“From whom?” Jeschonek asked.

I was interested to note that the issue of my source of information was his first question, rather than wondering of what I had been warned. “The graves up there talk, you know. Many of them babble, but some are very sensible indeed.”

His lips curled in disgust. “Don't tell me ghost stories.”

“You are being an idiot,” I snapped. Pulling my knife free, I began slapping the palm of my left hand with the flat of the blade. “You lived through Federo's ascendancy. And you did it standing as close to him as anyone did who survived. You were inside the biggest ghost story to be told here in generations. Of all the council, you and Kohlmann should require the least convincing on this matter.”

“The world is filled with powers,” Jeschonek admitted. “As above, so below. But the ancient dead of another era, interred a long day's ride from here, have no special insight into our affairs. I do not care so much for gods and ghosts in any event. Surely they are only a projection of our desires.”

“As may be. But you have seen their effects upon this world. And Erio, a king of old who has been a student of this city a thousand years or more in his moldering grave, fears for us.” His warning of imbalances within the city, and plots against me, had been sincere, if sadly unspecific.

“
I
fear for us!” The councilor slammed down his kava mug and drummed his fist against the table. “You do not have to be dead to realize what trouble may descend upon this city.”

“There is no
may
to this trouble,” I told him. “It is here. Use Lampet's Lads to force the Selistani back on to their ship. The embassy is of my people, but their interests are not mine and most certainly not this city's. Then compose some suitable response to the pardines, for they will come to you eventually. Possibly with tooth and claw, possibly with petitions. Draw them away before their madness sinks in, for they have become infected with politics. Or perhaps religion.”

“You are infected with politics,” he said. “As for religion, I've never seen or heard of someone so god-haunted as you, Green. If you were not in this city, none of these others would have troubled us.”

He was right, so far as that went. The Selistani were here for me. The pardine Revanchists were here for the Selistani. Blackblood wanted to control his son. My daughter.
Fires take that bastard god.