Jay Lake - Green

Not just repaired, but well repaired. Even my boots had been worked on. New soles and heels replaced what had been worn by fighting, fire, and too much time in water. I ran my fingers over the tightly sewn rents in the trousers, then looked back at Corinthia Anastasia’s mother. “My thanks to whoever did this work.”

“There are no names here.”

Except the child, but there you were. “I understand. May I stay until the morning?”

Now something in her voice opened up again. “Of course, my girl. We will eat well tonight. A feast to send you off.”

“I would prepare it for you, if you’d like.” Suddenly I found myself shy.

She laughed. “Any woman of the Factor’s courts can cook for kings and princes. Here I’ve been giving you corn soup and boiled grouse. I would be honored if you did so.”

The afternoon passed into evening as we worked together. The cottage had no separate kitchen, just the fireplace with its pot hooks, and a little wrought-iron rack where I might set a bread pan. The pantry was better than I might have expected, especially among the spices. We sent Corinthia Anastasia out half a dozen times. She grew more willing as the scents of cookery multiplied.

Eventually I produced a braised rabbit in apples, baked into a butter crust. We had little nubbins of late lettuce from the garden, along with honeyed carrots and a boiled wine that I had carefully spiced by hand. I would have prepared our meal in the Selistani manner, but she had no spices for that, nor the right foodstuffs. Even so, I could have dined on the smells alone.

I was happy, in a simple, satisfied way. If I could ever find the knack of not killing people, I realized I might like to be a cook. Open a little cafe in Copper Downs to serve Selistani food, or even better, a little cafe in Kalimpura to serve northern food. That scrap of dream distressed me, so I folded it away for another time.

Evening carried a chill. The woman and I went outside anyway, and shared a bench with blankets wrapped around us. Her thigh was pressed against mine for the warmth. Rested and well-fed, it was easy to imagine us as friends. Or lovers. I felt so safe that I did not even know where my knife was. In a sense, that relieved me.

Of course, it also worried me.

“I leave tomorrow,” I told her.

“Be well on the road.”

Somehow I had expected a protest. “Thank you for sheltering me.”

“I am not ignorant of your identity.” She paused, evidently choosing her words with care. “There are… versions… of your tale even in these hills. Especially in these hills.” She gave me a long, slow look. “Do you know where you are?”

“No.”

“Back when Copper Downs was a kingdom, before the Amphora Wars threw down the crowns of the Stone Coast, it was the custom of the city to bury the most important dead well away from the walls. I suppose they sought peace for their departed.”

The Amphora Wars? How far into the past was she looking? I had not read of that conflict. The Ducal coronet reached back at least a thousand years, which meant any kingdom lay deeper in time than that. Thinking of the Factor, I said, “It also cut down on the ghosts in town, I imagine.”

“You would not be wrong. There are long neglected tombs among these hills. Their inhabitants have not forgotten themselves, nor their city.”

“You are a necromancer?”

“No, no.” She smiled. “I speak with the dead-I do not summon them or bind them to my will. A necrolocutor, I suppose.”

“With all that ancient wisdom, you live in a one-room cottage among the apples.”

Snorting, she said, “Why do people always suppose the dead to be so wise, when the living are so foolish?”

I thought about that. Surely the wisdom of the ancestors was a truism. “I had assumed the grave taught patience, and lent perspective, if nothing else. For those who did not pass on along the Wheel, or wherever their gods sent them.”

“Mostly it makes them angry.”

“There are many I have sped out of this life. I… I cannot count the number anymore.” I was thinking of the thieves Mother Shesturi’s handle slew in the park. “If they are all angry at me, I must trail such distemper like a shooting star.”

“You are a weapon, my girl. Made so by the hands of others. Wielded by your own will now.”

“Mostly,” I told her. “Mostly.”

“You have a patron, yes? Patroness?”

“I do,” I admitted.

“Yet your hand is not guided, your will is not bent. Was this true in the courts of the Factor?”

“Not at all. Nearly every moment was driven for me, and I in turn driven before the passing hours. I ran a race toward womanhood.” I thought of Mistress Tirelle. The snap of her neck echoed still in my ears, when I let myself hear it. “I first killed there within the bluestone walls. Many more died because of me.” A sob I had not known was coming escaped from me, though I tried hard to swallow it at the last second.

She put an arm across my shoulders and hugged me close beneath the blanket. “I told you, I have known who you were since the first. You are well thought of among the tombs of old, at least by those ghosts with any sense of the world as it is today.”

“For sending so many to their deaths?”

“The city has its patrons. Its parents. Like any child, it journeys forward through time as they fall behind. You freed it.”

“For Choybalsan,” I said bitterly, hating the salt tears in my voice.

“Another step in the journey.”

“I’m tired of killing people.” Curled closer to her, I shuddered with a swallowed sob. “I’m tired of freeing cities.”

“You want to go home?”

“Yes!” I shrieked at that, and cried into her shoulder for a while. When I finally found my voice, I stammered, breath heaving, “I have no home.”

“Everyone comes home to the grave.” She stroked my hair. “The lucky ones come home to their hearts while they still can.”

I wept awhile longer. When I sat up again and found my eyes not so overwhelmed by tears, I asked her the question that had been hanging behind my tongue. “Do you know any who survived the fall of the Factor’s house? Any g-girls? Or Mistresses?”

She gave me a long steady look. I could see the questions in her own eyes. Finally: “One called Danae lives among the tombs high in the hills. She is almost a shade herself, but has not yet given up to lie beneath the flowers.”

“Mistress Danae?” Words leapt in my throat, to go see her, to speak to her, to ask after my younger self, but I held them. Something very wary was in this woman’s tone.

“Just Danae, I think. It took her a season to trust me within a stone’s throw. Even now we do not talk so much.” Sighing, she continued, “I bring her food and blankets, and sometimes tell her of high places where she might find shelter or needful things. She has been used past the point of shattering her spirit.”

“I would wish her well, but I will not disturb her peace.”

“Peace it is. Strange and fragile, but something called her here. I will not let her be unseated from this resting place.”

“Thank you.” I leaned over to kiss her cheek. I knew from that brief taste of her that in a different time, this woman and I might have been great lovers and friends.

Morning brought the gift of a new veil. My old one was long gone.

“How did you know?” I asked with delight. This was a metal mesh, faced with black silk.

The woman smiled. “No one betrayed you, but the tombs have been watching.”

I turned it back and forth, looking at the fine steel links, marveling at how light it was. “This is a grave good?”

“Yes. Freely given.”

I boggled slightly at the dead making an offering, but was pleased enough. “Now if only I had a blade.”