Jay Lake - Endurance

As Ilona slept I cleaned her a bit more, then unbuttoned her dress and eased her out of it. She rolled as I tugged at her arms and legs. Beneath she wore a simple cotton shift that I did not attempt to remove. I could not see pulling it over her head without waking her. Instead I fetched warm water and a cloth to clean her face, her hands, her feet. In another time this would have been sensual, even sexual. Right now it was all I could do for her.

The whole time I cleansed her and wiped away the grime of the road and her suffering, I considered the problem.

Surali.

This whole business hinged in large part on the Bittern Court woman. Though I longed for hot, bloody vengeance, the child was far more at stake. Could I trade the Eyes of the Hills for Corinthia Anastasia? What would I be giving up? What kept the girl safe from another abduction afterward?

The only answer was that they must surrender the child and be forced to leave the city. Unburnt, though if I could find a way to trouble their ship…

No, I would not do that. I had known too many sailors by now to think that in pursuit of my wrath they could just be disregarded as furniture aboard their vessels.

Still, Surali would never run far enough to escape me, even if I was forced to let her slip my grasp awhile in this time and place.

As I watched Ilona sleep, my thoughts returned to the subject of Blackblood. Another child taker, in his own words. I still wondered how he fit in. He’d sent those men to me, killing the girls in the Temple of Endurance.

Or had he?

I’d assumed that, but had not yet proven it. Skinless had sought me not so long ago, yet I had persuaded him away with the open hand of friendship. The avatar and I shared a bond. Beyond that the god still must have been willing to let his pursuit of me lag awhile. After all, Skinless was little more than a finger from Blackblood’s divine hand. If the god had chosen to close his fist over me, Skinless would have folded me in, despite the creature’s dim regard for me.

If the raid on the temple had been commissioned by Surali-and I had to admit, that sort of action was more her style than Blackblood’s-the deed was done with local bravos hired to find me. Their failure to do so might have prompted her to send a handful of Street Guild men out to the High Hills in a side bet, a play to secure another hold on me should Mother Vajpai and Samma fail to tame me.

Which they in turn indeed failed to do. Mother Vajpai had fought to lose. Further evidence that it was unlikely to be she who had stolen Corinthia Anastasia away.

Here was the betrayal. Even Samma allowing herself to be forced to part with the Eyes of the Hills was a portion of the betrayal. The Lily Blades playing false to everyone. That was not our way, but these were perilous times with terrible pressures.

If Surali was behind the attack on the Temple of Endurance, then what had Blackblood done to me? In response to… nothing?… I had set not one, but two, enemies upon him. Iso and Osi were no friends to the god. The magics of their ancient rites would not be so easy for Blackblood to ignore. Not to mention I’d united them with the Rectifier, who was a mercenary in the purest sense of the word. He had no loyalty to Blackblood at all, nor to any human god.

In that moment, my focus finally returned to the chalk marks on the wall of Marya’s temple. I understood how great my blindness had been. I did know what they signified. They were the same marks Iso and Osi had shown me in counseling me how to cloak myself from the attentions of a god. Wards, and boundaries. They were the same marks the twins had been drawing on the warehouse floor to the Rectifier’s benefit.

Those two were on a more troubling pilgrimage than they’d admitted to me. Except they had. Their rite forbade eating with or touching women. I thought back to the stories of Desire and Her daughters that I’d read long ago. Both the men’s and the women’s version spoke of the daughter-goddesses always watching for a man at the window, just as a woman would with a drunken husband to avoid.

Sick with realization, I was near to throwing up. Iso and Osi had brought down Marya. Slain her. Not in open conflict over the future of a city and the fortunes of its people, but by stealth and guile and timeless rite in pursuit of an ancient grudge. The ultimate beating of woman by man, laying a death magic on her protector goddesses.

I had loosed a pair of god killers on the trail of Blackblood. They might just be warding him away from me, but what could I trust? The prospect made me ill.

My own doubts had tried repeatedly to alert me, but I had failed to listen to myself. Fool, fool, fool!

Worse, what if Surali was in league with them? No wonder the Lily Goddess had feared a fate emanating from here across the Storm Sea in Copper Downs. I could easily believe the Bittern Court woman to be plotting against the Lily Goddess Herself. It all made sense. And all of it tied back to the Eyes of the Hills. Even my old crime of slaying the Duke.

The truth fell upon me like bricks collapsing to spontaneously form a wall.

Having first used me to wrest the Eyes of the Hills from Michael Curry-and to whom had he meant to sell or give them, anyway?-Surali brought the stolen gems across the sea to buy off not the pardine Revanchists, but the twins Iso and Osi. All in pursuit of the Bittern Court’s vendetta against the Lily Goddess. God killers pursuing daughter-goddesses across the plate of the world to satisfy an ancient vengeance would have any number of uses for such artifacts. Even with their power stripped away, like me, the gems were a conduit to the divine. As I’d been reminded so forcibly, much as small children who would not release a favored plaything, what the gods had once touched they would touch again far more easily than not.

No wonder Desire had pressed theogeny on me. She must have seen me as someone who could stand against the threat of the twins.

The sheer scale of the plot was sickening. Likewise my part in advancing it. Shame bloomed within me at being so readily gulled, until I myself had become a weapon in the hands of my enemies. Easing Ilona under a blanket, I hurried from the tent to see what I could salvage of both error and vengeance before the day grew any shorter.

I passed urgent words with Ponce about the need to care for Ilona, and keeping her quiet for a while. He was shamefaced as I lectured swiftly in a hard tone. When I finally wound down, his only response was apology. “I am sorry, Mother Green.”

“For what?” Anger still boiled, but there was little point in allowing it to spill on him.

“That we do not fight.” His voice was stark. “A man-a person, excuse me-should defend himself. Herself.”

“A person should live in peace.” My own words surprised me. Perhaps I had been listening to the god Endurance.

With those words, I took my leave. My heart had been seized with a burning desire to look into the house of my enemies. I knew where they were, and I knew more of their rented mansion than my countrywomen there realized, thanks to my studies of architecture. What I did not know was where within that place they were holding Corinthia Anastasia.

Below would not be a sensible approach. For one, I doubted that I could gain interior access to the house from the sewers. Neither did I want to do a reconnaissance from the street. The gate guards would see me, and report to Surali.

It came down to some sneaking by the back wall, and possibly grabbing hold of someone from within the household to question. Both of these things I could do.

The grounds of the embassy’s rented mansion met another property along the back. These were not true fortified walls, such as had surrounded the Factor’s house in my youth, just masonry courses designed to keep stray animals and undesirables like me from wandering across the lawns. No guards here, or even empty guard stations. I glanced around to be sure I was unobserved, then took a running leap to grab the top, using my momentum to hoist myself up and over.