Endurance (36 page)

“Their work feeds their bond. You have put the brothers on a trail. They will hunt that trail until they make their kill. Or until they are thwarted.”

“Iso and Osi are not human, are they?”

He shrugged. “Neither am I.”

That was difficult to answer. Instead, I focused on the problem at hand. “I must now oppose what I have begun with the twins. Then I must find a way to turn the Selistani embassy from attacking the Lily Goddess.”

“Let them all kill each other.”

“No. There is a child at stake.”

He favored me with a curious stare. “You would upset the fate of cities for one child?”

I felt myself grow hot. “If not for one child, then for whom? How many count? If we stop at one, we may as well never try at all.”

The Rectifier raised a hand. Claws gleamed just at the tip of his blunt, furred fingers. “That is a matter for your people to decide. I merely point out how the costs hang in the balance.”

He had the right of it. For the same reason I could not simply charge into the Selistani embassy with blades drawn, neither could I exact my vengeance in a swift series of back-alley killings, nor set the will of two cities against one another.

Some prices truly were too high.

And some were already paid in full.

“I can perhaps solve this problem of Iso and Osi, and also protect Blackblood from my own worst impulses.” I reached within my clothes and pulled out the small velvet bag that contained the Eyes of the Hills. “I must ask you to take something from me, but only for safekeeping. You are specifically charged not to bargain the worth of this.”

He took the sack. “Should I look?”

“As it pleases you. In any case, I wish you to hold them for me.”

The Rectifier closed his eyes a long moment, fingers twined around their small burden. “I know what these are,” he said softly. “You carry a key to a lock you do not understand.”

I was startled at how precisely his words echoed my earlier thoughts. How had he known? Was I that transparent? “And you know where that lock may be found, yet I trust you to carry this key. People will try to take those from me. My position will be improved if they cannot be shaken out of me or seized while I am under restraint.”

“You should not do this, Green.” He slipped the bag inside his own ragged manleather vest. “But I will hold them for you, for the sake of what you did with the ox god.”

A narrow-faced woman brought us two tankards unasked, interrupting our conversation. The Rectifier glared at her until she wilted from his gaze and turned to glare at me. “How much?” I asked, surrendering to the inevitable.

“Two coppers.”

I fished a pair of the smallest taels from my diminishing cache of money. “Enough,” I told the woman. She drew her lips back as if to spit, then wandered away.

The smell was vile. Beer brewed from milling waste was my best guess. I did not touch it. “I bound your people's ancient power into a human god.”

“Not all pardines agree with the Revanchists,” the Rectifier said mildly. He took a deep draught of his tankard. “Some sacrifices are better left unredeemed.”

“Here,” I told him. “Have mine.” With my fingertips, I shoved the questionable stuff across the little table. “Somehow I would not have expected you to see the world that way.”

“Yet you trust me.”

“I trust you because you fought me until the need had passed, and not a moment longer. You never lost sight of who I am.”

“You have never lived wild.”

I thought of my first days in Selistan, after leaving Pinarjee and Shar behind—my father in his dementia and the woman who was properly my stepmother, however I chose to think of her. I'd lived as close to wild then as ever I would. But I didn't think that was what he had in mind. “No, I have not. Not as you mean it.”

Another long sip. “I am the greatest warrior of my people in this age, though we are a small echo of what once was. I understand as well as any of us what has been lost. Very few realize what was gained in return when that power was given away.”

Even across the table, I fancied I could still feel the crackle of the gems. I was certain the Rectifier could do so. “I thought it was stolen from you.”

“Could someone steal your spirit without your permission?” His eyes seemed to deepen as he stared at me over the rim of the tankard. “Some things can only be given away, not stolen. However that might be recalled later.”

“The Factor told me that as the Duke he had fought a great war against your people.”

“We are still very dangerous. Once we were far more so.” He took up my tankard. “I would not see those days return. It will be the end of us if they do. In their terror, your people would hunt mine until nothing remained but pelts, bones, and travelers' tales. Even so, I will guard your treasure, not for that reason, but for your own sake.”

“Thank you,” I said simply. “I must go Below and seek further aid. When I want those back, I will find you.”

“If you need to tell someone where the Eyes of the Hills are in order to spare your own life, that does not trouble me.” He grinned, his mouth all teeth for a moment. “I could use the exercise should someone come searching for them in my hand.”

I took my leave of him then with no more ceremony than a swift farewell. Outside, I knew what I must do next. Mother Iron had already handed me this answer. I found a large sewer grate with an inspection ladder and slipped Below, out of the ever heavier snow and into the dank, sheltering darkness.

*   *   *

Winter cold had begun infecting the uppermost tunnels. I felt as if I wandered through ice. I was tired, while my rooftop adventuring earlier in the afternoon had left me with horribly aching shins and a deep sense of lassitude.

Still, Archimandrix had offered his services to me, and therefore presumably his guild's entire strength. Mother Iron had indicated that old problems required old solutions. I was coming to appreciate how old a problem Iso and Osi truly were. Not to mention Desire …

I wasn't sure exactly where I was Below, but I knew the direction I needed. A swath of coldfire in my hand, I headed for the great machines. Archimandrix would be somewhere near there. That was his world. I was only a guest here, far from the lost time in which he and his sorcerer-engineers still dwelt.

Which was fine with me.

The sewage tunnel opened into a larger gallery. Here the flow had been routed through masonry guideways—low walls containing the muck, in order to keep the runoff from flooding into the old mine tunnels. I stepped away from the shallow filth I'd been splashing through and reoriented myself toward the Temple of Endurance.

I walked, noting landmarks such as a great skeleton covered in moss and mold, some eldritch creature that could have served as a mount for Skinless. My thoughts continued to range through the issues bedeviling me. I wondered what the Rectifier would have me do about Endurance, if he could. He'd certainly intervened at the death of Federo and the casting down of Choybalsan. Had the wily pardine rethought his desires? Or perhaps the realities of the situation had simply passed the old rogue by.

Power moved in circles, in circuits. Like a rooftop tank of water released, it had to go
somewhere
. Bleeding it off would be as slow and cautious a problem as draining the tank through the smallest pipe.

Endurance was a safety valve on the ambitions of the pardine Revanchists and the rogue twins alike. The ox god was a safety valve on me also, in truth. He had already served this city well.

Soon I found myself among the machines of the great gallery beneath the temple at the old minehead. They were colder now, leaching what little warmth might be in this room to leave behind only the chill. Seen glittering in my coldfire, they looked as if frost had settled upon them.

Winter. That curse of cities and people alike. A blanket of quiet, white death to put us all to sleep.

I touched one of the old machines and thought of Archimandrix. The metal was so cold my fingers threatened to stick. My warmth would pour from me, I realized, to be absorbed within those brass and copper and iron angles. Time seemed to congeal here in the chill beneath the world. The ancient men in their leather masks who'd built this thing were waiting just beyond the line of shadows for their chance at trying yet again for whatever aims had first driven them.

“What purpose?” I asked the machine. It was large and inscrutable, with bolted hatches long since corroded to a single mass. Multijointed arms folded against the higher reaches of its body, where once they might have swung free to service some distant, unknowable need.

“What purpose ever the past?” asked Archimandrix from behind me.

I swung about, startled, short knife in my right hand. “Who's with you?”

“You are,” he said reasonably. “I knew you'd be back.”

Again, the young man—or to be more accurate, the man with young voice—had wrapped his head in leather bandages except for the brass oculars. His robes covered the rest of him.

“I am back,” I responded. “And I do need your help.”

“As Mother Iron foretold.” He tipped his head toward me. A nod? A bow?

“Foretold or not, the moment is here. I have caused a problem you may be able to sort out.”

“Explain, please.”

I got the impression he didn't very often remember to say “please.”

We squatted on our heels in the cold presence of the machines while I told him about Blackblood, about Iso and Osi, about Corinthia Anastasia and the Selistani embassy, about the pardine Revanchists. I left out nothing, and did little to alleviate my own sorry role. I had gotten the entire affair wrong almost from the beginning. As a result of my own poor judgment I'd placed two deicides on a god's tail.

When I was done, Archimandrix remained quiet for a while. From the set of his head, I surmised he was squinting thoughtfully, as very smart persons will do when confronted with an idea outside their notions. Intelligence could be so limiting at times.

“You want my sorcerer-engineers to oppose these divine twins.”

“I do not think them divine,” I replied quietly. “Very old and very powerful, yes.”

“The fall of Marya is being spoken about the city,” he said. “Her loss troubles Below, and imperils women everywhere. That these ones should claim another god from Copper Downs is unacceptable.”

“You will block them from Blackblood?”

“I can do better than that.” Now I could hear the grin in his voice. “Much better.”

“Then I leave you with this problem. I have more to do, and time is terribly precious for me right now.”

Archimandrix touched my shoulder. His heavy leather glove was as cold as the machine beside us. “See to your people and the missing child. My sorcerer-engineers will see to the gods of our city.”

It was all I could do in this moment. “Thank you.”

I knew who my next contact would be. Blackblood needed another line of defense. Arranging chessmen on the board, Skinless was my next play.

*   *   *

The best way to find the avatar was to head for Blackblood's temple from Below. Unfortunately, I knew
that
path all too well. Following it reminded me overmuch of Septio, who had brought me here, and up through the labyrinth that joined Below with the sacred precincts. I passed into a familiar corridor of carved, screaming faces—homage to the pain god, or an ossuary of souls, I could not say.

As I walked, I whispered the avatar's name. “Skinless … Skinless…” In the unquiet tunnels, that sound carried to blend in with the drips, the rivulets, the groaning of the earth, the occasional distant knocking and banging. I felt as if I were calling a lost goat. “Skinless … Skinless…”

I continued to suspect that the avatar had been following me for days. Surely he would be found now, here, close to his home.

At one point I stopped and turned to look behind me. A great, gelid eye peered back from a muscled face. He was so close I could have touched him with my tongue. A shock of surprised fear coursed through my veins before quickly settling.

“I bear a message for your god,” I told Skinless.

Great hands flexed, tendons sliding over fat, along muscle, as veins throbbed. I had fought this one too—was that true of all my friends?—and knew how difficult he was to even check for a brief moment. Never to be defeated, not by me.

“I have wronged Blackblood, grievously. A pair of hunters are on his trail now.” Slowly, carefully, I detailed my missteps with Iso and Osi, and my fears for what they planned.

Skinless listened, nodding, with as thoughtful an expression as that great, flayed face could manage. When I had spun my entire tale, I finished by saying, “I have asked Archimandrix and his sorcerer-engineers to deal with the twins before they ever reach your temple. But the god must make ready.”

Another long, slow nod. Then one great hand reached out, finger extended, to delicately brush against the not-so-gentle bulge of my belly.

“Yes, I'll be careful.” I tried not to think of my missed leap to the warehouse roof this afternoon. I needed to stop acting as if I were a Blade in prime condition, and start behaving like a pregnant woman.

If only everyone else would
let
me do so.

He mimed picking me up, carrying me, as he had once done when I was wounded.

“No,” I replied. “I shall make my own way. But thank you.”

We parted then Below, uneasy friends, he to his god of bitter dregs, me to my plotting.

*   *   *

My next step would conveniently bring me to a resting place for the night. I had need to raise a great noise against the Selistani embassy but it would do me no good to run through the streets decrying a stolen child. Who would believe me? More to the point, who would care?

Children were essentially disposable, unless they happened to be heirs to a great fortune or the objects of great love. My own life was sad testament to that truth.