Kalimpura (Green Universe) (37 page)

“My mind is not my own. Not so much. Some things when brought to my notice hurt me. Some things hurt me until I leave them off, for fear they will shatter me.”

Yet he claimed to be difficult to harm. The greatest weapons were the ones that worked from within. A blade’s edge could only stop a heart; it could not break one. “Ah.” I had no idea what else to say. I could not assuage the wounds upon his soul. The only one who could do so lay in the bottom of the pond before us. A strange funeral rite, but no stranger than the sky burials of the Bhopuri people in the land of my birth. There are, after all, only four elements. Each of us must each go back to one or another of them in our time.

Still, a response seemed called for. “To speak of Mafic raises this hurt, then?”

He nodded too precisely. More steam wisped on the pond. At least we were unlikely to set a fire out here. It seemed worth my time to map the edges of his pain, for they might tell me something of the Saffron Tower, or at least its methods. And Firesetter was cooperating, in his strange, sullen way.

“Also it hurts you to speak on how you were raised.”

Another nod. More steam. Firesetter looked sidelong at me again, only his head moving as before so that he seemed as a statue swiveling only one of its parts. “And to think on where my kind had come from. They told me I was a made thing. Belonging to the Tower. Having no others in the world but
me
.”

Now he was wreathed in hot clouds of water. The surface of the pond was beginning to churn.

“Let it go if you can.” I touched his arm again. His skin was warmer, too, still slick and solid as stone. “You are beyond their reach.”

“No one is beyond their reach.” His voice was what passed for a mumble in such a giant of a man.

“I do not believe that. The plate of the world is infinitely longer than a man can walk in a lifetime.” I thought back on something the Dancing Mistress had told me quite some time ago, and felt a stab of heart’s pain for my troubles. “Somewhere there are purple seas, where people converse in a language of flowers. Somewhere on this earth there is anything you can imagine. The writ of the Saffron Tower cannot run everywhere.”

“Everywhere I might go,” he amended grudgingly. The pond was calm again.

“Iso and Osi told me much,” I said, angling into the subject from a new direction. “About the fall of the titanics, and theogenic dispersion, and the Saffron Tower’s purpose in correcting what they see as an ancient wrong between men and women.” That was putting the matter far more kindly that it actually deserved, but I did not intend to argue either theology or gender with Firesetter.

“I am no monk.” He sighed with a noise like the great kettle boiling at the heart of one of those iron ships from the Sunward Sea. “Fantail knew more of this. They always sent their orders through her.”

That piqued my curiosity. “How?”

“Messenger, mostly.”

Well,
that
was mundane.

He continued: “Sometimes through wind and wave.”

Wind and wave?
My heart fluttered. I’d had more than enough of wind and wave lately, sufficient to frighten the experienced crew of
Prince Enero
as well as half the waterfront population of Kalimpura. “Why that method?”

He seemed surprised, and that emotion drew a more genuine, open expression onto his face than what the withdrawal of grief had left there. “Fantail is—was—a water sprite. She can hear the right call across an ocean’s distance.”

“Ah.” I had not yet met Fantail when the storm at sea was calmed. It could not have been her doing, I realized. Nor did she likely have so much power. Those were the acts of a god. Or a titanic. “Thank you.”

“Mmm.” His body settled, muscles shifting for the first time I’d seen that day. As if the statue were waking up.

I took that for encouragement and tried to drive the conversation further forward. “So you did not worry much about the purpose of your work.”

“What I did is what I did. Who has purpose, really?”

“Slaying goddesses? That is not just employment. Or adventure, even. That is a mission. A … a
quest
.”

“Life is a quest, Mistress Green. Most pursue it no further than their doorstep, but it is still a quest.”

Well, he certainly had the right of that. “Your quest is finding the wellspring of your people,” I said softly.

That was met with another of those steam-kettle sighs. The pond bubbled a bit more.

The idea that had been glimmering in my head burst into light. Before I could think too hard on my own words, I blurted, “If I could find a way to free your mind from Mafic’s chains, would you aid me?” Could it be so much harder than calming a storm at sea?

“I will help you in any case,” he replied. “All my own purposes are spent. I might as well pursue yours.” He smiled without humor. It was like watching a forge grin. “You propose to stand against Mafic. That cannot be so wrong.”

Though it burned my hand, I touched his cheek. “Your purposes are not so dead as you think, Red Man.” I would have pitied him then, but he was beyond pity and into another place where I could not follow.

*   *   *

We sat in silence awhile until the steam had cooled again. The sun climbed past its zenith and began the long, slow slide toward the western horizon. I might have taken his hand, but it seemed disrespectful to Fantail and besides, not likely what the Red Man needed in that moment.

Eventually we spoke further, talking for quite a while. I fenced with exquisite care around the borders of the spell that lay across his mind. In return, I learned more of the Saffron Tower and its methods. The men—and it was exclusively men who made decisions and took actions there, Fantail notwithstanding—who sat in their high platforms staring out across the Riven Strait and thinking on the state of the world were more scholars than monks. The Saffron Tower celebrated a number of rites that coexisted more or less in harmony, as they all served the larger end.

Firesetter could not tell me if it was divine energy or a more human sort of magic that drove their miraculous powers. At that time in my life, I had yet to meet a wizard, and indeed barely knew rumors of their existence, and so was far more inclined to ascribe miracles and wonders to the touch of a god. Such had been my experience, after all. To a carpenter with a hammer, everything is a nail and the world is made of wood.

What troubled me was that the Saffron Tower seemed to have no god as such. At most, what Firesetter described was a species of dedication to the masculine principle. They tore down the Daughters of Desire not to replace those goddesses with anything else, but to reduce the power and protection of women until the only shelter left to the wives and daughters of this world was the strong arms of their husbands and fathers.

That wasn’t a theology; that was just simple control.

We talked about the hunters they sent out. We discussed how the art of god-killing was honed and pursued. We went over in great detail the training they had received in everything from roundhouse punches to rhetoric, so those warrior-monks and their agents could persuade as well as pursue.

When I finally went back into the kitchen to seek some clean water and to feed my children at my breast once more, I was left with the impression that Mafic would be dangerous, possibly extremely dangerous, but that he would be just one man. A nearly fatal mistake that proved to be, but not due to any faithlessness on Firesetter’s part.

My dear Chowdry;

I have found that I miss your company. Neither of us is perhaps blessed with wisdom, but you are not afraid of me, nor do you see a child when you look into my face. No one else treats me as I am, not quite the way you do.

This city stands on the brink of ruin. I am quite tired of politics. Though, in truth, I suppose the struggle here can be seen as the same struggle back there in Copper Downs. Why anyone longs for such power is past my understanding. It comes only with the need to defend ever more.

This I know from my own experience, and my power does not even exist.

I have learned more of the man Mafic, of whom you warned me. There is one here he once trained, who was turned down another path. I know that I would not fight Mafic if I had the choice. There are further methods of opposition, but they are being closed off one by one through circumstance or the plotting of others.

All I want now is for the affairs of Kalimpura to settle sufficiently for my children to be safe here. I may have to settle these affairs myself.

Be well, build your temple, and pray this trouble does not come back to you.

Though Mother Argai returned at dusk, Mother Vajpai did not. The Red Man continued to rest in stony silence by the pond, now that our earlier interview had ended. He showed no signs of stirring. The rest of us sat vigil in the kitchen. I sewed that day’s bell onto my silk and Marya’s both, and inspected the knots on my older work.

“The fire at the Hawk Court is still being at smolder,” Mother Argai said in her slightly odd Petraean. She seemed tired, and occasionally glanced toward the door leading to the back garden and Firesetter.

I continued to wonder about that fascination, but the news of the moment was far more important. “Nothing else caught in the blaze, I trust?”

“Not from that fire, no.” She rubbed at her eyes. “There are being least six other burnings about the city.”

“Is that normal?” asked Ilona. Ponce stirred, Federo sleeping in his arms, but said nothing.

What a strange question,
I thought. “Are building fires ever normal?”

“No, that is not what I meant. Does this city burn much on its own, or are these fires entirely part of the street fighting?”

I glanced at Mother Argai. She’d lived here all her adult life, unlike me. “It rains enough here,” she said, “that we are not for the most part fearing a great burning.”

“More attacks from the Street Guild and the Bittern Court, then,” I said.

“Perhaps. Many old grudges were being contested this day.”

She had the right of that. The Saffron Tower’s grudge was the oldest of all, if their stories were to be believed. And that certainly was being contested to this day.

“What else?” I asked her.

She slipped into Seliu, a more comfortable tongue for her. “Rumors and more rumors. No one has seen the Prince of the City. His guards are gone from their posts. Most foreign captains have fled the port. Cargo sits idled on the docks. The fishing fleet is thinning as those boats head up the coast to hide in smaller, quieter places.” She gave me a long, hard glare. “The recent rising of the waters is as big a factor there as any violence in the streets.”

I ignored the implied reprimand and answered in Petraean so Ilona and Ponce could follow better. “With the burning of the Hawk Court and the thinning of the fishing fleet, people will soon start to be hungry here in the city. It will not take too long for that to become a wider issue than Surali can manage.”

“Or anyone else,” said Ponce finally. “I know little of this city, but in Copper Downs my father is the master of the Green Market. I do know something of how many cartloads of food it takes to keep a city eating for a day. Everyone from the wealthiest to the beggars depends on what comes through the gates and off the docks. If you do not fix that problem quickly, it may become unfixable.”

“I am not in a position to raise the Hawk Court from its ashes,” I said, stung. “I did not do this to Kalimpura.”

“Be telling that to the captains of the fishing fleet,” snapped Mother Argai.

Opening my mouth for further hot words, I closed it instead of replying in kind. She certainly had the right of this situation.

I did not know how I had raised the sea. How could I possibly not-raise the sea well enough to assure everyone on the waterfront of their safety? As soon prove it would never rain again. Or always.

“In a word,” Ilona said, her own voice leaden, “despair. Your city despairs.”

“Not yet,” answered Mother Argai, “but that is coming.”

Closing the circle of the argument, I added, “And Mother Vajpai is not.”

Everyone fell into thoughtful silence for a few moments. I settled Marya against my shoulder and let her sleep. Soon I would trade off with Ponce and have Federo at my breast awhile.

The quiet was finally interrupted by the hitch of a sob from Ilona. “We are no closer to my daughter.” Her voice trembled.

“I will go and fetch both her and Samma from the Bittern Court,” I promised, striving for loyalty to our other lost hostage. “Before dawn, if Mother Vajpai does not come back with some other, better news in the meantime.”

“No,” said Mother Argai as Ilona began to say something in response.

Ilona’s face darkened. “No?”

“We need to do this properly. Or it will not be done at all. I think one of us should seek after Mother Vajpai. The value of the Blades in this would be incalculable.”

“You don’t have—” Ilona stopped herself. She and Mother Argai shared a long, slow look suffused with shame and grief on both their parts. Samma was daughter to none of us, but clearly had been a lover of Mother Argai’s after my departure. And she was a Blade Sister to me.

“Everyone’s heart is in this,” I said slowly and carefully. “The question is not whether we act, but how. And we are all agreed that waiting is no longer the best strategy. Yes…?”

That question elicited a series of nods.

“Fair enough, then. Here is my proposal: I favor going straight into the Bittern Court before Surali has an opportunity to further deepen our troubles.” I nodded at Mother Argai.

She understood what I was doing well enough. “Green and I cannot be succeeding on such an effort without help. We know this because she was being at the Bittern Court before, and that was a price too high to be paying for nothing. We need the Blades too badly to not try to seek them one more time.”

“And if we lose you or her as we have lost Mother Vajpai?” asked Ilona. “Then what? Ponce and I can hardly go knocking at Surali’s front gate.”