Endurance (23 page)

That latter rivalry was obvious enough—weapons carriers against weapons carriers, each with a very different notion of justice and fairness. But the rivalry between the Temple of the Silver Lily and Bittern Court went back well before my time in Kalimpura, rooted in long-ago betrayals and old hatreds of which I knew nothing.

Would they truly plot to bring down a goddess? Who thought in those terms?

Me, for one, I realized with unintended irony. I'd done for Choybalsan myself, although with a great deal of help. And
someone
had laid a trap for Marya not long after I had first fled Copper Downs.

That
was who Surali was looking for. With whom was she bargaining? The Rectifier? Somehow god killing didn't quite seem his mode. He had priests to hunt, but that was a different matter.

But what of the rest of the Revanchists?
My blood ran cold. Surely the Dancing Mistress had small reason to love the Lily Goddess. There had been nothing kind about her treatment at the hands of my temple sisters and Mothers.

It all fit together, but somehow was still too neat. I had trouble believing in this plot. Who could conspire across the breadth of an ocean, given the excruciating pace at which messages traveled? And some pieces of it had to stretch back years. The Eyes of the Hills, for example, if they were indeed involved.

“I find it more likely that Mother Vajpai has encouraged you to think this,” I told Samma. “To bait me into her grasp once more. I will not return to her again.”

“No, Green.” Samma sounded almost desperate now. Close to tears. “Please listen to me. The plots in the embassy are as thick as silkworm webs on a mulberry bush.”

“That is the way of Kalimpuri politics,” I told her. “And everywhere else, too, I suppose. This does not mean some great effort is being made to slay our goddess. They work for advantage, that their names may be ascendant.”

I was loyal to the Lily Goddess, albeit very irregular in my observances, but I was not dedicated to Her political power, or the particular fortunes of Her temple. If the Temple Mother and the Justiciary Mother and Mother Vajpai wanted to fritter their years on those disputes, it was no game of mine.

There were gods aplenty here in Copper Downs to trouble me.

“I-I brought you something,” Samma said, her voice very small indeed. “By way of proof.”

She reached inside her Blade leathers and pulled forth a small velvet sack that had been lying close to her left breast. I knew how she favored that one when at play, so perhaps she had drawn comfort from having her secrets there.

Samma hefted the sack. I could see it was light. Money? It was not so heavy, not at all. Some ancient sigil, perhaps. But when she tugged the drawstring, two gems spilled into the palm of her left hand: a green tourmaline and a cobalt spinel.

“The Eyes of the Hills,” I whispered.

They
had
returned to Copper Downs. No wonder the Revanchists were down out of their high forests and meadows. I felt ill as I realized how much of that supposed plot
had
to be real.

Maybe Osi and Iso were right after all. Set the Selistani embassy and the pardine factions on one another, then simply clear the streets.

“Where did you get those?” I asked her.

Samma shook her head, miserable, as she tucked the Eyes of the Hills back into their velvet bag. “I h-had some gems, to barter for cash or goods or passage, as I began to pursue you. I stole these from Mother Vajpai, but left her with two other gems so she would not note the theft so quickly.”

“You stole from
Mother Vajpai
?” This was not the Samma I had known.

“I'm no longer the scared girl you dumped when you became a star among the Blades,” she said in a determined voice. “All we do is police Kalimpura, and spend our time there. When Mother Vajpai sent me after you alone, with Captain Padma and those t-terrible men, I think I learned some things. Maybe I grew up.”

“You may not be a scared girl,” I said simply, “but you are a frightened young woman.”

“Possibly. But I c-couldn't just let it be. Not once I knew Mother Vajpai carried something Surali wanted real bad.”

Ah-ha.

“So they argued over these?”

“Surali has been beside herself for this whole trip.”

Which made me wonder all over again if Mother Vajpai had manipulated Samma into even this betrayal. A way to secure my help without asking me.

Oh, the wheels inside the wheels of this were making my head ache.

A solution of sorts came unbidden into my thoughts. “Give the gems to me.”

She stank of a sudden surge of fear sweat, then closed her fist. “No. I might need to put them back.”

“I can keep them far safer from Surali than Mother Vajpai can.” Which was almost certainly not literally true, but I was willing to hang on to the thought for right now. “Also, I know what to do with them, to ensure that no harm comes to the Lily Goddess through the agency of these gems.”

“They're powerful, aren't they?” Every now and then, Samma showed something of what the training mothers had seen in her. She slipped the sack back within her leathers.

I could not allow her to leave with them. “All by themselves, perhaps not.” I grabbed hold of her wrist. “But they have the power of a symbol, and are connected to an ancient magic here in the city which has been stolen and re-stolen.”

“They're not
yours
, Green.” Samma tried to pull away from my grip.

Tugging her toward me, I leaned in close. “They're not yours, either. And they are
dangerous
.”

Samma yanked herself almost free, rising to her feet. I came up with her, then tripped her ruthlessly by the bad leg I'd injured previously. That dumped her to the ground in front of the temple steps with a hiss of pain. I followed with a body pin of my own weight, pressing her into the graveled soil as my right hand snaked inside her leathers to retrieve the gems in their sack.

Recovering her breath, Samma kicked up with her knee, catching me painfully in the thigh. I dug a thumb into the edge of her eye. “Do not try me further.” I was not pleased with myself, but I had neither time nor patience for her foolishness.

She went limp, surrendering as she used to on the practice floor and in our shared bed. “
Greeeeeeen
,” she gasped in whining misery.

I rolled off her and stood, wary of some last-minute trickery on her part. “Not a word of this to anyone, not even Mother Vajpai.” Especially not Mother Vajpai.

Betrayal was written large upon Samma's face, scratching open a sense of guilt which I rarely experienced. “I was trying to help you,” she sniffed.

“You have.” I glanced down at the velvet bag, then tugged at the drawstring until the Eyes of the Hills spilled out once more, this time into my waiting hand. They tingled with that familiar metal-in-the-mouth feeling of something touched by the divine. It was all I could do not to glance skyward and look for the lightning strike to come.

Instead I leaned forward and kissed Samma gently. “Go home. Back to the embassy, then back to Selistan.”

Her lips surged against mine, an old habit of sexual hunger between us; then she tore away, saying, “I hate you.” But the tone of her voice told me differently.

Watching her totter out, limping yet, I wondered if I should have sent for a carriage. When she disappeared past the far side of the gate, I turned my attention to the pair of gems in my hand. Once again, I had a feeling I'd paid too much for too little reward. Except for their size, the stones were unremarkable enough to casual inspection. Blue and green, a pair of eyes that reminded me muchly of Michael Curry. I was fairly certain no one but a priest would sense the power that buzzed against my hand like a trapped wasp.

What if I had not killed him then? Would all this be different now?
What if I had not just bullied Samma, hurt her to force the girl to my will?

I dismissed all of that as fruitless. It occurred to me that my very best source of information would be the Factor's ghost, for in his guise as the Duke, he had first stolen these away from the pardines.

The flaws in that idea were readily apparent, and so I abandoned it. No, I was done with turning to those who had once held authority over me to ask for help and more help. To the Smagadine hells with the Interim Council, the Factor, and even Mother Vajpai. Armed once again with the power of a god, I would seek out Osi and Iso and craft a response of my own.

*   *   *

Out on the streets once more in my guise as a lad of Copper Downs, I ignored my fading guilt about Samma and instead mused on Erio's fears. Surely the Eyes of the Hills were what had caught at the old ghost's attention. His own years far predated the late Duke's appropriation of the pardine artifacts, but Erio, much like the tulpas of Below, had been focused on the city throughout the entire sorry history of the gems. Their power, both as legacy and whatever remained directly invested in them today, was now too closely tied to Copper Downs. That these gems drew the pardine Revanchists with their atavistic ways back into the city would be deeply frightening to a soul who remembered the older days of pardine Hunts and the brutal wars with the human settlers of this land.

The feral aspect of the Dancing Mistress and her cohorts in the Tavernkeep's place was surely a pathway to a much darker facet of her people, harkening to those older days. I had loved her for years in various ways, but she always held a frightening depth.

Sometimes I preferred a person of simple intentions. Samma, for example. Or me. I grew tired of outguessing the inscrutable motives of those taken up with ancient, invisible agendas. Looking back, I find it amazing how unaware of myself I was in those years.

As I turned onto Calabar Street, the air around me seemed to pop. Strange shadows danced on the walls even in broad daylight. For a moment my mouth filled with the metallic taste of power. Then a sound rumbled by, loud enough that it overwhelmed all the noise of the city. I had in the past been mere handspans away from lightning strikes, thanks to the kind attentions of Federo. This was worse.

Some around me fell, mostly through fear, as the ground did not buckle. Noting the alignment of the new shadows, I turned and sprinted back toward their source. Once I was heading that way, the column of smoke and rising, multicolored sparks was easy enough to spot.

The Temple Quarter? Had Blackblood done himself a mischief? My troubles could surely not be so easily solved.

I raced toward the Street of Horizons, leaping over people huddled by the curb, pushing past the more alert who fled in the opposite direction. This was no explosion of alchemical powders, I was certain. Nothing a man or woman could create would cause such a flash of light. This was magic, the divine, something supernatural.

I approached the Temple Quarter, my sprint converted to the ground-eating lope of a Blade run. I could see that the cloud rose from a block behind the Street of Horizons. That was a smaller road of which I did not know the name. I arrived at the scene to find a few dozen stunned acolytes and priests of several orders staring at a rubble pile out of which the last of the smoke and dust was boiling.

The remaining air was strangely clear, as if wiped of all impurities. Like the garden before time, when the birds and animals had not yet been awoken to breathe it in. The metal-in-mouth taste was strong here. I could see by the expressions of several of the watchers that they shared it.

Puffing, I pulled up to the group.
I never breathe hard. Not like this!
An argument with the baby, for later. One hand on my belly, trying not to be obvious, I asked, “Whose place was this?”

None of them even looked at me, until I plucked at one young boy's robed arm. He turned and opened his mouth, popping his lips like a carp in a pond. I realized his ears were bleeding. He must have been deafened by the explosion.

All of them seemed to have been.

I hoped they had a god of hearing to pray to.

Instead of addressing them, I pushed through to the front of the semicircle of onlookers. “Go home!” I shouted, letting the words form large upon my lips. I touched my ears, then pointed to them, then shooed them away.

Even the older priests nodded, somewhat to my surprise. In my experience, men of a certain age simply don't surrender authority to women or boys. Their willingness to heed me was a mark of how overwhelmed they felt.

I turned around and looked again. Their departure was also a mark of how utterly unlikely I was to find any survivors.

Given the intense nature of the explosion, I knew I would probably have a few minutes to myself. Especially with the smoke plume almost vanished, which would reduce the likelihood of a bucket brigade arriving.

Looking around, I realized that the damage had indeed been contained. While windows were shattered in all directions, only one building had collapsed. Rubble smoldered in front of me, beams shattered, bricks broken and ground to dust, the contents of the inside mixed into the mess—plates, a splintered table, a length of cloth.

I moved closer. The length of cloth enclosed a human leg, protruding from under a still-intact chunk of masonry the size of a large trunk. Now I wished I hadn't sent the priests away so quickly. Still, the chunk was balanced precariously on a pile of smaller wreckage. And there was no lack of loose wood for levers.

Swiftly I wedged a seven-foot length of milled lumber into place under the high edge of the masonry. Even as I worked to that, I confirmed my impression that this place had been targeted very specifically.

Was this the Temple of Marya? That hand had been played before, after all.

Someone had tried to attack this temple several years ago, not long after the fall of the Duke. I'd heard the story when I was staying with Ilona, twice, about a long night of light and flame, and a horrid creature slain in the street, only to have the body vanish with the sunrise. This had all taken place during the brass-ape races, which were a time of debauchery and general foolishness. While I'd recognized the importance of the story, I'd discounted most of the details.