Kalimpura (Green Universe) (28 page)

All they’d seen was me laying the water to rest. I could fight this mass of people even less than I could have fought the tide, had some god or goddess—which, I did not know—not heeded me. Ilona’s warning about me becoming a Selistani storm goddess might have been more prophetic than she knew.

Still, there was nothing for it. I smiled, caught more flowers, was showered with mostly copper coins, and allowed myself to borne toward the statue of Maja’s Boar on Savvatana Street.

In all this messy business, I realized I had not seen any Street Guild. These laborers and stevedores and sailors and tavern wenches and shopkeepers and beggars and brokers were all people with little cause to love the Street Guild. And they knew I had fought their enemies before.

I was safer here and now than I would be among a Blade handle on a run. In a sense, this was a restaging of the beggars’ riot I’d helped put on not too many days ago.

The chanting and shouting continued. I tried to listen, but it was hard to pick out words amid the rising and falling racket. They shouted against the Bittern Court, against the Street Guild, and for the Blades. Not so much for the Lily Goddess or Her temple, not that I could hear, but for now, I was among them, being carried as theirs.

I would take this for what it was.

Eventually I was set down in Ardi Square, where bonfires were being built out of smashed market booths and overturned carts. More food appeared, and tall poles with flags, and even more of those foolish fireworks that now sounded too much like weapons to me.

Set down, I took a deep draft of a proffered bowl of what turned out to be rice wine. Offered a pair of arms, I danced. Handed a child, I dandled her. Everyone wanted to touch me. After a while, it felt as though everyone had done so. No tiger roared, no angry armored men chased after me, and though my children were still too distant for my comfort, otherwise it was not so bad a way to pass the lengthening day. Hidden, as it were, in the plainest sight.

*   *   *

Once the madness finally died down, I slipped away in the shadows of evening. Fortified by strong drink and rich food, I did not walk in so straight a line as I might have liked. I counted the day a success in that I had not collected that arrow in the back I’d been fearing.

Half the city had seen me, and what little protection my remaining anonymity had granted me was long lost. Still, I had done some good from the mess I’d created the night before.

How to explain all this to the Mothers and Ponce and Ilona, though …

I’d acquired someone’s midnight blue robe and wore it now, along with several garlands of flowers. I seemed to be carrying a pair of protesting chickens. Their feet were wired together. When had I picked them up?

Well, no one looking for the renegade Lily Blade Green would see me in the staggering progress of a half-drunk poultry seller. Or poultry buyer. Or whatever I was. At least the Street Guild would not be likely to know me either.

It occurred to me somewhat belatedly that I could not simply hammer on the front gate of our hidden house. The place was not supposed to be inhabited, after all. And I wasn’t sure how Mother Argai found her way in and out.
I
had gone over the wall very late at night when no one was looking.

Picking my path with some care, I found myself in the narrow street behind our back wall. This faced onto another row of great houses, unlike the back of the Bittern Court’s compound. So fewer eyes, and even fewer suspicions unless I was spotted by happenstance.

I sidled up to the service entrance of our house, glanced around, then tossed the chickens over the top of the gate. After that, I stumbled a bit farther down the street, not waiting to see if anyone noticed. Looking around in a guilty manner was like hanging a sign.

Near the corner of the property, I scrambled up the wall and dropped into the neighboring lot. There I crashed into a large stand of ferns. I lay there awhile, breathing shallow, and strained to listen for any hue and cry. If someone had noticed me, they would surely raise the alarm. Preferably with the neighbors rather than to the supposedly empty house.

Five minutes went by, then five more. Nothing whatsoever happened other than some low, distressed clucking from my own yard next door. I hoped the chickens had not gotten free. The hassle of catching them would be more noise and trouble than the birds were worth.

*   *   *

With a hiss of breath, I startled awake. I had not realized I’d fallen asleep. Too much strong drink, too long a day. I quietly cursed my loss of time, and thanked whoever among my various gods that might be listening for a continued lack of tigers.

I lay there a few more minutes and tried to sort out how long I’d been asleep. The stars were visible now, but being for the most part fixed and unchanging in the sky, they were little help. No moon only meant it was still fairly early, as the moon currently rose about midnight.

Enough,
I thought.
Up and moving before someone finds you here and proves you to be the fool you are currently acting the part of.
I rose to a crouch, quietly stretched, then sprang for the wall dividing this property from ours.

A brief search for the chickens was fruitless. The little beggars had escaped after all. A problem for another time. No one should mind that so much, I realized. They had both been hens and were thus unlikely to set to crowing with the dawn.

I slid through the shadows of the rear expanse of the property, careful not to walk too openly where there were sight lines from the neighboring houses. When I finally sidled into our kitchen, I found six pairs of eyes glittering at me.

Everyone was up waiting for me.

“Hello,” I said, at a sudden loss for further words.

“Thank you for the chickens,” Mother Vajpai replied solemnly. Her expression was far more grim than her words.

“I … I am sorry.” Suddenly my feet were quite interesting, but I would not play the child. Looking up again, I said, “I have a great deal to confess.”

Ilona stepped forward and handed me Federo. Ponce followed a moment later with Marya. Both of them looked at me sourly. Then the four adults drifted to our circle of chairs by the fire, where the smokeless oil stove Mother Argai had managed to secure was positioned.

I followed, balancing two squirming, gurgling babies. “It has been quite a day,” I began, but Mother Vajpai raised her hand.

“Mother Argai attended a festival near the docks today,” she announced.

“Ah.” Once more I was at a loss for words.

“She learned much there.”

Mother Argai nodded along to those statements. Ilona sighed and studied her own hands. Ponce just appeared sad, and confused. But then, he generally did of late.

“Wh-what did she learn?” I finally asked.

“Amazing things,” Mother Argai said. “That you are commanding the waves. That you fight tigers. That you have slain the entire Street Guild to a man. That you plan to slay the entire Street Guild. That you are secretly being a northern goddess come to twist the heads of our children.”

“Amazing, indeed,” I echoed, keeping my voice careful. I rather wished the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

Mother Vajpai spoke once more. “Mostly we have learned that you are in the city again, and that you are seeking to right the wrongs done against you. Every beggar and errand boy and scullion in Kalimpura knows this by now.” She leaned forward, hands on her knees. I saw her fingers tremble. The knuckles stretched tight and white. “
What
were you thinking?”

I started to defend myself, then broke off. What was the point? I had been wrong to leave. I had been wrong to stir trouble at the palace of the Bittern Court. Though I had certainly never intended all that had taken place, everything that had happened this last day, for good or ill, rose from those two decisions.

“It does not matter,” I finally said. “What is done is done. And I have learned much.”

“What?”
shouted Ilona, almost ready to explode. Her anger seared my heart.

“I have learned that we will not take Corinthia Anastasia and Samma from the Bittern Court by stealthy force. The place is too large, and complex, to sneak into as a half handle of searchers and hope to profit anything. We must apply guile, and negotiate.”

A long, contemplative silence followed my statement.

“Negotiate?” Mother Argai finally said. “You are Green. You have never negotiated in your life.”

“On the contrary, I do it all the time.” In an eruption of self-honesty, I pointed out, “I’m doing it now. Besides, going in low and hard with one’s weapons bristling is just another form of negotiation.”

That drew a grunt of surprised amusement from Mother Vajpai, which she quickly covered with a glower.

I sighed. It was not that they didn’t know me. It was not that they didn’t have the right to be angry with me, each of my friends for their own reasons. But there was no
point
. The argument would be lengthy and without purpose, because we would wind up back where were right in that moment.

“Listen. I was wrong to leave. I knew that when I did it, and I know that now. But I understand more than I did about the problem to which we have set ourselves.” I also understood I would be much happier if I avoided the waterfront for a while. And tigers. Definitely avoiding tigers. “I would rather expend our energy on sorting out our next plans for Samma and Corinthia Anastasia than on criticizing our past actions.”

“
Your
past actions.” Ponce spoke up in Petraean. He must have followed enough of the discussion in Seliu, then.

“Yes,” I snapped. “Mine.”

“And what happens when they come here for us?” Ilona asked softly in the same language. “I am no fighter. Even I know our protection in this house is secrecy. Not walls, not force. Just secrecy.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Which you broke! My daughter is lost and perhaps never coming home. She could be dead
now
. Will you lose yours as well, for the sake of your stupid, stupid pride?”

Ilona began to cry in earnest. With my babies in my arms, I could not comfort her. Even if she would have me. Ponce leaned close to her, taking one arm fondly. I felt a stab of jealousy.

Jealous?

Me?

Of what?

Not of either of
them,
I told myself scornfully.

“Stop.” Mother Vajpai’s voice was cold and quiet. This was the old Blade Mother. Commanding, dangerous. Maybe coming home to Kalimpura had revived her spirit. “You are all fools,” she went on. “Green is right. What is done is done, and cannot be unmade. Are we worse off for Surali knowing her enemy is close? Probably, but then Surali already knew us to be in Kalimpura. Are we worse off for Green being a hero in the streets? Probably not. For the moment, at least, we have a thousand eyes and ears.

“And it does … not …
matter
.” Now her tongue lashed us like a whip. “We are in the midst of a mission. Green’s mission. This is her run. She has made errors, errors that may prove fatal for some or all of us. That happens. All we can do now is choose to continue to follow where she leads, or back away and leave her to find her path alone.”

That speech was greeted by another silence broken only by the gurgling of my children and the faint ticking of the oil stove’s metal shell. I realized from the scent of mustard seed and saffron that they had been cooking, which in turn stirred my hunger.

After a little while, waiting to see if anyone cared to add to Mother Vajpai’s outburst, I spoke once more in Seliu. “We will never find our lost ones by stealth. The grounds of the Bittern Court hold two dozen buildings. They are connected by bridges and walkways. We could search all night, and have the girls moved just ahead or behind of us all unknowing the entire time. Without our temple’s backing, and the full force of the Blades, there is small purpose in even trying those walls around Surali.”

“Trying those walls again,” Mother Argai put in.

“Trying them again,” I said, staring at her unashamed. “I was wrong in how I went about it, but I was not wrong in what I did.”

“And the tiger?” asked Mother Vajpai.

“It was not my tiger,” I pointed out. “You never taught me how to face one of those, but I survived anyway.”

Another amused snort greeted that remark. I took this as an invitation to continue. “If we can find the Red Man and his apsara, they may be able to tell us more of what the Saffron Tower was about. They may even have been in on some early portion of Surali’s schemes and know more of what she was about. But more important, they are the only string we have to pull that she
is not aware of
. The woman is no fool. She knows full well that Mother Vajpai will seek to turn the Blades away from Mother Srirani. She understands we will seek her out ourselves if need be.

“Hidden strength is the greatest power,” I concluded, quoting the Stone Coast military philosopher Chard Lindsley. “And those two are our greatest hidden power.” Of course, Surali had a hidden strength of her own in her contract with the Quiet Men, about whom even Mother Vajpai knew very little—when we’d talked aboard the ship, all she could say was that they were rumors, perhaps private agents to the highest houses and courts but outside even the street-level justice of the Lily Blades. Dangerous, yes, but not necessarily our enemies.

Not until now.

However I was trying to rally my half handle, not discourage them, so I said nothing of this thought. Instead, I glanced at Ponce and Ilona to see how much of that they had understood.

He did not look puzzled. Ilona cradled her face in one hand, the other twined finger-to-finger with Ponce. That sight made me feel very strange. It should have been me who comforted her. Still, to my considerable relief, she was no longer sobbing.

Both Mother Argai and Mother Vajpai appeared thoughtful.

I shifted the weight of my children. Had they somehow grown over the brief time I was gone? Such large little things they were. Two pairs of eyes—one blue gray, the other brown—stared back at me.