Jay Lake - Green

I tore a cloak from one of the dead men and began to bind Mother Argai’s shoulder. Mother Shig sprinted away at a word from Mother Shesturi.

In this city, even the cutpurses would stop to aid a fallen Blade. Unless she was alone and there was no chance of being caught. Now that the fighting was done, people were drifting into the park. Mother Shesturi deputized half a dozen good-sized men to stand on the necks of the survivors.

Then I realized I was hurt, too. Blood was spattered all down my left sleeve. That side was growing numb.

Mother Gita squatted down next to me and touched the wound on my upper arm with the fingers of her good hand. I nearly passed out from the pain. “Good work,” she said, then began packing dirt into my wound.

Dirt? I thought.

The world whirled in darkness.

“We run as we do so no one will know where to find us,” said Mother Shesturi to me three days later.

“That hardly seems effective,” I mumbled.

“If we are nowhere, we are everywhere. You, Green, were everywhere that night.”

“Wh-who were they?”

“The men we killed?” Her smile was grim. “No one. Nothing. Men bent on stealing something that didn’t belong to them. We found them on accident.”

“Th-then why do we care?”

Mother Shesturi took my hand. “What happens to Kalimpura happens to the Lily Goddess. When the city suffers, She suffers. When we defend everyone, we defend ourselves.”

“We killed a dozen men in the park.” My stomach flipped.

“So we did.” Her tone was even.

The wounded had not survived. Should I sorrow? “Please,” I said. “I would like a dozen black candles, and a dozen white candles. Matches. And if you know, their names.”

“This is not our way.”

“It is my way,” I insisted, feeling my temper bubble.

Eventually she said, “Fair enough.”

I waited for my candles and considered the nature of souls. The air circled in the healing room as if the Goddess had something to say. I glared at Her, wherever She was. “I will be going down to the docks. I wish to hear more of Copper Downs. If they are still buying children, I will know of it.”

No answer came but silence.

It took ten aching days for the slash through my left biceps to heal well enough that I could pull weight with that arm again. The candles had brought me neither peace nor release, but still I felt better for them. I sat in on training with the younger Blade aspirants. The kitchens took more of my time, as I dictated recipes and tasted new experiments in their version of northern cooking. “Bland,” Mother Cook said of a lamb stew, “but we can build on it.” They still liked my baking best.

I also haunted the docks every day in my hand-sewn costume. The leather mask was a bit theatrical, but no one ever saw the slashes on my face, and it diverted attention from the Petraean accent I could never quite shake off.

Drinking among the tars required money. While the Blades drew no salary, let alone their aspirants, the Temple of the Silver Lily was more than wealthy. Since my part in the stand beneath the mango trees, the women of Mother Shesturi’s handle had made it known that my wishes were theirs. No one said anything more about my choice of clothing.

The Fallen Axe quickly became familiar to me. I spent time in winesinks with names like Risthra’s Nipple, Three Bollards, and The Bunghole. It was the barkeep at the Fallen Axe who named me, early in my adventures.

I walked in for the third day in a row, carrying a small purse of copper paisas and a few silver ones. “Oi,” he said. “If it ain’t the Neckbreaker back again. You must be liking of our brew.”

“Deep stuff, my friend.” I let the pain in my arm burr my voice. Likely enough they thought me some younger son of nobility skylarking about in a festival getup.

“I am giving you the better cask today,” he whispered so loudly, the rats in the alley behind the building probably heard. “On account of you almost being a regular customer and all.”

“Mmm.” I made it a point never to thank people when dressed in my blacks.

His barmaid smiled as she brought me a bowl. Even with her missing teeth and the sores at the corner of her mouth, I could see the beauty she would have been. “Here is being your brew now, Neckbreaker.” Her wink was meant to be flirtatious.

If I were in fact the younger son of a great house here in the city, I would be quite a catch. An hour’s dalliance could bring her more reward than months of working drudge at these tables.

I smiled at her, knowing that she would glimpse the crinkle in my eyes.

The stuff was somewhat less foul than his earlier bowls. It slipped up easily enough beneath the edge of my veil. I sat and listened.

Over time, since I had begun haunting the docks, I realized just how many tongues came to this port. Seliu was always spoken to some degree-it was the local language of coin.

Of course, I listened for Petraean. I spoke it better than Seliu, even now, and no one around me would think it my language to look at me. Hanchu I could follow a little bit, and I quickly came to recognize the quick, pattering consonants of Smagadine. There were half a dozen more languages I heard almost every day, and a dozen more than that passed in a given week.

I would never know them all.

Seliu and Petraean were the two most important. Selistan and the Stone Coast stood at each end of the child trade, at least as it had taken me. I had promised myself to stop that somehow, someday.

Yet a ship might have sailors from anywhere within ten thousand leagues of whatever water it sailed upon. Given that the plate of the world was wider than anyone had ever compassed, it followed that the tongues were just as widely scattered. Presuming that the gods had not played some joke and fastened the ends of all things together in a great circle, of course.

We often drilled at our violence on dogs, in the practice room with the channels in the floor and the good drains. Strays were like sand on a beach in Kalimpura. The larger ones took wounds much as people did. Pigs were better for close work, due to similarities that their arrangement of skin and organs held with those of humans. In sparring with spear and short knife, though, I became convinced that I wished to best a bullock.

“You are cracked,” Mother Adhiti told me one day after a grueling session. We’d bruised each other blue and green, like so many orchids tattooed upon our bodies.

“No, no, don’t you see? A bullock would draw out all our strength.” I could see it as a certain man, implacable, powerful, and just as subject to death as any dumb animal.

She looked at me strangely. Even at my current growth, the woman outweighed me twice over and more. “A bullock in a small room like this would draw out all my fear. You would be trampled like plum paste beneath a child’s feet.”

“Then we can fight it at a festival. Make a show of things.” I had not set to with a blade in earnest since the night we’d fought under the mangoes, though months had passed. There would be no more black work until I had sworn my final vows-that was sound-enough policy. Besides, at the moment, I was neither well liked nor widely trusted outside my own handle.

Mother Adhiti mopped her neck. “The temple does not concern itself so much with that sort of spectacle, as you well know, Green. Like all sharp weapons, the Lily Blades are most effective when still in the scabbard.”

“Sheathed, we must always be sheathed.” I flexed my knuckles, which ached deliciously.

“If you want to fight so much, go pick trouble down at those docks you seem to love.” Now she was grumpy. “Forget this foolishness with a bullock. No one would let you fight one even if it was our way. You are the youngest and smallest of the Blades.”