Kalimpura (Green Universe) (3 page)

Ilona’s eyes glittered with unshed tears as she walked away. Carefully I put the babies down in their cradles, then took up my knives and went out into the cold. My body might not be quite sufficiently healed for the work of readiness, but I could not deny it.

Besides, I needed to do something with my rage before someone else came along and stumbled upon the brunt of it.

*   *   *

I chopped again at the wooden man I had lashed together from beams and stakes. Chips arced away from me into the weeds. This was wrong of me—bad for my blades, bad for my own form, wasteful of the wood—but I needed to cut, and cut deep.

Everything
ached, not just my breasts and loins. Muscles in my back and legs screamed their protest after long disuse. My arms burned with the exertion. My eyes burned with tears.

Trapped
. So damned trapped. I had only one course open to me, and it was impossible for me to follow.
How
could I take the babies across the Storm Sea?
How
could I leave them behind?

Another flurry of blades and blows, and stinging pain to my wrists as metal bit wood. I imagined Surali’s face before me, cheekbones crushed under my assault, eyes bleeding, lips spread wide by the slash of my knives. The architect of all my troubles, she was a human woman as confounding to me as any god had managed to be.

I drove my long knife into the target so hard the blade sang as if it would break. A rope snapped, bits of hemp flying off in the air as the wooden man collapsed. Embedded, my blade went with it. I would deserve the trouble it would cause me if I’d broken the weapon.

“Feel better?”

Whirling, I confronted Mother Argai. She’d spoken in Seliu. Even after months here in Copper Downs, her Petraean vocabulary was largely limited to coinage, drinks, and cursing.

“What?”
I demanded, feeling as clumsy with my words as I had been with my weapons.

There was no watching crowd. My bursts of rage and energy were well known now. Even Lucia had not followed me out past the temple foundations to watch me scramble among the weeds and piled dirt. Only Mother Argai, her face quirked into a curious expression.

“What, indeed,” she said softly. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. Now I was ashamed of my mood. Anger was not power. It was just anger. A disease of the soul, if one indulged the emotion overmuch.

Mother Argai sat on my broken pile of wood. “What don’t you know? What it is you should be doing?”

“Oh, I know that. We return to Kalimpura.”

“When?”

“As soon as…” As soon as what? When the babies were ready? When I was ready? My voice was small and shamed as I finished my thought. “As soon as I am able.”

“Breaking weapons does not increase the likelihood of you being able.” Her tone was mild, but I could hear the scorn as she tugged my long knife free of a shattered baulk of timber and flipped it toward me.

That was an old Blade teaching trick. Throw a weapon at a student and see what they did. Most people needed stitches only once or twice.

Not me. I’d never been cut that way. I snatched the spinning knife out of the air, whipped it against my forearm to sight down the edge, then sheathed it. “A dull blade.”

“And you?”

A dulled Lily Blade, of course. I’d stepped right into that bit of rhetorical trickery. “We are going,” I told her. “As soon as I can arrange passage. Will you inform Mother Vajpai?”

I had missed being so decisive. This was as if I’d woken up from a longer sleep than was reasonable.

“If you wish,” Mother Argai said quietly. “She has gone back to rest.” The amputation of Mother Vajpai’s toes at Surali’s orders was one of the many sins I held higher than the value of that wretched woman’s life. “What of your friends and enemies here?”

“For the most part, they are the same people.” I snorted. “Still, you have the right of it. I must make my farewells.” And parting bargains, it would seem.

That appeared to satisfy Mother Argai. “I will pass the word. The women of the Bustle Street Lazaret will wish to know.”

“I shall call there in the next day or so.” My arms were flaccid and my body ached, but I felt like
me
for the first time in months.

“Farewell,” she said in passable Petraean, and walked away.

Stumbling toward my own tent, I called for Lucia to help me bathe and rub liniment into my back and legs. And other things besides, no doubt, once we were snugged together and touching.

Of course, I had not reckoned on the babies crying and Federo learning a new trick of vomiting into his cradle while lying down. Neither bath nor gentle caress was mine that night.

*   *   *

The next day after having fed my children, I passed over breakfast and forced myself into my leathers for the first time since my pregnancy. They stank a bit of molder and old sweat. Sunlight and use would do them good. Not to mention the good such exposure would do for me.

It was time to go calling, remind Copper Downs who I was, and make my farewells to those who might care to hear them. I would start with the hardest parting of all—the god Blackblood, whose boy-priest had fathered my children, and who had prophesied to claim my son. Threatened to do so, speaking more accurately.

Ilona had goat’s milk for the children and Lucia to argue with. I tucked spare rags into my sleeve to clean myself if my milk ran hard while I was away, and headed into the streets outside the temple walls.

At the time, I had not left Endurance’s compound in almost two months, I realized. To simply feel cobbles beneath my feet was such a privilege. It was a delight to be passed in the street by total strangers. Horses! Wind! The rising scents of the slowly warming weather were welcome, as evidence of the wider world.

My children I already loved foolishly, in fact beyond reason, but these first few hours of escape since their birth were a blessing unlooked for. I thanked Endurance, which seemed safe enough, and proceeded happily upon my errands.

The Temple District was showing the first signs of spring. The trees that struggled in the great iron pots lining the Street of Horizons were putting out their first buds of leaf and flower. Vendors hawking food from carts and trays seemed to have improved their wares. People walking along the street smiled, or so I thought.

Life was better.

I paused in front of Blackblood’s temple. I had done murder here twice, or near as made no difference. First back in the dark days at the end of Federo’s reign as a god, I’d caused the then-priests of Blackblood to be locked within alongside Skinless, their patron’s fearsome avatar. Vengeance was exacted for their Pater Primus’ scheming treachery. The dents and warps in the great black iron doors were mute testimony to that day’s sorry massacre.

Later, I’d fought the twins Iso and Osi, agents of the Saffron Tower, on Blackblood’s front steps. They’d died a death of women. Whatever might have become of their souls afterwards, I could only hope and pray that they writhed in the unshriven torment foretold by their all too peculiar and misogynistic faith.

Staring at the steps, I wondered if their blood still stained the ancient, foot-polished marble. Though the steps were so worn and misused that any of a dozen shadows, stains, and discolorations could have marked the end of those wretched priests.

What was left of all my misadventures in this city besides the broken doors? I believed then that when I sailed away sometime in the few days hence that I would not be coming back. Too many complications here. Too many deaths.

And truthfully, Selistan was the home of my heart. My first memories were there. I harbored ambitions that my last would someday be as well.

I trudged up to the doors. They were tall, almost twice my height, and proportioned strangely to make the entrance seem narrow even to a large person approaching.

So much of religion was about architecture, I mused. Even the meanest godling has a shrine somewhere. The first impulse of followers seems to be to build.

Today I was not a follower, nor a supplicant of this peculiar god of men and their pain. I was Green, come to bid my farewells to one who had touched my life with long, strange fingers. My own fingers, short and narrow and oh-so-dark in this land of the pale-skinned, tugged at the doors to pull them open.

*   *   *

Within stank of old sacrifice and unwashed linens. A male smell. No woman’s temple ever held such an odor. I looked around the familiar sanctuary. One time I’d descended from the clerestory, and nearly been killed for my trouble. On another visit, I’d entered this place through the tunnels from Below, and nearly been made pregnant for my trouble. Front doors were not so easy for me, it seemed.

Narrow, dark pillars lined the dusty shadowed space like a rank of starveling caryatids. Moth-worn banners depended from the upper reaches, faded bands as bars sinister upon them where the fugitive light of day touched briefly with each passage of the suns. A reservoir of mercury stretched ahead of me in the middle—the Pater Primus’ scrying pool, where I had never seen anything but uneasy, muckled reflections.

Notable in their absence were the god’s priests, who might presumably be found in this house of their holy. I had never seen worshippers here, and Blackblood did not have a flock as such. This temple served other needs than the usual. He favored supplicants over congregants. Every wounded man or dying boy was his. That much was obvious from the lack of benches or kneeling bolsters or, really, anything at all in this hall.

Once again, the architecture of the spirit predominated.

I did not bother to call out. Instead, I walked purposefully toward the deeper shadows at the rear. Beyond was the fane itself, the altar where sacrifices were taken up or turned back into the world. From there the labyrinthine lower levels opened as well. Skinless, whom I counted as a friend of sorts, could likely be found in those depths. And the god himself, whom I had seen in two aspects thus far in my life.

The mercury pond rippled as I passed it. I glanced down only to falter in my pace as I saw for the first time ever a vision there. Flames heaved in a burning sea, and eyeless children cried out as their blank faces beseeched me. My gut lurched in a momentary twist of terror and I ran deeper into the darkness.

What the liquid mirror had shown was too close to my dreams of late for my comfort. I growled a curse under my breath, damning this god back to the titanics who had birthed us all.

Blackblood was mocking me.

Passing through the tripled doorway into the darkness beyond, I came upon a familiar carved screen. It was barely visible, illuminated by the flickering light of a single tallow candle. The throne above and behind the screen stood vacant. The shackles at its arms and pediment lay empty, useless, containing nothing but a slice of deeper shadow. The languid young man I’d seen there before was absent. Who knew what purposes a god was about? Whether being “here” was a concept that held any significance in the face of divine ennui?

“I am arrived,” I told the darkness in my best speaking-to-gods voice. That, I had found, was rather like facing down a large and irritated dog. The divine responded best to a firm intent and despised any appearance of weakness. “I present myself to make my farewells.”

Only the faint whisper of dust falling answered me. I listened for the creak and pop of Skinless, or the footsteps of a languid god returned from whatever space they inhabited.

Nothing. The temple might as well have been a sepulcher.

“I honor what you have done in my life.” Deep breath. “I honor your lost priest Septio.” Another deep breath. “I honor you and what you do.” One last shudder. “But I am leaving Copper Downs. I do not know when or if I shall return.”

The necessary words spoken, I turned to find a man so close behind me that he could have encircled my shoulders with his arms. My short knives were in my hands and touching his abdomen between one moment and the next.

“It would be amusing to see you try,” said Blackblood.

He did not breathe, of course, except when taking in air to speak. I had not heard him behind me, because he had not willed it. Still, one must keep up a good face. “There are worse temperings for my steel than the blood of a god.”

When the god’s smile dawned, I was sorry for my little joke. An acrid scent bit at my nose. I realized my hands were growing quite warm. I looked down to see both my knife blades glowing a dull orange. With a shriek, I dropped them.

“Temper, temper,” said Blackblood. He bent and grasped each by the heated blade. The stench of burned flesh filled the air.

Despite myself, I gasped.

“What is pain to
me
?” With that, the god handed me my knives once more.

I held the weapons away from my body, wary of the fading heat even through the leather-wrapped handles. “Your purposes are ever mysterious.”

“They should not be.” He shrugged, so human a gesture, then in one step was upon his throne. I cannot describe how he covered the distance of a rod, or spun me about doing it. He just … did.

The manacles there stirred to fasten themselves around his wrists and ankles. With another sly, dangerous smile, Blackblood said, “It makes my priests feel better to see me bound.”

Curiosity overcame my more difficult emotions. “What could men forge that would hold you?”

“Nothing. But even metalworkers have gods.”

That I could well imagine. Smithing had to be one of the oldest magics of all. Metal drawn from deep within the earth carried the might of the deep darknesses and the secrecy of stone with it.

“I thank you for the lesson.” My gut still churned, spinning like a child’s toy. Apparently this day was meant for queasy, no matter what I did.

Blackblood’s eyes flashed. The hair on my arms and neck rose like wires. “Where is my boy-child?” His voice had lost its human timbre and become something much more like what I’d heard from Desire, or the Lily Goddess. Weighty with the power of years and the might of the divine. A blunt instrument for persuasion and intimidation.

Holding in my bladder fiercely tight, I stared him down. “I do not recall you carrying a baby under your heart these past nine months.”