Kalimpura (Green Universe) (29 page)

Each small forehead seemed to beg for a kiss, so I planted one on first my daughter, then my son. That was better than thinking about Ilona, which would only lead me to brooding and anger. Clutching the babies close, I continued in Petraean, which I reckoned Mother Argai could follow enough of. “Without the full backing of the Temple of the Silver Lily, we do not have the power to force Surali to negotiate. Picking at her secrets, unraveling her plans, even her old plans, may give us that leverage in another form.”

“We are working on the problem of the temple,” Mother Vajpai said almost grudgingly.

“I know. And you shall solve it quite well. But now I know my own best path will not work. I cannot be a large enough storm of blades against them. Not as we are constituted today.”

“What of that cold tide?” Mother Argai asked.

That caught me short. “My pardons, what?”

“The people on the docks are calling the water swellings cold tides. Either you are summoning them, or they are following you.”

“Yes,” I breathed, wondering if I could possibly give her a worthwhile answer. Almost certainly not. “In any case, Surali has not been obliging enough to place herself at the waterfront. If I could somehow pull the tide to the Bittern Court’s palace, it would destroy half the city.”

“The ocean is in love with you,” Ilona blurted.

We all stared at her. Once again, I felt that I’d missed an important turn in the discussion. “The ocean, well, it just
is,
” I finally said.

“Oceanus was one of Desire’s brothers. One of the titanics.”

“Yes.” That much was true. “But the titanics are long gone from the plate of the world.”

“Not Desire.”

“No…” Despite the best efforts of the Saffron Tower in that regard, either. Or perhaps not their best, not yet. I still had to meet this Mafic about whom Chowdry had written me in such haste. “Not Desire.”

“It reaches out for you,” Ilona persisted. “We both read
Goddes ande Theyre Desyres
back in our days at the Factor’s house. You know the lore. Perhaps too well.”

“It’s lore. And old lore at that. Not law. The ocean weaves through the plate of the world, an endless braid of salt water. If Oceanus is still walking the Earth, he cannot possibly focus on me any more than he could focus on a single grain of sand along one of his beaches.”

“Desire has focused on you,” she persisted.

“Through the lens of the Lily Goddess, and lost Marya!” At the sound of her name in my raised voice, my dozing daughter stirred and coughed.

“Through the lens of Desire…” Ilona’s voice trailed off. She seemed ready to drop the question.

“It does not matter,” I told them. “I cannot control that power, no matter to whom it might belong. The tide is not mine to raise. The Red Man is mine to seek out, though. He is all of ours to seek.”

“There was talk today,” Mother Argai said into the silence that followed. “From your street festival.”

“Of the Red Man?”

“Yes.” She tapped her fingers together. There was no point in urging her to continue speaking. I waited to let Mother Argai frame her thoughts, as was her way. “Word has been that he is off in the high, hard country of the Fire Lakes. But today some said they had seen a Red Man drinking in a tavern near the Evenfire Gate.”

“Well, that seems appropriate,” I muttered.

She shrugged. “I do not know. But we can search here with some hope.”

“Surely you were not thinking of haring off to the Fire Lakes yourself, Green?” asked Mother Vajpai in astonishment.

Actually, I had been thinking exactly that, but the prospect was grotesque. Besides the logistical issues, such an expedition would take me too far from Samma and Corinthia Anastasia. “No,” I lied cheerfully. “We have a lead to follow here. Find them, and we have strength as well.”

“I will inquire quietly around the Evenfire Gate,” Mother Argai said. “One such as he should be difficult to hide.”

“Good.” I finally sat to ease the strain on my back from standing and pacing with both babies in my arms. They needed to be fed in any case, and I desperately needed to feed them. “Now that we have an oil stove, I will cook a chicken for dinner. Ponce, will you please go kill and dress one of the hens I brought?”

He murmured some dejected assent and left. Which nicely got him away from Ilona. Hopefully I could tempt her into helping me with dinner. Kitchens were always a place for propinquity.

Setting that thought aside, I placed the babies at my feet, opened my robe, and unlaced my leather tunic to release my breasts. It was time to feed my children. And baring myself in front of Ponce when he was touching Ilona … It had felt just wrong.

*   *   *

The chicken turned out well, for all that I could not coax much heat from the little stove. Nor from Ilona either, unfortunately. A simmer is as good as a roast, if one is patient. It felt like real cooking to work with fresh meat and the increasingly improved larder provided by both Mother Argai’s rangings about town and our own continued careful searches of this house. Spices, for one, were now in relative abundance.

Working alone despite my best intentions, I shredded the meat, soaked it awhile in sesame oil with red peppers chopped in, then set all in a pan of small beer to cook slowly while I worked with fresh vegetables, fruits, rock salt, and paprika to make a medley that crossed half a dozen flavors into a tangy, blended whole. There was enough Stone Coast cooking in my blood to make me wish for bread in the absence of the rice we would have trouble preparing over the weak fire.

Still, it made for marvelous eating, albeit quite late. Afterwards, the children sleeping once more and hopefully for the rest of the night, I sat outside with Ilona. She’d recovered herself enough to be willing to hold my hand in the dark. Whatever they meant to her, Ilona’s fingers twined in mine were water in the desert of my love.

“She is still alive,” I whispered after a while. Nighthawks peeped overhead, and occasionally a bat would whir by in a staggering flitter of small, leathery wings.

“I cannot know.” Ilona’s voice hitched. “When you went there, they might have taken their s-swords to her.”

“They did not trouble to carry your daughter across an entire ocean only to put her to death at the first sign of difficulty.” I doubted the same could be said of Samma, given the old enmities in play here, but that did not bear speaking aloud. Not in this moment.

“You stirred their nest.” Now her words were so small, they barely fit into my ears. Like catching dust motes.

“They knew I was here even before we stepped off the ship.” That sounded like an excuse, though I did not mean my words as such.

“I know.”

We lapsed into silence awhile, but she did not release my hand. Something larger and slower swooped overhead—perhaps one of the flying foxes that lived among the papaya trees.

“Green…”

“Yes, dear?”

“If she is … is … is no longer here to be rescued…”

“Yes?”

“I do not think I can go on. Or go back.”

“Leave it be,” I said, squeezing her hand. “There is so much trouble to be had here already. We have no need to borrow more.”

After a while she rose, kissed me on the cheek, and drifted indoors. Wishing mightily that I could follow Ilona right into her bed, instead I stared at the night sky and the treetops. At the least, I should be grateful that this house and its surrounds were laid out such that we could find a place to sit outside that was not within sight of the neighbors. Not to mention the noisome, nosy Street Guild that clattered through the city searching for me.

I was alone now, as alone as anyone ever managed to be in a place so crowded as Kalimpura. I found I did not like this so much. So I took myself to think upon my dead awhile, clinging to that ritual of candle and prayer that released me from their ghosts.

When I tired of my thoughts, I went to sew my bells, then sleep beside my children. Ponce snored in my bed with them. I did not roust him out, for company seemed better than not. Even if he had been sniffing after Ilona. When he awoke later and embraced me, I let him. I did not even move his hands away from where they wandered, though I did not open myself to the firmness of his need.

*   *   *

The next day, I wanted to go over the wall with Mother Argai, but Mother Vajpai forbade that plan. “After your little street festival, your name will be on everyone’s lips.”

“Just as much tomorrow.”

“Perhaps. But let it rest. Besides, you are still very much being chased. Allow them to spend themselves awhile in casting about as you rest to rebuild your own strength.”

So I brushed out my borrowed blue robe and cleaned my leathers and tended my children and managed to feel generally useless. I tried thinking of ways to fight tigers, then tried thinking of how many houses or compounds in Kalimpura might even
have
tigers.

As soon fight the tide, which at least appeared on a twice-daily basis. Tigers were hardly unknown, but they were notably scarce within the walls of most cities. Recent experiences notwithstanding.

Marya was trying to crawl now, though Federo just watched her in amazement as she wriggled herself against the furniture and squirmed, squirmed, squirmed as she cooed. I wished mightily for an ox that she might play under, and my son also at her side. Still, I saw myself most in her ragged, unsteady persistence. A child determined to be more than she was.

“You have no grandmother to love you, or for you to bury,” I told them both sternly. “And I have already sent a troop of shades to someday guard your way into the next life. So stay here awhile, and be the delights of my world.”

They both burbled at me. I received a gummy smile from Federo.

That was good enough for me.

Mother Argai came back that afternoon with a sack of sweets, some new knives that had obviously been extracted from the temple armory, and another letter from Chowdry. Also addressed to me at the Temple of the Silver Lily.

I supposed I should count myself lucky that Mother Srirani had not ordered them destroyed. Likely she was unaware of the existence of the missives.

In my whole life, I had never received a letter. Now here were two in the span of a week. Not even troubling with choosing from among the new weapons yet, I took Chowdry’s missive and retired to a chair to read it while others played with the babies and the knives.

Greetings to Green, from Copper Downs and now of Kalimpura.

This place will never be settled, I am swearing on it. Councilor Jeschonek has come twice asking after the day of your return. I told him to wait until the phoenix drowns.

Putting my words to paper is not so simple, and Sister Gammage advises me how to say things when the words are trapped. I am thanking you for your patiences and her for her hand in writing.

The Mafic I told you of sails for Kalimpura. He knows about you and seeks you. I did not tell him anything. He also carries mystic weapons from the distant east that kill with a look by sending a thunderbolt.

I have seen this once, and am thinking it magic, but I have been told there is an art to this thing, just like kettle ships are an art as well.

In any case, it does not matter. This Mafic seeks you, he can kill with a look, and you must be on your guard. He also is seeking two named Firesetter and Fantail, though I am not knowing if and how they are bonded to you.

Stay well. Do not let yourself be taken like the drowned phoenix.

It is to be wishing you well.

Chowdry, of Endurance

I smiled a bit at the letter, then took it to Mother Vajpai to see what she made of the news. The words of my old pirate-turned-priest seemed clear enough. Chowdry had never been one to speak in riddles. I did not count him so clever as to try a code. And why should he bother?

Mafic was coming, and he possessed those selfsame firearms that Lalo’s men had used aboard
Prince Enero
. I’d seen them close by. They were frightening. I wanted no part of such things here in Kalimpura.

Unfortunately, the only people with the authority to forbid the weapons entry to our harbor, or confiscate them if they did come, were the Bittern Court. Their control of the affairs of the portside was close enough to complete, and well settled in the fragmented mass of customs and half-remembered wisdom that passed for the law here in Kalimpura. Besides, none of the other Courts would welcome the precedent of interference in their own prerogatives.

For a long moment, I wished for
Prince Enero
back. Lalo close at hand might have been comforting, even more than Ponce’s warm, supple body had been in the night.

Mother Argai handed me back my letter. “Firesetter,” she said. “If his name is carrying meaning, he might be easier to find.”

So far as I knew, never having seen one for myself, Red Men resembled the coal demons that were paraded at so many of our Kalimpuri festivals. Usually caged statues, sometimes mummers or priests wandering free in makeup and a mask and stilts beneath upon their feet, they were human in shape, but terribly oversized and ridiculously wide, their snarling faces filled with sharp teeth.

Not unlike larger versions of the tiny men passing out meat at the beginning of my festival. I tried to put those two ideas together, but could not make them fit. At least not right there in the moment.

“Did you find any evidence of him?”

She laughed softly. “Most of the merchant caravans from Shaggat, Malahar, and the westward extents are coming through the Evenfire Gate. Do you know how many little taverns lie within a few blocks of there?”

“More than one woman could visit in an afternoon, I should imagine.”

“More than a dozen women could.”

Among the hulking, strange creatures sometimes found guarding caravans, a Red Man might not even be so immediately remarkable as he would elsewhere in the city of Kalimpura. Such a one could not simply throw a cloak over his head and shoulders and wander the streets freely outside an area like that.