Jay Lake - Endurance

My feet had led me to the breweries near the docks. Even my wandering mind could not ignore the odor of yeasts and hops and spillage, and the spoiled barrels placed out on the loading docks, from which the poor could drink unmeasured at their own risk for half of a split copper tael or some shred of barter. Horses, too; the district always had that smell of horse, those monstrous great beasts that drew the brewery wagons about the city.

Beer I was fine with, horses I mistrusted deeply. The broken screw that had borne me on my fateful trip with Septio, leading to his death and my pregnancy, had been a wicked animal with a special hatred for me in its liquid eyes.

An ox, now, there was an animal with which you always knew your place. No question of standing with an ox. They never got above themselves, and generally were not independent thinkers. Little wonder that Endurance had manifested as he did. I shuddered to think of the moods of a horse god.

I strode casually past the mouth of the Tavernkeep’s alley. I was pleased to note that no crowd of Selistani filled the narrow roadway as they had on my previous visit. Wandering around the block, I chanced to duck unnoticed behind a hops wagon, then scaled to the roof of the warehouse that should back onto the tavern. From above I scrambled across the tarred sheet metal expanse of the warehouse’s flat roof, then dropped to the sloped tile of the tavern itself.

That building was three storeys tall, though I’d never been above the second floor. It surely also had a cellar for beer barrels and the distilling of bournewater, the mountain liquor of the pardines that looked like rain and stole away the sense of any human who imbibed more than a few sips. All I could do from above was watch the entrance and the alleyway. There I could see who might be watching for me.

Blackblood’s men, for one. And people from the embassy. Not that the Prince of the City cared, but I had come to understand that Mother Vajpai and Surali were at odds, just as they had always been back in Kalimpura. Both of them had business with me. So possibly two sets of watchers from the embassy, poised for me and for each other. And by now, Kohlmann and the Interim Council might well have their own people tracking me.

Erio didn’t need to have been concerned for Copper Downs. All the old ghost needed do was be concerned about me and the troublemakers I attracted.

Too many cared where I was to be found. Too few cared for the right reasons. I would not give up my baby, and I would not give up myself. So with my long knife balanced across my thighs I crouched up on the roof, the cistern behind me to break my outline against the sky. There I hunted my hunters as patiently as if they were rabbits in the meadows of High Hills.

A surprising number of Selistani came and went over the next hour. At least a dozen of them passed down in the alley, almost all men. They seemed of the meanest and poorest classes-beached sailors, displaced farmers, idled laborers. Most were burned dark by the sun, without the pale, oiled sleekness of the aristocracy and the merchant castes. Almost without exception they wore faded and patched kurtas, very nearly the uniform of the country of my birth for those who could not afford more, but whose modesty forbade a dhoti or a mere clout.

I would not put it past Mother Vajpai to set a clever spy for me, but I doubted that Surali would even think to hire such a person as these to her service.

Only one Stone Coast woman came in the hour, and she quite clearly was bringing supplies, in the form of two herb baskets across her shoulders. She left twenty minutes later, her baskets somewhat the lighter.

Also, three pardines.

That proved to me that the Tavernkeep had not shut his business, and that the pardines had not drifted away in the face of the human invasion brought on presumably by Chowdry’s cooking.

And of course, that was where he had been so often lately. The realization struck me as funny. Chowdry was working his shifts for the Tavernkeep. A temple camp full of the round-bellied children of the wealthy, and still he trudged here every day to make curry and samosas and whatever else struck the fancy of either Chowdry or his patrons.

Did the pardines’ subtle distaste for the human not extend to the Selistani lately come among them? Or was their patience simply long enough to wait out this latest insult? That was a question for which I had no useful answer, though I could spin theories enough. Besides which, it was only my curiosity talking. No stakes rode with the issue.

That I could think of.

It occurred to me that lately my judgment of what was important had been flawed.

In any case, no one lingered with their eyes on the tavern that I could see. I spent time scanning the few windows opening on the alley. All were dark and still. A watcher or three quite possibly lurked within, but my entry there would not be reported without me knowing it.

Feeling quite pleased with myself, I put away my long knife and moved two rooftops over to a loading bay out of sight of the Tavernkeep’s door. There I made a rather showy descent before an audience of a ragged orange cat and several pigeons. The baby had not overset my balance so much that I couldn’t slide down a pipe or bounce off an awning. The landing stung my feet and shins a bit more than I thought proper, but the watchers did not complain or mark me out.

Inside, the Tavernkeep’s place did not seem so homey as it had before, yet it still welcomed me. Low ceilings with their heavy wooden pillars, a bar to my left with a kitchen beyond, stairs at the back, a large, cold fireplace on the right-hand wall. He had no windows here, only the door, so it was dark except for oil lamps burning with some imported scent that had little in common with the usual acrid smokes of this city.

Tables were more closely crowded together than I remembered. The widely spaced circles favored by the pardines, each with its deep stone bowl, were the same; but smaller furniture had been brought in for the Selistani who now patronized the place. A number of my countrymen were scattered about the room with the air of long-term occupants. Card games overflowed, as well as several sets of the Hanchu gambling tiles that could be found in any port town, along with the inevitable clack of dice. Those who have almost nothing always seem willing to play the highest stakes.

The smell of them-that scent of food and the choice of soap and the sweat of each race of man-was so familiar that it almost made me ache. I fought the urge to step back into the alley. I could not flee my own people. The embassy aside, they were not part of my troubles.

In a sense, I was responsible for them, too. Much as I had brought Chowdry to Copper Downs, so my deeds had brought the rest of these men.

I did scan carefully for Little Baji, whom I had recently glimpsed here, as well as anyone else who seemed familiar, or simply out of place. If any of those present were watching for my entrance, they had adopted a magnificent pretense of complete disinterest.

Turning my attention to the rest of the room’s occupants, I saw that a pardine stood behind the bar puzzling over some mechanism. A pump handle, I thought. It was not the Tavernkeep, but a rangy, younger male with ginger fur, two heads taller than I. He looked to have lost more fights than was properly pleasing to him. Several of their tables were occupied as well. Tails flicked attentively, but not at alert. Ears were perked, but not tense. I could read this crowd. One feline face met my gaze and nodded.

Someone who had fought beside me at Lyme Street, though I could not bring a name to mind.

I nodded back. A human gesture, not native to them according to my old teacher the Dancing Mistress. These pardines had chosen to live in exile from their forest home and mountain fastnesses here among the human sprawl. In doing so, they had made their own accommodations to fit within our ways.