Jay Lake - Green

That Kalimpura had no militia-and no particular interest in maintenance of the public order as the Stone Coast understood the idea-was not something that every traveler knew in the moment of confronting a frightened, crying child. Some of the little ones in the Beggar Caste were so good that I’d seen the Broken Wing run through to the payoff even when the touch had spotted the initial dive.

The Dancing Mistress made the mistake of turning and kneeling to see what she had done. I pushed forward through the crowd, growling from behind my mask, just as a cutpurse plucked at the satchel on her arm. She whirled, and blood spattered.

The claws were out.

Drawing my pigsticker, I ran toward her. I had to stop her before she killed one of these beggars, or the other citizens stepping into the fray like the fools that they were.

If they lost their lives on my blade, it would be a matter for negotiation. If they lost their lives at her hands…

There were too many backs in the way, too many bobbing heads. I scrambled up a big man’s shoulders as he cursed me. In that moment, I had forgotten that I was masked and in black. No one but me knew I was a Blade.

“Out, away,” I roared, my voice screeching far too high to gain their attention. I jumped past my perch and onto a woman, knocking her down and me with her. Her neighbor in the crowd saw my knife and wiggled away as I regained my feet.

The Dancing Mistress was clinging to one of the Skull Horse’s legs, swinging a stick she had not been carrying moments before. I thanked the Goddess and the tulpas of my lost home that she hadn’t snatched a blade. Still, there was blood and people screaming for more blood. The Death Right could yet be at issue.

With fists and elbows, I fought through to her. A pair of toughs from the Street Guild were closing on the Dancing Mistress. I popped one of them behind the ear with a stiff-fingered jab. He stumbled backwards, howling. She tried to kick the other away, but caught him in the throat and soft under-part of the jaw with her foot claws.

His skin tore open in an impressive spray of blood. His fellow grabbed at me. I turned, blocked a stab from a dagger, then drove my own knife into his gut. The tough went down for good that time, vomiting blood and bile. The other staggered as people around us panicked. Those in the front tried to push backwards while those behind tried to push forward.

I grabbed at her wrist and called out in Petraean, “With me, with me.”

Though there was the light of battle in her eyes, the Dancing Mistress responded to the words. She jumped down onto the two bodies, one still moving and groaning, and shouted,“Where?”

Pointing ahead, I charged with elbows and knife butt flying. People moved quickly enough.

She followed.

Our saving grace would be that the street was so crowded with festival traffic. The entire screaming mess of the riot had probably gone unnoticed twenty paces away. I shoved and prayed, counting on the Dancing Mistress to remain close on my heels.

What I didn’t count on was the mass of children following us, shrieking about violence and the Death Right. I was certain that the Street Guild man whom I’d stabbed was dead. The other likely so, and him by the Dancing Mistress’ hand.

I was protected from the Death Right, but she was not. If a child with any family of substance had been hurt as well, her fate was probably sealed.

Realizing what I was thinking, I nearly dropped to my knees in disgust. Children. Whom I’d spent so much time claiming to worry about and fear for. How easy it was to see them as an obstacle, an inconvenience, when they were not of my own accounting.

Ahead of us, a writhing line of coal demons chased a fire snake. I turned with bared blade and shifted the Dancing Mistress past me. I showed the mob of children the bloody edge. “Get away from the docks,” I screamed at them in Seliu, “before any more of the child-takers come!”

That was a stupid lie, but it gave them pause. A moment was all I needed. “Keep close!” I shouted in Petraean. The snake dodged and twisted right before us in a clash of gongs, spewing nose-searing red and orange vapors from censers dangling below his frills. Underneath, a line of sweating, nearly naked men worked poles and spun back and forth on their heels. They were a storm of legs and wood, with the crowd pressed skin-close on the other side.

This was the woman who’d taught me how to move. I moved. With a quick tumble and a screamed apology, I slipped between two of the snake dancers. The Dancing Mistress was so close behind me that she must have slipped between the next two. I heard an angry shout, but already a twelve-foot coal demon roared and vomited black smoke amid the crashing of his gongs.

Shoulder first, I pressed into the next part of the crowd. These people were a shift from one of the green-wallah houses, for the group of them smelled of garlic and onions. Not so much different from lily bulbs, I thought, and wondered if the Goddess had sent them.

I wasn’t concerned now about whether the Dancing Mistress could follow me. She still was my superior in the art of swift, graceful economy of motion. I was worried that some ripple of outrage would pursue us both, even through the snake. The street was a peculiar thing, and rumor traveled by strange paths.

While I could slip away easily enough, it would be impossible to deny her part in the fighting.

Amid a hail of firecrackers, with their red-and-gold flurry of shredded paper and stink of pouther, we slid into an alleyway. Though the din was magnified here by the confined space between the walls, there was no one with us.

I stepped back into the shadows and looked up as she loomed behind me. “My thanks, stranger,” she began, but I put up my hand for silence.

This had to be the Ragisthuri Ice and Fuel bunker house on my left, and the Wheelwright’s Guild Storehouse on my right. A small haven was located in a shack atop the bunker.

“Up,” I said, and began climbing the drainpipe.

Once again, I did not need to look to see if she followed.

She scrambled up behind me, then across the roof toward the little shack. I opened the ill-fitting door. No locks on this small haven. Inside was a collection of ladders and rags and buckets-stuff too difficult or worthless to bother bringing up and down for use whenever the roof needed cleaning or maintenance. Many of our small havens were as anonymous as this.

The junk was out in four armloads. I opened a folded piece of canvas, then reached behind a loose board to find a pouch that would contain needles and thread and a few other healing essentials. There was also a clay water jar. The place reeked of old paint and moldy cloth, but it was quiet and hidden.

The Dancing Mistress stepped inside with me. Together we filled the space. Small havens were for the most part, well, small. They were intended for one Blade to go to ground until help could arrive.

I had just betrayed the location of this small haven to a foreigner. Not to mention their very existence.

Putting that aside, I touched my face. After all our dodging and leaping, the mask was still on. My blood pounded in my ears, and I found I was trembling. I took a deep breath and tried to relax. “You nearly forfeited your life down there, Northerner,” I told her.

“My thanks again, sir.” I realized her breathing was quite ragged. “That was very poorly played on my part.”

She’d never spoken much of her people, but I knew they came from woodlands high in the mountains. Five was a crowd and ten a mob. I remembered how Kalimpura seemed to me when I first came, and I had not arrived during a festival. “You’ve never seen so many people in one place in your life.”

I was not quite ready to reveal myself, not until I understood what it was she did here. The Lily Goddess had not pulled this woman all the way across the Storm Sea merely for my bedevilment. Something else was afoot.