Endurance (6 page)

Certainty. The path forward always lay through certainty. The Lily Blades taught that—always be certain, always be prepared to change one's mind.

That in turn moved me to hone my long knife, test the sharpness of my short knives, and spend several hours sprinting up and down hills and speed-climbing damp-barked trees, all out of sight of the road below. I was slower than I should have been, and did not move quite as I might have liked, but I could still kick, dodge, and roll almost as expected.

The key, of course, was not to get into fights in the first place. As I worked myself, I thought of Mother Vajpai. She could take down almost anyone in a straight match but rarely needed to do so. As dangerous as her body was, her mind was the far deadlier weapon.

Another lesson, surely. One I should have attended to more closely in the days that were to come.

It occurred to me to wonder who I was planning to fight
with
. Body or mind, I had no serious enemies roaming the streets of Copper Downs. Endurance could hardly wish me ill. Blackblood was, well, complex, but not precisely an enemy. I no longer feared Skinless, as that silent avatar of the god seemed to hold a mute, deep regard for me.

Finally I shook off the mania of preparation for combat and cleaned my campsite. While I'd worked my body the wind had blown in a few flower petals that might have been lilies, so I burned them with reverence and gave the ashes back to the air as I buried my fire. It was close to midday before I gathered my belled silk and my few other belongings to scramble down toward the Barley Road in order to join the travelers following Chowdry into Copper Downs.

*   *   *

Entering the city was like cooking in a familiar kitchen. I knew the pans by touch, did not need to look for the cutting knives. So with these streets. The fall harvest was being brought in to the bourses and markets for auction to the cellarmen and canners and warehousemen. That meant an unusually large number of carts with confused horses and even more confused country lads atop the drover's bench. Still, they laughed at one another and shouted rude names in booming voices instead of jumping from their seats to brawl.

I marked their progress and watched for other signs of commerce. Did the bankers' boys trot past at double time with their lacquered boxes slapping against their chests? What of the runners from the Harbormaster's office and the shipping exchange? How many clerks hurried along the streets mixed among the ladies' maids and shrieking children with their stick-a-hoops?

I was surprised at the brown faces I saw. A fair number of my countrymen lived here now. Only one in a hundred, perhaps, but that was still ten times what I could recall from even last summer, let alone the years of my training when I might have been the only Selistani in the city aside from the handful of resident trading families and a few passing sailors.

Rarely did I pause to think on the color of my skin—there always seemed to be more urgent matters which needed attending to—but it pleased me to see faces as brown as my own. My child would not be so alone in this place as I had been.

Endurance's temple stood not in the Temple Quarter, where the houses of the gods generally were to be found, but rather was a building amid the Velviere District. I avoided both those areas at first. In due time I would need to see to the god I had helped birth, and call on Blackblood as well. For now, I had a different destination in mind.

The breweries were busy as ever. So far as I knew, not war nor famine nor fire nor outright bankruptcy had ever succeeded in stilling this city's thirst. The Stone Coast was not wine country, not at all. Distilleries were common enough, and some of their product was magnificent, but beer was the bubbling heart of these northern people.

I was headed for a quiet alley amid the breweries, where I might find a certain tavern. Last I knew, Chowdry had been cooking there most nights, though his duties to Endurance had probably taken him away from the Tavernkeep's kitchen more often now. This nameless place was the heart of the small community of the pardine people in Copper Downs. My old Dancing Mistress was the first of that race I'd ever known, but I had yet to meet one I did not like and respect. Even the Rectifier, a violent and difficult old rogue with an unfortunate tendency toward murdering human priests, was charming in his strange way.

However, when I turned the corner into the brick-walled alley with its familiar cracked flagstones now damp and slick, the area before the tavern entrance was full of people. Humans, not pardines. And Selistani at that. Chattering, almost angry, a buzz of voices arguing in Seliu.

Startled, I tugged up my hood and dipped my face. I was far too easily recognized with my scarred cheeks and notched ears. Until I understood what mischief this restless crowd was about, I did not want them to know me.

I eased into a crowd of men in white linen kurtas, a few women in colored sarongs scattered among them. My black leather would have been more conspicuous if they'd been paying much attention to me, but these people were focused on a woman standing in the doorway of the Tavernkeep's establishment, arguing both with someone inside and with several men outside.

Moving closer, with a cold stab of my heart, I recognized the one at the heart of this brangle. It was the Bittern Court woman, whose name I had never known. How wrong I had been in my sense of being safe from her. Nameless, she was only a power to me, a persecutor. This woman had pursued me to exile back in Kalimpura, while calling for my head over the matter of Michael Curry's assassination. I owed the Bittern Court no loyalty and even less affection for their conflicts with the Temple of the Silver Lily, not to mention their attempts to persecute me. To see
her
,
here
, could only be very bad news indeed.

No wonder I'd felt a need to sharpen my knives this morning. I would be lost to the Wheel before I would place myself under this woman's influence.

Pulse pounding, I backed slowly through the crowd, pushing toward the open street beyond. Someone bumped me, then shouted out my name in Seliu. This was not the time to confront whatever had brought people across the Storm Sea in search of me. I ran, sprinting out of the alley, down past the Cooper's Brewery, and away on the stones of the city. I might not have been as fast as before, but I was still faster than those behind me.

*   *   *

Winded, but safe, I paused for breath in an empty lot near the old wall, now simply a dividing line between the Greenmarket and the Ivory Quarter. Crumbling bricks rose forty feet to a walkway that joined four surviving towers. It was pretty enough, in a desolate way, and a tribe of indigenes had made their stick-and-daub homes atop the walkways and tower crowns, so that the whole thing looked as if it had been colonized by enormous raptors.

A firecart offered meat sticks, while the strange little people who lived atop this section of wall passed in abundance on their own errands. No Selistani were in evidence.

I fished out a copper tael from my limited supply of coin and bought a length of some birdflesh. I didn't ask what fowl, and the man did not say. It tasted mostly of charring, and a bit of sage, but that was enough for me in the moment. My hands were busy and I looked as if I might belong there.

Truly, I needed to stop wearing black leather. That was like a fart at a temple service—marking me out and making people stare. I resolved to purchase a colored wrap at the very next opportunity, and decide later how to be safely anonymous on a more consistent basis.

I pondered whether Chowdry had known that the Bittern Court woman had arrived across the sea from Kalimpura. Persons of her status did not voyage alone, either. He'd said important people had arrived from Selistan, some mission or embassy calling here at Copper Downs. It was beyond unlikely that I would not be involved in their purposes.

Had Chowdry brought me back to Copper Downs only to betray me?

Or had the Selistani stranger asking after me at Briarpool been searching on behalf of the visitors?

Perhaps it did not matter so much, except as concerned future trust between me and Chowdry. Enough that I was here. Enough that a woman who'd tried to claim my life back in Kalimpura had made a challenge in one of my safest places. Not particularly welcomed there, from the look of things, but still,
she
had come to
me
.

I fingered the hilt of my long knife. This was Copper Downs. We had no Death Right, and not so much in the way of governance these days. She would be hard-pressed to hire locals to kill
me
, unless they were complete fools. Anyone she had brought with her would be lost here until they learned both the streets and the local customs. I knew Below, and they did not. I could take her far more readily than she could take me.

This was
my
home ground.

Simply slaying the Bittern Court woman out of hand, either quietly or publicly, had much to recommend itself as a strategy.

My child moved at that thought, and I caught myself. I had only days ago dreamt of a quiet life of cooking and peace, and here I was now plotting another death. That for the sake of my convenience.

I needed help, I realized. I could not pursue this on my own, not if an entire embassy had arrived from Kalimpura. Endurance might be of some aid, but my trust in Chowdry was provisional until I could understand what he had known before he came up to see me at Ilona's cottage. Not just what he had known, but more to the point, what he might have failed to tell me.

Any mission of note from Kalimpura would be accredited to the Interim Council. While the councilors were venal bastards to a man, they were venal bastards with whom I could work. Furthermore, they
did
owe me.

I headed for the Textile Bourse, seat of the Interim Council ever since my slaying of the Duke had vacated the palace on Montane Street. The Lyme Street building was a fraction of the size of the old palace, and crowded to the rafters with clerks and ministers of government, but it had thus far kept them free of the taint of the old regime, free to create their own, novel disgraces.

*   *   *

The building had not been fully repaired since the day last spring when we brought the god-king Choybalsan down from the roof. Almost six months past, now. His lightnings had shattered much of the facade. As for the damage to the street, I'd accounted for that personally. The cobbles I'd broken had since been filled in with gravel to keep the street traffic flowing while presumably someone sought funds for more permanent repairs. The shattered windows were boarded over, while the front door was replaced with stout, iron-banded oak. The flowers that had sprung up full-grown with Endurance's theogeny were long vanished.

The banner of the city still hung overhead, a copper shield in four parts, surmounted by a coronet and a ship. As I'd assumed, the Interim Council had not relocated during my time in the High Hills. That was confirmed by the two very large guardsmen at the door. They were the sort of accessory that served as a timeless classic in the halls of power.

I paused at a little teahouse I did not remember from the days of struggle. That was not so long ago, yet it felt like half my life had passed since. Just outside the teahouse, on the edge of the street itself, small round tables of lacquered wood perched on twisted metal legs, inviting me to take my ease in ironwork chairs. A twinge in my back reminded me that I hadn't sat like a civilized person since leaving Ilona's cottage. Nor had I enjoyed any tea, let alone the rarer vice of kava, a habit I longed to acquire in detail some day just for the sake of the steamy brown richness of the stuff.

The streets were no place for me to linger, but neither could I dash into the Interim Council with nothing more on my mind than a panic at seeing a tradeswoman from across the sea. I compromised by taking a chair in the shadows next to the rippled glass window. That position carried an excellent view of the Textile Bourse while keeping me relatively anonymous. For once today, the black leathers would work in my favor.

I had begun to understand why the mothers of the Temple of the Silver Lily had so disliked my Neckbreaker guise. The affectation was beginning to gall even me.

A short woman with cinnamon-colored skin placed a basket of well-buttered cardamom rolls in front of me. Where were
her
people from? Suddenly I was hungry beyond measure. The
smell
had drawn me, I realized. I nodded at the woman, whispered “Kava, with cream” in my gruffest tone, and fell to.

What with one thing and another—riot, revolution, godhead—I have rarely found time to practice my baking. I am a good hand with breads, thanks to Mistress Tirelle, who did her best to make the most of what could be made of my enslavement in the Pomegranate Court. It was not just my empty stomach or the demands of the baby, I was sure, that led me to find these pastries the most delicious I had ever eaten.

I knew I should have meat, greens, some fruit. The Temple of the Silver Lily had been quite clear on the care and feeding of pregnant women. But this soft, crisp-edged bread that came apart in my hand, steaming of butter and spice, and melted on my tongue, was divine. I did not even notice when the woman brought me my kava, until its insistent smell wedged past my obsession with the baked goods.

After the cardamom rolls, even the kava seemed a bit tame. Still, the rich bitterness overtook my palate much as a fine wine might do. A good third of an hour had passed before I finally came back to myself. I had intended to sit, and plan, and consider my statements on broaching the Interim Council. Instead I was brushing crumbs and shining dark droplets of kava off the front of my leathers.

“I must have needed that, badly,” I said aloud.

The cinnamon-skinned woman was back. “More?” she asked, with an accent I could not place any better than I could place the unusual color of her face.

“My thanks, but no. I need to move on. Those were the best rolls I have ever eaten.” I considered subtleties of texture and flavor. “A wash of egg white, yes, with sea salt and a pinch of sugar to go along with the cardamom seeds?”