Jay Lake - Green

A scent of smoke met my nose. At my feet, the blood was curdling to black. A presence loomed at my back more dangerous than blades, more frightening than wounds.

There was not enough courage in the world for me to turn and look. I shivered, crying now, wishing I had done anything other than this summoning. My knees became soft, trembling fit to fold and swallow me to the floor. I considered casting myself on my knife.

A spray of water touched me from above. A single lily petal floated in the shaft of weak sunlight. It caught my eye, and my fear. The Goddess, I wondered, or some careless flower-seller in the street above?

Did it matter? Cycles and circles. They could be one and the same, after all. Miracles always worked best through the mechanism of the mundane.

Courage found me after all. Setting the bell down, I turned. The wooden clop continued to echo from within the surrounding darkness another moment or two before it faded.

The Factor stood there, grubby and grave-pale as I’d glimpsed him at the ruins of his house. He did not look like a ghost-no will-of-the-wisp or smoky aspect. He seemed as real as Mother Iron.

His eyes, though misted and dark, were not dead. The rest of him most certainly was, but laughter and tears and much more lived in that gaze. The opposite of how he’d appeared in life.

I felt an odd stab of hope at that.

“My prodigal Emerald returns to me at last,” he said.

Hope, indeed. The old arrogance of power had not been washed out of him by death. With a laugh that I did not have to force from my lips, I replied, “I am Green, grown to myself, come to call you.”

“I know who you are.”

Even though I understood his perfidy, I felt a flash of sympathy for the pain that crossed his face.

“I know what you did to me,” the Factor added.

“It was needful.” I believed that, but I realized I believed it because I’d been told to.

“Truly?” Now his smile was sly. “Tell me. How many did I kill during my centuries on the throne? What wars did this city fight? Did coin shrink and the harbor traffic wither? Was there dread and fear upon the streets?”

His questions took me aback briefly. “How should I know? I was not given anything recent enough for me to understand such things. I was educated as… as…” My voice broke off as I realized the miserable truth. Softly, I continued. “I was educated as a woman of the time of your youth. Nothing was told to me of the world since you came to the throne.”

“The long years are very lonely,” the Factor said. “You would have reminded me of who I once was.” His hand reached up as if to touch me, then dropped again. There was no noise as he moved, reminding me that he was not truly present.

A swell of bitter rage crested within me. His loneliness was the cause of all my own loss? “I would have recalled your youth until I withered with age. While you went on forever!”

“You will age with or without me.” His voice was sad, his eyes watered with tears. “What is terrible about aging in a splendid palace with a great city ready to do your bidding?”

“You were a tyrant!” I tried to hang on to the old arguments, but really, they were nothing more than what I had been taught. What did any child know but what they had been told?

“I was a tyrant who brought peace and prosperity and quiet streets at night, and silenced gods so they could not meddle daily in the business of men.” He sighed, though I wondered how someone with no breath could do so. Or speak, now that I thought upon it. “My crime, my tyranny, was not to rule, but to live beyond the years of ancestry and descent of entire families.”

“Your crime,” I growled, “was to strip power from a peaceful people and bind it to yourself.”

“How peaceful were those people?” Now his face flared with passion to match my own. “Do you know of the last war this city did fight? Under me, as a living man? We battled the pardines. In their time, they were terrible hunters and raiders. Others followed them, thinking by their appearance that they were wise and powerful. The shared path they have instead of souls lent them a strength in this world that could not be matched. Over a thousand men were lost wrestling them down. I took what they used to wreak the death of farmers and children and traders, stripped it from them, and made peace for Copper Downs. I even made peace for them!”

I struggled against his logic. This man was the villain of centuries, yet to hear him tell it, he held the good of the city in his heart, and had delivered it.

He was right. Hundreds must have died in the riots that followed the fall of the Duke. There were still buildings, even entire blocks, burned out and not rebuilt. The sea trade had diminished. The city lived in fear.

As it had not under the Duke’s rule.

A trick, a trap lay at the heart of this. I’d always known what it was. “You stole away the choices of generations. You stole away my choices. My freedom.”

He laughed, bitter and hollow. “Freedom? To be a rice farmer’s wife? You should be on your knees thanking me, Green, for saving you.”

“That was my fate!”

Leaning close, the Factor said in that growling voice, “Then consider that I have changed your fate. You might rejoice in that if you were honest enough.”

I took a breath and tried to fling his words away. I did not need his self-serving logic and the justification of his memories.

What I did need was him.

“We argue to no purpose,” I finally said, collecting my thoughts. “You are what you are now-”

“What you made me,” he interrupted.

“What you made yourself. You made me, after all.” I gave him the sweet, nasty smile that I seemed to be perfecting. “You are what you are; I am what I am. Choybalsan will gut us both to set himself in your stead.”

The Factor shook his head. “Oh, no. I was never a god.”

“I do not think this one should be, either. He is too cruel and foolish.”

“Did I make you to be a judge?”

I tried to stare him down, but that is impossible with a ghost. He did not blink. “No, but you made of me a person who is capable of judging, at need.”

“You, who would kill gods, also have learned the ways of doing that?” His smile remained wicked. “My education must have been very deep, indeed.”

“I l-learned that in the world. But to do what must be done, I need your help. Or at the least your advice.”

The Factor spread his hands, like a greengrocer who has run out of turnips and must apologize. “You have only to ask.”

Such a curious echo of Corinthia Anastasia’s remark. It took me a moment to unravel that he meant for me to request his aid right at that moment. “Fine. Will you please help me save your city, and yourself, from this man who would be the god-king?”

“Yes.”

He must fear Choybalsan far more desperately than I-he could not just board a ship, for example. The Factor made this sound so simple, so condescending, that for a moment I would have slain him all over again if I’d had such power.

A while later, I sat on a step. The Factor paced before me. He made no noise except when he spoke. I’d just finished telling him of the fight within Choybalsan’s tent.

“What made you think you could harm a god?” he demanded.

“He looked like a man.” I shrugged, feeling vaguely ashamed. “Besides, I have heard of god-killers here in Copper Downs. If they could do so, why not I?”

The Factor waved that off as inconsequential. “They were specialists from the Saffron Tower, passing through. One was not even human.”

“Where did they fare next?”

“Selistan.”

A stab of cold fear found my heart.

His malicious smile widened the wound. “Did someone go after you there?” he asked.