Their fire flared. Osi held a cone of powder that he trailed into the brazier even as he bandied with me. Iso wielded a small, silver knife-a ritual implement I would not have used to peel a pear.
I reached for the brazier’s tripod with a jingling swipe of my arm. Iso swung around behind his brother, flowed into a motion so smooth and fast I could barely see it, and launched a cobblestone that struck me in the chest. That forced me to stagger back, all air in my lungs lost as pain radiated with a starburst of cold, miserable sharpness.
It took almost a dozen, deep, whooping breaths for me to begin to recover. My cloak rang faintly with each gasp, distant silver rain. The twins paid me the insult of ignoring me. Iso scanned the darkness, seeming vaguely worried. Osi had begun to chant. The night air curdled, a mist being born around us.
I longed for Endurance’s envelope of warmth. Looking back at the ox god for comfort, I saw those great, brown eyes shift as he tossed his head to call me back to safety.
Trying once more, I made a run at Osi. One, two, three swift steps and a leap into a knee-breaking kick. My misbalance on the icy street again marred my attack, but even so, Iso was faster. This time the cobble took me in the pelvis, just below and to the right of where the baby rode.
I crashed onto my chest in a cacophony of music, scraping my hands and chin on the road. No time to think of it now, no time to worry about what that had done to my child. I was up and moving, spinning in the dark even as another cobble whipped out of his hand. As if they’d ever needed my rescue that day in the Dockmarket.
This stone I managed to dodge. But I could not both defend and attack. And something was wrong with my right leg. That last missile had injured me to the point that I could no longer move with my usual strength and purpose.
I’d known I couldn’t fight them, but I wasn’t even trying now. I just wanted to disrupt their ceremony before that curdling darkness came completely into being, focused on the chalk marks on the steps of Blackblood’s temple, and subtracted another god from this city.
Let alone what these two will do to the Lily Goddess in Kalimpura.
That thought roused me once more. I had to win a different way.
“Women’s power,” I whispered. Slipping to my knees, though I nearly toppled from the weakness in my right leg, I prayed to Desire, to the Lily Goddess, to Mother Iron. “These two have stolen much from You, and threaten so much more. Bring me a regiment of women to oppose them.”
Out in the darkness, the Rectifier growled. Something murmured. Both twins looked now, the rhythm of their rite on the verge of being broken.
Did Archimandrix’s brass apes approach, despite my orders?
No.
A light sparked.
My prayers, being answered.
Then another light.
In moments, a thousand candles, lanterns, and torches were aglow despite the plucking, grabbing wind. A thousand female faces stared at me-no, not at me, at the twins. I turned my head. They’d filled the Street of Horizons from both directions. Desire’s women. Marya’s women. Mother Iron’s women. Ragged. Wealthy. Thin. Plump. Young. Old. Pale. Dark.
Acolytes of Marya-traders’ wives and maids from the great houses and fishmongers and whores and animal trainers and midwives and chiurgeons and mothers and daughters, Copper Downs women of all walks of life gathered to stand against the masculine, jealous power of the Saffron Tower in the form of Osi and Iso. I could sense Desire there as well, and Mother Iron, not in a direct manifestation, but through the breath and body and words of their followers.
Like the sea, women surged forward.
Now not even Iso’s cobbles could stop me. Finally I had my way. Women’s power, indeed. An elderly lady in the dress of some great house of a century past handed me a white candle. An angry, muttering Hanchu child offered me a black candle. Funeral rites. The only death magic I knew, the simplest one of speeding a soul upon its way. So I lit the two wicks from the fires gathering around me.
Then I waited for the tide of women to sweep toward the twins.
No cobbles flew this time, but Iso and Osi stood close about their fire, their rite abandoned in the moment. Not even they could slay a thousand women at once. I let myself be pushed forward until I was an armspan from them, candles burning in each hand.
“We choose life,” I said, mindful of the Rectifier’s warning about the cost of slaying them out of hand. “Not vengeance and death. Embrace us.”
They both bolted up the steps toward Blackblood’s door.
The tide of women followed, some pushing in to each side of the stairs, the rest flowing up, still buoying me along. Iso turned with two last cobbles in his hand while Osi banged on the iron doors.
“You will not live to regret this,” Iso snarled. He took aim at my head.
Skinless reached out through the door, tearing the metal, to crush Iso’s cocked fist in his own much larger meat-fingers. The other hand trapped Osi by the neck. I closed on the twins, whispering my thanks to Blackblood’s avatar, and drew my two adversaries into a close embrace beneath my belled cloak.
Their kicks and blows were as those of angry children, while the avatar held them both trapped. The women behind me reached beneath my silk to touch as the twins’ hands and feet slowed. Iso said nothing, but Osi began to keen in a thin, anguished voice.
“Know the power of women,” I told them.
Skinless released the two. I twisted with them, handing them down into the crowd. A mob now, female hands clutching at the twins’ saffron robes, tearing at their skin, prying their fingers back, clawing at their eyes. These two ascetics, for whom the touch of a woman was the ultimate unclean filth, were passed shrieking down into a seething female mass. They vanished as the murmurs of the mob rose to shouts and then thundering prayer.
The ox god was there with me, at the top of the stairs, and I slid beneath his belly and let him shelter me while death stalked the crowd below.
What one woman could not do, a thousand could.
Whatever power was bound into the death of twins was diffused by the touch of the divine and shared murder by a myriad of hands.
Eventually I cried.
Later, the Rectifier came to me. I looked up. The moon was strongly westering, but sufficient light flooded the Temple Quarter for me to witness a scene filled with the debris of a crowd-dropped scarves, hats, a shoe. The women were gone. Two sodden lumps lay unmoving in the middle of the Street of Horizons. There was no sign of their brazier or their rites. Behind me, Blackblood’s temple was silent.
Also, Endurance had vanished, as had my cloak of bells.
“Hello,” I said absently through chattering teeth.
“Your work is not complete, I do not think.”
No, there was a whole different battle being fought elsewhere in the city. Still, I had triumphed sufficiently to assure some safety for the Lily Goddess.
Why doesn’t it feel like victory? Another lesson I did not want to learn. In time I would, but not that night.
“Have you any word from Archimandrix or Mother Argai?”
His expression wrinkled oddly. “How would I? They do not answer to me. They do not know me.”
“Then I should leave.” I stood, profoundly exhausted. My hip joint felt ready to fold. “I could use that mount now.” The joke fell very flat, even to my own ears.
“Here.” The Rectifier offered me his arm. “I will aid you.”
He led me stumbling down the steps, then up the Street of Horizons to Pelagic Street and on toward the Velviere District. I could not imagine going Below in my current shape. The wind had died, at least, leaving the night crystalline cold and still somewhere the far side of miserable.
I wondered if Corinthia Anastasia was safe. If Mother Vajpai and Samma yet lived. If I had done the right thing. Should I have gone to the embassy first and freed the prisoners? Who else would have found a way to remove Iso and Osi from this deadly game?