Jay Lake - Endurance

Across the hall, I tried the other door. A bedroom that had been in recent use. The bed was stripped-I knew where these linens had gone-and the fireplace smoked slightly. The occupant had forgotten to open the damper.

“Idiot,” I whispered.

Back out in the hall, I was reaching for the next doorway when someone opened it from the other side. A Selistani clerk stepped out, clad in a well-tailored green silk kurta of a very traditional cut. He looked up at me in surprise as I thumped him hard in the side of the head with the butt of my long knife.

A man in the room behind him called out. I jumped over the body and charged, blade already swinging forward, only to meet another clerk.

This one yelped and tried to dance away.

I caught him a long, shallow slash to the arm that sent blood spilling widely. He drew a breath to shout, so I slapped him hard across the face. “If you want to live, be quiet,” I barked.

My words had been in Petraean, I realized, as he screamed, “Help, housebreaker,” in Seliu.

My next blow took him on the neck, right across his vocal cords. The clerk collapsed in choking surprise. I swept a dish of water-for soaking nibs and brushes-off the desk and dumped it on the one I’d laid out. “Help your friend breathe,” I barked into his unfocused face as his eyes flicked open.

Out in the hall I threw open the next door. Surprise was lost. My time advantage would be gone in seconds. Corinthia Anastasia was already beyond my reach. I’d need to find my Blade sisters quickly, or the entire run would be a total loss. The latest door yielded two men already moving to investigate. One clutched a fireplace poker, the other had his hands spread wide.

Not Street Guild then.

“Stay back,” I shouted. “Invaders, you won’t be safe.” I slammed their door and spun around.

The door across the hall opened. This time it was Street Guild, two of them with swords out. I hoped like the hells that my sister Blades were somewhere behind them, because I was about to be outnumbered.

Yelling wordlessly, and spun a kick that took the lead man in the side of the knee. I’d used a similar move on Mother Vajpai once, the first time I’d ever counted a touch on her-and the last, for quite a while after that memorable day. He collapsed with a howl. His fellow came right over him, leading with the point.

Long knife at the ready, I stepped back and right into the poker swung by the idiot from the other room. He connected hard enough across my shoulder that something cracked audibly. I felt the pain like a stabbing.

So much for the healing that Desire had bestowed upon me.

Spinning half to my left, I backswung my short knife into the fireplace enthusiast’s side. I caught him just below the entangling ribs. As expected, he had no parry, and fell away sobbing.

I completed my spin in time to sidestep a sweep of the long knife from the more capable fighter. “I’m one of you,” I shouted in Seliu, in hopes of confusing him.

He was not fooled.

Another of his brethren came out the same door. If that wasn’t the Azure Room, I was deep in the cesspit. I gave back two more steps and palmed my long knife to grab and hurl a nearby marble head at the swordsman. He dodged that as it cracked into the wall, but my short knife came right after and caught him in the cheek.

The man howled, then swallowed the point of my long knife. He vomited blood around my blade before collapsing with a puzzled expression on his face.

The next one was more wary, which was fine with me. Unfortunately the door at the end of the hall flew open as half a dozen more Street Guild raced pell-mell toward us.

I knew my exit when I saw it. Cursing, with no more knowledge of Corinthia Anastasia or my Lily Blade sisters than I’d had before, I snatched up my weapons and shoved through the door to my right before the mob could reach me.

This was another bedroom, double length for a suite. Four tall windows overlooked the patio and back lawn. Slamming the door behind me, I sprinted through the shadows for the glass. I intended to dive and roll, taking the fall into the arbors with whatever momentum I had and to the Smagadine hells with the splinters.

“Green!” snapped a voice in Seliu. The familiar tone caught at me. I swerved, bounced off the wall, and turned around with both blades bristling. Already they were arguing in the corridor about who would follow me through first.

Mother Vajpai sat up on the bed. Mother Argai was springing from the chair beyond her, on the other side of the bed from which I’d passed. Samma was not in sight.

I could have blessed a thousand goddesses in that moment. “I came for you.”

“Fool,” Mother Vajpai replied. Mother Argai just shook her head sadly.

“They’ll be on me in seconds. If you want to be shut of Surali, come with me now.” My sense of my own failure about Corinthia Anastasia gnawed at me, but I had no time to dwell on it.

The Blade Mothers exchanged a fast look in a familiar, unspoken negotiation. I turned my back on them and kicked open the window.

I was above the terrace. No pursuit was yet visible outside. Looking over my shoulder, I asked, “Are they more afraid of me or of you?”

“It does not matter,” Mother Vajpai replied. I realized she was still in the bed.

“I am coming,” added Mother Argai. They glared at one another-more silent argument-then Mother Argai dove out the window, tucking to land running eighteen feet below.

“Samma?” I asked.

Mother Vajpai shook her head.

The door burst open.

I flipped over the smashed windowsill backwards, knowing I had enough fall length to right myself. On the way down I remembered what pregnancy had done to my balance.

Thank the Lily Goddess Mother Argai spotted my landing, taking much of my weight and keeping me from pancaking into the tiles of the terrace.

“That way.” I pointed toward the back wall.

Stealth abandoned, we raced through the snow-choked garden, trying to outdistance the crossbow quarrels I was certain would be fired at any moment.

Twenty minutes later I stopped to breathe. Mother Argai and I had taken to the rooftops as soon as we cleared the Velviere District. Even that had been a project. Two women in dark, bloodied clothing were conspicuous, so we’d been compelled to stick to walls and alleys until I’d stolen a tarp off a wagon. After that we’d just appeared to be derelicts, homeless and wageless. Now we crouched in the lee of a water tank. The tiles sloped gently away from us, treacherous in the slick drip of the morning snowmelt. I watched smoke rise somewhere over near Lyme Street.

“What was that all about?” I finally asked Mother Argai.

She answered my question with a question. “How many did you kill?”

“One for certain, another if he is unlucky. I tried not to.” And three of my own left behind. Failure by any measure.

“Hmm.”

It wasn’t clear to me what that grunt meant, whether she signified approval or disapproval. Mother Argai had run with me, trained with me, bedded with me. Though I’d learned much from her, she’d never been one of my training Mothers. I’d not learned to read her so well as some of the others.

All I could do was ask. “Tell me, what was that all about? Why were you staying in a room unguarded? Why did Mother Vajpai not rise from that bed?”

“Don’t you mean to ask where Samma is?” Mother Argai’s voice was soft.

Embarrassed at being caught out, I mumbled weakly, “That would have been my next question.”

“No, Green, it was not. We all are knowing how you are.” Mother Argai appeared sad. “But this is being your city, not ours. Mother Vajpai and I both realize how little of it we know. Not just a matter of buildings and streets. A matter of people and their discontents.”