Jay Lake - Endurance

“I am sure that iconoclasm is one of your greatest charms, Miss Green.”

With that, he withdrew. I impatiently awaited water and fruit, which arrived soon enough. A delicate Hanchu bowl, porcelain and painted with bamboo and plum blossoms, featuring three crisp apples and a soft peach, along with a tall carafe of water with chips straight from someone’s icehouse. My stomach seemed willing to tolerate these things.

After I ate I commenced to carving my name in the mahogany tabletop with one of my short knives. It was a horrible abuse of such a decent weapon, but I wanted to motivate the council to respectful haste.

If not this time I called, the next.

Councilor Roberti Jeschonek arrived before my boredom had become dangerously destructive. He was disheveled, and seemed to have run from the docks to the Textile Bourse. I said as much.

“No, ’twas a horse, but the docks did not have an easy morning of it.” He sat down in Kohlmann’s chair and apparently couldn’t decide whether to glare or smile at me. “Two foreign crews mixed it up and we nearly had a riot.”

Which was, of course, the Harbormaster’s problem. Except when it wasn’t. Rather like Kohlmann, and much unlike Lampet, I could readily imagine Jeschonek wading into a dockside brawl with both fists, risking himself to bring it to an end before serious blood was shed. “You did not take any hits, I trust.”

“Oh, a man always takes hits. The secret is giving back more than you get.”

I laughed. “A policy that has served me well thus far in life.”

A moment later one of the junior clerks darted into the room with a mug of kava for Jeschonek. The young man shot me a cautious look that in turn disguised a wink, then slipped out again.

The councilor took a long, careful sip before glancing down at where I’d been defacing his table. “That will not so easily be sanded out.”

“Consider it a reminder.” I dropped the knife from a foot above. It landed point-first in the wood and stuck upward, vibrating.

“No one is at your beck and call, Green. Especially not this Interim Council.”

“Perhaps I could arrange the bad news to arrive at your convenience?”

He leaned forward. “What bad news?”

I tapped at the top of my knife’s narrow hilt as I listed off what was on my mind. “You already know of the Selistani embassy’s attempt to imprison me. They nearly fought with Councilor Kohlmann. There was another attempt upon my person yesterday, in which two innocents were killed.” At the surmise in his eyes, I added testily, “ Not by me.

“Today I find that zealots among the pardines are come to Copper Downs in search of an ancient treasure stolen from them by the late Duke. Those are an even more dangerous embassy than the Prince of the City and his little collection of fops and assassins.” A stronger tap made the knife quiver with a metallic noise. “All of which ties back to a warning I received during my stay in the High Hills.”

“From whom?” Jeschonek asked.

I was interested to note that the issue of my source of information was his first question, rather than wondering of what I had been warned. “The graves up there talk, you know. Many of them babble, but some are very sensible indeed.”

His lips curled in disgust. “Don’t tell me ghost stories.”

“You are being an idiot,” I snapped. Pulling my knife free, I began slapping the palm of my left hand with the flat of the blade. “You lived through Federo’s ascendancy. And you did it standing as close to him as anyone did who survived. You were inside the biggest ghost story to be told here in generations. Of all the council, you and Kohlmann should require the least convincing on this matter.”

“The world is filled with powers,” Jeschonek admitted. “As above, so below. But the ancient dead of another era, interred a long day’s ride from here, have no special insight into our affairs. I do not care so much for gods and ghosts in any event. Surely they are only a projection of our desires.”

“As may be. But you have seen their effects upon this world. And Erio, a king of old who has been a student of this city a thousand years or more in his moldering grave, fears for us.” His warning of imbalances within the city, and plots against me, had been sincere, if sadly unspecific.

“ I fear for us!” The councilor slammed down his kava mug and drummed his fist against the table. “You do not have to be dead to realize what trouble may descend upon this city.”

“There is no may to this trouble,” I told him. “It is here. Use Lampet’s Lads to force the Selistani back on to their ship. The embassy is of my people, but their interests are not mine and most certainly not this city’s. Then compose some suitable response to the pardines, for they will come to you eventually. Possibly with tooth and claw, possibly with petitions. Draw them away before their madness sinks in, for they have become infected with politics. Or perhaps religion.”

“You are infected with politics,” he said. “As for religion, I’ve never seen or heard of someone so god-haunted as you, Green. If you were not in this city, none of these others would have troubled us.”

He was right, so far as that went. The Selistani were here for me. The pardine Revanchists were here for the Selistani. Blackblood wanted to control his son. My daughter. Fires take that bastard god.

“You were not so eager to have me gone before,” I told him in a hard, quiet voice. “Not when the city was at stake. You would never have brought down Federo and Choybalsan without me.”

“No. And do not think us ungrateful.” He leaned over the table. “But we cannot govern a city according to the whims of your enemies and the violence of your acts, Green. Life is settling. The troubles that dog us now follow you, not Copper Downs.”

“You had a goddess nearly slain in the Temple Quarter during the brass-ape races four summers past,” I told him. “Which was nothing to do with me. Despite the matter of Choybalsan, I do not set my targets so large, and would never care to meet the one who might try. Trade is unsettled, or you would not be seeing riots on the dock and yourself so busy and under duress. This city has not yet fully recovered from the death of the Duke. If it had, Councilor Johns would not have a place in this room.”

“That fool of a Factor trained you too well.” His reluctant smile belied his words. “But those are matters we will resolve. It is you who has small armies of assassins following you around.”

“Should I return to Kalimpura, then?”

“The High Hills were far enough away for me, frankly. At least there we knew where you were.” After a moment, Jeschonek added with rueful honestly, “And could find you at need.” He drummed the table again. “But here is my problem with you now. We bring our own enemies into being. When the Duke held the throne and kept all our politics and religion quiet, trade came to the city and little disrupted us. There has been more riot and trouble in the past four years since his fall than in the previous four centuries combined.

“You enter the city, and forces follow to oppose you. Green, I do not know what you are. Surely your tale is not yet fully told. God-touched, a storm of blades, or just a freakishly determined young woman, it does not matter. But your strength draws opposition. And that is what my city does not need.”

It is my city, too, I wanted to say. This I had realized when speaking with the Dancing Mistress earlier. These people had bought me away from my father and my home, but they had also raised me to be one of them.

Councilor Kohlmann stepped into the room as I was considering my next words. I was glad enough it was not Lampet, for whom I already lacked patience. “Have you told her?” he asked Jeschonek.