I looked up to see that the day was almost gone. Several dozen people gathered around me in a wide circle. Chowdry, Ponce, faces both familiar and strange from my days staying here.
“Are you back with us?” Chowdry asked quietly.
Wondering where I had been, I said, “Yes.”
“You did not work alone,” he added in Seliu.
I looked to see a few stray lily petals scattered around me. The air smelled of wet ox. How great had my prayers been?
“The rite is not quite complete,” I told him. “I will need two white candles and two black. Bring me also paper, pen, ink, and a writing board.”
Someone had thought ahead, for these were produced immediately. Or perhaps, I realized with a wry twist, Endurance had made his will known again.
I placed the black candle to the left of each girl’s head, and the white to the right. Then I took the board and with care drew out word-houses of the Hanchu script from the few that Lao Jia had taught me aboard Southern Escape when I’d first fled Copper Downs.
For Amitra I drew the word-house that meant “beauty.” As Lao Jia had said when teaching me, each word-house has little rooms of meaning. And so “beauty” was woman and the western sun and an eel swimming in a river.
For Nitsa I drew the word-house for “peace.” Those little rooms of meaning were sky and hearth and an open door.
I laid the papers down upon each girl’s chest for a time, and prayed voicelessly once more. It was fit that a mute god such as Endurance should be met with silent prayer. As for the Lily Goddess, She had been close enough to hear me, but we did not have so many words to spare that I needed to speak aloud to Her another time this day.
When I picked up Amitra’s “beauty,” it smoldered into flame. The flare lit the gathering shadows of evening as someone gasped. I put the little fire to the black candle first, then spoke quickly before it burned my fingers. “Doubtless she was vain,” I said, bespeaking her sins and sorrows. “As all the beautiful are.” I reached for the white candle and spoke to her hopes and dreams. “She believed in something beyond this life, or she would not have been here.”
When I moved around the bodies to reach for Nitsa’s “peace,” that slip of paper also flared of its own accord. I lit the black candle. “She might have resented others their grace.” I could not know this, of course, but I had known solid girls in the Temple of the Silver Lily, and it was a fair guess. I had no need or desire to understand this dead woman’s more shameful sins. Then the white candle. “She made music that others might know joy, which is one of the greatest gifts.”
I shook the last of the paper away from my fingertips in a shower of sparks and ash, then walked back toward the smoke reek of the tent camp. The circle of watchers melted before me. Someone called out in a soft voice, “What shall we do with the bodies?”
“Bury them,” I said. “Or send them Below to sleep with the echoes of history.” My work was done.
I found my cot and slipped into a deep, dreamless silence. Even the worry of another attack was too far from my mind. The last thing I heard was a buzz of voices without, as the people of Endurance’s temple took up their watch over me.
Sunlight glowing through the canvas brought me awake hard and fast. My fingers were blistered, the tips sore and ground in with clay. I took a long moment to recall why that might be.
What had I done? Armed men on the loose looking for me, and I’d spent half a day playing at being a psychopomp. The memory of timeless peace was close by, though. I realized that I must have been under the protection of the gods.
And goddesses.
This morning, I was protected by nothing more than my wits and my knife, as had been the case for so much of my life. I rolled out of the cot and looked to my workboots. I didn’t recall taking them off last night, but someone must have. These boy’s clothes stank more than my old leathers by now, but they were not uncomfortable. I was better off without the sleek drama of an assassin’s guise in any case.
Food.
I needed food. At that thought, my gut roiled. The baby made me hungry. I had not eaten at all yesterday afternoon. I was fairly certain this was poor practice for a woman with child.
Patting myself down, I slipped my long knife within my corduroy trousers and into the scabbard alongside my thigh. My short knives I tucked inside my sleeves. The arrangement was not ideal, but carrying a sheathed weapon openly would defeat the purpose of this guise.
I slipped outside the tent to find breakfast.
Half a dozen of Endurance’s young acolytes stood waiting for me, along with several older men and women. Their faces were a mix of pale and dark. Neither Chowdry nor Ponce was present.
“What do you want?” My tone was more brusque than I’d intended.
“Nothing,” one of the young women said.
“Well, I need breakfast. Then I must go out into the city, and make sure the tragedy of yesterday is not repeated.”
“W-will you visit the wounded before you depart?”
A sharp retort was on my lips, but I swallowed the words unspoken. “Yes, but not to dress them for death.”
They trailed me to the tables next to the ruined kitchen tent. The canvas cover was gone, but in the morning’s unusually decent warmth I did not care. Ponce was once more frying sausages, this time over an open fire, camp style. Some of their cookery gear had been salvaged. He smiled to see me, though without his grinning enthusiasm of before. With some effort, I smiled back.
That seemed safe enough.
When he offered me the pan, my smile grew more genuine. The world was hard, lives had been snuffed out, but as Mistress Tirelle had beaten into me, good cooking makes up for a multitude of sins. Using the same simple ingredients as before, I made up light, tangy eggs with the sausage cut into them.
Also as before, once I’d cooked a sufficiency, I ate as if food had just been invented for the first time. The watching circle was different, though. Not amazed at a young woman eating like a cartload of soldiers. More like people waiting for a miracle.
Between mouthfuls of egg, I made to shoo them off. “Don’t you have work to do? I am not entertainment.”
Ponce touched my shoulder. “They hunger for your words.”
“Silly fools,” I spat in Seliu, before I recalled that almost half the people here were Selistani, and surely could understand me.
Those took no offense, but smiled shyly.
I am rarely pleased to be told what to do, and never dance when called upon, so I finished my meal in a grim silence. This did nothing to discourage my watchers. I resolved to depart the temple grounds as swiftly as possible. Let them try to follow me through the city. I could swarm the roofs or go Below and lose every one of these soft, wealthy children within a block or two.
With that thought I glanced at my older watchers, wondering if they were truly seeking wisdom from me, or keeping an eye on their younger charges.
No matter. I had to take some action. I had sulked and skulked too long, and it was never my way to let the fight be brought to me. “I shall visit the wounded,” I announced as I scraped my fourth plate clean. “Then I will head out into the city.” Someone else could clean this makeshift kitchen.
Now that I knew that Surali and the rest of the embassy were in the Velviere District, I counted it reasonably safe to head back to the Tavernkeep’s place. There I might find some answers from my friends among the pardines, for whom the human politics of all this would be little more than an amusement. If that.
I rose, looked around, and realized I had no idea where the wounded had been taken.
“The temple,” said Ponce helpfully. He made to lead me there, though I knew perfectly well where it was. We trailed acolytes and elders as a duck trails her hatchlings.