Endurance (5 page)

I whirled away from both of them to regain my composure. “S-sorry about the bowl,” I told the fireplace.

Chowdry touched my shoulder, a brief gesture of comfort or camaraderie. “I know how you are,” he said in Seliu. “I was wrong not to wait outside where you could see and hear me.”

“You don't assassinate someone for the sake of a bowl of beans and a conversation,” Ilona added, though I knew she had not taken the meaning of Chowdry's words.

“I have killed for less,” I said in my smallest voice, and screwed my eyes shut against the tears. My breath shuddered in my chest, and I was shamed that the two of them could hear it. When I turned back, the compassion in their faces stung me even more. “Why did you come up for me, Chowdry? Your man at Briarpool was already looking.”

He glanced sidelong at Ilona before answering. “I am not knowing of Briarpool. I am sending only me. I knew you would listen to no one. You never do. Especially not me. But I can be arguing with you. Anyone else is too frightened.”

Ashamed all over again, I leaned forward and snatched my short knife from the tabletop. I was
not
a difficult woman! “If you were not frightened, you weren't paying attention. And who was looking for me at Briarpool?”

“More Selistani have arrived in Copper Downs from across the sea. Kalimpuri high-noses with their city ways, wearing their money as if it was being power. They prepare for someone greater. I do not yet know who.”

I was momentarily distracted by the political issue that implied. The number of Selistani back in Kalimpura who spoke Petraean was quite small. Who was coming, with the power to scour the merchant families and counting houses for those people? Not Mother Vajpai, or anyone from the Temple of the Silver Lily. Wealth and influence we—they—had. But not sufficient to compel unwilling persons on an adventure across the Storm Sea. Our writ was mighty, but definitely limited to the bounds of Kalimpura's city walls.

Oh, how much I later paid for lacking sufficient foresight then.

“It is time for me to leave here.” I nodded at Ilona. “If such people are seeking me, I cannot stay. But I resent being pushed into the service of the city once more.”

“There is no pushing here,” Chowdry said. “All I am asking is that you come to speak to Endurance.”

“The god is mute,” I gently pointed out. I had made him so myself.

“The god is wordless. He still has much to say at times.” The pirate-priest smiled. “Born of your deeds, how could he be otherwise?”

I had to laugh at that. To my immense relief, Ilona chose to laugh with me. We bent to cleaning the scattered slops and ceramic fragments, while I furiously wondered what was so bad that both the god Endurance and the ghosts of the High Hills should care that it be me who stepped into it.

 

Return to Copper Downs

C
OMING DOWN OUT
of the hills with Chowdry, I decided to follow the route I'd taken while fleeing Choybalsan's army at the beginning of the summer. This was a rough track, so I carried only my knives, some small essentials for cooking and sleep, and of course my belled silk with the needles, thread, and cache of bells. That line of work had been broken too often. I would not abandon it yet again. I did roll the cloth carefully so as to pad the bells that I did not jingle as I walked.

I stayed away from the Barley Road and the banks of the Greenbriar River, and instead traveled along the ridges following goat tracks, tracing the crumbling high road of former times where possible, and indulging in a fair amount of plain old bushwhacking. Following me, Chowdry was not so pleased.

“It was taking a long day to find your cottage from the city as it is,” he complained in Seliu as we rested in the shelter of a wisteria. The weather was sunny but sharp, somehow the worst of both summer and winter in one difficult walk. We shared our bower with a mass of late-season mosquitoes, but I was more interested in being out of the biting wind than in fleeing from the insects. Besides, they were more attracted to Chowdry than to me. He continued his litany: “Now we are walking several days for no reason.”

“You're spoiled,” I announced with a grin, watching him slap at himself like one of the rough-trade Blade Mothers after a bad night in the rack. “When I met you, you were crewing the rankest little coaster ever to sail Selistani waters. You would have been glad of fresh squirrel over an open fire and a dry place to sleep.”

“I am not seeing fresh squirrel here,” he grumbled.

“You will. But first understand that I have my reasons. I am coming with you. Surely that will be enough, for now. As neither of us answers to the other, nothing else is possible.”

The look Chowdry gave me suggested that he had different theories on who answered to whom, but then he shook his poor humor off and smiled. “Then I am to be cooking the squirrel this evening, so long as you are to be killing it.”

“Perhaps,” I told him.

We made camp that night in a rotten-roofed barn that still sheltered one dry corner. I managed to bring in two squirrels, some windfall peaches, and a collection of herbs and green onions from a long-neglected garden near the foundations of the vanished farmhouse.

Once the supplies were in place, I pushed Chowdry aside and began to do the cooking myself. That was one of the few undiluted gifts of my childhood training. I was able to do far too little of it. What I made was not even stew, for we had no stock and no time to prepare it. Rather I heated a piece of old iron on our little fire, smeared it with squirrel fat and the juice of several onion stalks, then fried the squirrel meat together with the peaches, seasoned nicely enough in the Stone Coast fashion.

Even such primitive cookery was a pleasure. I was glad enough of the good food, and even more glad of the company. Otherwise this would have been the first night I had spent completely alone since arriving at Ilona's cottage these months past.

As we cracked the bones in our teeth, I turned my thoughts to what lay ahead. “Tell me more of why Endurance wishes me back in Copper Downs.”

“You are already saying how the god has no words.” He toyed with a squirrel thigh, picking seared meat from the bone and flicking the bits into his mouth as he watched me for a reaction.

“Well, yes. A mute god seemed … safer.”

“I am not to be saying you are wrong. Still, this makes troubles.”

“You never meant to be a priest,” I offered.

That made him laugh. “I am never being a priest. I am servant to a god. Others dance in robes and light incense and make up new books of ancient ceremony. I do what Endurance asks of me.” He paused, his mirth falling away. “Demands of me.”

I allowed my voice to soften. “In what manner does the god compel you?” I had already enjoyed far too much experience of divine influence in my own life. Though I only suspected it then, more was all too definitely to follow.

“Dreams,” Chowdry said slowly. “Pictures. Thoughts without words. So I
know
that such a thing should be done, without it being said. This is not like Utavi ordering a sail to be reefed back aboard
Chittachai
. Or you, pushing me where I would never be going of my own.”

“Do you dream with Endurance in Seliu?”

He gave me an odd look. “There are no words, I am already telling you.”

Somehow this became very important to me. “But
where
are you in dreams? In a field under our hot sun?” My father's paddies, where Endurance the ox had lived and died. “Or on the cold streets of Copper Downs?” This northern city was a strange place for any Selistani.

Almost helplessly, he replied, “I am with the god.”

Having stood far too close to Blackblood for the comfort of any sane person, and been called by the Lily Goddess, I could take his meaning. Gods happened in a place where the everyday world was an incidental detail. As if one could see and hear
everything
. Which, while possible for the divine, was very difficult for the merely human. As an ant might be confused to view the world as seen from a person's eyes.

“I understand,” I told him, patting my silk, which awaited this evening's sewing of the bell.

Gratitude flashed across Chowdry's face. “So you see, I cannot be saying exactly what the god wishes of you. Only that the god wishes you to return to his domain.”

“Is he afraid?”

That provoked a thoughtful silence. Finally: “That I cannot say either.”

I let the matter drop then, and tucked into the last of my fried squirrel with peaches. I had eaten far worse.

*   *   *

Two days later we arrived at the place I'd had in mind on choosing this difficult path back to the city. The last of the inland hills petered out several miles from my goal. They terminated in a final upthrust knee of rock, soil, and trees from where I'd observed the condition of Copper Downs under occupation at the time I'd previously made this journey.

I wanted that hawk's-eye view again, from the branches of the great oak spreading amid a stand of bayberries. Not to seek out the disposition of armies, for surely they had not gone that seriously wrong, but just to take the mood of the city. I would count the chimney smokes and look for evidence of either riot or festival. In Kalimpura, those two were nearly synonymous. These Stone Coast folk celebrated with a reserve that was almost depressing.

I had thought also to be able to number the masts in the harbor, which was perhaps the best indication of the health and welfare of any trading city. In that I was disappointed—memory did not supply the view, and in reality too much of the city intruded for me to accurately gauge the density of shipping. At least the day remained clear, instead of misty along the waterside as this season so often could provide. The scattered clusters of hutments and wayhouses at the outer edges seemed normal enough, but that told me little.

Chowdry sat and watched me watch as the sun trundled along the trackway of the sky. Finally, as I paused from my study to sip at my waterskin, he spoke.

“You hunt the city far more carefully than you hunt our dinner.”

“It is bigger game,” I said, meaning that for a joke. The humor rang flat in my own ears. Nothing in his eyes suggested that he took it any better.

“They fear you and love you.”

“Who?” This line of conversation was making me want to change the subject.

“The people. Of this city. Also, more Selistani live here now. They buy passage, or jump ship.”

“
What
would possess any of our people to emigrate here?”

“You and I came here,” he said quietly. “Endurance is here. The first new Selistani god in generations, birthed far across the sea from his proper home. Some wish to learn his mysteries and carry his name back.”

I listened carefully to the catch in his voice. “You do not favor that, do you?”

“I do not know what the god is. The
god
does not know what the god is. Not yet. We are much too soon to make promises in another country. Even our own country.”

That made a great deal of sense to me. I exhaled slowly, trying to release some of the uneasiness he raised in me. I knew too much of gods already, far too much. I could not unlearn, but I could most certainly avoid more of such dabbling.

So I thought then, at least.

To distract myself, I turned my attention back to the city.

*   *   *

We camped on the hill one more night. Chowdry cooked this evening as a gentle, chilled rain descended. That dinner was wasted, as this time the smell of squirrel made me violently ill. I was reduced to gnawing roots while feeling both hungry and nauseous at the same time.

“It is your child,” Chowdry said in Petraean, oddly.

“My child?” I didn't think I'd shown that much yet.

He switched to Seliu. “The baby inside does not like some foods. My sister, every time she is pregnant, must have plantains, but cannot stand mangoes.”

“Wonderful,” I muttered. Losing my balance
and
my appetite to my daughter. What was in this for
me
?

I had to check that thought. Poor, doomed Septio lived on inside me. And through him the seed of the god, if Blackblood was to be believed. Time away from the streets and temples of Copper Downs, and especially the dark, hidden world of Below, had lessened the grip that those same gods held on my imagination. I suppose I'd expected to turn inward, become focused on the child, as women were said to do. So far the baby and I had gotten along well enough not to notice much.

Until these last few days.

I ran my hand over the leathers tight upon my abdomen. Beneath my touch, I fancied that she eased.

Still, I didn't eat any squirrel.

“Green,” Chowdry said, drawing my attention back into the moment.

“Mmm?” I looked at him fondly, this thin man with the perpetually worried expression who'd so unexpectedly inherited divine responsibility.

“I am to be returning to the city tomorrow. If you are staying up here to eat shoots and berries, that is your business. But the god wishes your attendance. Do not wait too long, I am begging of you.”

He was almost cute about it. I smiled, feeling a wash of tenderness. “Do not fear, old friend. I shall soon be there.”

Chowdry appeared even more worried at my words, but he said nothing more.

*   *   *

The next morning, the old pirate took his leave of me with the dawn. He followed our backtrail, stumbling down to the Barley Road well away from camp. I watched Chowdry trudge through the morning mists off the river, until he caught up to a farm family driving their pigs to market. I could not mark him out after that amid the people and the intermittent rain.

I spent the next hour or so examining not just the city, but also myself. What had I been about the night before? The way I had spoken to Chowdry was so unlike me. This pregnancy was making me untrustworthy. I resolved to cultivate a healthy suspicion and maintain distance from people around me, lest unthinking kindness blunder me into greater trouble.