Jay Lake - Endurance

The Tavernkeep gave me a long, slow look, with a secretive smile at its heart. “Your word is always good here, Green.” He stepped into the kitchen, his tail flicking back and forth.

Binding my slashed palm with a bit of rag, I found my mouth watering to the smell of Selistani cooking. Even the pardines seemed to have taken to it. But there was a musk in the room tonight, something stronger than the odor of wet fur and winter on the backs of these strangers. Was it the scent of a Hunt coming together?

Did I care about that?

I turned to scan the room. The Dancing Mistress caught my eye. Between us, pardines shifted their chairs, or stood to find other places in the room. A lane was being cleared. Perhaps we were to fight.

On my best day, I could do no more than battle her to a draw. Now, pregnant, bruised, battered, and tired, I would not even think to stand to the combat. If she wanted to take me down, she could. Rangy strength and an intimate knowledge of my own weaknesses as a fighter were a combination I didn’t care to challenge.

Besides, I held secret what she most desired. The Rectifier still carried the Eyes of the Hills for me. The old rogue, priest killer and historian of his kind, was as close to an unbeliever in the human sense as I had ever known a pardine to be. He understood the power in the Eyes of the Hills. He simply did not care.

Was all of this what Erio had feared? The larger circles of plot that spun around me were so vast, the entire fate of Copper Downs was but a cog in their gearing. I could fight only one battle at a time.

Well, perhaps as many as three or four.

The principle was the same.

A bowl clicked on the bar beside me. I turned away from the burgeoning challenge and began to eat my supper.

Behind me, the noise of the tavern resumed.

The door banged open. Wind howled for a moment, pushing a frosty gust through the room before being cut off again. The murmur of voices did not die this time, so I was willing to take it on trust that no maniac was charging me from behind with a naked blade. Besides, the Tavernkeep had not lowered his ears.

The meal was hot, and spicy. Someone had found a selection of actual Selistani vegetables-roots and peppers that could have been harvested from any garden in Kalimpura, though here they must have traveled across the Storm Sea in the hold of a ship. Wasteful but delicious. The meat was Stone Coast mutton, unfortunately.

Still, it was a taste of home. Of my other home.

I realized all over again that I would never settle the question of home. Not in my mind, not in my heart. I promised my child she would not ever be so beset by confusion. Even to my own thoughts, the statement seemed hollow, for all my intentions.

First, survive the night. Second, stop these plots and counterplots. Third, keep my child disentangled from them all. Fourth, free Corinthia Anastasia and my fellow Blades. Perhaps my priorities were backwards.

Or perhaps not.

As I finished my bowl of bastard stew, I resisted the temptation to put aside my knives. I would not fight the Dancing Mistress, not now, not ever. And it was not in my desire to battle anyone else tonight. But there was violence to come. Some of it would surely be directed at me. What could I do but respond from my place at the heart of the storm?

I wiped my mouth on a bar rag, smiled at the Tavernkeep, then slipped from my stool and turned to face my old teacher. As I did so, the gentle buzz of voices died once more.

They’d all been waiting for this, pardine Revanchists and city pardines. Likewise the Selistani onlookers. I suppose I had too, ever since that day when she and I had defeated Federo, our co-conspirator from the earliest times.

Now was a time to pass over our differences. I did not need pardine power loose in the city, least of all a Hunt. But I badly wished to give her a reason to return to her groves and mountaintop meadows.

And I had one.

I walked toward the Dancing Mistress.

She rose from her table, stepped around her supporters, and stood before me.

“Green.”

I nodded sharply. “Dancing Mistress.”

Her tail whipped back and forth, but her ears did not lie flat. This evening she was wearing loose leather, almost armor. So unlike her city ways from the whole time I’d known her and held her as my teacher, let alone our brief period of being lovers. That bond had fallen dormant under so much else that had passed since.

She spoke next. “We search.”

“I know. And I have found.” I let a smile slide across my face. She would understand the expression. The Dancing Mistress had been as citified a pardine as I’d ever met.

“What?” she almost whispered. “What have you found?”

The silence around us deepened. So many in this room were Revanchists.

“Back in Kalimpura,” I said, “I killed a man named Michael Curry for the gems that he carried. I did not know then what stakes were in play. Surali of the Bittern Court brought those gems back across the sea here to Copper Downs. She had planned to barter them for more power, but I have taken them away from her.” I looked around the room, catching in my own gaze glittering pardine eyes with their barred pupils. “They were not hers to sell.”

“Nor are they yours,” breathed the Dancing Mistress.

“No. Neither are they mine.” I sighed. Here was the play I needed to make, the edge I had been forced to approach. “So I gave them away.”

The sigh ran around the room as if one breath from several dozen mouths. Muscles rippled, chairs scraped. It seemed the whole pardine nation was ready to spring upon me.

“I gave them away,” I continued, interrupting whatever words were forming on the Dancing Mistress’ lips as her claws flexed, “because I gave them back to you.”

“Do not toy with me,” she snapped. Her ears had lain back flat. The Revanchists at her table were all on their feet, tails flicking.

“No. I will tell you of the meaning of my actions, but I ask a bargain.”

“None will bargain in ill faith,” growled a male beside her.

“This is not your soulpath.” I bared my teeth at him.

“What bargain?” The Dancing Mistress ignored her fellow.

“This one: That you take the Eyes of the Hills…” I paused, to let another sigh ripple through the room. I had their attention even more fully now, if that was possible. “Take the Eyes of the Hills back to their shrine and trouble this city no more with dreams of lost power. Every measure of that dance has long since been trodden. You will not find your elder days amid our ruins, nor in the promises of southerners bearing lost treasures.”

“You make promises now,” she said.

“No.” I spread my hands. Empty, weaponless, softly blunt-fingered as any human being’s. “There is nothing I promise. All I do is deliver. Deliver, and ask you to walk away from a fight that was never yours.”

“They stole…” the male began uncertainly.

I focused on him. “They did. How shall I redeem that theft now? How can more death reclaim what was lost? Besides, what I have heard is you gave away power as much as it was stolen from you.”

“We could not be who we were,” the Dancing Mistress said. “We can only become who it is left to us to be. If that is a twilight people, so it is for us.”

“Have we a bargain?” I asked.

“Show your terms.”

I waited a long beat. “Have we a bargain?” I stared intently into her eyes, willing the old trust between us to spark back to life.

“ We have a bargain,” she said slowly. I knew she’d taken my meaning.

Another long, quiet moment passed. The musk in the room seemed to thin a bit. A few pardines relaxed; one or two even took their seats again.

“The Eyes of the Hills are safe.” I looked around at all of them. “I gave the gems to the Rectifier. He will guard them for you. What you make of the Eyes of the Hills is between you and him.”