Endurance (49 page)

It took almost a dozen, deep, whooping breaths for me to begin to recover. My cloak rang faintly with each gasp, distant silver rain. The twins paid me the insult of ignoring me. Iso scanned the darkness, seeming vaguely worried. Osi had begun to chant. The night air curdled, a mist being born around us.

I longed for Endurance's envelope of warmth. Looking back at the ox god for comfort, I saw those great, brown eyes shift as he tossed his head to call me back to safety.

Trying once more, I made a run at Osi. One, two, three swift steps and a leap into a knee-breaking kick. My misbalance on the icy street again marred my attack, but even so, Iso was faster. This time the cobble took me in the pelvis, just below and to the right of where the baby rode.

I crashed onto my chest in a cacophony of music, scraping my hands and chin on the road. No time to think of it now, no time to worry about what that had done to my child. I was up and moving, spinning in the dark even as another cobble whipped out of his hand. As if they'd ever needed my rescue that day in the Dockmarket.

This stone I managed to dodge. But I could not both defend and attack. And something was wrong with my right leg. That last missile had injured me to the point that I could no longer move with my usual strength and purpose.

I'd known I couldn't fight them, but I wasn't even trying now. I just wanted to disrupt their ceremony before that curdling darkness came completely into being, focused on the chalk marks on the steps of Blackblood's temple, and subtracted another god from this city.

Let alone what these two will do to the Lily Goddess in Kalimpura.

That thought roused me once more. I
had
to win a different way.

“Women's power,” I whispered. Slipping to my knees, though I nearly toppled from the weakness in my right leg, I prayed to Desire, to the Lily Goddess, to Mother Iron. “These two have stolen much from You, and threaten so much more. Bring me a regiment of women to oppose them.”

Out in the darkness, the Rectifier growled. Something murmured. Both twins looked now, the rhythm of their rite on the verge of being broken.

Did Archimandrix's brass apes approach, despite my orders?

No.

A light sparked.

My prayers, being answered.

Then another light.

In moments, a thousand candles, lanterns, and torches were aglow despite the plucking, grabbing wind. A thousand female faces stared at me—no, not at me, at the twins. I turned my head. They'd filled the Street of Horizons from both directions. Desire's women. Marya's women.
Mother Iron's women.
Ragged. Wealthy. Thin. Plump. Young. Old. Pale. Dark.

Acolytes of Marya—traders' wives and maids from the great houses and fishmongers and whores and animal trainers and midwives and chiurgeons and mothers and daughters, Copper Downs women of all walks of life gathered to stand against the masculine, jealous power of the Saffron Tower in the form of Osi and Iso. I could sense Desire there as well, and Mother Iron, not in a direct manifestation, but through the breath and body and words of their followers.

Like the sea, women surged forward.

Now not even Iso's cobbles could stop me. Finally I had my way. Women's power, indeed. An elderly lady in the dress of some great house of a century past handed me a white candle. An angry, muttering Hanchu child offered me a black candle. Funeral rites. The only death magic I knew, the simplest one of speeding a soul upon its way. So I lit the two wicks from the fires gathering around me.

Then I waited for the tide of women to sweep toward the twins.

No cobbles flew this time, but Iso and Osi stood close about their fire, their rite abandoned in the moment. Not even
they
could slay a thousand women at once. I let myself be pushed forward until I was an armspan from them, candles burning in each hand.

“We choose life,” I said, mindful of the Rectifier's warning about the cost of slaying them out of hand. “Not vengeance and death. Embrace us.”

They both bolted up the steps toward Blackblood's door.

The tide of women followed, some pushing in to each side of the stairs, the rest flowing up, still buoying me along. Iso turned with two last cobbles in his hand while Osi banged on the iron doors.

“You will not live to regret this,” Iso snarled. He took aim at my head.

Skinless reached out
through
the door, tearing the metal, to crush Iso's cocked fist in his own much larger meat-fingers. The other hand trapped Osi by the neck. I closed on the twins, whispering my thanks to Blackblood's avatar, and drew my two adversaries into a close embrace beneath my belled cloak.

Their kicks and blows were as those of angry children, while the avatar held them both trapped. The women behind me reached beneath my silk to touch as the twins' hands and feet slowed. Iso said nothing, but Osi began to keen in a thin, anguished voice.

“Know the power of women,” I told them.

Skinless released the two. I twisted with them, handing them down into the crowd. A mob now, female hands clutching at the twins' saffron robes, tearing at their skin, prying their fingers back, clawing at their eyes. These two ascetics, for whom the touch of a woman was the ultimate unclean filth, were passed shrieking down into a seething female mass. They vanished as the murmurs of the mob rose to shouts and then thundering prayer.

The ox god was there with me, at the top of the stairs, and I slid beneath his belly and let him shelter me while death stalked the crowd below.

What one woman could not do, a thousand could.

Whatever power was bound into the death of twins was diffused by the touch of the divine and shared murder by a myriad of hands.

Eventually I cried.

*   *   *

Later, the Rectifier came to me. I looked up. The moon was strongly westering, but sufficient light flooded the Temple Quarter for me to witness a scene filled with the debris of a crowd—dropped scarves, hats, a shoe. The women were gone. Two sodden lumps lay unmoving in the middle of the Street of Horizons. There was no sign of their brazier or their rites. Behind me, Blackblood's temple was silent.

Also, Endurance had vanished, as had my cloak of bells.

“Hello,” I said absently through chattering teeth.

“Your work is not complete, I do not think.”

No, there was a whole different battle being fought elsewhere in the city. Still, I had triumphed sufficiently to assure some safety for the Lily Goddess.

Why doesn't it feel like victory?
Another lesson I did not want to learn. In time I would, but not that night.

“Have you any word from Archimandrix or Mother Argai?”

His expression wrinkled oddly. “How would I? They do not answer to me. They do not
know
me.”

“Then I should leave.” I stood, profoundly exhausted. My hip joint felt ready to fold. “I could use that mount now.” The joke fell very flat, even to my own ears.

“Here.” The Rectifier offered me his arm. “I will aid you.”

He led me stumbling down the steps, then up the Street of Horizons to Pelagic Street and on toward the Velviere District. I could not imagine going Below in my current shape. The wind had died, at least, leaving the night crystalline cold and still somewhere the far side of miserable.

I wondered if Corinthia Anastasia was safe. If Mother Vajpai and Samma yet lived. If I had done the right thing. Should I have gone to the embassy first and freed the prisoners? Who else would have found a way to remove Iso and Osi from this deadly game?

Except it wasn't me. It was Mother Iron and Desire. They could have done the very same without me.

Wrong, wrong, I'd guessed wrong again and again. How many lives had my error cost?

The night was too cold for self-pity. I needed to concentrate. At least in holding on to the Rectifier's arm, I was able to find my feet. Feel almost a little balanced.

Our first idea of how things were proceeding came when a team of heavy horses cornered from Ríchard Avenue ahead of us, running too swiftly. They towed a large drayage wagon, one of the dockside haulers. Selistani men hung off the sides with bared swords.

A motley mob of more men and three or four armored figures—no, brass apes—appeared behind them at a dead run. It was a small riot, fast-moving.

Some of the embassy were escaping.

I looked at the Rectifier in panic. There was no way I could halt four big horses. “Can you stop them?”

“Get out of my way,” he growled, then stepped into the center of Knightspark Street. Arms wide, claws out, the Rectifier
roared
at the oncoming team.

The leads spooked, trying to turn though there was nowhere to go and they had no freedom to head there harnessed into their traces. Still, they forced their teammates to stumble. The wagon slewed, throwing off two of the defenders. Of necessity, it lost speed, though the drover still whipped at the horses.

I threw a short knife that caught him in the side as his arm was upraised. He shrieked and dropped his whip just as the Rectifier leapt onto the neck of the right-side lead horse, clawing and biting like a mountain lion. The leather harness straps snapped under his attack. The panicked horse bolted again, this time breaking free. Its fellow, in a similar frenzy to escape, headed for the opposite wall. The rest of the team and wagon followed, the box smashing into the stucco to shed more bodies before the whole thing tipped over with an enormous groan, scattering the last few Street Guild clinging to the wagon's right side.

Half a dozen clerks and servants spilled out of the back, shrieking and gabbling. Most of the defenders were down, or dazed. The pursuit overran them with a shrieking vengeance.

I kicked the injured driver hard in the head to shut him up, retrieved my short knife, then sprinted toward the scattered clerks before they were overrun or beaten. Selistani, all of them.

Amid the scream of horses and the shouting of the small mob, I grabbed at them. “Where is Mother Vajpai?” I shouted in Seliu. “Where is the girl Surali holds prisoner?”

Several of my witnesses rolled their eyes in terror. One young fellow babbled. The fifth one I took hold of, an older man, had maintained his composure. “We are being only clerks,” he said. “Everyone you want is still behind.”

That I could believe. I looked around for the Rectifier. He was lining up stunned and wounded Street Guildsmen along the wall, throwing them like stale loaves. There would be many broken bones tonight. “We have to keep moving,” I shouted in Petraean.

The Rectifier must have been listening for me, because he left off his work and shoved through the milling crowd of Selistani and the three now-silent apes. They stood still as their clockwork ticked away the energy of their fierce brass hearts.

We raced after the wagon's backtrail. The next turn found us on the same block as the embassy. Two more wagons rumbled toward us from the front gates. Men were down in the street beyond, but more continued to fight. Some of them were brass. Not enough, though. I thought I saw arrows flying.

Too late, by the Wheel and all its turnings.

I could have cried.

Then I saw Mother Argai clamber over the top of the lead wagon. She dropped down onto the drover and his guard—had the other one been guarded?—sending them both off with a pair of solid punches. One hand on the reins, the other on the brake, she tried to stop the vehicle. She succeeded only in oversetting it. This foursome broke free and ran, trailing their harness.

The horses behind were not so lucky, caught between the overturned wagon and their own. A horrible, wet splintering was followed by more animal screaming.

Mother Argai staggered toward me.

“They s-still have Mother Vajpai inside,” she shouted, too loudly. She must have hurt her head.

“What about the stolen girl?” I shouted back.

“In-inside!”

“Check the wagons,” I shouted at the Rectifier, then ran toward the battle, wishing I still had my balance and my strength and my confidence. I'd have settled for a good meal and a night's sleep.

*   *   *

The night air had grown still and dry, though ice still crusted many surfaces. Closing, I realized that what unfolded before the embassy walls was not so much a battle as a brawl. Even as a brawl it did not seem to be succeeding. Wherever Archimandrix might be, he was not here with his apes. I had just seen that they fought, powerful and merciless, but without initiative or intelligence. My Selistani were no army at all. Without Mother Argai to harry them on, they were already fleeing. Arrows pelted out of the night to land among them—purely a weapon of terror at this point, for the archers could see no more from behind their walls than their victims could from outside.

I did not waste my breath trying to reorganize my men. I didn't know much of leadership and less of armies. Instead I raced for the front wall and swarmed over it without thinking, slipping at the slick top to drop down the other side in an acanthus bush a dozen yards in front of a foursome of archers. The Prince of the City's men, not Street Guilders, though that hardly mattered now.

They did not even notice me, so intent were they on their officer directing their fire from a place up in a nearby tree. The fighting outside had masked me. Fine, I had a moment to consider. There were at least four more archers nearby, judging from the arrow flights. Even with that thought, they released another round, and drew again.

I couldn't very well rush four prepared archers. They'd skewer me.

The answer was obvious enough. I altered my crouch, checked their officer, and threw my blade into his armpit as he raised his hand to call another volley.

Peacock-pretty silks make for lousy armor.

He shrieked and fell from his tree, grabbing at himself until he slammed into the ground with an unpleasant crunch barely more than an arm's length ahead of me. Some fruit is never out of season.