Jay Lake - Green

“Hmm. Ask someone else, girlie mine. I’m out of the business of doing you.”

Oddly, I found myself blushing. “No, no. I want to go outside the temple.”

“Our Goddess’ house is full of doors.” She yawned. “No woman is trapped here, least of all you who walk the streets every day.”

“Without people knowing it’s me.”

She cocked one eye open. “People here, or people out there?”

“People out there, Mother. I don’t suppose anyone’s business is private inside the temple.”

Mother Argai laughed. “Take two hundred and more of the most ornery, independent women in this city and put them under one roof? With the Goddess in charge, lurking in every corner like a fart in the Courts? No one’s business will ever be private. One grows accustomed.”

Her casual words surprised me. Women in the Lily Temple tended to be comfortable with their divine patron, but I rarely heard someone speak so crudely of the Lily Goddess.

“As may be, Mother. Still, I would pass the dockside unnoticed to hear news of the world.”

“Missing your other home, eh?” She slopped through the water to draw me into a wet hug. “Then don’t go as a Blade, or as Green. Go as someone else.”

“Who?”

“Put on a veil. Or mask, girl. You are your face to everyone who sees you. Most notice nothing else about you. Hide your face, you’ve hidden yourself.”

I curled closer into her arms, my fingers seeking that spot on her hip. “I shall think on it.”

Some time had passed since I had sewn more than my bells. I found the workshops on the ground floor of the temple, where I begged supplies for what I had in mind. The Mothers there were willing to give me black-dyed muslin, a bit of leather, and the appropriate needles and thread. “Ain’t nobody ever taking a liking to our work,” a white-haired woman told me. “If you are not being at the altar or the justiciary, you are being unseen hereabouts.”

“My interest in cloth and clothing has been with me most of my life, Mother,” I said politely. “I wish to take it up again as I approach my vows.”

“Such a sweet girl. Come see me at the end of my day. I’ll find something special to wrap you in.”

“Of course, Mother.”

Up in the dormitory, I began sewing pants and a tunic, with a cape and mask to go with it. I based them on my recollection of an illustration of the Carmine Flaxweed from one of Mistress Danae’s storybooks. He was the youngest son of a noble house that had been overthrown in Houghharrow, and had fought in secret to restore the fortunes of his brothers and his lover. I figured the look of a theatrical Stone Coast would-be assassin might pass well enough in this city of endless festival and spectacle.

While I made no great secret of my project, I found I preferred to work on it alone. It took me several weeks. When I was done, I had flared leggings, a cinched tunic with long sleeves puffed at the wrist, a leather half mask, and a tatted veil. I was forced to buy a hat-making such a thing was not among my skills. Brims were not popular in Kalimpura, so that was round with a pointed leather crown.

People would see only the gleam of my eyes. All else was dark and dramatic. Exactly the sort of outfit no working troublemaker would be caught dead in. I was trying for a naive but possibly dangerous dilettante. If I could not be anonymous, I would be memorable for something other than who I really was.

Taking a small sack of paisas with me, I went down to the Avenue of Ships late one afternoon dressed in my handmade blacks. I’d received a few stares leaving the Temple of the Silver Lily. The little space that followed the Mothers of the temple through the crowds of Kalimpura didn’t attach to this costume. Rough customers stayed away from me regardless. I saw pickpockets turn aside, as well as a pair of footpads. Perhaps it was the set of my shoulders.

Along the Avenue of Ships, I drew no stares at all. Enough strange costumes came off the ships in harbor that I fit in as just another oddity. I walked the length of the street as the sun was setting. No one bothered me.

I stepped into a tavern when dark fell. The signboard was at a slight angle, one chain slipping down. It read FALLEN AXE, with a crude painting of a black hood with two eyeholes. Somehow, that drew me.

Within was a wide room with a low ceiling supported by rough-hewn tree trunks. Tables encircled each trunk. A trough of water stood against the far wall, chunks of ice floating in it.

Sailors in the dress of half a dozen nations clustered at those tables. Few enough Selistani were here, which suited me fine.

The barkeeper, a local man with no hair, nodded.

I wondered what to do next.

Money. Money. I had never really bought anything. I slipped half a dozen coppers onto the bar.

He nodded again, then laid out a bowl and poured something dark and foamy from a jug.

I sniffed it. Bitter, almost loamy, mixed with yeast. Ale? There had been wines back in the Pomegranate Court, and also at the table in the Lily Temple. Little Kareen had preferred a beer that smelled of swamp water, back when I’d worked for him outside the gates. I’d never tasted it myself.

Taking my bowl, I retreated to an empty table and listened. Sailors chattered in several languages I did not speak, though one table muttered along in thickly accented Petraean.

That was sufficient. I listened awhile longer to sounds that felt oddly like home to me, and drank from the edges of the thick unpleasant brew. I knew I looked like something from a festival dumb show. No one here cared, as half of them were equally out of place.

Eventually I headed back to the temple, smiling beneath my mask.

“Green.” Mother Vajpai stood at the door of the practice room where I fired arrows as fast as I could into a mudball target.

I turned with an arrow nocked.

She ignored the weapon to step toward me. “How are you, my girl?”

We hadn’t spoken much in the past few weeks. “Well enough, Mother.”

“You are growing closer to the need to take your vows.” She reached down and pushed the bow away, her fingers on the arrow shaft just behind the razored head.

I slipped the arrow loose and let the bowstring relax. “Yes, Mother.” I was growing ever further from any desire to take my vows. The Goddess had not spoken to me since Curry’s death. My quarrels with the older Blades were weakening the bond of sisterhood.

“We have let you be too long idle. Your… obsession… with costuming is unseemly.”

In her present mood, my temper would do me no good at all. “I would walk the city unnoticed, Mother. With my face, I cannot simply pull on some bright sari and pretend to be a merchant’s daughter. A costume draws attention to something I am not.” I smiled. “Mother Argai first gave me the idea.”

“I have spoken to Mother Argai concerning the wisdom of her suggestions.” She sighed. “You need to work more. Play less.”

I gestured with the bow. “I work all the time.”

Her voice was gentle. “To what end, Green? We serve the Goddess here. You have not recovered your sense of purpose since reaching your final Petal.”

“To whatever end seems best to me. The Goddess moves us all, you say. Perhaps She moves me in a direction you cannot see.”

“As may be.” Mother Vajpai’s tone was bare steel. “For now, you run with the Blades. I’m assigning you to Mother Shesturi. Her handle patrols the city six days a week, on whatever schedule she chooses to set.”

A handle, of course, was a group of Blades.

“I am not yet sworn.”

“You will be soon.”

We shall see, I thought. “What of my dockside forays?”

Long silence. Finally she said, “I will not forbid you those. The Lily Goddess does not hold Her followers prisoner within these walls.”