Jay Lake - Endurance

They glanced at one another. Then, out of one mouth, “More of a foul evening, Mistress Green.”

The other: “Come to see justice done?”

The shared smile that passed across their faces was deeply unpleasant.

“Yes,” I declared. “It is time for you both to return to an honorable retirement in the Saffron Tower.”

The Rectifier slipped away to my left. One twin’s attention turned to follow him. The other’s remained focused on me.

“A remarkable theory,” that one said. “But alas, of little interest to us.” He turned back to the fire while his brother stared off in the shadows, a slightly puzzled expression on his face.

This was it. My bluff was being called. All I knew was violence. There were no other tools ready to hand.

I could pray to Endurance, but the ox god had already manifested. This one would never take the attack. He stood beneath me, defending me by his very presence, but he had no fangs or claws or flaming sword.

Mother Iron? Her power was women’s power, if she’d begun to fit properly into the role Desire wished of her. The example of the Lily Blades notwithstanding, women’s power was like water. It flowed around obstacles, it did not shatter them.

Blackblood himself? He’d promised to take my child. My misguided overreaction to that threat-serious as it was-had started the chain of events that had led us here. His temple was dark and silent as a cenotaph on this frozen night. The building loomed high, offering little more evidence of occupation than such a cenotaph would have.

I trusted the Rectifier was up to something worthwhile, but I could not count on miracles from him. The only person I could count on was me.

Always back to me.

And my child.

Well, ever was I trained to be a sacrifice to this city’s need. The oldest lessons were the deepest.

I slipped from the ox’s back. If only I could seize the power I’d held when I’d stood against Choybalsan.

And so what then? These two knew how to fight that particular power.

My belled silk rang as I walked toward the fire. The twin who wasn’t scanning the dark-Osi, I thought as I drew close-looked up at me again. “If you will not be gone, we will make you go,” he said, as if speaking to a troublesome beggar.

“I will not depart.” Hopefully the cloak, an artifact of the divine, would protect me from whatever blast his hands could unleash. Or Skinless? Where was Skinless now?

“Do not disrupt our rite,” Iso said, turning away from his study of the Rectifier to glare at me.

Their fire flared. Osi held a cone of powder that he trailed into the brazier even as he bandied with me. Iso wielded a small, silver knife-a ritual implement I would not have used to peel a pear.

I reached for the brazier’s tripod with a jingling swipe of my arm. Iso swung around behind his brother, flowed into a motion so smooth and fast I could barely see it, and launched a cobblestone that struck me in the chest. That forced me to stagger back, all air in my lungs lost as pain radiated with a starburst of cold, miserable sharpness.

It took almost a dozen, deep, whooping breaths for me to begin to recover. My cloak rang faintly with each gasp, distant silver rain. The twins paid me the insult of ignoring me. Iso scanned the darkness, seeming vaguely worried. Osi had begun to chant. The night air curdled, a mist being born around us.

I longed for Endurance’s envelope of warmth. Looking back at the ox god for comfort, I saw those great, brown eyes shift as he tossed his head to call me back to safety.

Trying once more, I made a run at Osi. One, two, three swift steps and a leap into a knee-breaking kick. My misbalance on the icy street again marred my attack, but even so, Iso was faster. This time the cobble took me in the pelvis, just below and to the right of where the baby rode.

I crashed onto my chest in a cacophony of music, scraping my hands and chin on the road. No time to think of it now, no time to worry about what that had done to my child. I was up and moving, spinning in the dark even as another cobble whipped out of his hand. As if they’d ever needed my rescue that day in the Dockmarket.

This stone I managed to dodge. But I could not both defend and attack. And something was wrong with my right leg. That last missile had injured me to the point that I could no longer move with my usual strength and purpose.

I’d known I couldn’t fight them, but I wasn’t even trying now. I just wanted to disrupt their ceremony before that curdling darkness came completely into being, focused on the chalk marks on the steps of Blackblood’s temple, and subtracted another god from this city.

Let alone what these two will do to the Lily Goddess in Kalimpura.

That thought roused me once more. I had to win a different way.

“Women’s power,” I whispered. Slipping to my knees, though I nearly toppled from the weakness in my right leg, I prayed to Desire, to the Lily Goddess, to Mother Iron. “These two have stolen much from You, and threaten so much more. Bring me a regiment of women to oppose them.”

Out in the darkness, the Rectifier growled. Something murmured. Both twins looked now, the rhythm of their rite on the verge of being broken.

Did Archimandrix’s brass apes approach, despite my orders?

No.

A light sparked.

My prayers, being answered.

Then another light.

In moments, a thousand candles, lanterns, and torches were aglow despite the plucking, grabbing wind. A thousand female faces stared at me-no, not at me, at the twins. I turned my head. They’d filled the Street of Horizons from both directions. Desire’s women. Marya’s women. Mother Iron’s women. Ragged. Wealthy. Thin. Plump. Young. Old. Pale. Dark.

Acolytes of Marya-traders’ wives and maids from the great houses and fishmongers and whores and animal trainers and midwives and chiurgeons and mothers and daughters, Copper Downs women of all walks of life gathered to stand against the masculine, jealous power of the Saffron Tower in the form of Osi and Iso. I could sense Desire there as well, and Mother Iron, not in a direct manifestation, but through the breath and body and words of their followers.

Like the sea, women surged forward.

Now not even Iso’s cobbles could stop me. Finally I had my way. Women’s power, indeed. An elderly lady in the dress of some great house of a century past handed me a white candle. An angry, muttering Hanchu child offered me a black candle. Funeral rites. The only death magic I knew, the simplest one of speeding a soul upon its way. So I lit the two wicks from the fires gathering around me.

Then I waited for the tide of women to sweep toward the twins.

No cobbles flew this time, but Iso and Osi stood close about their fire, their rite abandoned in the moment. Not even they could slay a thousand women at once. I let myself be pushed forward until I was an armspan from them, candles burning in each hand.

“We choose life,” I said, mindful of the Rectifier’s warning about the cost of slaying them out of hand. “Not vengeance and death. Embrace us.”

They both bolted up the steps toward Blackblood’s door.

The tide of women followed, some pushing in to each side of the stairs, the rest flowing up, still buoying me along. Iso turned with two last cobbles in his hand while Osi banged on the iron doors.

“You will not live to regret this,” Iso snarled. He took aim at my head.

Skinless reached out through the door, tearing the metal, to crush Iso’s cocked fist in his own much larger meat-fingers. The other hand trapped Osi by the neck. I closed on the twins, whispering my thanks to Blackblood’s avatar, and drew my two adversaries into a close embrace beneath my belled cloak.

Their kicks and blows were as those of angry children, while the avatar held them both trapped. The women behind me reached beneath my silk to touch as the twins’ hands and feet slowed. Iso said nothing, but Osi began to keen in a thin, anguished voice.