“Then heed my questions. What took place back there?”
She glanced away a moment, embarrassed. “Samma is hostage. Mother Vajpai is wounded.”
“Wounded how?”
Mother Argai’s voice was flat with pain and anger. “Surali has cut off her toes. Mother Vajpai cannot yet walk.”
I was shocked out of my impending funk over losing the girl again. “Who could cut off her toes? Who could hold her down?”
“You do not know the powers at stake in this, Green.”
“No, I don’t. Not from Kalimpura.” I leaned close, growling. “But I know the powers at stake here in Copper Downs. Some of them have arms long enough to reach across the sea.”
“Surali did this to Mother Vajpai to punish us for your conduct. Samma is now held against the good behavior of the rest of us.”
Fighting down an urge to be sick, I glanced around our rooftop. “Which you have broken beyond question.”
“Mother Vajpai will say you forced me from the room. Samma’s life may be forfeit in any case, but I doubt quite yet.”
I made a leap of logic. “She is with Corinthia Anastasia.”
“The northern girl who is also hostage, yes.”
With those words, Mother Argai lapsed into her usual silence. I stared across the city awhile, trying to parse what this all meant, where my deeds and intentions would come into play. How much I might have betrayed those who loved me through unwise action.
None of what she had just told me changed my plan of action. At most, Mother Argai had deepened my sorrows. Those I had plenty of already.
I bent to clean my weapons. “I regret that man’s life,” I told her.
“Never regret a death that keeps you alive.”
“Perhaps.” I restored my weapons to their proper places. Long knife on the thigh for the running and the fighting. Short knife on the right wrist for close work, short knife on the left wrist for stealth. That was drilled into Lily Blades from the earliest years of their candidacy.
I looked again at the pall of smoke from the general area of Lyme Street. This was not yet the time for regrets, not with so much to be done. “Where are the rest of the embassy? I saw half a dozen guards and two clerks.”
“Most of them marched out under Surali’s orders to deliver a demand to your Interim Council.”
“It’s not my Interim Council,” I said reflexively. “Did Surali march with them?”
“She seems to be having some difficulty with her hands.”
I glanced over at Mother Argai, suspecting her of humor. Her expression was bland. “Well, there is at least one glimmer of hope here.”
“Her troubles have not improved her disposition.”
“I should think not.” I looked back out over the city. “We need to move on. I want to find out what is happening on Lyme Street, and I have business with the Interim Council in any case. Are you prepared to go Below and work our way through that particular maze?”
“You always did have a fondness for tunnels.”
That was all the answer I was likely to receive. I took that for a yes, and led her back down to the street. We dodged through the alleys until we found a hatch that would carry us both into the stygian depths of this city’s permanent, stone-walled night.
Mother Argai had never been a tunnel runner back in Kalimpura, and certainly not here in Copper Downs. I was not even sure she’d been off the grounds of the embassy’s rented mansion since first arriving. Nonetheless, she climbed down a beslimed wooden ladder without hesitation or question. This entrance was over a running sewer line, but as I’d hoped, the rungs led to a board that stretched across the tunnel.
“Mind your feet,” I whispered up to her. “Dead dark, you’re landing on an uncertain plank. Step toward my voice when you reach it. I am standing upon a narrow ledge. Sewage flows beneath everything just here.”
“Many thanks,” she muttered.
I scooped the small trace of available coldfire off the wall as Mother Argai landed on the board. It creaked under her weight-perhaps forty pounds more than my own, allowing for her squat, muscular build. Her hand reached out in the shadows as she took a step toward me, when the board gave way. She dropped another four feet into the stinking stream.
Leaning down, I held my glowing hand over Mother Argai to check that her face was above water. Well, above liquid.
“Cold,” she gasped.
“Snowmelt,” I said. “Makes even shit frigid. Don’t grab the glowing hand.” The slime would keep her from getting a decent grip, and she’d wipe it off in the process. We’d lose our light. “I’m reaching down with my off hand.”
“Understood.” She caught my grip.
“Side walls will be slimed but rough underneath,” I warned. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Trying to keep as much of my weight as possible back on the ledge, I grasped her wrist as she grasped mine. She kicked while I pulled, and scrambled up the edge of the channel. I felt myself leaning into her. To counter that I flattened back as best I could. “Have care,” I hissed, then pulled her up with me.
Mother Argai wound up lying on her side, stretched away from me along the ledge.
“It’s dangerous down here,” I said.
Given only the dimmest light of the coldfire, I could still read her reaction to that comment.
I got her up and moving as soon as possible. Below was not so cold as above, even in winter’s harshest grip, but it was still far too chilly and damp for anyone to lie about quietly in stinking, wet leathers. “Fifteen minutes to where we’re heading, and I can probably find us a warm spot to clean up in.” I was thinking of the bakery-kitchen behind my little teahouse.
Mother Argai followed me along the ledge until we came to a side tunnel that branched away in the general direction of Lyme Street. I knew this one. It was part of a series of cutoffs laid into Below by some builders with a fondness for arched brick vaulting. Also, and more to the point, the water flow in these tunnels was largely incidental.
Getting her away from the wet, chilly tunnel was sensible.
“I reek,” Mother Argai said quietly. Not quite complaining-Blades did not complain-but definitely unhappy.
“It’s a good masking odor,” I offered. “And besides, that was at least half snow.” Maybe. “You didn’t fall into the slaughterhouse runoff, for example.”
“One is always grateful for small blessings.”
That brought a backward glance from me. This time I definitely suspected Mother Argai of humor. Once again, nothing in her voice or in the ghostly-lit hint of her face cracked the least bit of a smile.
“Really, we should have run Below more in Kalimpura,” I told her.
“Our tunnels are not so extensive.”
“Even so, you learn much down here.” I held up a hand; we were coming to a larger junction that the Dancing Mistress used to call the Station. “Quiet,” I hissed.
We stopped so I could listen. No one was moving or breathing audibly up ahead, but some of the most frightening people and things down here didn’t make noise.
She needed to be warm, but I had to understand what I’d seen back at the Selistani embassy. I’d been mulling all that over as I walked. Such knowledge might be critical to our own next moves. We were as safe as we might be Below, right here. And Mother Argai seemed to be in a talking mood. Turning back to her, I asked, “What was Surali thinking, to hurt Mother Vajpai so?”
“I do not know,” Mother Argai said, her voice very serious. “I cannot imagine what she believes will happen back in Kalimpura over this. But Mother Vajpai forbade me to interfere.”
What would happen back in Kalimpura was clear enough to me. If the Bittern Court planned to bring down the Temple of the Silver Lily and slay the Lily Goddess in the process, then there would be no consequence to injuring Mother Vajpai here and now. The point would be moot. “I don’t understand why Surali didn’t just kill her. Mother Vajpai wounded and angry is far more dangerous than Mother Vajpai dead.”