“You’ve caught a bad case of pardine politics, haven’t you?” I was fascinated. I’d always understood her kind to work through consensus, a sort of oversized tribal family. What made the Rectifier so unusual among pardines was the strength of his individual passion and purposes.
“Matte has shown me certain truths I had long needed to hear,” she admitted. “We are on a Hunt, of sorts. A Hunt of history.”
That frightened me. I knew a little of pardine Hunts. It was a practice they had laid down, or claimed to, these past few centuries. A group would band together and share their senses, their intentions, perhaps even their thoughts, so they became one creature with a handful of bodies and cunning multiplied through all those hearts and minds. “Who is Matte, then?”
“She speaks of a doctrine of Revanchism. Our people should take back what was once ours and yet rightfully belongs to us.”
Something in the Dancing Mistress’ voice told me she saw a weakness in her own thinking. I drove toward it. “Speaks? Or preaches? You were always so much the champion of individual responsibility. This Revanchism is not a soulpath idea. This almost sounds human.”
“ What do you know of soulpaths!? ” she shouted, slamming her hand into the table so that our bowls of bournewater slopped.
I came up out of my chair. My words had struck a nerve, and we were once more on the verge of violence. Into the silence that rang about the tavern I hissed my reply: “Nothing. I know nothing of soulpaths. I would no more play at being a pardine than you and your Revanchists should play at being human.”
“I apologize, Green,” she answered after a long moment. “Sit, please.”
Sitting, I remained silent. This was on her now. I could not twist out whatever truth she was choking upon.
“I did not intend to take up this cause.” The Dancing Mistress was quiet as well, speaking almost too low for me to hear. Once more the clack and murmur of men at their games swelled up around us, though we still very much had an audience. Any battle between us here would be the stuff of legend within the hour. I’d already had my fill of legends, and resolved anew not to fight my old teacher.
She went on: “When you brought the god into being, I thought the long struggle was over. The power seemed safely grounded in a mute and pleasant beast. I do not foresee Endurance becoming greedy for conquest, or world-weary, or even particularly dangerous. Your choice was inspired.”
“Hardly a choice.” This was not modesty-at the time I’d had little notion of what I was doing. I had understood even less since that fateful day.
“As may be. I left without seeing you because, well, it was over. My time here. My work. With Federo, of course, but also in the city as a whole. I was done with humans. Most specifically, you.”
I ignored the twinge in my heart. “And yet here you are, back a few months later.”
“Because of Matte.” Now her tone was almost pleading. “I do not agree with much of what she says, but she is right in one thing. Our people’s power should live, and die, with us. Not in the hands of some immortal duke, or a rogue human with the aspect of divinity upon him. Nor even a mute and pleasant ox god.”
I wondered if this Matte was offended by Endurance. What if the god had manifested as something with sharp teeth and swift wit? A frightening thought. “It is an old theft, oft repeated,” I answered her. “And the threat is now safely grounded. Your people and mine fought great wars in the past. That is one reason your power was laid down. By you.”
“It was ours to lay down, it should be ours to take up again.” Now her tone was stubborn. I was far too familiar with the sound of a woman arguing to convince herself. She had nothing to convince me of. “And that is why I am here once more, in Copper Downs. Where I never expected to be. Looking for the edges of the power.”
“What edges?” I had the sickening notion that she was referring to my baby. I could not fight the entire pardine race. I could not even fight the Dancing Mistress. Taking ship to a port far beyond any horizon had a rapidly growing appeal.
“We are not here to make war upon Copper Downs, and especially not to find any quarrel with you, Green. But there is something taken from us long ago, by the Duke himself when he first grasped for our power. A token we would redeem for our own.”
Not my child then, and not the god Endurance. I sighed heavily, expelling a tension I had not realized I was holding in until that moment. “What is this token, and what does it have to do with me?”
“Something precious to us has been brought back to the city recently. Matte has seen it while walking her soulpath in the moondark. With your return, I wondered if you might be carrying it.”
“I carry nothing but a child in my belly and the knives in my hands.”
That brought a smile from the Dancing Mistress. A genuine pardine smile. “You carry far more than you know, Green. But in this case, I refer to the Eyes of the Hills.”
That meant nothing whatsoever to me. “You propose a puzzle to which I have no clues.”
“Once, far in our past, my people made temples. We did not build, not as humans do, but we find great trees and certain caves to be, well, entrances to the soulpath. You would perhaps say sacred. A wise old pardine might give up her body there, but remain on watch through the windows in her bones as a guardian of our people. Or this one might bring a lucky stone, and that one another lucky stone to join it, until one day a pillar of great good fortune has been raised.”
I thought of the sky burial towers of my earliest youth, and temples of Kalimpura and Copper Downs. “Every people has an architecture of the sacred, a house for the spirit. That is what we do with minds unable to contemplate the fullness of the divine.”
“As may be. One of our spirit houses was a statue. Sculpture is a rare art among my people, but not unknown. This was an ancient mother of the pardine race, idealized long after her death but honored all the more for the hand that wrought her image. She had two eyes, one a green tourmaline and the other a cobalt spinel. These were taken by the Duke as a token of his theft of our power.”
For a moment, my heart stilled, then pounded within my chest. My gut roiled, the baby rejecting the paneer and bournewater along with the Dancing Mistress’ words, until only by sheer force of will did I hold down my stomach.
Michael Curry, the man I had killed aboard the ship Crow Wing in harbor at Kalimpura, on orders from Mother Vajpai herself, had carried a key with blue and green gems inset within a head cast in the form of a snake. It was meant to guard a treasure I never had seen. At the time I’d thought the colors were to match his eyes. The key with its emerald and sapphire chips I had thrown away on purpose, to spite the Bittern Court and their shameful politics.
Surali was here for me because of the way I had ruined the Bittern Court’s intentions for the death of Michael Curry. But blue and green. Green and blue. Passing through my hands to spite the plans of the mighty. The coincidence was too great.
He must have been carrying the Eyes of the Hills behind whatever lock that key was fitted to.
“You know,” she said.
I had taken too long to reply. Besides which, of all people this woman could read my hesitations as if they were the stirrings of her own heart.
“I do not know enough to tell you what you wish.” Which was a lie of omission, but not an untruth as such. I needed to extract myself from this conversation as quickly and smoothly as possible. Unless I wanted to set the wild pardines upon the Selistani embassy. Far more important that I retreat and think these revelations through. This bit of business tied back to the Lily Goddess, to Endurance, to all my reasons for being in Copper Downs.
Hoping to find help dealing with Blackblood, I’d come here. Instead I’d uncovered… what?