Jay Lake - Green

“Do you know of the Ways, girl?” Septio asked, his voice clearing. I realized then from his tone that he was little older than I. A boy, down here in the dark alone.

The Dancing Mistress touched my shoulder. “She is from across the Storm Sea. What she has been taught is extensive, but very… focused. The Ways are distant from the agenda of her keepers.”

I had never heard so much said directly about the purpose of my time at the Pomegranate Court

She squeezed my shoulder harder. “You may answer for yourself.”

To speak to a stranger! “The sun is just as hot for every man,” I told him in my own words, my old words. By then that was one of the few things I could remember Papa saying. Then in Petraean: “I do not know, sir. The Ways are hidden from me.”

“The Ways are hidden from most people.” He took his hand from his face and drew a deep, snuffling breath. “You have good reflexes.”

He and the Dancing Mistress exchanged pleasantries; then Septio moved on into the quiet depths.

“That was a priest,” I finally said.

“They are not generally so young.”

I awoke one day to the sound of voices. A crowd of women had gathered in the courtyard. They were placing chairs and sorting themselves into positions in the dawn light. I had never seen so many people at once in the Pomegranate Court-four at the most before this morning. If not for the Dancing Mistress’ night runs, I would not have seen more than four people at once in the years since Federo drove me here from Fortune’s Flight.

Each one of the women wore a straight-backed gown in black satin, with ribbon cross-lacing bodices that were slashed to show gray silk beneath. A uniform of sorts, shared by the two dozen of them.

I dressed myself as well as my unprepared wardrobe allowed, then stepped outside to find Mistress Tirelle and Mistress Maglia awaiting me. Mistress Maglia was clothed to match the women below, while Mistress Tirelle was swathed as always.

“Come, Girl,” Mistress Maglia said. That was unnecessary. I could see what was wanted. Besides, it had been years since I’d let my rebellious nature overcome my curiosity.

I followed the Mistress until she set me in a chair upon a small riser. That placed me high up overlooking the uniformed women. Instruments emerged from cases, carriers, and sacks. Polished brass gleamed in the morning sun. Mellow brown woods shone in the shape of a woman’s curves. Narrow silver pipes trilled as their warming-up began.

What I had studied as harp and spinet and flute, one instrument at a time, was about to unfold before me in the array of a performance. I was entranced. My own skill with anything but voice was marginal at best. Mistress Maglia had given me only scraps and foretastes of this.

Mistress Tirelle stood close, stretching to speak with me. “You know the tests of the fruit. This is the same, with music.”

Mistress Maglia came to my other ear. “They will play pieces of music known to you. The first is the overture to Grandieve’s Trollhattan Moods. You will listen through. Then they will play again, but certain musicians will play flat or off-key or out of tempo from time to time. When you hear an error, you will point to the offender.”

I clasped my hands. She nodded, a sharp smile on her dark-browed features. “When I am wrong, what will happen?”

“Mistress Tirelle will record your marks as given by me, and show you punishment later.”

I had not taken a beating in almost two weeks. It seemed improbable that I would finish the day without a score of blows due to me.

When they played, the women made a beautiful sound, which twined around me. It must have been audible in the other courts as well. The Grandieve piece is a study of moods, a series of tone poems about an icy island in a high-walled northern bay. Mistress Ellera had once shown me a painting of Trollhattan. I could see the sound pictures even when I had first practiced it on my little flute.

The orchestra made it as big as the sky.

They played through perfectly, then fell silent. At direction from Mistress Maglia, they resumed. This time one of the horns was flat in the very first measure. I pointed, the woman nodded and set aside her instrument. Two bars later, a viol slipped out of key. I pointed again. Another nod, another instrument fell away.

By the end, I had missed but three. Only four players still carried the composition.

If not for the promised punishment, this would have been a fascinating exercise.

So began my training with others. All women, still, but more and more came to the Pomegranate Court in the months that followed. We staged dinner parties where some women wore black sashes to indicate they would be served and eat as men. Women in leather trousers marched in review as if they were a squad of guards. Women in pairs danced alongside me in the practice room or out in the court while a small orchestra played.

I was learning to be in the world. Somehow this was stranger and more frightening than being below the stones, because this was the truth of what they pushed me toward.

Every night I took my belled silk from its imaginary hiding place and added to it. These days, the bells were a cascade of tones and keys, different sounds that would have been a waterfall of music had such a thing ever existed in truth.

I loved it, for all that it was pure figment.

We found Septio again and again underground. Our paths crossed often enough that I soon realized it was not coincidence. He, like Federo, played a role in the silent conspiracy that wrapped my life with an invisible thread.

I did not strike him again, and Septio did not remind me of my first attack. Instead we took time to talk on occasion.

“The gods of Copper Downs are silent,” he told me. “They are real as the gods of any other country. I could show you their beds and bodies, except that their power would strike you blind.”

“It’s not merely silence if one has been reduced to bones.”

“Gods are different.”

Later, the Dancing Mistress and I spoke quietly while taking turns climbing an ornate wall and dropping free.

“His god’s name is Blackblood,” she told me.

“Not someone you should want to invoke, I think.”

“I do not know. Septio has common cause with others who disagree with the Duke of Copper Downs. Common cause does not mean common interests. My folk are not usually of significance to the gods of men, nor they to us.”

There was small purpose in asking the Dancing Mistress of her gods. She said so little of her people that I did not even know their name for themselves. Any more than I knew hers. I understood, though, that they were quite concerned with paths and souls and some connection that ran between them one and all.

“I am human,” I said quietly.

“You are not of this place. Your home has its own gods and spirits. They should be of importance to you.”

“Tulpas,” I said, the word leaping to memory. “Like the soul of a place, or of an action. An idea, I suppose.”

“The tulpas concern you. This city belongs to Blackblood and his fellow sleepers.”

“I am of this city now.” That was a hateful thought, but true. “I can scarcely converse in the tongue of my birth, while in Petraean, I can speak learnedly on dozens of topics. The music of my people is unfamiliar to me, but I know what instruments they play here. Likewise the food, the clothing, the animals, the weapons. My roots may be in the fire-hot south, but Copper Downs has been grafted over me.”

“Perhaps,” she said after a little thought. “They have dozens of gods here in this city. Blackblood is only one. Each has their concerns, their purposes, their temples and priests.”

“It is like a market, then. Each stallholder calls his wares, and people pray where the fruit is freshest.”