Jay Lake - Endurance

Not my child then, and not the god Endurance. I sighed heavily, expelling a tension I had not realized I was holding in until that moment. “What is this token, and what does it have to do with me?”

“Something precious to us has been brought back to the city recently. Matte has seen it while walking her soulpath in the moondark. With your return, I wondered if you might be carrying it.”

“I carry nothing but a child in my belly and the knives in my hands.”

That brought a smile from the Dancing Mistress. A genuine pardine smile. “You carry far more than you know, Green. But in this case, I refer to the Eyes of the Hills.”

That meant nothing whatsoever to me. “You propose a puzzle to which I have no clues.”

“Once, far in our past, my people made temples. We did not build, not as humans do, but we find great trees and certain caves to be, well, entrances to the soulpath. You would perhaps say sacred. A wise old pardine might give up her body there, but remain on watch through the windows in her bones as a guardian of our people. Or this one might bring a lucky stone, and that one another lucky stone to join it, until one day a pillar of great good fortune has been raised.”

I thought of the sky burial towers of my earliest youth, and temples of Kalimpura and Copper Downs. “Every people has an architecture of the sacred, a house for the spirit. That is what we do with minds unable to contemplate the fullness of the divine.”

“As may be. One of our spirit houses was a statue. Sculpture is a rare art among my people, but not unknown. This was an ancient mother of the pardine race, idealized long after her death but honored all the more for the hand that wrought her image. She had two eyes, one a green tourmaline and the other a cobalt spinel. These were taken by the Duke as a token of his theft of our power.”

For a moment, my heart stilled, then pounded within my chest. My gut roiled, the baby rejecting the paneer and bournewater along with the Dancing Mistress’ words, until only by sheer force of will did I hold down my stomach.

Michael Curry, the man I had killed aboard the ship Crow Wing in harbor at Kalimpura, on orders from Mother Vajpai herself, had carried a key with blue and green gems inset within a head cast in the form of a snake. It was meant to guard a treasure I never had seen. At the time I’d thought the colors were to match his eyes. The key with its emerald and sapphire chips I had thrown away on purpose, to spite the Bittern Court and their shameful politics.

Surali was here for me because of the way I had ruined the Bittern Court’s intentions for the death of Michael Curry. But blue and green. Green and blue. Passing through my hands to spite the plans of the mighty. The coincidence was too great.

He must have been carrying the Eyes of the Hills behind whatever lock that key was fitted to.

“You know,” she said.

I had taken too long to reply. Besides which, of all people this woman could read my hesitations as if they were the stirrings of her own heart.

“I do not know enough to tell you what you wish.” Which was a lie of omission, but not an untruth as such. I needed to extract myself from this conversation as quickly and smoothly as possible. Unless I wanted to set the wild pardines upon the Selistani embassy. Far more important that I retreat and think these revelations through. This bit of business tied back to the Lily Goddess, to Endurance, to all my reasons for being in Copper Downs.

Hoping to find help dealing with Blackblood, I’d come here. Instead I’d uncovered… what?

Something that frightened me.

The Dancing Mistress studied me carefully for a while. I pushed the paneer and the drink away as she did so-the smell of both worked to further threaten my stomach.

“I don’t suppose you’re carrying the gems,” she finally said. “You could not lie to me about that, and I can see your surprise. You’ve seen them, though. Or know of them.”

“A rumor only,” I blurted. “Back in Kalimpura. Off a Stone Coast ship. I followed the smuggling trade, for the sake of children. I heard things.”

“Blue eyes and green?”

Her shrewdness was closing in on me. I had to give up something more, and do so convincingly enough that my old teacher would believe she’d winkled the secret from me. “A man. Named Michael Curry. They called him Malice. His eyes were mismatched, and he may have guarded the gems.”

“What ship?”

Did I dare deepen the lie? Or was the truth more dangerous? Such things were too easy to check, though, if you had friends in the Harbormaster’s office. “ Crow Wing. Of the Stone Coast. I am not sure which city flagged her.”

So much remained unsaid. I did not mention that I had killed him myself, or that I had thrown his snake-headed key into the harbor, or that I had cut out his eyes to fulfill the letter of the Bittern Court’s death order while entirely abrogating the spirit of it.

She did not need to know these things, my old teacher. Not as feral and strange as she had become. Her struggle against Federo and Choybalsan had marked her as surely as it had marked me. But the Dancing Mistress’ scars were much deeper and stranger. Especially concerning the theogeny of Endurance. Had that calling on her people’s power torn away part of her own spirit?

Now more than ever I wished for the advice of the Rectifier. He was difficult and dangerous, but charmingly unsubtle. Honest to the point of insanity, I suspected.

“I must depart,” I told her. “This food sits ill, and I am needed back at the temple.”

The Dancing Mistress did not ask which temple. I could see a flash of calculation in her eyes as she considered holding me here against my will. Our old bond won out, or perhaps common sense prevailed. Scraping my chair back, I rose with a brief bow to her guardians. “I hope you find what you are searching for,” I said politely. “And I hope even more it brings you what you expect.”

“Thank you, Green.” The Dancing Mistress rose as well, then stepped around the table to embrace me. I tensed, wondering if she would try to take me now much as Mother Vajpai had attempted, but in truth, all she did was hug. While her mouth was close to my ear and the scent of her was stirring the memory of something warm and sweet inside me, she whispered, “I am sorry.”

I smiled and broke away to weave through the tables full of busy men. None of them would look straight at me, but out of the corner of my eye I could follow the wave of stares. At the bar I paid for my food, then leaned close to the pardine working there. “Tell the Tavernkeep that I would speak to the Rectifier should that old rogue decide to call here.”

“Yes, Mistress.” His tone was thoroughly cowed. Was the fact that I associated with the Dancing Mistress so overwhelming for him?

No matter. I strode out the door without hurrying. Once in the alley, I checked again for watchers, then stumbled to the little loading bay I’d used to climb down earlier and spewed everything I’d eaten and drunk in the past hour.

I was sick of being sick. After throwing up, I retreated to the rooftop, not so much to watch the street as to have time to think alone, out of the public eye. The sloping tiles were a bit of unexpected trouble. On the other hand, I now enjoyed privacy, respite, and time.

At moments like this, I very much missed the Blade handles. I’d grown quite accustomed to working in company, to benefitting from experience and wisdom and the annoyance of advice.

Alone, I was responsible for everything.

Alone, I had no check upon my foolishness or my ambitions, either one.

Alone, I was, well, alone.

Still, it helped me to lay things out as if explaining them to a fellow Blade or one of the teaching mothers. That habit has stood me in good stead ever since, just as it served me then. The problem of the raid upon the Temple of Endurance still loomed. Stuck in a line of reasoning that was later to prove foolish, I continued to believe Blackblood responsible, more by process of elimination than through any positive evidence. The attack certainly would have been the style of the old Pater Primus. And the Temple Quarter was stirring. The gods of Copper Downs had awoken in the time since the Duke’s death. That was part of the lifting of the magical hold he’d placed on the entire city. Gods being who they were, I could guarantee they were becoming fractious. Having personally spoken to four gods, slain one, and birthed another, I was sadly an expert on this topic that no sane person would wish to understand too well.