Jay Lake - Green

“I am no goddess,” I told him. But I knew one. This killing was old news. Whoever they were, they had come and gone from Kalimpura long ago. Or so I devoutly hoped.

The Factor pushed the question. “Do you think you harmed him?”

“Only with the touch of my bare hands. I wish I’d thought to crush his chest while shoeless.” I spread my fingers and looked at them. “Not until I reached Kalimpura did I learn to fight properly.”

“You did well enough here,” the Factor told me grudgingly.

I glanced up to see some distant emotion in those eyes. Had he been handsome once, four hundred years ago when he was a young man with a name and a future? “Perhaps,” I said.

“Where is my part in this?”

“It is doubtful that I can bring him down weaponless,” I admitted. “He is far more powerful than the largest man. I came back to the city looking for you, in hopes that you could raise the sendings and avatars that haunt the Below. Fighting Skinless taught me how they must be struck. Federo-as-Choybalsan is turning into one of them.”

“Larval gods,” he said with disgust. “Buds of the divine.”

“Choybalsan is the get of no god.” I added, “Except maybe you.”

“I can promise you Federo had no touch of the divine. Whatever Choybalsan is, it uses him as a host. Much as those wasps that lay their eggs inside other insects. That is why he is so powerful. A sending is little more than the cyst of a dream, loosened from the divine mind.” He was becoming angry again. “I spent much of my effort stamping them out, as a source of future trouble. He is a sending wrapped in a man.”

“When he goes into town and plays the councilor, we see no lightning.”

The Factor looked thoughtful. “The god may remain behind. Perhaps in that altar you mentioned.”

I became excited. “In which case, we must attack Choybalsan at the Textile Bourse. He will be without his army, and lacking the full mantle of his powers!”

“Though I do not agree, neither am I ready to deny you.” He renewed his pacing. “If I had Skinless, or something like it, we might be able to deal with the god. Have you ever seen dolphins kill a shark?”

“Uh… no.”

“A shark of any size is more than a match for a lone dolphin. They are tough, powerful, and very dangerous. The dolphin cannot bite back. He has no swords in his mouth.” The Factor grinned. All I could think of was the great dead-eyed monster that had nearly taken me when I first set out from Selistan. He continued: “Any one dolphin would fall before the shark like a child before a drunken guardsman. A dozen dolphins can surround a shark and batter him to death, moving too quickly for him to stop them.”

“You want to surround Choybalsan with Skinless?”

“With sendings and avatars. The gods are stirring. I would prefer to lay them once more to quiet rest, but I would use their children for this before our argument can be ended by the deaths of all.”

I nodded. He’d come to the same conclusion as I. “Then I will go above the stones and look for what friends I can. It may be of use to have a few arms in the corporeal world.”

“As you will. But I cannot raise Skinless. The monster is too well kept within the Algeficic Temple. It roams sometimes, but it is not free like the older ones.”

“The canny ones, whom you never caught,” I said. “Mother Iron.”

“Precisely.” He looked irritated now.

I had my own problems with that temple. The god was a horror, and the Pater Primus a traitor, at the least. Still, they would no more profit by the coming of Choybalsan than anyone else. “I will do what I can.”

He glanced over at the square of light admitted by the grate high in the ceiling. “It is a bit past the noon hour. If Federo is yet in the Textile Bourse, we must catch him today. Meet me at the Lyme Street cistern three fingers before the sun sets.”

I actually knew where that was. Nodding, I opened my mouth to speak, but the Factor was gone. Gone as if he’d never been there in the first place.

Looking at my arm, I saw the long wound I’d made. I twirled the bell in my hand. A muffled clop sounded.

I followed the steps on which I sat, until I found an exit.

The stairs came up behind a set of public baths. A blessed good thing. It is difficult to persuade people to a cause when you are coated in drying sewage. I stepped out through a little closet. The steam was high, so these lower baths were in use. I stole to the first tub and slipped in, clothes and all, until I was completely under the near-scalding water.

Holding my breath, I scrubbed at my hair. A minute later, I came up gasping and began to search for my veil. I could not remember where I’d had it last.

At least I still held the knife and the bell.

“You are supposed to wash before you sit in here,” said a man across from me. He was only a shadow through the curtains of steam.

I had company, too. My hand closed on the haft of the knife.

“The water has been terribly dirtied.” I knew that voice. He continued: “I should call the attendants and have you beaten and thrown out.”

Recognition dawned.

“Stefan Mohanda,” I said. What in the name of all the gods was he doing here? “Or should I call you the Pater Primus?”

“Either is correct.” He leaned forward, becoming a firmer silhouette as the stinking water sloshed back toward me with its scum of sewage, slime, and blood. “Though never both at once. The scrying mirror told me where to expect you. Now what have you done with my favorite priest?”

“Your fellow councilor laid open his gut and let him die.”

“Federo? Never.” The Pater Primus laughed grimly. “The god I could easily believe that of. Not the man. A pity about Septio. He was a good lad, with the ass of an angel.”

He knew. Everything. My knife hand lay easy in the bath before me. I had not trained for water fighting, but I doubted very much this man had, either. His age and size would slow him.

Never let the enemy see your attack. That had been one of Mother Vajpai’s first lessons. I stalled, talking to cover my small movements. “If you knew, why the charade of sending Septio with me up into the hills?”

“You asked to go.” He sounded delighted. “You would bring yourself to him in the seat of his power. So much easier than abducting you from the city against your will. Surely you realize that you are very difficult to move unwilling.”

I began to slide up out of the tub. “Then I will be on my way, and leave you-” Even as I spoke, I kicked off from the tiled wall beneath my feet, flinging myself at him. That was an attack I would not dare against a prepared enemy.

Mohanda, unfortunately for me, was prepared.

Unfortunately for him, he was also slow.

He raised himself up, thin robe dripping, something long and dark in his hand. For one horrified moment, I thought it was a crossbow. I crashed into that arm above the weapon, then slid my boning knife up into his armpit, letting the leverage of my sinking weight drive the blade farther.

A stupid blow, weak and wrong-angled, but it worked. Mohanda’s arm nearly separated from his shoulder. He shrieked like a child as dark blood gushed from the gaping wound to flood down his body and into the tub. His panicked thrashing kept the blood pouring.

I snatched up his weapon. That was a short iron bar with a reversed barb at the top. Purely defensive-he’d expected me to attack. That meant he almost certainly had allies close by.

Flipping the bar around, I set the barb into the bouncing flab of his belly and smacked it hard with my other hand.

More foulness in the water as I tugged the bar free. I leaned close. “A pity about the Pater Primus. He was never a good man.”