Where can the Rectifier be? With my missing Blades?
My gut flopped. What had happened?
She shook her head, sighing, and for a moment was my old teacher again. “Green, I will not strike at you. Not now, not ever again.”
A strange promise, I realized, but held my tongue.
The Dancing Mistress continued: “Much stands at risk here, missing.”
“I know that. If I could search for them, I would.” Instead, I could barely move. I did not then realize how much one is tied to children, whether they are in one’s belly or at one’s side.
“Where might they be?” she asked softly.
Not the Temple of Endurance or Chowdry would have known. With Blackblood? He was a god of men, not women. Besides which, Skinless would not have borne me here if my people had been lying in his god’s temple.
The answer came to me. “Archimandrix,” I whispered. “They are Below. With the sorcerer-engineers.”
“Ah.” She turned swiftly away from me. I heard the door crash open and then swiftly slam shut again a moment later.
Better she than me, I thought. Ponce came to spoon dhal into me until I could take no more. I asked for a room, and they let me rest.
Daylight glowed red against my gummed-shut eyes. Someone had opened a shutter. I blinked, but it was too bright.
Closing my eyes again, I realized my belly was swollen and painful even beyond the pressure of the child within me. Too many tumbles onto my face. One hand strayed to stroke my skin there, trying to send comfort to the baby. I was still over two months from my due date, though it felt as if she wanted to emerge right now. When had I grown so enormous? I was unwieldy as any clay oven, potbellied and thin-legged and never the right temperature.
“Green,” a voice said softly.
I tried opening my eyes again, just a squint. I didn’t recognize the room-small and spare, with words painted on the plaster wall in some script I could not read. The smell of Selistani cooking told me I was above the Tavernkeep’s place.
Ilona sat beside me. She took my other hand in hers. Her face was red and swollen, puffy with tears, with grief.
“I…” The words would not be said.
“You did so much,” she whispered.
“Not enough.” My own tears poured forth. “C-Corinthia Anastasia, th-they sailed away with her.” I began to sob, to blubber as an ill-trained child might. “Sh-she’s gone…”
“Green.” Ilona gripped my hand tighter. “She’s been gone since they took her from my cottage. We will find a way to get her back.”
“That’s my promise to you,” I almost shouted, my voice mounting in anger.
“It is.” Ilona leaned close and kissed my forehead, then my tears, then my lips.
That quieted me a little. But not for long.
“Where are my sister Blades?”
“Those terrible women in black?” Humor rode in her voice.
“Yes. They were with the Rectifier. Th-that big pardine warrior.”
“Your Dancing Mistress brought them here this morning.”
I gave fervent thanks to the Lily Goddess. “Where are they now?”
“Both are recovering.”
Both? “I had three sisters here.”
Her face fell. “Two came in. In the arms of brass apes that followed the pardine woman.”
The next question made me very afraid. “Which two…? And, and… where is the third?” Dead?
“I don’t know their names,” she said. “One could not walk. Something was wrong with her feet.”
“Mother Vajpai.” I was unsure whether I was relieved or disappointed.
“The other would not wake up. A woman who had been hit about the head.”
“A woman, or a girl? My age, perhaps?”
“No, much older than you.”
Panic tinged my thoughts. I could not keep anyone without losing them. “Then where is Samma?”
“I don’t know, Green.” She leaned close to kiss me again, but I turned my face away.
“Don’t be too near me. You will suffer.”
Ilona slid into the bed. “I already have suffered.”
I let her curl her body around my back, and her hands clasp me just beneath my breasts; then I slept awhile with her breath warm upon my neck, safe in the circle of her arms.
Later I awoke again. At first I was too stiff to move. The light held a golden tinge, like honey glaze on a fresh-baked bun, suggesting the day was nearly at an end. Ilona was gone. I was alone.
No matter how much my body ached, I had to pee. I pulled myself from the bed, at the cost of no little pain and some lumbering misbalance, and found the chamber pot. Water came pulsing out of me like a countryman spitting durian seeds, urination so hard and deep that it was painful. How long had I lain there?
Pissing left me parched and hungry, but not so weak I couldn’t walk. Someone had removed-or cut away-my ruined clothing. I was naked. I found a tattered robe on a hook behind the door. Left for me, surely, for no pardine would need such a thing and especially not in so small a size.
Slowly, carefully, I stumbled into the hall, then crept down the stairs that opened into the back of the tavern. I kept one hand on the rough-carved rail. I could no longer see my feet, nor tell where they touched down. This pregnancy was like being aged, or ill. How did women stand it over and over?
The common room was much quieter, almost normal. Gaming tiles clacked, voices murmured, a fire crackled against the winter chill. I followed the sounds and smells to find Ilona sitting in close conversation with Chowdry and Mother Vajpai.
Most of the pardines were gone. Among those remaining, I saw none whom I could identify as Revanchists.
Mother Vajpai noticed me first, and pointed. Chowdry jumped up so fast he knocked his chair over. Ilona still reached me quickest.
“Green.” Her voice was urgent with concern. “What are you doing about?”
“Hungry,” I muttered, the first explanation that came to mind. A moment later I realized it was true.
She and Chowdry helped me to a seat at the table, then he darted off to the kitchen.
I stared at Mother Vajpai. Her cheeks were blistered, but she still possessed her dark, lustrous hair. “You are here,” I said in Seliu.
“Yes. I am being here.” Her tone remained somber. “Mother Argai sleeps upstairs. A real sleep now, not the stone-stillness of yesterday. We will be seeing what is in her thoughts when she awakes.”
Blows to the head could be among the worst of wounds. Everyone feared that loss of mind and spirit that threatened with a cracked or dented skull.
“And Samma?”
Mother Vajpai did not flinch away, though her eyes were clouded. “She stood and fought so that your great cat and I could escape. The Prince’s men wounded her. Then they took her down.”
This was how my bullying of her was repaid. Guilt flooded me once more. “Dead?”
“I do not know. Dead or alive, she is departed aboard their ship.”
My first lover, in Surali’s vengeful hands. “So when I failed at the docks,” I said bitterly, “I betrayed both Samma and Corinthia Anastasia.” Again.
“Green.” Ilona took my hand again. She was speaking in Petraean, of course; she had no Seliu. “I know what happened to your friends. You cannot blame yourself.”
“All of it is my fault!”
“No,” she said. “Others chose their own path.”
“Not your daughter.”
The haunted expression in Ilona’s eyes cut me to the quick. I wished mightily I had not said those words. “Not my daughter, no.”
“I will take ship,” I announced in Petraean still, then repeated myself in Seliu. Looking at Mother Vajpai, I continued in that language. “I will follow them across the ocean, and I will burn down the Bittern Court. I will sift the ashes for Surali’s bones. I will break them all one by one, then dance on the shards. I will cut the throats of every member of the Prince of the City’s household. I will feed them all to the pigs.” Brave words, given how badly my body was overset just then.