Something large and invisible moved nearby. Skinless, I devoutly hoped. The avatar in its dim way had proven to count me as a friend. Were it some other servant of the god, I would have to give in to the gibbering fear that did not threaten me at all. Not one bit.
“There are no women like you.” The voice was smooth and rich as heartsblood.
The god was upon his seat, had always been there, I realized, only my poor eyes had failed to see him before this moment. Where the manifestation I’d last witnessed had been a pudgy child on the point of petulance, now Blackblood appeared as a languid youth. Dissolute, louche, dangerous in his detached passions. Even so, power shone through. The chains that bound him to the chair did not seem fit to hold him back.
Still, I faced him. It was not courage I summoned, but foolishness, and the worn edge of familiarity. My words were brave, nonetheless-always that has been my strength and downfall. “Whereas gods such as you might be found in every city of the world.”
“You have no concept.” The hopeless despair of centuries threatened in his tone.
I peered closely at his face. Blackblood’s expression seemed a study in indifference. At the least, I had expected the god to be angry with me, given my dealings with his late priesthood.
“There are many things I have no concept of,” I told him. I was much better at arguing than at obeisance. “You surprise me.” Nohow would I call him lord. “I might have thought to meet more anger from you.”
“If I were capable of gratitude, I might have shown you that.” His face remained eerily slack.
I spoke with a puppet, I realized. The body before me was not Blackblood, any more than the statue of the ox was Endurance. I knew what it was to be close to a god. Standing before divine regard was like standing before a racing tide. It was possible-with luck, strength, and some good bracing. But the struggle was never simple, and always bordered on the fatally overwhelming.
“What keeps your attention from me?” I asked, going on the attack.
This time Blackblood’s focus did sweep to me, and I regretted the question. Those eyes opened wide, to become dark, swirling pools. That languid face transformed into a cruel, predatory leer. Weeping sores and suppurating wounds chased themselves across his body like roaches in a filthy kitchen.
When he spoke again, his voice was the hollow, rust-showered tolling of neglected iron bells. “You bear my child.”
Calling on both the Lily Goddess and Endurance, I braced myself from dropping to my knees. His aspect was unfolding to push me down. Still, I continued to pretend to bravery. “So you have claimed.”
“You will bear me a son, and he will be presented unto me.”
“ No! ” I shouted, unthinking. “My daughter will not be stolen away.”
His next words echoed like a dropped iron kettle. “You will have no choice.” The laughter that followed threatened to flense me.
I faced him with murder in my eye. No one threatened to steal my baby. No one, in no way, ever. I might not be able to stop the child selling in Kalimpura, but by all the gods I could keep it from starting here in Copper Downs. Looking back, I realize now how blind I was to what was so clearly to come. Only my youth and my anger can excuse the foolishness that came next.
“I will not pimp my own daughter for you,” I screamed into the continuing storm of his laughter. Then I was alone in the little room.
That utter bastard of a god. He had all but threatened me. Skinless might be a friend of sorts, if I were lucky, but his master had just set a course that promised ill will between us. I wished Blackblood every plague the divine could endure, then stalked back through the temple. The new Pater Primus stood near the scrying pool, but retreated after one glance in my direction.
It was nice to have someone’s respect.
Blinking back tears of rage, I returned to the street. I was sick of sunlight and people and crowds and simply being looked at. I heartily desired to head to the quiet of Below. That was a place of dubious safety, but the threats there were ancient and indifferent to me personally. Even Below, I could not hope to evade Skinless, but at least the human servants of Blackblood would be hard-pressed to follow me there.
I sought out an entry point. The Prince of the City’s embassy could not reach me there. Neither could the Interim Council. All I had to worry about were the ghosts and avatars that always haunted the lower reaches of this city.
Once I was safely out of the cold sunlight amid the dank stone and moldering air of Below, I found my mind settling. Blackblood could not take my child. Though I was certain she was a daughter, that did not matter. Boy or girl, the baby was mine. I had been afraid of returning to Kalimpura for the sake of not losing her, but now Copper Downs might prove as unsafe.
One stolen childhood in a lifetime was enough for me.
This mixture of sewers and tunnels and mines older than the city slumped in the open air above were as familiar to me as my own hands. At least, my usual paths were. I seriously doubted anyone had a true idea of the extents of Below. Copper Downs was thoroughly undermined as any anthill, saved from collapse into a great, deep hole only by the solidity of the bedrock and the dubious wisdom of engineering down the centuries. Millennia, rather.
The sewers were the easiest to comprehend. Tunnels shored by bricked or stone archways, inspection walks, ladders up and down. But they cross-connected with private diggings, some of which were ritualistic-I knew of an entire labyrinth, not so far from the Dockmarket, only a few rods beneath the streets. Others were smugglers’ hideaways, or underground warrens from different ages of the city when the surface was more dangerous. Ossuaries, cold storage, prison cells; every manner of use one could think of for windowless, cool spaces.
Around and beneath the diggings were the mines, far more ancient than the city to which they lent their name. Played out, so far as anyone knew. Certainly there were no headings bringing out metal for the markets, and the ruins of the Ore Docks were barely identifiable just east of the current boundaries of the city, they were so old. Some of those galleries were strangely smooth, as if carved by the rush of waters. Others featured frenetic details that bespoke lifetimes of craftsmanship beneath the skin of the world. Caryatid pillars, battle scenes stretching for a quarter mile, footprints chiseled into floors to mark out the steps of a complex pavane for two dozen dancers who had probably never trod a single measure in the deep dark.
All these wonders, and far more that I’d likely never see. Each haunted by furtive figures and angry ghosts and the tulpas that seemed to compose the city’s literal and spiritual undermind. The place had an aesthetic and an etiquette of its own, one hard-learned by me over careful months and years. During my time in the Factor’s house, the Dancing Mistress had used Below as my primary training ground for subverting my transformation into a great lady of the courts of Copper Downs.
Here amid the endless shadows and the strange creatures that haunted the dreams of the city, she had taught me to run, to fight, to leap into the void, how to land, how to climb, how to survive. My time down here had prepared me to encounter the Lily Blades of Kalimpura without being cut to ribbons at the first. My time down here had readied me for so much. Even my earliest killings, of Mistress Tirelle, and the ancient, ageless Duke of Copper Downs.
So now I walked past timeless carvings of demon-haunted men and humans with demonic faces. Pillars; raw rock walls; long, gleaming forests of slime; strange little creeks that reeked of elements I could not name; skeletons in armor frosted with mold and fungi; great, damp footprints longer than the height of my waist.
Below. It was home, of a sort. And for the first time in a long while, I found myself willing to contemplate leaving Copper Downs for good. Most likely I should have stayed in the High Hills. I could tend graves as well-or poorly-as anyone. The unquiet dead were merely that. Unquiet, not dangerous. Even Erio with his strong opinions and ready words was not so difficult to bear. And none of them would try to take my baby.