Kalimpura (Green Universe) (6 page)

“Then bring me my children,” I snapped.

I turned, looking one way then the other. Chowdry watched me from close by. His expression was closed and hard, lit in the dancing flames of the burning tent.

“There are no apologies,” I told him.

Chowdry’s face sagged into a species of regret. “You draw trouble like a mast draws lightning.”

“I am leaving. I have business in Kalimpura.” I nodded over my shoulder. “Which has become all the more urgent now.” Surali’s agent had waited until I was birthed and about because no one watched over me so closely now. Nor my tent.

Ponce came me to with one of my babies in each arm. I took them and clutched them close while I glared at Chowdry. Clearly I could not let my children out of my sight.

“I cannot bless your going,” the priest said reluctantly in Petraean. “Nor can I be pressing you to stay.” He seemed old and helpless now. Night’s darkness hung around him like a shroud.

“You do not have a say,” I told him not unkindly. “But neither do you deserve these assaults on your temple simply because of my presence.” Not so long ago, two girls had died here at the hands of Surali’s troublemakers hunting me. “I will be gone within a day or two. My children will go with me.”

Chowdry gathered a long, deep breath. “I shall send Ponce with you.”

Ponce?
I had figured Ilona to accompany me, to assist me in tending the babies. I doubted I could keep her away in any case. Not from crossing the sea in pursuit of her own child. That she had waited this long without taking ship herself after Corinthia Anastasia was something of a miracle.

But Ilona was troubled. Nearly hysterical, grieving her daughter. Ponce could help mind Ilona while she helped mind my children. And perhaps a sea voyage would heal her heart enough for her to see me again, I reflected with a mix of anticipation and guilt.

“I shall take him,” I said, then hastily added, “if he will go. But that is much to ask of a young man.”

“This young man will not need to be asked.” That was Ponce, close by again. He looked as if he meant to be brave. “I am going.”

I turned to him, shifting my babies to my shoulders. It occurred to me I could
never
fight like this. Should the children have had small leathers of their own?

“Do you know where we are headed?”

“Kalimpura,” he said promptly.

“A city full of women like me, and men like that fool who attacked us. Are you certain you wish to go there?”

“I will follow you anywhere.” His eyes glittered.

“Then hold my children again, and guard them.” I handed him back the babies. Unaccountably but still much in the fashion of babies, they had fallen asleep. “With your life,” I added.

*   *   *

The fire was dying, defeated by water and the immolation of my tent that had served as its fuel. Ignoring the twisted and charred body of the man I’d killed, I stalked the perimeter of the ashes, marveling that the flames had not spread. Sister Gammage, the closest thing the Temple of Endurance had to a nurse, tended to Mother Argai and Ilona, both of whom were laid out nearby on a quilted blanket. With the tent in embers, lanterns had been brought out.

There was still no sign of Lucia. Ponce had acolytes out all over the tent camp, and looking in the two temple buildings. I stared at the collapsed ruin of the tent, smoldering, shredded canvas draped over the bed and the two chests.

The chests,
I thought in horror.

I rushed to a nearby tent, pushed inside—it was vacant—and tore down one of the two poles propping up the central ring. The roof creaked and sagged as I ran out again. The ashes of my own were too hot to stand in, but I leaned as close as I could and shoved the pole through the ruins to the first of the chests. My impromptu probe dragged along the collapsed, burned cloth like a plow through a reluctant field. I did not have the leverage to lift and poke as if I had a giant finger, but I managed to force the pole to the front of the chest.

Despite the danger I quickly stepped into the ashes, working my way up the pole until I did have the leverage to lift the lid. I shoved, ignoring the heat seeping into my feet through my boots. The chest creaked open, burned tent sliding off it. Within were clothes and sacks, smoldering now, probably ruined.

No Lucia.

I sagged, relieved, then backed swiftly out of the circle of embers to dance from one foot to the other until they had cooled down.

By the time I was ready to brave the other chest, from the far side of the circle where the edge drew closest to it, a small crowd had formed around me. Someone brought me strips of wet canvas and tied them around my boots. Ponce sat on the blanket with Ilona and Mother Argai, still cradling both babies, but I had many other willing hands to help me prop the tent pole high and push it into the other chest.

That one opened with a wave of smell like roasted pork. Behind me, someone vomited into the ashes. I stepped close on my wrapped shoes and peered within. Her neck had been broken, either to kill her or to fit her into the chest. At least she had not died screaming in the flames. He must have slain her first and hidden the body more carefully to buy time.

“Lay her out as soon as it is safe to do so,” I said roughly. “And the dead man. I will light the candles and pray for them both.” Each of them was owed that respect from me, albeit for different reasons. I turned to walk away from the tents into the darkness around the stone temple’s construction.

It was time to breathe some clean air.

*   *   *

I sat on a granite block and stared upward into the night. Only the stars looked down upon me—the moon had not yet arrived in the eastern sky.

Certain mystes aver that the world is a plate, wide as a man can walk in a lifetime and long as the cosmos itself. I had no reason to doubt this, nor any reason to believe this, but I had always wondered what role the stars played. Surely they were more than mere piercings in the curtain of night?

Right then I felt as cold and distant and small as any of the stars in this evening’s sky. I had hurt a man, very badly, then made sure his death was as painful as possible. I would do so again between any one heartbeat and next to keep my children safe. But they never would be safe enough.

So long as I moved freely through this world, my enemies would follow.

Perhaps I would be better off behind walls and surrounded by guards. Had I so long ago taken the place originally intended for me as the Duke’s consort, I would have been thusly secured. Like a pearl wedged inside an oyster, requiring a knife the size of an army to extract me.

Alone, any one man could pursue me. Anyone on a rooftop could kill me before I knew I was being attacked. I was a danger to everyone around me.

Most especially my children.

Anyone who sought their lives would be doing so to punish me. No inheritance of land or money or great title rode on the shoulders of little Federo and tiny Marya. The only treasure they carried was my own blood.

What was I to do?

In the darkness, I wept a little while. I had lost Lucia, my sly and willing bathing partner and sometime lover. Who yet knew how much hurt had been done to Ilona or Mother Argai?

My would-be assassin had kept them alive with an intent to torment me if he could. By now everyone knew the people of this temple would raise neither fist nor weapon against an invader. By what power did Endurance protect his own?

By my power, of course.

I began to laugh, mirthless and bitter. “When I go across the sea,” I said into the darkness, “who will take care of these little problems for you?” Chowdry had once been a pirate, and had quite possibly in the course of his sailing days slit more throats than I ever would, but he was settled in now as the priest. The man took the will of his pacifistic ox god seriously.

Someone else would have to be the god’s knife. Not I. Not any longer.

I sighed, stood, and walked back to the tents. I was long overdue to feed my babies, for all that it was night. Then I would check on my wounded. Then as promised, I would lay out the dead, painting them both with the red and the white, and setting the candles around their silent heads for both sin and virtue. Finally, I would sew that day’s bell onto my silk and think on the meaning of all this.

Then on the morrow I would go find a bedamned ship and arrange to leave this terrible, cold city. But first in the morning I would find whoever had been sheltering my attacker in the months since Surali’s departure. Whoever that was would be very, very sorry before I was done with them.

*   *   *

When the day returned, I was so stiff, I could barely move. Last night’s troubles had vastly overtaxed me. We had sent Ilona and Mother Argai both to the Bustle Street Lazaret late that evening, so I had no one to help me with my children either. Their crying had awoken me.

Groggy, I wondered whose tent I slept in. I pulled Federo to my breast first and felt the strangely comforting bite of his gummy mouth against my nipple. It was somewhere between joy and pain, but not in the rough way that most of the Blades played at their sex. Something more maternal, more primal.

Once he had suckled his fill, I lifted Marya to my other nipple. I whispered apologies to her for making her wait. It was never too early to explain the ways of men to a young woman, for her own protection. Brothers were men as well.

The children fed and burped, I dressed myself. Truly I wished for a deep, hot bath, but the day awaited. Vengeance and transportation were my agenda for the morning. With luck, I could handle both and be back before dinner.

I looked outside the tent, ready to shout for Ponce, only to find him dozing seated on the ground just by the flap. He awoke at my touch on his shoulder. “Will you mind the babies while I run a few errands in preparing to depart?”

The smile I got in return was almost too devoted. “I am yours,” he said.

“Be my children’s.” I handed both of them to him. “You run the kitchen, I don’t need to tell you where to find the goat’s milk. How are Ilona and Mother Argai?”

He frowned as he hefted the babies. “There has been no word from the lazaret this morning, which I suppose is a good thing.”

“I shall see to them later,” I said, resolving to visit the two while about the city today. Swaggering a little, I left him. I kept my proud step until I’d passed out of the gate, then nearly collapsed against the wall. I could not
do
this.

What choice did I have?

It was time to go see my countrymen. Someone among them would likely know where Surali’s agents had been sheltering. Besides, then I could bid farewell to the Tavernkeep, in whose establishment so many of my fellow Selistani sheltered and drank away their meager laborer’s wages.

Obols and taels never went as far as one needed them to.

*   *   *

The Tavernkeep’s place was a nameless bar in the Brewery District, down an alley and through a door with no sign. When my old teacher the Dancing Mistress had first taken me there, it had been quiet, almost haunted, with few patrons besides the scattering of pardines who came down out of their distant hilltops and montane forests for whatever business called their kind among humans.

Long ago, that business had been slaughter. In time, wars had settled affairs between humans and pardines. Then the late Duke of Copper Downs had stolen one of the hearts of their magic in the form of the gems called the Eyes of the Hills. His power had been released by my killing of him only to settle into Federo in the form of the violent god Choybalsan. In turn, I had then killed Federo, and seated the power into the ox-god Endurance, before finally arranging the return of the stolen but now-quiescent gems to the pardines.

My relationship with these people was complicated.

Now their one retreat within Copper Downs had been taken over in large measure by Selistani immigrants and refugees. The Tavernkeep and his conspecifics had borne this with remarkably good grace, and surely for more than the sake of a busy till.

I slipped down the alley, too tired and worn to take to the roofs and not trusting myself besides on the high paths. Below would be no better in my current condition. Frankly, if some assassin with a crossbow were waiting for me high up, she could have me.

Though it was early for a bar, the Tavernkeep was behind his counter taking inventory of a rack of bottles on the back wall. Tall, rangy, furred with pointed ears and a long whisking tail, he looked like nothing so much as a great cat up on two legs. This was a dangerous confusion—pardines were far more powerful and capricious than any house pet. I’d had inklings of their might, and did not care to see more.

Otherwise the room was quiet—the perpetual dice games played by my countrymen waiting for work, word, or wages had not yet resumed for the day. Many of them were stretched by the faint remains of the fire, wrapped in cloaks or thin blankets. The large round tables with the pardines’ traditional stone bowls were scattered across the room, interspersed with smaller, human-scale furniture that seemed to have multiplied every time I visited this place.

“Green!” The Tavernkeep seemed delighted to see me. “It has been some time. Have you littered successfully?”

That took me a moment to unravel. “Yes,” I said. “I have borne twins, a boy Federo and a girl Marya.”

“Fine human names, I am certain.” He laid out a stoneware bowl and poured me some of the clear and deadly pardine bournewater. “Welcome.”

“Thank you.” I took a sip. As always, the drink was clear as morning air, deadly as last weekend’s sin. “You are too kind.”

“One honors what has come before.”

“Indeed.” I turned to look at my sleeping countrymen. Our voices were provoking a few of them to stir. Facing the Tavernkeep once more, I smiled. “Shortly I shall leave Copper Downs. I may not be back for some years. Or possibly ever.” Some prophecies were simple enough to make.

“Across the sea again.” He frowned at a twisted bottle of something clear and violently red. “The Dancing Mistress did not care for your foreign city.”

“Kalimpura is not foreign to those who live there.”