“It is your child,” Chowdry said in Petraean, oddly.
“My child?” I didn’t think I’d shown that much yet.
He switched to Seliu. “The baby inside does not like some foods. My sister, every time she is pregnant, must have plantains, but cannot stand mangoes.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered. Losing my balance and my appetite to my daughter. What was in this for me?
I had to check that thought. Poor, doomed Septio lived on inside me. And through him the seed of the god, if Blackblood was to be believed. Time away from the streets and temples of Copper Downs, and especially the dark, hidden world of Below, had lessened the grip that those same gods held on my imagination. I suppose I’d expected to turn inward, become focused on the child, as women were said to do. So far the baby and I had gotten along well enough not to notice much.
Until these last few days.
I ran my hand over the leathers tight upon my abdomen. Beneath my touch, I fancied that she eased.
Still, I didn’t eat any squirrel.
“Green,” Chowdry said, drawing my attention back into the moment.
“Mmm?” I looked at him fondly, this thin man with the perpetually worried expression who’d so unexpectedly inherited divine responsibility.
“I am to be returning to the city tomorrow. If you are staying up here to eat shoots and berries, that is your business. But the god wishes your attendance. Do not wait too long, I am begging of you.”
He was almost cute about it. I smiled, feeling a wash of tenderness. “Do not fear, old friend. I shall soon be there.”
Chowdry appeared even more worried at my words, but he said nothing more.
The next morning, the old pirate took his leave of me with the dawn. He followed our backtrail, stumbling down to the Barley Road well away from camp. I watched Chowdry trudge through the morning mists off the river, until he caught up to a farm family driving their pigs to market. I could not mark him out after that amid the people and the intermittent rain.
I spent the next hour or so examining not just the city, but also myself. What had I been about the night before? The way I had spoken to Chowdry was so unlike me. This pregnancy was making me untrustworthy. I resolved to cultivate a healthy suspicion and maintain distance from people around me, lest unthinking kindness blunder me into greater trouble.
Certainty. The path forward always lay through certainty. The Lily Blades taught that-always be certain, always be prepared to change one’s mind.
That in turn moved me to hone my long knife, test the sharpness of my short knives, and spend several hours sprinting up and down hills and speed-climbing damp-barked trees, all out of sight of the road below. I was slower than I should have been, and did not move quite as I might have liked, but I could still kick, dodge, and roll almost as expected.
The key, of course, was not to get into fights in the first place. As I worked myself, I thought of Mother Vajpai. She could take down almost anyone in a straight match but rarely needed to do so. As dangerous as her body was, her mind was the far deadlier weapon.
Another lesson, surely. One I should have attended to more closely in the days that were to come.
It occurred to me to wonder who I was planning to fight with. Body or mind, I had no serious enemies roaming the streets of Copper Downs. Endurance could hardly wish me ill. Blackblood was, well, complex, but not precisely an enemy. I no longer feared Skinless, as that silent avatar of the god seemed to hold a mute, deep regard for me.
Finally I shook off the mania of preparation for combat and cleaned my campsite. While I’d worked my body the wind had blown in a few flower petals that might have been lilies, so I burned them with reverence and gave the ashes back to the air as I buried my fire. It was close to midday before I gathered my belled silk and my few other belongings to scramble down toward the Barley Road in order to join the travelers following Chowdry into Copper Downs.
Entering the city was like cooking in a familiar kitchen. I knew the pans by touch, did not need to look for the cutting knives. So with these streets. The fall harvest was being brought in to the bourses and markets for auction to the cellarmen and canners and warehousemen. That meant an unusually large number of carts with confused horses and even more confused country lads atop the drover’s bench. Still, they laughed at one another and shouted rude names in booming voices instead of jumping from their seats to brawl.
I marked their progress and watched for other signs of commerce. Did the bankers’ boys trot past at double time with their lacquered boxes slapping against their chests? What of the runners from the Harbormaster’s office and the shipping exchange? How many clerks hurried along the streets mixed among the ladies’ maids and shrieking children with their stick-a-hoops?
I was surprised at the brown faces I saw. A fair number of my countrymen lived here now. Only one in a hundred, perhaps, but that was still ten times what I could recall from even last summer, let alone the years of my training when I might have been the only Selistani in the city aside from the handful of resident trading families and a few passing sailors.
Rarely did I pause to think on the color of my skin-there always seemed to be more urgent matters which needed attending to-but it pleased me to see faces as brown as my own. My child would not be so alone in this place as I had been.
Endurance’s temple stood not in the Temple Quarter, where the houses of the gods generally were to be found, but rather was a building amid the Velviere District. I avoided both those areas at first. In due time I would need to see to the god I had helped birth, and call on Blackblood as well. For now, I had a different destination in mind.
The breweries were busy as ever. So far as I knew, not war nor famine nor fire nor outright bankruptcy had ever succeeded in stilling this city’s thirst. The Stone Coast was not wine country, not at all. Distilleries were common enough, and some of their product was magnificent, but beer was the bubbling heart of these northern people.
I was headed for a quiet alley amid the breweries, where I might find a certain tavern. Last I knew, Chowdry had been cooking there most nights, though his duties to Endurance had probably taken him away from the Tavernkeep’s kitchen more often now. This nameless place was the heart of the small community of the pardine people in Copper Downs. My old Dancing Mistress was the first of that race I’d ever known, but I had yet to meet one I did not like and respect. Even the Rectifier, a violent and difficult old rogue with an unfortunate tendency toward murdering human priests, was charming in his strange way.
However, when I turned the corner into the brick-walled alley with its familiar cracked flagstones now damp and slick, the area before the tavern entrance was full of people. Humans, not pardines. And Selistani at that. Chattering, almost angry, a buzz of voices arguing in Seliu.
Startled, I tugged up my hood and dipped my face. I was far too easily recognized with my scarred cheeks and notched ears. Until I understood what mischief this restless crowd was about, I did not want them to know me.
I eased into a crowd of men in white linen kurtas, a few women in colored sarongs scattered among them. My black leather would have been more conspicuous if they’d been paying much attention to me, but these people were focused on a woman standing in the doorway of the Tavernkeep’s establishment, arguing both with someone inside and with several men outside.
Moving closer, with a cold stab of my heart, I recognized the one at the heart of this brangle. It was the Bittern Court woman, whose name I had never known. How wrong I had been in my sense of being safe from her. Nameless, she was only a power to me, a persecutor. This woman had pursued me to exile back in Kalimpura, while calling for my head over the matter of Michael Curry’s assassination. I owed the Bittern Court no loyalty and even less affection for their conflicts with the Temple of the Silver Lily, not to mention their attempts to persecute me. To see her, here, could only be very bad news indeed.