Jay Lake - Endurance

We were a long time coming out again, and quite chilled when we finally did, but I fancied her smile was just as large as mine.

Chowdry was not pleased with me the next morning. “This is not your temple of harridans back in Kalimpura,” he grumbled in Seliu. “Everyone in the camp knows about you and Lucia. It will be a scandal when her parents hear.”

“What?” I laughed at him. We sat with our breakfast bowls on the steps at the front of the wooden temple, ignoring the morning’s chill. By the Wheel, I was no whitebelly. “You were a pirate cook when I first met you. What do you care now what some parents think?”

“This project…” He waved around him to indicate everything within the walls of the old minehead grounds. “It costs money. A great deal of money. Young people like Lucia are blessed with older parents who are having a great deal of money to give.”

“Utavi would have your head.” Chowdry’s old captain aboard Chittachai, and as unpleasant a small-time pirate as ever skulked along a waterfront.

“Utavi is not here.”

“He might be,” I said. “I saw Little Baji when I first returned to town almost a week ago.”

That got Chowdry’s attention. “Where!?”

His surprise seemed genuine enough, which served to further lessen my distrust. “The Tavernkeep’s place. Where you cook. Which is full of Selistani men. It would not be so great a trick to hide one or another there. And the opportunity to learn too much about you, and me, is great.”

“Ah.” His face was a study in misery. “This is why I am needing people like Lucia’s parents. Their money will be keeping this temple and the god Endurance safe. That safety is my safety.”

I punched Chowdry in the shoulder hard enough to make him flinch. His foolishness would not ruin my good mood. “Just think of them all as wallowing coastal ships carrying payroll. You know how to make a raid.”

“This temple will do a poor job of sailing to the next port to escape retribution,” he complained.

“Then learn more, sir priest.” I leaned close. “And listen to Endurance. He’s rarely wrong, I am certain of it.” I stood, whistling.

“Green,” said Chowdry. Something sharp lay in his voice.

I leaned forward, hands on my knees, and let him pretend not to think about my breasts. “Yes?”

“Twice now a girl has called in the name of the Prince of the City. One of your Blades, but being younger and softer than you.”

Samma, of course. Though in fact she was my elder, she was one of those girls who always looked as if she’d been raised on warm milk with a good blanket. Whereas I knew perfectly well that I was a walking battlefield. “Did she present herself with swords at her back?”

Though even Samma alone would be quite dangerous to anyone in this group. She might be among the weakest of the Blades, but a Blade she was.

“No. Just nerves. And always looking over her shoulder.”

“Interesting.” My cocky mood deserted me with the news as I was once more caught up in figuring odds and probabilities. Why would Mother Vajpai send Samma to me? Few of the answers that presented themselves seemed sensible. And surely Samma had not sent herself. “What did she say she wanted?”

“To be speaking with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere near the Selistani embassy again. Not without plentiful swords at my back.” The memory of Mother Vajpai in the process of taking me down was still fresh. Samma, too. “Did she limp?”

“She walked with a cane.”

Hah.

As Chowdry moved on to his tasks, I returned to consideration of my own troubles. Comfortably seated on the wooden temple’s steps in warm daylight, I found that they did not seem so bad. Osi and Iso were not my friends, not in any meaningful sense, but their wise and disinterested counsel had already opened my eyes to certain nuances of the situation. If Samma truly was looking for me, I could turn her against the pardines, and perhaps the other way around.

That mutual leverage appealed to my sense of orderliness, but it also felt like a double betrayal. The pardines, even the Revanchists, were not my enemies. Nor would it be fair to think of them as enemies of Copper Downs. If they were fighting anything, the Revanchists struggled against the weight of history and the tangled mass of their own resentments.

If I were not careful, I could make a true enemy out of once-friendly strangers. And in the Dancing Mistress’ case, much more than that to me.

Likewise the Selistani embassy. I was nothing to the Prince of the City. Mother Vajpai could not have turned on me so thoroughly, I simply didn’t believe that; she must be playing a deeper, doubled game. Or redoubled, perhaps. Only Surali, the Bittern Court woman, was seriously out to overset me and bring me low.

Now if I could manage to focus her and Blackblood on one another, I might truly be free.

All that made me wish I’d explained myself to Iso and Osi better, that they might have given me wiser counsel now.

A motion in the edge of my vision made me glance up. I saw Samma walking toward me. She definitely limped badly. When she realized that I was looking at her, she halted.

“I believe I kicked you in the belly,” I said by way of greeting. This was not a moment likely to incline me to charity.

“Yes. You nearly dislocated my hip.” She grimaced. “I have bruised black as a coal demon’s face.”

“Surely you have not been loitering outside the gate?”

“I was not bid to wait here for you. I have been to a kava house three times so far to while away the hours.”

That there was a kava house anywhere near our gate was news to me. I continued to peer up at her, deliberately not inviting her to sit. “You would have betrayed me, alongside Mother Vajpai. Why should I welcome you, even as a negotiator? Especially so?”

Samma looked miserable-sad and nervous, her regrets writ upon her face in the not-so-secret language of her heart. “You have no reason. B-but I have tried to bring you some.”

Resting my hands on my belly, I considered that. Soon I would be too pregnant to fight properly-terribly unbalanced, for one. Then even this weak sister would take me down. Better to listen for a while, perhaps. I resolved to consider new attack strategies even as we spoke. In a way, I was maturing, though then I would have scarcely admitted to a need for such. “Illuminate me, Blade.”

She almost shuddered at my words. “I departed Kalimpura less than a month after you. Aboard a ship called Atchaguli. Sister hull to poor Chittachai.”

That was very interesting news, indeed. I bent forward, thinking hard. “To what errand?” I asked softly.

Samma glanced about almost theatrically. She would never do for a spy, or even a decent lookout. “Mother Vajpai put me on your track. The Lily Goddess wanted you to return to Copper Downs.”

Suspicious now, I probed. “The Lily Goddess? Not the Bittern Court?”

“Th-that happened later. After I left.” Her misery deepened. “Please, may I sit with you?”

I relented and patted the step next to me. Samma stumbled over and lowered herself painfully. It was like watching a woman of seventy-six instead of sixteen.

“Did I truly kick you that hard?” I asked softly, my fingers brushing along her thigh.

“You kicked me so hard that Mother Argai probably felt it.”

“I am sorry.” Surprisingly, I found I meant that. “I was rushed.”

“I know. We wronged you.”

We. “Whose idea was it to take me hostage?”

“L-let me tell it from the beginning. As I understand the tale, at least.”

I could not help myself; I leaned over and hugged my very first lover ever. “Speak, friend,” I whispered in her ear. She even smelled like home.