Jay Lake - Endurance

One of the big round tables was clear, near the back stairs. Her escort of wild pardines spread out along the wall where they could watch our table, the room, and each other. I found that a little strange. Such conspicuous display was never the Dancing Mistress’ way.

Nonetheless we sat. My bowl of bournewater was provided, and a larger one for her. A lotus flower floated in the deep stone bowl at the center of the table, symbolizing the feasts by which the Dancing Mistress’ people shared souls and bound the mourning of their dead to the communal memory.

The clack of tiles and the rattle of dice was the heartbeat of the room. We sat in the shadowed back like two actors waiting for our light.

She sipped at her drink and watched me for a while. Being raised as I had among the harshest teachers, I was quite accustomed to this. I amused myself by staring back. Nothing I saw altered my earlier assessment of her. The Dancing Mistress had the mountain way about her now. She didn’t seem to have been in any serious fights lately, for her muzzle and face bore no fresh scars.

We had been lovers, briefly, and I knew her body well enough. She’d lost weight. Become, if anything, more rangy.

Eventually, I outwaited her, for my old teacher spoke first. “I am come to Copper Downs once more in search of an edge. An old, old edge.”

“That brought you down out of your mountains?”

“Yes.” She toyed with her bowl of drink, an excuse not to meet my eye. “The search has something to do with you, though I did not expect the matter to pass directly through your hands.”

“Do you regret seeing me here?” I asked softly.

“We have not met since Federo’s death.” Now the mourning was clear in her voice.

But did she mourn the man? Surely not the god Choybalsan, who had made terrible war upon her people, themselves only a remnant of an earlier age of glory when men were not so strong. “His time was done,” I said, “and the power that was upon him needed to pass further onward.”

“It was never his power.” Her eyes met mine again. Something ancient and hard lay in her gaze now. “You took that stolen power and made another god of it.”

“You say that as if I were a carpenter who’d chosen to build one thing over another. Besides, I could hardly have returned the power.” Where to?

After a long moment, as if in consideration, the Dancing Mistress said, “I have spent time alongside a very wise woman of my people.”

To my left, one of her guardians-or wardens? I realized-murmured a name. Matte, it sounded like. “You yourself are a very wise woman of your people,” I told her.

“In certain, specific ways, perhaps,” she admitted, “but not about the wider concerns of life.”

I did not like where this conversation was heading, though I could not yet say why. “What did you learn from this wise woman?”

“That our people gave away our power too easily.” Her voice grew tense and fierce. “That in my turn I was part of that giving up. That there is much to be rectified.”

The Rectifier? Surely her choice of words could not be coincidence. “Every people with a long past could say such a thing,” I told her, keeping my own tone gentle and easy. “Surely that has been true since the morning of the world.”

Now the Dancing Mistress was very nearly growling, and her claws splintered into the tabletop as she spoke. “This is ours, the soulpath of my entire people. The decision to take it up or lay it down again should be ours alone.”

“You’ve caught a bad case of pardine politics, haven’t you?” I was fascinated. I’d always understood her kind to work through consensus, a sort of oversized tribal family. What made the Rectifier so unusual among pardines was the strength of his individual passion and purposes.

“Matte has shown me certain truths I had long needed to hear,” she admitted. “We are on a Hunt, of sorts. A Hunt of history.”

That frightened me. I knew a little of pardine Hunts. It was a practice they had laid down, or claimed to, these past few centuries. A group would band together and share their senses, their intentions, perhaps even their thoughts, so they became one creature with a handful of bodies and cunning multiplied through all those hearts and minds. “Who is Matte, then?”

“She speaks of a doctrine of Revanchism. Our people should take back what was once ours and yet rightfully belongs to us.”

Something in the Dancing Mistress’ voice told me she saw a weakness in her own thinking. I drove toward it. “Speaks? Or preaches? You were always so much the champion of individual responsibility. This Revanchism is not a soulpath idea. This almost sounds human.”

“ What do you know of soulpaths!? ” she shouted, slamming her hand into the table so that our bowls of bournewater slopped.

I came up out of my chair. My words had struck a nerve, and we were once more on the verge of violence. Into the silence that rang about the tavern I hissed my reply: “Nothing. I know nothing of soulpaths. I would no more play at being a pardine than you and your Revanchists should play at being human.”

“I apologize, Green,” she answered after a long moment. “Sit, please.”

Sitting, I remained silent. This was on her now. I could not twist out whatever truth she was choking upon.

“I did not intend to take up this cause.” The Dancing Mistress was quiet as well, speaking almost too low for me to hear. Once more the clack and murmur of men at their games swelled up around us, though we still very much had an audience. Any battle between us here would be the stuff of legend within the hour. I’d already had my fill of legends, and resolved anew not to fight my old teacher.

She went on: “When you brought the god into being, I thought the long struggle was over. The power seemed safely grounded in a mute and pleasant beast. I do not foresee Endurance becoming greedy for conquest, or world-weary, or even particularly dangerous. Your choice was inspired.”

“Hardly a choice.” This was not modesty-at the time I’d had little notion of what I was doing. I had understood even less since that fateful day.

“As may be. I left without seeing you because, well, it was over. My time here. My work. With Federo, of course, but also in the city as a whole. I was done with humans. Most specifically, you.”

I ignored the twinge in my heart. “And yet here you are, back a few months later.”

“Because of Matte.” Now her tone was almost pleading. “I do not agree with much of what she says, but she is right in one thing. Our people’s power should live, and die, with us. Not in the hands of some immortal duke, or a rogue human with the aspect of divinity upon him. Nor even a mute and pleasant ox god.”

I wondered if this Matte was offended by Endurance. What if the god had manifested as something with sharp teeth and swift wit? A frightening thought. “It is an old theft, oft repeated,” I answered her. “And the threat is now safely grounded. Your people and mine fought great wars in the past. That is one reason your power was laid down. By you.”

“It was ours to lay down, it should be ours to take up again.” Now her tone was stubborn. I was far too familiar with the sound of a woman arguing to convince herself. She had nothing to convince me of. “And that is why I am here once more, in Copper Downs. Where I never expected to be. Looking for the edges of the power.”

“What edges?” I had the sickening notion that she was referring to my baby. I could not fight the entire pardine race. I could not even fight the Dancing Mistress. Taking ship to a port far beyond any horizon had a rapidly growing appeal.

“We are not here to make war upon Copper Downs, and especially not to find any quarrel with you, Green. But there is something taken from us long ago, by the Duke himself when he first grasped for our power. A token we would redeem for our own.”