Jay Lake - Green

Together we passed through streets vacated by the rain. Another difference: in Kalimpura the traffic barely changed for the weather, except in the face of the occasional full-on typhoon. Here we might almost have been alone in the city.

We passed close to the remains of the old wall with its cap of strange wooden structures, then into a neighborhood of wider streets that showed little sign of regular use. A district of wealth. Finally we found a street with a very familiar block of town houses. A bluestone wall rose on the other side. I drifted to a stop and stared upward.

“I should think we may use the gate now,” the Dancing Mistress said.

“Perhaps. That somehow seems less fitting.” I sprinted for the drainpipe at the far end of the block and swarmed up, much as I had on our night runs long ago. She was half a dozen heartbeats behind me.

On the broad walkway atop the outer wall, I looked down into the yard next to the Pomegranate Court. Whatever tree had stood there-I could not remember now-was gone. Even its base had been torn out. Weeds thrived in the jumbled pile of soil and stone where it had once grown.

Copper had been stripped from the roof beneath my feet. The exposed beams sagged, covered with rot and mold.

Something inside me fell. “This place is empty,” I whispered.

“Which is why we could have used the front gate.”

“Still…” I don’t know what I’d thought to find. Girls in captivity. Perfidy. Bandits living in the rooms of my youth. This was almost as bad as seeing Papa in his hut, Endurance dying in the mud beyond, while that desperate woman Shar looked on me as the thief who would steal her tiny, tiny future.

I had learned cooking and dance and the stories of old here. The swell of regret was surprising.

With dread I stalked down the wall toward the Pomegranate Court. I didn’t want to compass the strides. Rather I wanted to remain safely distant, closed off from whatever had happened there.

You left the place with a corpse cooling behind you, I thought. What do you expect now?

My home had burned. My tree was shattered, spread across the court to rot. The horse box still stood, fairly intact and apparently spared from the fire. The building below my feet was a total loss. There was no body in the yard, at least.

The Dancing Mistress folded me into her shoulder. I was the scourge of this city. I had come to defend, to attack, to right wrongs-not to shed tears for a hated youth from which I had struggled to escape every minute I’d spent here.

“Wh-what happened?”

She hugged me tight, then set me at arm’s length. “His men mutinied.” Her voice was quiet. “The day you met the Duke, once the spells were gone and the word flew across the city on wings of rumor, the guards slew the residential Mistresses. They raped the older girls to death. For their beauty, I suppose. A few of the younger girls escaped. A handful of the visiting Mistresses were trapped as well. Of them, I believe only Mistress Danae emerged alive.”

I was on my knees, heaving as I had done the night I killed Mistress Tirelle. Oh, Goddess. All I had meant to do was find my way out, not call down death on a house full of women. The girls were innocents, just as I had been. Even the Mistresses…

Goddess, have a mercy for their souls, if it is not too late, I prayed. These people do not follow the Wheel as they do in Your south, but there must be some balm for them.

The rain fell on me like a benediction. My hair was plastered to my head. It felt as if the Goddess’ hand were pressing down on me. I listened for a long time to see if She would guide my heart. She told me nothing that I wanted to hear. That silence meant more than words might have been able to say.

“It is my doing,” I finally said, wiping the bile from my mouth. My heart felt ground to shattered glass. “I wrought this.”

The Dancing Mistress knelt before me. “Green. We know now that the Duke created this disaster, in his guise as the Factor. He set men to guard these girls as if they were treasures out of legend, and treated the guardians harshly. The girls were doomed the moment he was gone. If someone else had done the deed, you would have met your end as well.”

“I did it,” I repeated stupidly. Killed them all, with a few words.

“They died.” Her voice was hard now. “With and of the Duke. Come now, we must move on. Nothing is for you here.”

She was right, though my legs protested. Whatever I might have found in the rooms of the Pomegranate Court had been wiped out by fire and weather since those first days of riot and blood. Perhaps that was just as well, I thought. The ghosts I could meet down there would be very unpleasant.

I was too upset to climb down the drain. The Dancing Mistress led me to the main gate and a little stair choked with leaves and debris but still passable. We descended into a narrow alley that must once have given access from the street to the blank-faced central tower.

Looking up, I tried to imagine the men who had lived there. How they had thought, felt, why they had taken the lives of so many girls and women with such pain. I knew what sort of men they were. Like the four who had tried to rob me of my purse today. Not the elegant guardians who’d ridden blindfolded with the Factor’s coach, but angry brutes who believed their strength made them right.

What did men like that think would happen to them as they grew old and frail? To their wives and children? Did the world only ever belong to the strong?

The tally of my dead had just more than doubled, with the women and girls of the Factor’s house to my account.

I realized the Dancing Mistress was plucking at my arm. “We go Below now,” she said. “It will be good to be out of the rain.”

“It is just water.” I tried to smile. “I’ve been told that washes away sin.”

“My people do not believe in sin.” Her voice was serious. “There is only circumstance, and choice. Green, you had neither circumstance nor choice when great harm befell this place.”

I nodded, because that was what she expected. As we turned toward the street, something caught my eye. I looked back toward the blank-walled central tower. Someone stood there, half-hidden in the pouring rain.

Tapping the Dancing Mistress’ arm in battle code for rapid reconnaissance, I sprinted toward the figure.

I heard her curse, and realized I’d used a signal of the Lily Blades. Which she would not know. Still, she would follow.

Whoever it was seemed to retreat as I approached. At the same time, they did not move at all. I burst through a swirling curtain of rain to find the Factor-the Duke-standing in the shattered doorway of the tower. The skin of his face was as gray as his rotten clothes. He appeared surprised to see me, then backed into the shadows with one hand raised before him.

He was gone.

The Dancing Mistress caught up to me. “What?”

Shivering, I found my voice. “The Factor was just here.” And why not? “He was dead long before I slipped your words within his ear, Mistress. Surely he still is.”

Like a god, I realized. Ghosts and gods were not so far apart. Especially as the greatest part of their power came from how much a person believed. As with tulpas?

“A glamer.” She touched my face, peering into my eyes in the graying light of the rainy afternoon.

Staring up at the blank bluestone rising between the closing walls of this gateway, I was inclined to agree with her.

Over the next few days, the Dancing Mistress and I visited different parts of the city. I wanted to see Copper Downs by daylight, without riot on my heels. I wanted to understand more of what there was here. At the same time, we set about purchasing various neccessities with her recently procured funds.