Jay Lake - Endurance

I figured I could not lose. Either the barrels would burn, which would spill flaming oil under their front door; or they would blow up, which would shoot flaming oil under their front door. That the Interim Council would be seeing a substantial bill was a bit of a bonus, so far as I was concerned. Or even better, Lampet’s Reformed Council. As for myself, I was cold, hungry, and tired. And I had not yet begun to fight.

Let someone else suffer a bit.

The oil caught and bloomed. I scooted away fast, keeping upwind in case the barrels decided to explode and spray. A doorway across the street and one building over beckoned me with a deep vestibule. I’d noted earlier that the floor there was an imitation of a Sunward Sea mosaic, done either by someone homesick or a student of the foreign art. It wasn’t bad, really, and a fine place to rest my feet while I waited to see what might erupt at the twins’ warehouse.

I hadn’t counted on the doorway being occupied on my return.

“Green,” said the Rectifier. He loomed close. His fur stank of wet weather and drowned cat.

I stifled a shriek. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” He glanced up at my little fire, which was burning merrily. It seemed the flaming leak was going to be the answer, as nothing had exploded yet. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to smoke out Iso and Osi.”

“They have gone to the Temple Quarter. Apparently this was an auspicious night for them to challenge your Blackblood.”

I was in the wrong place!

Everything was at risk. As he fell, so fell the Lily Goddess in time. “By the Wheel, I need to be there.”

One enormous hand lay heavily on my shoulder. “Have a care.” Claws pricked, even through layers of my leather vest and canvas shirt. “I do not think you should walk alone.”

“I have you,” I said recklessly. Behind me, one of the barrels went “whoosh.” The Rectifier’s face was suddenly a study in glare and chiaroscuro.

He shook his head. “Can you call your ox god? Or one of your friends Below?”

Sighing, I turned to look back on my act of pyromaniac vandalism. The barrels were burning ever stronger, the warehouse door was smoldering, but the wind was whipping both the flames and the spilled oil away faster than they could spread.

Apparently it was time for me to open a restaurant, because my two barrels of lamp oil weren’t even serving as a distraction. Let alone as the opening movement of any attack I might have intended to pursue.

“I will call Endurance,” I said. “But I do not know if he will respond to me.” The ox god had already given me his blessing, after all. Had always protected me. Would he not now? I was too far from the Lily Goddess. Besides which, I would not dream of exposing Her to these two.

“Where will you do this?”

“Nowhere. Here. Now.” I sank to the cold tile, wondering how long I’d last freezing my buttocks. “Watch over me.” Blinking, I looked up at him. “Oh, I did sell you to the Revanchists, in a manner of speaking.”

“Mmm?” His voice was a rumble that struck deep into my bones.

“I told them they could have the Eyes of the Hills back so long as the gems remained under your control.”

There was a long, strained silence. Then the Rectifier snorted. “You trust me?”

“Yes,” I said simply, then closed my eyes and began to pray.

The ox god was never my god, but he was first and foremost my ox. Always. I did not try to imagine Endurance in his temple as a marble statue hung with prayers and ringed with incense. Rather, I took myself in memory to my father’s fields, the mud-filled wallows of my youth.

Insects buzzed first. Despite the intense cold, I had no trouble recalling the warmth of the sun. Selistan was an oven, this place an icebox. Somewhere in the world lay a land at the pleasant midpoint between the two.

Mud. Rice. Flowers. Fruits. A great, patient ox, standing close on tall legs, brown eyes rolling to follow me. Always overhead, always a presence, always my anchor to call me home.

Was it any wonder I’d placed Choybalsan’s power in the ox god?

“Are you with me now?”

The great, long face turned in my direction. The eyes were deep, deeper, the deepest things I’d ever seen. Wells of glossy brown light fountained forth.

The god was with me.

“Bear me forth to meet those who would slay my patrons.”

The ox shifted toward me. He shook off the flies around his ears and eyes, tail flicking. I slipped over his back, to ride him as only the dead had done. And once, the Dancing Mistress.

A jangling weight settled over my shoulders. I opened my eyes again to find the Rectifier arranging a length of belled silk across my shoulders. I sniffed at the cloak-it was mine, indeed, from the temple. Mine, and yet also my grandmother’s in a very real way. No stranger that the god should bring his relics with him than that he should appear himself.

Endurance lurched forward into the cold, cold night. My grandmother’s bells jingled, the cloak wrapping me in an envelope of warmth brought with the god from some other realm.

I gave the ox god no directions, and he asked none. We simply plodded through the silent, frozen streets. The Rectifier padded close at our side.

What, I wondered, was in all of this for him? Not loyalty, surely. Interest, perhaps. Or possibly the idea of a herd of unattached priests running about in the panic sure to follow a divine battle featuring Iso and Osi.

Cradling my belly in my hands, I wondered if I was bringing my child where she needed to be in this world. Surely this was not the path.

The Street of Horizons seemed even colder than the rest of the city. It was broad, almost a plaza in its own right, with fewer windbreaks. The old sacrificial pots lining the roadway did not host so many trees as to deter the cold knives of the air.

We plodded toward Blackblood’s temple. Each strike of Endurance’s hooves was the dull tolling of a muffled bell. My cloak shook a gentle counterpoint, a silvered rain. I could see the twins standing before the steps of the temple. They flanked a brazier balanced on a tripod and were casting something… what?

Did they care about Blackblood at all? Or was this all part of the larger plot against Desire and Her daughter-goddesses? It didn’t matter. In either event, they had to be stopped.

I did not know if the Rectifier would draw blood for me in this matter. I did not know if that would make a difference. Endurance and I would face these men down, though I had no plan anymore. I already knew I could not slay them out of hand without releasing great, destructive power. What else could I do? The gods of this city, of whom I was going to some trouble to shed myself though they stuck to me like spilled honey, deserved better than what I’d helped bring down upon them.

“If you are not safely born here in Copper Downs,” I whispered to my belly, “you will at least be safely dead with me.”

The twins turned to look at us. The light of their fire caught at their faces, twisting them from sallow, foreign men to leering demons. Their saffron robes seemed to glow. The cold didn’t billow from their mouths in little clouds, or redden their skins. Rather, it encased them, bejeweled them, armored them distant from me as the uncaring stars.

This would never be solved at swordspoint, even if I’d been moved to bare blades against these two. But I knew from the warehouse fight they would be a difficult match. And too dangerous to kill, besides. Pregnant and freezing, I would not resort to arms.

All I had was a god between my legs. And a priest killer at my side.

“I bid you good evening.” My voice whipped thin upon the chilling wind.