Jay Lake - Endurance

In truth, I was hoping for the Rectifier, though not with much expectation. The old miscreant was difficult, and had nearly fought me to the death on Lyme Street that most fateful day when we’d brought down one god and raised up another, but I had never counted him as an enemy. In the troubles dogging me now, his sort of wisdom might be very much to the point. Surely he was disinterested in these factions much as any of his people would be. More likely he was up in the hills hunting priests, or making some other form of trouble.

Which was of course what I needed him for. Not that I meant to attack Blackblood directly. That would be foolish in the extreme. Undermining the gods of a city was somewhat different than undermining the streets and walls. Rather, I was confident that the Rectifier knew better than I how to fight, and defeat, the will of the gods.

I was merely a tool of the gods. He was a weapon against them.

Tool, weapon, or otherwise, the only thing for it was to approach the bar. I pulled up a stool near the pardine at his work. He glanced up at me. “I cannot load this spring,” he said softly. His Petraean had a hillman’s accent, which made me wonder where he had learned the Stone Coast tongue.

“Shall I try?” From my time with the Dancing Mistress I knew that their fingers were not so nimble as a human being’s. With claws extended, their hands were weapons. With claws drawn in, their furred bluntness was inconvenient for handling small tools and mechanisms. Few pardines sewed, for example, because of the difficulties inherent in managing needle and thread.

He handed me the pump fixture with a flash of fangs that I knew for a smile. Despite my years with the Dancing Mistress, I had none of their language, nor a tail to flick as they were wont to do among themselves. I smiled back instead, and looked for his trouble.

“What will you have?”

“A very small bowl of the Tavernkeep’s finest bournewater, and if he is about, a moment of his time.” Though I had eaten only a few hours earlier, I also liked the smell from the kitchen. The kick from the bournewater would give me a needed lift. “And some of whatever is cooking to the scent of lentils and cloves.”

“Our best cook is not in today,” the pardine replied. “But the boy back there does well enough.”

“Do you enjoy Selistani cooking?” I asked, curious. The spring fitted into the sleeve with the proper snugness; he had been struggling to slip it past a little burr meant to keep the metal bit safely within once emplaced.

He answered me in poor but intelligible Seliu. “The taste is very fine.”

I laughed softly and handed him back his pump fixture. He shouted into the kitchen, then went to draw me my bowl. My mouth watered at the scent of the food, but I wondered how the baby would take the spice. The oddest things bothered me these days.

At my back, the murmur of Selistani voices died. One last tile clacked, and the room fell silent. I wondered if the Rectifier had arrived against expectation. A pardine voice spoke softly, and I turned about to find the greatest shock I’d experienced yet since returning to Copper Downs this time.

The Dancing Mistress stood in the middle of the room, close by the pardine who had recognized me. I had never thought to see her again. Given the expression on her face and the stirring of her tail, I realized that my instincts had probably been for the best.

“Green,” she said, then began to stalk toward me.

The Dancing Mistress moved with such intensity that I wondered if I was about to fight an old teacher for the second time in a handful of days. She would be as difficult to defeat as Mother Vajpai. At most, I could battle her to a standstill and then hope to escape.

Sliding from my stool, I prepared to palm my short knives and studied her in the few seconds I might have before violence erupted.

The Dancing Mistress looked wild, as if she were as fresh from the hills as the bartender I’d just helped. I could not say precisely why-the unaccustomed rough nap of her coat, from living outdoors, perhaps? Or the way she moved through the space around her as though filling it. Much as the Rectifier did, who deliberately cultivated a feral image, and so unlike her old mode of walking, where she slid between people and the gaps they made.

Not accommodating. Rather, asserting her control and power. Uncivilized, in the most literal sense.

“Mistress,” I replied warily. When we’d met in Kalimpura, we’d fought. She had not known it was me behind the mask. I was defeated by her, and I had been in better training then than I was now. “You are home from the mountains.”

Her tail flicked. A half-dozen more wild pardines spread out behind her. Pottery clicked nearby and I smelled a mouthwatering hot paneer. A weapon, of course-spinach in oily water near the boiling point.

“This is not home,” the Dancing Mistress said flatly.

I knew to listen to her tone, but I knew more to watch her claws. She was far too canny to signal her movements as most human adversaries would-even a well-trained woman requires iron self-control and fantastic muscle strength to lean in one direction and kick in another, but pardines are too alien to read in that same fashion.

The claw tips showing in her furred fingers were key to what would happen next. Flexed outward, but not fully distended. She would probably continue to speak with me. For now.

“It is my home.” I was quite surprised at my words.

The Dancing Mistress snorted. Her smallest laugh, escaping from her narrow nostrils. “I would never have thought to hear you say that, Green.” Her tail relaxed and the claws disappeared.

Without taking my eyes off her, I extended my hand behind me and grasped hold of my bowl of paneer. My mouth was watering, and while I could still throw it at need, I could also eat. The baby was hungry.

“I might say much the same.” With swift decision, I plunged on. “Why are you back in the city? I’d not figured to find you again in Copper Downs after you turned me away last summer.” Recovering from her wounds in an upper room of this tavern, the Dancing Mistress had refused to see me. She’d then slipped from the city without a farewell.

“The world is not about you, Green,” she said sadly. For this moment, we were only a student and her former teacher.

“The world was never about me.” My voice was hard; I touched my belly lightly with my right hand, still holding my spoon. “Until I made it listen. A skill you taught me.”

“Fair enough.” She ran a hand across her close-furred scalp, as if nervous. “Why are you here?”

“The usual,” I admitted.

“Gods and monsters and politics?”

“That, and I was hungry for some good Selistani cooking.”

She nodded, that human gesture again. “Your man here is becoming famous.”

“He’s not my man. If Chowdry belongs to anyone now, he belongs to Endurance.”

“You brought him helpless across the sea,” she replied. “He is yours.”

Anger stirred and my voice heated. “Then by your logic I belong to you as much as to myself.”

That brought me a feral glitter of teeth and quick flexing of the claws. “I should not be so foolish as to try to take you up like an old weapon.”

“I would not shatter in your hands,” I told her, “but you might not enjoy so very much the edges you find.”

“It is edges I search for now.” That was an admission of sorts. “Though not yours. I’d heard you were safely in the High Hills.”

And so I’d meant to be, but I did not say that thing to her. Instead I pursued her hint: “What edges?”

“Please,” she said. “Sit with me and we will talk.”

My paneer and I followed her to a table at the back of the room. As I walked, the earlier buzz of men and their games resumed. Whatever came next between us would not be at the center of all attention.