Jay Lake - Endurance

I dropped the mattock down the drain. It thumped rather than splashed. That was fine with me. I took a deep breath, slid feet-first into the hole, and prayed again, that the horizontal run crossing below was large enough for me to continue. Otherwise I’d spend the very short balance of my life cowering under this house while it burned down over my head.

Halfway down I got stuck. The blessed thing narrowed. I almost cried, then cursed, then raged in fear. Wriggled. Moaned. Cursed again. Sucked my gut in, pressed my already-burning arms against the walls, and lifted, before I dropped a handspan or two. Something slipped. Something else caught. My pants?

Another heavy breath out, another sucking in, another lift and drop. The baby didn’t appreciate it, I could tell. “You won’t enjoy being rump roast, either,” I whispered.

I pushed again, feeling my hips scrape even through the canvas trousers, and my belly crushed. Panic closed in on me, darkening my shadowed vision and pimpling my skin. I was going to die here.

Then I slid the rest of the way down in one ragged slump, nearly turning my ankle on the mattock and landing on my ass in the circle of light from above. Everything hurt. I’d slowed down too much, and my exhaustion was catching up to me. My gut was aching, my throat burned with the need to throw up.

Instead I grabbed the mattock and stumbled in the direction of the street, under an arch so low I had to either bend over or duckwalk. Two stout iron grates later, broken open with my trusty mattock, I was Below, safely beneath Richard Avenue, and away from that damned fire.

Operating only on faint hope and dim instinct, I headed toward the docks. I left the mattock behind. Still I carried some poor bastard of a guard’s bloodied sword.

I emerged beneath the Mendicant’s Well in the Dockmarket. A narrow tunnel opened into the shaft just above the water level of the cistern that supplied the well. A roof overhead blocked the night, but the wind howled just fine.

Up, into the cold. My entire body cramped at the thought. I was so tired I wanted to vomit. Every part of me felt bruised, some bits broken, and I was leaving a bloody trail as I walked. I didn’t know why something large and hurtful hadn’t already climbed out of Below and claimed me.

Up, up.

What was I chasing?

Up!

I don’t know who spoke, but I could hear her voice.

The climb was so difficult, I almost didn’t make it. My hands shivered on each rung, my arms stretched like clay. It’s only water below me, I thought, and envisioned falling into that cool embrace.

Then I thought of Ilona, and kept climbing.

Over the lip of the well and into the little shelter where it stood. This close to the harborfront, the wind was biting, toothy and vile. I’d lost my furniture covers somewhere, and had no idea what had become of my comfortable stolen robe.

March on, march on.

An awning flapped nearby. I paused to cut it down, wrapping myself in blue and gray striping.

March on.

Even the waterfront taverns were shuttered. Though the storm had faded to clear skies, still no one was out in the raw, blustery weather. All we lacked was more snow or rain to complete my misery. The wind-driven spume along the docks was freezing in place. Ships creaked dark and ominous at their moorings, a few faint lights showing even lonelier than deepest shadow would have been.

No barking dogs, no whores’ come-ons, no drunken singing. It was as if the entire city had been frozen into its grave. Copper Downs, brought to this. Though I’d be willing to bet things were quite warm inside the Selistani embassy.

That thought made me giggle. Giggling turned into laughter, and the laughter very nearly turned into whooping hysteria. I had to stop and sit on a pile of cargo nets until my breath ran out and I could rediscover my sense of purpose.

A few more ships farther down, stumbling under the starlight, I saw a vessel lit up with the pale orange-yellow flicker of bottled lightning. The steam kettle thrummed. She was making ready to sail. A few figures moved along the dock. One of those big drayage wagons was just pulling away.

Surali.

The Selistani embassy.

Corinthia Anastasia.

I tried to run, stumbled, slid on an icy patch and fetched up hard against a barrel. Climbing to my hands and knees, I staggered on. There was no running left in me.

Could I call them back? I opened my mouth and croaked. Damn me for carrying a sword but not a torch. These people would want me, if they knew it was me coming for them. I couldn’t fight a sick chicken in my current state, but I could catch up. Later I’d find a way to escape with the girl.

The dockside figures withdrew up the gangplank, weapons still at the ready. In careful order. A rear guard. Watching for me.

If only they knew.

To all the hells with staggering like a drunk. It was time for one last run. Time to catch them. I took a deep breath, lurched forward graceless and heavy as I had ever been of late, and was caught up in massive hands. Screaming, I turned to look into the face of Skinless.

He shook his head, no. One massive, meaty finger touched my lips for silence.

A bell clanged. Water churned as the ship slowly backed away from the dock. I didn’t even struggle. What would I have done, except be a prisoner? And who knows what Surali would have trimmed off of my body, the way she’d taken Mother Vajpai’s toes?

Still, I strained to retrieve the girl. I wept, until the tears froze on my cheeks; then the lumbering giant carried me away through the crystalline spaces of the winter night.

To my surprise, Skinless took me not to the temple of Blackblood, or even the Temple of Endurance, but rather to the Tavernkeep’s place.

“How did you know?” I asked as the avatar gently placed me swaying on my feet before the door.

He shook his great, flayed head as if to deny any complicity, then lumbered once more into the darkness.

I was standing. Barely. For a moment, I was tempted to simply walk away. But that I could not do. I had allowed a child to be stolen to Kalimpura, home of the same child trade that had once sold me away. The two Blades who should be in here now were my key to following Surali, following that ship, and retrieving Corinthia Anastasia before… what?

I did not know.

So I staggered into the firelight.

My entrance was marred by my stumbling at the threshold. I hit the floor once more. This time I just stayed down. Something I’d never done. I felt too heavy to even move.

Strong hands-furred, as well as homey Selistani brown-picked me up off the floor. I was carried to a flat spot. A table?

Noises of crowding and moaning and the sweaty, bloody smell of recovery. Flickering light. Someone pouring pardine bournewater down my throat. Wincing as fingers probed for broken ribs.

Eventually I cried.

When I stopped crying, Ponce from the Temple of Endurance was holding my hand. “You need to sleep,” he said softly. “And perhaps to eat as well.”

“I need to know.” Then, one of the hardest things I’d ever asked: “Sit me up.” I had to see.

With the help of one of the acolytes, he propped me up, then they slid me into a chair. I looked around. Crowded, indeed. Rough-furred pardine Revanchists stalked among Selistani refugees with broken noses and bandaged wounds.

“Where is Mother Argai?” I asked. “And Mother Vajpai, and Samma?”

Ponce shrugged. “I am not certain.”

He slipped off, to find me food maybe, leaving me to wonder if he meant he did not know who I meant, or he did not know where they were.

No one else I knew well was close by. I half-recognized most of these people, though in my current state of fatigue and confusion, I might have thought to recognize anybody. Or no one at all. But where were any of my people? Corinthia Anastasia was gone, lost to me. My fellow Blades should be here somewhere. The Rectifier with them. Of course, the last I’d seen those three, they’d been leaping into a fiery night, while Mother Argai had been stumbling wounded in the street.