I ranged quietly through Below, carrying a swath of coldfire as I made progress toward the minehead and the site of Endurance’s temple. The cold, oil-and-rust smell of ancient machines was strong, as it always was near that point. I’d never found enough light down here to properly judge what I sensed around me. Old stone and older pathways sweated their long, slow memories. These places were far more ancient than the city above, extending back through time as deep as the abandoned galleries of the copper mines that wound beneath my feet.
In any case, Below comforted me; pattering bodiless footsteps and all. This was the heart of Copper Downs. Blackblood or no, this city was as much my home as Kalimpura ever would be. All I needed to do was find some way to unseat the embassy, and deter Surali with her prideful anger.
If I killed her, that would solve some of my problems. The Death Right case would be complex and expensive back in Kalimpura, at meaningful risk to my own neck. But if I never returned, well, I did not care much, did I?
Getting past Mother Vajpai and Mother Argai to reach Surali would be a trick. I wondered how thoroughly Samma had betrayed me. To trust her now was foolish.
No matter, I thought as I approached the central gallery of the minehead. I would just-
Then Skinless was before me.
Imagine a man almost a rod tall, completely flayed. The muscles and tendons of its widespread arms gleamed in the faint light of the coldfire. As always, it just barely sweated blood, slick, crimson sheets covering its body. Its great round eyes rolled amid their pads of fat, glistening.
“Hello,” I said to this sending of my unfriend.
Skinless nodded. I saw a hard light in its expression.
“Is it your god’s will that I be returned to his temple?” I asked.
The avatar nodded again. I thought perhaps I saw slow regret. Those great fists, each larger than a ham, opened and closed very deliberately.
I reached for the right words. This creature had carried me through the streets when I was wounded, had tended me awhile. We had a bond, I knew it, if I could only touch that point within its dim consciousness. “You stood with me on Lyme Street, when we brought down Choybalsan.”
Silence. But no action.
“It was me who ended the corruption among Blackblood’s priests.”
More silence. More inaction.
Below carried as always its sense of arrested breathing. As if the city had filled great, stone lungs, and waited for a time when it could exhale once more. I smelled the blood-and-meat reek of Skinless, the sewer rot of the sludge gathered in corners, the nearby metal and oil of machines.
A moment, poised. Much as the Dancing Mistress had taught me when we first began to run Below. My earliest escapes from the Factor’s house had all been about these poised moments. Body, mind, heart, soul.
Danger, balanced on the tip of a knife.
Like all such balance points, it could be pushed one way or another with the slightest effort. I stepped close to Skinless, inside the reach of its arms, and stretched on my toes to whisper near its dripping ear. “I am mother to this child. She will not be taken up in pain.” The lie, then, for in the god’s sending of Skinless to find me, I thought I knew who my enemy was. Or one of them, at the least. “Neither will I work against Blackblood, for he has spared my life and made me whole.” And once more the truth, to bring the lie round again. “But you are my friend, and I will never harm you.”
Skinless stared a long while. Its eyes-no, his eyes-glistened until they ran wet down the pulsing horror of his cheeks. Then he turned and shambled away into the deeper darkness that was the rightful state of this place.
I stood, breathing hard as the meat reek vanished with the avatar’s departure. My hands cradled my belly, smearing coldfire across my shirt, though the child had not stirred. Strangely, I was not even ill from the smell. Perhaps because it was familiar?
Skinless I could no more defeat in a fight than Mother Vajpai. But I had not been certain that I could talk him out of a course once he was set upon it. He was an avatar of the god Blackblood. A tulpa. He was a part of the god. If he could be softspoken away, then that meant Blackblood himself was not fully resolute.
The chilling, indifferent power of that languid youth still haunted me.
I turned, suddenly hungry, which seemed very odd, to find myself being watched from the open gallery ahead. Mother Iron stared from beneath her cowl. The Factor’s ghost stood beside her. She had no face to read, just a deep pool of shadow with a hint of red glow guttering within; but he appeared both sorrowful and thoughtful.
I had not expected to see either again. Which was foolish, of course. They both dwelt Below. Proto-gods and ghosts of this city.
With a flush of mixed embarrassment and fear, I snapped at them. “Were you intending to restage our fight with Choybalsan? All we would need now are some pardines.”
The Factor seemed as if he would say something. Mother Iron, so very often mute, stood unmoving. Whatever they wanted, I would have no part of it. Not now. Sick of this city and all its plotting powers, I circled around the wider space and headed for the upper gallery that lay beneath the building site of the Temple of Endurance.
I climbed the rickety ladder to hear a great racket above me. Shouting and crying. A fight?
Just below the bright-lit opening at the top I paused. It still stood unguarded-which still seemed odd to me. Just because I had an understanding with the dark places and their restless haunts didn’t mean anyone else was safe.
I listened for several moments. The shouting continued, and several dull thumps echoed. I smelled smoke. Something serious was afoot. Wary, I eased my long knife into my hand and scrambled the last half-dozen rungs as if my own clothes were afire.
No one was working on the temple foundations when I leapt up into their midst. To my right one of the tents was burning-the kitchen, I thought-with a handful of Endurance’s acolytes working to beat out the flames. People screamed by the gate, and I saw a flash of blades. More folk tended several fallen alongside the wooden temple.
Wishing I’d moved a little swifter at the first, I raced toward the battle. Chowdry’s people saw me coming, weapon in hand, and scattered until only half a dozen toughs with knives and staves remained to face me.
Reckless with anger, I did not falter in my charge. The attackers took to their heels. Feet pounding, I chased them out into Durand Avenue, screaming for their blood.
I only gave off when I realized their numbers, and turned back before they did the same. That I had not even laid a blow upon them felt shameful.
Within the temple grounds, Chowdry and Ponce awaited me.
“What has happened?” I demanded, feeling unaccountably winded for such a short sprint.
Chowdry shook his head. “One of my people is dead. More are being wounded.”
“We didn’t even fight,” said Ponce. I realized he was crying. “It is not permitted.”
“You do not defend?” I realized then I had no notion of the theology of the god I had created. Somehow I’d assumed anyone who took me as a wellspring would know their way around a blade. But of course, all these happy, well-fed young acolytes did not have the look of hard training, or even rough-and-tumble play.
With disgust, I understood that Endurance was drawing the children of wealth to his service. I had never meant to serve them. People with family names and money needed no further protection. I glared at Ponce, and once more brushed my free hand across my belly.