Jay Lake - Green

My tears continued to flow. “That cannot be right.”

“Many things are not right. You can dedicate yourself to repairing some wrongs, but not even the titanics could have repaired all the ills of the world. In their time, they sundered, and from them have splintered all the folk of the world. We each carry a measure of grace, and we each carry a measure of evil. There is never enough grace to banish the evil, and there is never enough evil to smother the grace.”

“So no one does anything.” My heart was leaden. My throat had closed. The very words were bitter in my mouth.

“People do what they can.” Her hand on my shoulder squeezed tight. “When you strode into the Ducal Palace, you threw down more evil than a generation of child-sellers could possibly wreak.”

“That was not my evil.” I felt very small in my shame and anger. “It belonged to your people, and to Copper Downs.”

“No, it was not your evil, yet you fixed what you were able to.” Her smile was tender by the rising moon.

“Then why have you come to call me back?”

“I have already told you. More evil is afoot. Many of us believe your place in the breaking of the old order gives you power in the new.”

“It isn’t power I want.”

She knelt. “You could still leave this ship and take foot back to your temple. When their anger has banked to coals, they might even take you in once more. That choice is yours. But I beg you to come and help, for my sake. For the city’s sake.”

“Get up, get up.” I flushed with embarrassment now. Goddess only knew what the tillerman thought. “The Goddess has sent me. I am going.”

“When you released the spells upon the Duke,” the Dancing Mistress said late the next afternoon as a pot of fish soup bubbled between us, “what did you see and feel? Where did this take place?”

“W-we were in a counting room.” The memory was intense and difficult to frame into words, for then I had not yet taken up this habit of writing my story behind me. “There was no throne-it was not an audience chamber, but rather a place where men would meet to talk over numbers until their arguments turned to agreement. He toyed with me awhile, then I jumped at him and spoke the words you gave me.” I paused for a deep breath of air, which despite the baking sun tasted almost chill for a moment. “Then he was gone.”

“I know he is gone. His power is not.”

“It must be. That might swirled around me like a storm of dust and air, and plucked at me with a thousand small fingers. Then his power wailed away, taking him with it.”

“We did not study our war so well.” The Dancing Mistress’ voice was sad and slow. “People came as claimants to a vacant throne. What they sought was not his Ducal coronet, but the power that hung like a pall over Copper Downs. I was forced to deal with one of these shamans myself.” Her eyes were haunted a moment. “At great cost.”

“I am sorry,” I said.

“No, no. It must be done. In the Duke’s absence since, the gods have stirred from their long silence. At least one has been slain out of hand-”

“Slain!?” I paused. “I am sorry for the interruption, Mistress, but gods are not meant to be killed.”

“They certainly do not think so.” Her smile was crooked. “It is something that can be done. With the right preparation and the right powers.”

“Small wonder the Lily Goddess fears,” I said. “If even that idea crosses the Storm Sea, She is at risk. Let alone someone with the sort of weapon that can do the job.”

“Oh, it is far more complex than possessing a mere weapon.” The Dancing Mistress frowned. “I do not have the secret of it myself, and wish nothing to do with such knowledge, but the Interim Council had discussed it more than once.”

“Interim Council?” The sound of that title bothered me. I had read enough history to know better.

“When the Duke fell,” she said heavily, “Federo stood forward, with a few of the great trading factors. Our little plan was secret enough, but general discontent was a club sport in Copper Downs under the Duke. It was not hard to find people who thought they knew better.”

“I suppose after four hundred years, there was no heir to come forward.”

“No. Not a trace of the old ruling house. The Duke had been a collateral cousin, but he’d killed them all long before they could die of old age. To keep there from being a claim. That was part of his own grip on power.”

“Your council rules the city now?” I was fascinated at the idea of the Dancing Mistress-a quiet woman who walked in shadow-sitting at the table of government.

“To some degree. The gods have bestirred themselves after long silence, the priests bicker, and our sister states along the Stone Coast have asserted all manner of baroque rights and interests.”

“Were you sent on this errand to get you out of the city?” I asked her gently.

“I claimed this mission for my own.” She smiled again, this time with genuine affection. “The council would have sent an embassy with edicts to claim you, if you yet lived. We had learned from the captain of Southern Escape where you went, and were set to petition the Prince of the City to proclaim you free and seek you out.”

That made me laugh. “The Prince of the City? He is a fop with less power than a decently successful chandler. He sits on a throne of lapis and silver to impress foreigners, and spends his time seducing their wives.”

“This is not so clear from Copper Downs,” she said with asperity.

“No. Petraeans see a title and think it makes the man.”

She returned my laugh. “You have become one of your country.”

“No more than you are.”

“No, I suppose not.” With a gathering of breath, the Dancing Mistress resumed her tale. “A claim has been made upon the Ducal throne. A threat, really. A bandit chieftain in the Blue Mountains campaigns ever closer to the city. His name is Choybalsan. He has taken up some of this old magic of my people, and wiped out half a dozen prides of us when we tried to fight him.”

“Oh…” I stepped around the fire and reached for her hand. “I am very sorry. So many soulpaths clipped to nothing.”

“To be sure.” She pulled away from me to stir the pot awhile. Then: “We are not numerous now. We never were, in truth. It would not take much more to drive my people from the world as anything but a memory.”

I sat with her in silence, until the Dancing Mistress was ready to resume the tale. Finally, she was. “Choybalsan is as deadly to my race as a fire to a forest. He has upset the gods as well. He seems likely to rise on the back of this freed magic to oppose them.”

“Did he kill the god who was slain?”

“Goddess. Marya, who watched over women’s desires. No, not him. We are not sure who did the deed-agents of the Saffron Tower acting in secret, or some darker force. That is what most disturbs the priests of Copper Downs.”

I could imagine.

“So,” she went on, “we come to you. The only person alive besides Choybalsan who has controlled that magic he now rides.”

Recoiling with horror, I nearly shouted, “I did not control it!” The tillerman Chowdry looked up to see what we were about with our arguing.

The Dancing Mistress shook her head. “Oh, surely you did, when you unbound the spells from the Duke.”

This so distressed me that I went and exercised myself with a boat hook for a very long time, until the captain came to beg me to stop destroying the rail.

We avoided each other most of that day, but the sense of the Dancing Mistress’ story was clear enough. I had touched it last before this Choybalsan. If anyone could turn him, it might be me.

Such reasoning smacked of idiotic desperation. The Duke had spent four centuries suppressing all other powers in his demesne. He’d even cowed the gods to silence. Who else could rise up now to defend Copper Downs?