Jay Lake - Endurance

“But the most patient will wait for the storm to clear,” Archimandrix responded unthinking.

Obviously we’d read the same books.

With an audible effort at realigning his thoughts, the sorcerer-engineer continued: “Even then our guild was very old. Our earlier… functions… had grown dormant. When this city was called Cupraneum and men with a different color of skin and eyes lived here, we were great. The Years of Brass were our time. The mines grew ever deeper, as secrets were imparted by the gods above and the powers below.”

It seemed he meant “powers below” literally. I would receive my litany whether I wished it or not. Mother Iron had urged me upon this strange man. It was incumbent on me not just to listen, but even to draw him out.

“We built machines to work the mines, to provide air and light and wondrous goods to the city. Though they are long since abandoned, most of their purposes forgotten even by us, still our guild tends those machines.” His voice was sad now, tinged with the twinned losses of history and time. “Now in these late days, we sorcerer-engineers mine the old ways for scraps of knowledge. Steam-kettle ships cross the oceans on the wings of the learning of newer, lesser men. Some of them even bear light as we once did. All our city can do is buy goods over their sides and stare longingly at the iron hulls and the growling power to sail against the wind.”

He was pushing me into the precincts of my own memory. “I have traveled aboard those steam-kettle ships,” I told him.

“They were not built by us as we might once have done. Our pride is in our past. The future comes speaking another language, seen first by foreign eyes.” That sadness had taken him over completely.

“And those are your deeper mysteries? Care of machines whose purposes you have forgotten?”

“Yes.”

The sheer, simple grief in his voice moved me. I was seeking wisdom from the depths of time. Mother Iron had delivered me into the hands of an odd young man who quite literally saw himself as the warden of those depths.

We had arrived at the gallery below the temple. Light filtered in from above, but much more dimly than recent memory suggested. I looked up the ladder that led to the surface. The acolytes had built a platform over the hole in the middle of their temple yard.

I bristled. There had better flaming well be a door set in that platform, or they’d see some divine wrath.

“We keep many old secrets, but those are our core.” Archimandrix sounded despondent now. He looked up, following my gaze. “You will need us soon. I am sure of it.”

I of all people understood the weight of history, but I was not ready to submit myself to the depressed recollections of this holdout from another age. He was probably right. I would need them soon. But I did not need them today. Lost knowledge of ancient mines and kettle ships from another age would do little to address whatever had passed between me and Desire in the ruins of Marya’s temple. I was looking for wisdom in the fruits of the wrong tree.

Neither would this one’s metallurgy and delving relieve me from Blackblood’s demands. Whatever magic these sorcerer-engineers carried with them, it had nothing to do with the Eyes of the Hills. I was certain of that much.

This was not divinity, nor even magic. This was tool using, elevated to a mystic rite then buried as all mystic rites are wont to be.

“How will I find you if I need you?” I fought the urge to dismiss Archimandrix and his obsession with ancient, rusted lore. It was important for me to trust Mother Iron that much, to believe that I would need this man and his guild again. She did not flow through the world as Archimandrix or I did; she might have seen a requirement years in coming, or moments away. I could only hope that I would know when.

Just not today.

“Return Below,” he said slowly. “Touch any of the great machines with your power. We will know.”

With my power? “Of course,” I murmured. “But for now, farewell.” I placed one hand on a rung, then turned back to him. “I thank you for the lesson in your history.”

“It is not mine,” Archimandrix mumbled, embarrassed. “I only recall it on behalf of those who have passed onward.”

With that, I climbed, wondering how much I would have to work to break out at the top.

Someone had been clever enough to build a trapdoor. Not only that, they had been wise enough to leave it unlatched for me. The true dangers of Below were far more intangible than night stalkers surfacing to rob and to raid. I had never heard of a gang of thieves using the network of sewers, tunnels, and old mine galleries for access around the city. Any that tried would be made short work of. I had been introduced with great civility and care in my day, so I supposed that I counted as one of the dangers of Below myself at this point.

Archimandrix was not so much a danger as a puzzle. I was most unclear on what aid he, his brass apes, and his derelict machines would bring me. But I trusted Mother Iron and her word. I just didn’t understand her. I had my counsel from deeper time, for all that was worth in the question of goddesses and city-killing power.

The temple construction was idle, which seemed curious. The afternoon had not finished slipping away. Chowdry’s acolytes should be at their laying-out of the foundation. Though I understood something of architecture, construction was not a skill of mine. Still, it seemed to me they were nearly at need of digging the trenches for the stonework courses.

Had this been my work gang, shovels would already be in hand.

I followed the buzz of voices into the tent camp. They were raising and fitting a new kitchen tent. That I could excuse.

Slipping around the edge of the busy crowd, I headed for the tent that I’d been using. I wasn’t sure who’d been dispossessed, but I wouldn’t be here much longer. Every day I spent here was a danger to the temple and Endurance. The god might grant me divine protection, but that hadn’t stopped murderers at the gates. Since Chowdry would neither set nor hire guards- And is that his foolishness, or the word of Endurance? I wondered-I needed to take myself somewhere that could be closed off, or much better hidden.

I paused around the canvas corner of my tent at the sound of voices. Something familiar but out of place. Listening, I realized I was hearing a muttered argument in Seliu between Chowdry and someone whose voice I recognized but could not in that instant put a name to.

Whom?

“… this is not a matter for these pale folk.”

“I will not be having any of this,” Chowdry hissed.

“It will be worse for all of us. That other one slew the entire ship but me! Chittachai lies burned beneath the ocean.”

The other man was Little Baji!

Chowdry grunted. “Good riddance to Utavi, I say, though I am sorry for the rest of them. But my answer is still being no.”

“I am making no threats,” replied Little Baji mournfully. “But the rest of them are threats. Those Blade women are mad as dogs in the market. Even the girl Samma. And that other one, the bitch from the Bittern Court. She frightens them all.”

“This is Copper Downs, not Kalimpura.” Good man, I thought, mentally urging Chowdry on. “Those powers hold no fear for me.”

“Your ox god is Selistani surely as Green herself.”

I knew my cue when I heard it. I slipped around the corner, short knife in my hand, and laid the blade edge at Little Baji’s throat. “Looking for someone?” I asked, also in Seliu.

Chowdry glared at me. “I won’t have you drawing weapons in my temple either, Green.”

“This isn’t a weapon,” I told him, my free hand tugging Little Baji’s short-cropped hair back to expose and tighten the skin of his neck. I eased the blade along as if shaving him, or stropping it on a piece of inferior leather. “This is a sacrament of the Lily Goddess.”