Endurance (48 page)

No one left cargo in a wagon overnight, not unless they were sleeping atop it weapon in hand, but what was in the warehouses around me?

A quick fifteen minutes invested in peering through windows—no roof climbing here either, not on this icy night—confirmed that the second warehouse up Theobalde Avenue from Iso and Osi's lair supplied at least some portion of Copper Downs with candles, wax, paraffin, and lamp oil. If I couldn't make trouble out of a couple of barrels of high-grade lamp oil, then I might as well give up and open a restaurant.

Forcing entry was trivial. Their locks were simple, meant to discourage vandals and children. On a night such as this, the watchmen were off drinking with the thieves, or huddled over a stove somewhere in the back. And there were no stoves in
this
warehouse, I was certain of it. The air inside smelled like an accident waiting to happen. No one smoked tabac here either, I'd guess, or hempweed. Or anything else involving sparks and flame.

Surely these people have heard of vents?

But not when the air was freezing. I'd guess it might grow cold enough to gel some of their oils.

The interior was a bit lower-ceilinged than the twins' building, surrounded by catwalks near the top. I thought I saw a crane up there, but sorting out its mechanisms was more trouble than I cared to take right now. Rows of shelves and racks and wooden footings held the seeds of destruction that I sought. This place was a pyromaniac's delight, better even than a fireworks factory.

I smiled.

Working only by the moonlight from the high, narrow windows—and who would hoist a loaded barrel of oil up and out a window?—I found a rack of exactly what I was looking for. Lamp oil, with taps already placed in three of the barrels. I wasn't about to shift that kind of dead weight around, but the collection of ramps and levers meant to load barrels on and off the rack were stored close by. How thoughtful.

I worked the first two barrels off. One of them was decidedly light in weight, so I pushed it aside and fetched the third out. It made a nice, heavy slosh. I had to be careful not to knock the taps off. They weren't meant to roll about in this condition, but I didn't need to move them far. From the inside, I opened the streetward freight door, and trundled both barrels outside. Slipping back in, I secured the freight door, then chocked the office door shut on my way out. No sense in
inviting
criminal behavior to follow me wherever I went.

The barrels rumbled on the cobbles outside as I shifted them one at a time to the front of Iso and Osi's warehouse. Fine, if they heard me, they heard me. I was too involved in my plan to stop now. At any rate, that noise was nothing like what someone alert for me dropping through the skylight would be listening for.

I positioned the second barrel so the bung was almost at the top of its rotation. This rendered the side-mounted tap useless, but meant I could break it off at need to set a fire. My last step before doing so was to scavenge some relatively dry wood from the bottom of a junk pile in the alley beside the warehouse. Using one of the short boards, I knocked the tap off.

Oil spilled. Terrific.

I let the stuff soak my lengths of dry wood, then stacked them against the still-sealed barrel. A few moments later, lucifer matches had a flame started that the oil took nicely even in the whistling, cold wind.

I figured I could not lose. Either the barrels would burn, which would spill flaming oil under their front door; or they would blow up, which would shoot flaming oil under their front door. That the Interim Council would be seeing a substantial bill was a bit of a bonus, so far as I was concerned. Or even better, Lampet's Reformed Council. As for myself, I was cold, hungry, and tired. And I had not yet begun to fight.

Let someone else suffer a bit.

The oil caught and bloomed. I scooted away fast, keeping upwind in case the barrels decided to explode and spray. A doorway across the street and one building over beckoned me with a deep vestibule. I'd noted earlier that the floor there was an imitation of a Sunward Sea mosaic, done either by someone homesick or a student of the foreign art. It wasn't bad, really, and a fine place to rest my feet while I waited to see what might erupt at the twins' warehouse.

I hadn't counted on the doorway being occupied on my return.

*   *   *

“Green,” said the Rectifier. He loomed close. His fur stank of wet weather and drowned cat.

I stifled a shriek. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” He glanced up at my little fire, which was burning merrily. It seemed the flaming leak was going to be the answer, as nothing had exploded yet. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to smoke out Iso and Osi.”

“They have gone to the Temple Quarter. Apparently this was an auspicious night for them to challenge your Blackblood.”

I was in the wrong place!

Everything was at risk. As he fell, so fell the Lily Goddess in time. “By the Wheel, I need to be there.”

One enormous hand lay heavily on my shoulder. “Have a care.” Claws pricked, even through layers of my leather vest and canvas shirt. “I do not think you should walk alone.”

“I have you,” I said recklessly. Behind me, one of the barrels went “whoosh.” The Rectifier's face was suddenly a study in glare and chiaroscuro.

He shook his head. “Can you call your ox god? Or one of your friends Below?”

Sighing, I turned to look back on my act of pyromaniac vandalism. The barrels were burning ever stronger, the warehouse door was smoldering, but the wind was whipping both the flames and the spilled oil away faster than they could spread.

Apparently it
was
time for me to open a restaurant, because my two barrels of lamp oil weren't even serving as a distraction. Let alone as the opening movement of any attack I might have intended to pursue.

“I will call Endurance,” I said. “But I do not know if he will respond to me.” The ox god had already given me his blessing, after all. Had always protected me. Would he not now? I was too far from the Lily Goddess. Besides which, I would not dream of exposing Her to these two.

“Where will you do this?”

“Nowhere. Here. Now.” I sank to the cold tile, wondering how long I'd last freezing my buttocks. “Watch over me.” Blinking, I looked up at him. “Oh, I did sell you to the Revanchists, in a manner of speaking.”

“Mmm?” His voice was a rumble that struck deep into my bones.

“I told them they could have the Eyes of the Hills back so long as the gems remained under your control.”

There was a long, strained silence. Then the Rectifier snorted. “You trust me?”

“Yes,” I said simply, then closed my eyes and began to pray.

*   *   *

The ox god was never my god, but he was first and foremost my ox. Always. I did not try to imagine Endurance in his temple as a marble statue hung with prayers and ringed with incense. Rather, I took myself in memory to my father's fields, the mud-filled wallows of my youth.

Insects buzzed first. Despite the intense cold, I had no trouble recalling the warmth of the sun. Selistan was an oven, this place an icebox. Somewhere in the world lay a land at the pleasant midpoint between the two.

Mud. Rice. Flowers. Fruits. A great, patient ox, standing close on tall legs, brown eyes rolling to follow me. Always overhead, always a presence, always my anchor to call me home.

Was it any wonder I'd placed Choybalsan's power in the ox god?

“Are you with me now?”

The great, long face turned in my direction. The eyes were deep, deeper, the deepest things I'd ever seen. Wells of glossy brown light fountained forth.

The god was with me.

“Bear me forth to meet those who would slay my patrons.”

The ox shifted toward me. He shook off the flies around his ears and eyes, tail flicking. I slipped over his back, to ride him as only the dead had done. And once, the Dancing Mistress.

A jangling weight settled over my shoulders. I opened my eyes again to find the Rectifier arranging a length of belled silk across my shoulders. I sniffed at the cloak—it was mine, indeed, from the temple. Mine, and yet also my grandmother's in a very real way. No stranger that the god should bring his relics with him than that he should appear himself.

Endurance lurched forward into the cold, cold night. My grandmother's bells jingled, the cloak wrapping me in an envelope of warmth brought with the god from some other realm.

I gave the ox god no directions, and he asked none. We simply plodded through the silent, frozen streets. The Rectifier padded close at our side.

What, I wondered, was in all of this for him? Not loyalty, surely. Interest, perhaps. Or possibly the idea of a herd of unattached priests running about in the panic sure to follow a divine battle featuring Iso and Osi.

Cradling my belly in my hands, I wondered if I was bringing my child where she needed to be in this world. Surely this was not the path.

*   *   *

The Street of Horizons seemed even colder than the rest of the city. It was broad, almost a plaza in its own right, with fewer windbreaks. The old sacrificial pots lining the roadway did not host so many trees as to deter the cold knives of the air.

We plodded toward Blackblood's temple. Each strike of Endurance's hooves was the dull tolling of a muffled bell. My cloak shook a gentle counterpoint, a silvered rain. I could see the twins standing before the steps of the temple. They flanked a brazier balanced on a tripod and were casting something … what?

Did they care about Blackblood at all? Or was this all part of the larger plot against Desire and Her daughter-goddesses? It didn't matter. In either event, they had to be stopped.

I did not know if the Rectifier would draw blood for me in this matter. I did not know if that would make a difference. Endurance and I would face these men down, though I had no plan anymore. I already knew I could not slay them out of hand without releasing great, destructive power. What else could I do? The gods of this city, of whom I was going to some trouble to shed myself though they stuck to me like spilled honey, deserved better than what I'd helped bring down upon them.

“If you are not safely born here in Copper Downs,” I whispered to my belly, “you will at least be safely dead with me.”

The twins turned to look at us. The light of their fire caught at their faces, twisting them from sallow, foreign men to leering demons. Their saffron robes seemed to glow. The cold didn't billow from their mouths in little clouds, or redden their skins. Rather, it encased them, bejeweled them, armored them distant from me as the uncaring stars.

This would never be solved at swordspoint, even if I'd been moved to bare blades against these two. But I knew from the warehouse fight they would be a difficult match. And too dangerous to kill, besides. Pregnant and freezing, I would not resort to arms.

All I had was a god between my legs. And a priest killer at my side.

“I bid you good evening.” My voice whipped thin upon the chilling wind.

They glanced at one another. Then, out of one mouth, “More of a foul evening, Mistress Green.”

The other: “Come to see justice done?”

The shared smile that passed across their faces was deeply unpleasant.

“Yes,” I declared. “It is time for you both to return to an honorable retirement in the Saffron Tower.”

The Rectifier slipped away to my left. One twin's attention turned to follow him. The other's remained focused on me.

“A remarkable theory,” that one said. “But alas, of little interest to us.” He turned back to the fire while his brother stared off in the shadows, a slightly puzzled expression on his face.

This was it. My bluff was being called. All I knew was violence. There were no other tools ready to hand.

I could pray to Endurance, but the ox god had already manifested. This one would never take the attack. He stood beneath me, defending me by his very presence, but he had no fangs or claws or flaming sword.

Mother Iron? Her power was women's power, if she'd begun to fit properly into the role Desire wished of her. The example of the Lily Blades notwithstanding, women's power was like water. It flowed around obstacles, it did not shatter them.

Blackblood himself? He'd promised to take my child. My misguided overreaction to that threat—serious as it was—had started the chain of events that had led us here. His temple was dark and silent as a cenotaph on this frozen night. The building loomed high, offering little more evidence of occupation than such a cenotaph would have.

I trusted the Rectifier was up to something worthwhile, but I could not count on miracles from him. The only person I could count on was me.

Always back to me.

And my child.

Well, ever was I trained to be a sacrifice to this city's need. The oldest lessons were the deepest.

I slipped from the ox's back. If only I could seize the power I'd held when I'd stood against Choybalsan.

And so what then?
These two knew how to fight that particular power.

My belled silk rang as I walked toward the fire. The twin who wasn't scanning the dark—Osi, I thought as I drew close—looked up at me again. “If you will not be gone, we will make you go,” he said, as if speaking to a troublesome beggar.

“I will not depart.” Hopefully the cloak, an artifact of the divine, would protect me from whatever blast his hands could unleash. Or Skinless? Where was Skinless now?

“Do not disrupt our rite,” Iso said, turning away from his study of the Rectifier to glare at me.

Their fire flared. Osi held a cone of powder that he trailed into the brazier even as he bandied with me. Iso wielded a small, silver knife—a ritual implement I would not have used to peel a pear.

I reached for the brazier's tripod with a jingling swipe of my arm. Iso swung around behind his brother, flowed into a motion so smooth and fast I could barely see it, and launched a cobblestone that struck me in the chest. That forced me to stagger back, all air in my lungs lost as pain radiated with a starburst of cold, miserable sharpness.