Kalimpura (Green Universe) (42 page)

Mother Vajpai sat down in a salty puddle on one of the flights leading up into the gallery and began examining the weapon closely. I noticed she was careful not to point the tip at me or anyone else. Herself most definitely included.

I turned and approached Firesetter. He sat smoldering on one of the benches where I had waited my turn at trial earlier. I swore to myself those benches would be taken out of here if I ever had anything to say about it.

“Where are the others from the safe house?”

“Here,” he said. “I could not leave them behind.”

“My children?…”

He turned and stepped out the doors. A moment later, Ilona and Ponce crowded in, each carrying one of my babies. Mother Argai followed close behind, looking rather more pleased with herself than usual.

I kissed my two caregivers and gathered my children in my arms. It was not unheard of for Blades to bear children, but we rarely bothered with such things. That I had two so small here in the temple would have been a curiosity on a normal day.

Today, with the sanctuary and galleries refilling, it was a wonder. I looked around to see Blades, Justiciars, Intercessors, Domiciliars—every order of the temple was filing in. Following the noise, following the news.

Mother Srirani had been laid across the flower altar itself. The babies cooing and babbling in my arms, I knelt before her and the goddess she had served in so misguided a fashion.

“These are my children,” I told the Lily Goddess and all Her followers crowding in around and above me. “I beg of You that they will be safe here, kept so by Your divine regard and my strong hands.”

Turning, I looked over the gathering storm of women. They had purpose now, reminding me of nothing so much as the mob outside Blackblood’s temple back in Copper Downs, the night I’d caused Iso and Osi to be struck down.

Fantail was back, too, standing with her arm raised around Firesetter’s waist, though he was three times her height. Ponce, Ilona, and Mother Argai watched me carefully. I knew what they wanted. Likewise Mother Vajpai gave me a lengthy, approving stare, one of the long guns across her lap. In point of fact, most of the temple now watched me and waited for my words—Mother Surekha and Mother Shesturi, Mother Tonjaree, and so many others known to me.

“I ask my friends from across the sea to stay here and watch over my children one more time.” They came and took my babies from me. Little Federo fussed at this; Marya just stared so intently that I wondered not for the first time who it was that looked out from those wide brown eyes. “I ask Mother Argai to stay to protect them here in the safety of the temple. As to who should stand here before the altar, we will answer that question. But not
yet
. Now it is time to rescue one of our own, that Mother Srirani allowed to languish in the clutches of the Bittern Court. Now is the time to rescue the daughter of one very dear to me.

“Now is the time to
act
.” I raised my god-blooded knife high. “I pursue Mafic and Surali to the Bittern Court. There we will free their hostages and end this feud once and for all, as Mother Srirani spoke of. Not on their terms, but on ours.”

With those words, I strode toward the broken doors. Thankfully, Firesetter and Fantail both followed me. Behind them came dozens of Blades, almost our entire force. Sisters and Mothers of all the orders poured out onto the front steps to watch us march forth from the watery chaos of the Blood Fountain’s plaza. Beggars crying out half-drowned, Beast Market merchants chasing down their wares, carters struggling to rehitch their calming teams—they all paused in their efforts. Hundreds more Selistani faces turned to me in a shared, silent amazement.

The women of the Temple of the Silver Lily had all obeyed me without argument, I realized, once the first impulse to look to authority had been settled. I would give back my borrowed power like a cloak once this was done. For now, even the notoriously proud Justiciary Mothers had not raised a significant protest.

Even Mother Vajpai, the Blade Mother herself, had followed my bidding. She stood on the steps with one of the long guns cradled in her arms. Others bobbed in the hands of some of the senior Blade Mothers. The look on Mother Vajpai’s face I could only describe as delighted pride.

I was both horrified and thrilled. Most of all, the sheer lack of argument from this fractious bunch of women pleased me.

“We go to free their prisoners and put their leaders to the sword!” I shouted. “I claim Death Right against the entire Bittern Court!”

With that, I began to run. Behind me, the largest Blade handle in my lifetime ran with me. One way or another, this would be over soon.

*   *   *

We raced up Shalavana Avenue. Everyone had gotten out of our way. Even the armed guards we met. Even the Street Guild we met. I did not waste energy or violence on those small patrols. Such fighting would only have broken our momentum.

More than fifty Blades was a force fit not just to be reckoned with, but to terrify. We were all armored with rage at the violation of our temple and its sanctuary. That the Red Man loped gracefully in our midst, an escaped coal demon bearing his own flame, only made us all the more a terror to those we passed along the way.

Massed fighting was not the usual way of things in Kalimpura. Even the worst of the street wars between Guilds and Courts were affairs of pinpoint struggles, targeted killings, and quiet work in the dark. Or politics. Or all of that together. The Street Guild’s increasing boldness had raised uneasy scandal.

We were settling that unease.

I did not even need to direct my assault. My Blades stormed the Bittern Court’s postern gate and went over the walls in a tide of leather and steel that rolled up the opposition before us. Whatever Mafic might have done with more of those firearms, the outside guards did not have them.

Firesetter did not bother with the postern or the wall. Instead he simply struck down the great carriage gates facing onto Shalavana Avenue with his fists and stormed into their front garden. I knew a mob of regular folk would follow swiftly as their own boldness dared—to loot, to stare, to bear witness to the fall of a power.

The power that fell had better be the Bittern Court. I cast aside the possibility that the Blades might break upon this rock, and through us the Temple of the Silver Lily fail.

“Find if there are more of those weapons!” I shouted to Mother Vajpai. “We cannot have them used against us.”

“Do you want us to use them at all?” she asked.

I glanced at the Bittern Court’s great hall, where knots of fighting were visible. Women in black swarmed through the gardens, kicked open doors, subdued servants, and battled guards. “Not unless they do so first. Let us make this no worse than it already must be.”

“We only found five,” she said, and was off.

Five what?
I wondered, but the thought was lost as a crossbow quarrel nearly gutted me. I charged the man who had hidden in a thorn tree before he could fire again, and lost track of what would later become a fatally important question—where all the long guns had gotten to.

Fantail beat me to my assailant, and drowned him where he sat in the branches by filling his lungs with water. I cut the string of his dropped bow so that some desperate fellow could not use it behind me. “Where is Firesetter?”

She pointed to where smoke already rose from one of the garden follies—a little six-sided gazebo overlooking a mound of reeds that hinted at a pond.

“Get him and come with me. We must find Surali, and we must rescue our prisoners.” I had hopes of finding their account books as well, for later when reason might once more prevail and we would be set to untangling very many messes.

She gathered Firesetter as I trotted toward a two-storey building that showed more signs of being a stronghouse than a bathing house. My hostages would not be somewhere ornate. They would be somewhere easily guarded.

The Red Man touched the door and it burst into flaming flinders. The two guards within ran screaming without stopping to fight us off. We entered, racing through rooms in search of our missing before they became our dead.

The curse I had called down on Surali back in Copper Downs was coming to fruition. I had promised to follow her across the ocean, and burn down the Bittern Court, to sift the ashes for her bones and break them all one by one, then dance on the shards. I had sworn before the gods to cut all their throats and feed them to the pigs.

Though I was already sickening at our slaughter, I could not then have said I was sorrowing. Not yet.

*   *   *

Emerging from the cellars of the third building we’d searched, I realized the grounds were flooding with even more who were not my people. Guards in the uniforms of some of the other Guilds and Courts marched in small formations, swords and bows at the ready. Laborers, servants, and beggars rushed by in an echo of the beggars’ riot we’d launched down at the dockside just a few days past. Their participation was the result of the swaggering Surali and hers had done these past months.

This was how Kalimpura restored the balance among its powers. Not through the small forces of the wealthy, but through the pressure of the streets. Officers of the Bittern Court were being dragged out, stripped, and beaten by people I did not know. Sometimes bloody knives flashed.

Too bad for all of them.

We had raced for another set of stairs leading down below the building that housed the kitchens, my ears pricked for news, when I saw Ilona running from the gates.

“I will follow!” I shouted to Firesetter and the two Blades who had joined us, then whirled to meet my erstwhile lover.
“What are you doing here?”
I shouted. “You could be killed.”

“Corinthia Anastasia,” she panted. Then, in Petraean, “I claim the right to find my daughter.
You
would do no less.”

That I could not argue with. “Fair enough,” I groused. “But stay close to me, and stay safe.”

She kissed me then, tasting of salt water and fear, and whispered into my ear, “No one close to you is ever safe, dear Green.”

Those words stung my eyes with tears. The kiss stung my heart even more. I blinked away the emotion along with my irritation at Ilona for putting herself into harm’s way, then followed swiftly after my little party where they’d gone down among the root cellars and cold rooms that had fed this place.

*   *   *

Thunder echoed as I clattered down the flight of stairs. By the Wheel, I was late and someone would be hurt. I burst into a lower hall and tripped over the body of a Blade—Mother Fastanjana, I thought. She’d died with one of the long guns in her hand. Another had left her chest a sickening mess.

Vile weapons. They had no honesty behind them. If I lived through this day, I would have to think hard on what to do.

Before me, Firesetter used a dead guard’s body to club two other Street Guild. The hall was filled with the dark, acrid smoke of the accursed firearms. Our enemies collapsed with one final cry. The Red Man threw down his corpse-weapon to grab at his own arm.

Fantail leapt to Firesetter’s side. I saw that he had been hit there as well by one of the long guns. Not torn wide open, as Mother Fastanjana had, but a furrow shredded through muscle and skin where copper brown blood fizzed as it oozed from him.

“Something important is here,” I said. “They would not be guarding taro roots with those weapons.” Where had the other Blade Mothers gotten to? I wasn’t even certain who’d joined us in the rush outside.

Wood splintered above my head as thunder barked again. I realized there was still an ambush in progress. A table overturned two rods down the hall sheltered more defenders.

Firearms or not, there was nothing for it but to rush them. Screaming red rage and bloody murder, I did so. Another crack came so close I swear I felt it. Then I was over the table and among three of them, swinging wildly with my single, god-blooded knife. Why had I not stopped to find other weapons?

It did not matter. That unholy edge sliced through even the iron length of the long gun, and took one man’s face halfway off. Another tried to jab at me with his weapon, for he had not yet finished replenishing the thunder within. I took his hands off at the wrist. Then I kicked him in the fork that he might sit down and bleed to death out of my way.

The third man’s head exploded with another echoing bark so loud my ears rang. I whirled to see Ilona standing on the other side of the table, long gun shivering in her hand. Tears coursed down her face.

“Well done,” I growled. If she wanted to come play Blade, she damned well could play the full part. I would no more let her fall into crying now than I would have permitted any of my Sisters to do so.

Someone screamed close by, through one of the storeroom doors. I yanked it open—the bar was on the outside, of course—to find sacks of flour threatening nobody.

By the Wheel, I will not fail now.

The next door yielded barrels, but no prisoners or Street Guild or Surali.

The third door opened onto the bark of another firearm. Wood exploded in my face, giving me half a hundred bloody splinters. My eyes stung, too, which could not be good.

Samma!

My heart raced. She was here, bound and gagged upon the floor. Corinthia Anastasia had been gagged as well, but it had slipped or she had worked it off, for it was she who shrieked. The Street Guildsman who’d just fired at me tossed his useless weapon away and pulled a knife to cut the girl’s throat. Behind me, Ilona shouted. I wasted a precious second turning to see her being rushed by another Street Guildsman.
Where is Firesetter?

There was no more time.

My heart pounded, counting out the precious moments of which I had too few. After all these months, I had no time to act, to save them both.

If I could.

Spinning, I threw the god-blooded knife into the eye of the man drawing steel even now across Corinthia Anastasia’s throat, and spun again to leap into the hall.

Too late,
by all the Smagadine hells.

Ilona was already collapsing with a blade stuck into her chest. I broke her assailant’s neck with a high blow, then caught at my friend and lover. We both sank to our knees. A glance showed me Corinthia Anastasia wriggling out from under the dropped body of her last guard. Her mouth was open, but nothing came out.