Jay Lake - Green

“You… do… not… judge,” said the Temple Mother. “And in your pride, you brought a dangerous foreigner to our city.”

On this, much of the matter hung. I turned to the Dancing Mistress. She was strangely relaxed, given the trouble unfolding around her. Surely the general meaning of the Temple Mother’s words were clear, even if their specifics were hidden in the sounds of an unknown tongue.

If the Dancing Mistress had been a woman of Kalimpura, she would have been safe from the Death Right. As a foreigner, she was at risk.

Another strategy occurred to me. I almost laughed. All was already lost, how could another throw of chance deepen the well? “She is not a dangerous foreigner, Mother. I have been told by Mother Vishtha and Mother Argai that this is an animal.” I cleared my throat and cast my voice as loudly as I could. “Animals are not subject to the Death Right.”

Someone yelped with startled laughter high in the gallery, but was quickly hushed.

“Be careful what you ask for,” the Temple Mother said in a conversational voice. “If she is an animal, we are free to chain her in the training rooms and spill her life for weapons practice.”

Like the pigs and dogs I had killed, and the bullock for whose life I had asked so recently. I felt slightly ill. The time for a simple plea for forgiveness was long past. Not that I’d known what to ask. Mercy, perhaps, but I’d had little mercy shown to me in this life, nor held much in my own heart.

I pitched my voice high again. “Am I wrong, Mother? To aid my oldest teacher in her time of need? In the cities of the Stone Coast, we do not have Mothers, but she was a Mistress to me. Much the same. I bared my blade for her just as I would have done for you.”

She gave me a long sad look. “ We do not have Mothers? Surely you meant to say they do not have Mothers.”

The gallery broke into a roar of voices. A drop of water hit my face, then another. I looked up, but there was only the towering point of the sanctuary’s distant roof.

“You do realize what this place looks like,” the Dancing Mistress muttered. I glanced at her as she made a vagina sign by nearly crossing the webs of her thumbs until a curved slit showed between them. Crude as that was, in that moment I was very glad that no one around us spoke Petraean. She’d intended the insult, and she’d intended it to be understood.

Nothing was above me to send the water down. Another spray of drops swirled around me on a wind. I recalled my dream, down in the cell below, of rain and lilies and the death of cities.

“I call…,”I shouted, then stopped. The gallery began to calm at the echo of my voice. I stared at the Temple Mother, but she was not focusing on me. From the fiery glare in her eyes, she had caught the gist of the Dancing Mistress’ remark. My last gambit had failed; now I would play for all. “Mother Umaavani,” I said, adding to the Dancing Mistress’ insult with deliberate disrespect of my own, “I call upon the mercy and wisdom of the Lily Goddess to pronounce upon my case. Lay your charges before Her, if She does not already know them, and let us see what She says of both me and my teacher.”

I heard another laugh in the gallery, this one loud and clear. The voice sounded like Mother Shesturi. There were some here who still cared for me.

“Very well.” The Temple Mother’s tones were ice now. “So it will be done. On your soul the burden rests.”

The gallery erupted again. Protests were shouted from higher up-by the outsiders, I was sure-but they were drowned out by the chatter of the women in the lower seats.

The Temple Mother pointed the Dancing Mistress and me to a low bench at the edge of the altar circle, just beneath the bottom tier of the gallery. It was normally used by aspirants awaiting their vows, or others sitting out a service until their special role was called upon.

This bench also had the advantage of being out of the line of fire of Mother Argai’s crossbow.

“What takes place here?” the Dancing Mistress asked in an urgent whisper.

“We are to be judged by the Goddess.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” I frowned at her. “I have made the best play I know for our lives and freedom. These women have no mercy, but the Goddess has been speaking to me. And Her power is very real. This is not Copper Downs. The divine does not drowse the years away here. There is risk, though. Most dicta from the Goddess are as She inspires the Temple Mother.”

“The Temple Mother says what she wishes, then credits your Goddess?” The sarcasm in her voice could have been scraped off with a spoon.

“Well, yes.” Put so baldly, the flaw in my plan was obvious enough. “Yet there are times when the Goddess speaks directly through her. Our gamble is that the Goddess will personally engage this matter, as she has been with me at times.”

“Why do you think that, Green?” I could hear the fear in her voice. The end might come at any moment, and the Dancing Mistress could not fight free of so many.

“Because I dreamed of rain, when we were below, and rain fell on me just now at the altar.”

She sighed. “She is not a rain goddess, is she?”

I shook my head. My Mistress’ life hung by far too thin a thread.

“Then let us hope your dreams are far more powerful than mine.”

As the altar was set up, a woman of the Bittern Court finally forced her way down to the sacred circle. Several Mothers from the Blades trailed protesting in her wake. The Temple Mother was having her sacred robes drawn over her by two aspirants.

When she turned to face the woman who approached in the harbor-gray silks of the Bittern Court, exasperation was plain upon the Temple Mother’s face.

“You cannot do this,” the Bittern Court woman said quietly. That there was no greeting or introduction told me they must have been speaking earlier, and were once more taking up the conversation in this awkward moment.

“I do not strut into your Great Room and tell the Prince of the Bittern Court how he may dispose ships in the harbor,” the Temple Mother said sharply. “It is not for you to come to my altar and tell me when and how to petition my Goddess.”

“We have an agreement.” Though she stood with her back to me, and might as well have pretended I was made of air and smoke, the Bittern Court woman’s wag of her chin to indicate me was clear enough from behind.

“We have an agreement to pursue the deaths today,” the Temple Mother said. “I am pursuing them. You will have your turn.”

“My turn is first.” There was venom in the other woman’s voice.

“Not when the issue is at prayer before the altar of my Goddess.” The Temple Mother’s tone matched the poison of the Bittern Court woman. “Now I suggest you go back to your seat before your daughters are made barren.”

When she turned, the woman finally looked at me. If a cast of the eyes could cut, I would have departed in a basket. I smiled broadly at her and nodded as though we were friends meeting in the market.

She left, shaking. I wondered if she would resume her seat in the gallery. More likely, there would be bullyboys in the pay of the Bittern Court lying for me, should I pass out the doors of the sanctuary with my freedom intact.

Though it would take a particularly foolish or ignorant street fighter to take on a Lily Blade. Any Blade had a number of very well armed friends.

Assuming, of course, that vowed or unvowed I was still a Blade when this proceeding ended.

One of the priestly aspirants began to light the thuribles hung around the altar. The look she shot me was full of worry. Interesting . I was still not convinced that my life was at stake, but the Dancing Mistress’ certainly was. We had upset whatever their plan was for this convocation.