His lips curled in disgust. “Don’t tell me ghost stories.”
“You are being an idiot,” I snapped. Pulling my knife free, I began slapping the palm of my left hand with the flat of the blade. “You lived through Federo’s ascendancy. And you did it standing as close to him as anyone did who survived. You were inside the biggest ghost story to be told here in generations. Of all the council, you and Kohlmann should require the least convincing on this matter.”
“The world is filled with powers,” Jeschonek admitted. “As above, so below. But the ancient dead of another era, interred a long day’s ride from here, have no special insight into our affairs. I do not care so much for gods and ghosts in any event. Surely they are only a projection of our desires.”
“As may be. But you have seen their effects upon this world. And Erio, a king of old who has been a student of this city a thousand years or more in his moldering grave, fears for us.” His warning of imbalances within the city, and plots against me, had been sincere, if sadly unspecific.
“ I fear for us!” The councilor slammed down his kava mug and drummed his fist against the table. “You do not have to be dead to realize what trouble may descend upon this city.”
“There is no may to this trouble,” I told him. “It is here. Use Lampet’s Lads to force the Selistani back on to their ship. The embassy is of my people, but their interests are not mine and most certainly not this city’s. Then compose some suitable response to the pardines, for they will come to you eventually. Possibly with tooth and claw, possibly with petitions. Draw them away before their madness sinks in, for they have become infected with politics. Or perhaps religion.”
“You are infected with politics,” he said. “As for religion, I’ve never seen or heard of someone so god-haunted as you, Green. If you were not in this city, none of these others would have troubled us.”
He was right, so far as that went. The Selistani were here for me. The pardine Revanchists were here for the Selistani. Blackblood wanted to control his son. My daughter. Fires take that bastard god.
“You were not so eager to have me gone before,” I told him in a hard, quiet voice. “Not when the city was at stake. You would never have brought down Federo and Choybalsan without me.”
“No. And do not think us ungrateful.” He leaned over the table. “But we cannot govern a city according to the whims of your enemies and the violence of your acts, Green. Life is settling. The troubles that dog us now follow you, not Copper Downs.”
“You had a goddess nearly slain in the Temple Quarter during the brass-ape races four summers past,” I told him. “Which was nothing to do with me. Despite the matter of Choybalsan, I do not set my targets so large, and would never care to meet the one who might try. Trade is unsettled, or you would not be seeing riots on the dock and yourself so busy and under duress. This city has not yet fully recovered from the death of the Duke. If it had, Councilor Johns would not have a place in this room.”
“That fool of a Factor trained you too well.” His reluctant smile belied his words. “But those are matters we will resolve. It is you who has small armies of assassins following you around.”
“Should I return to Kalimpura, then?”
“The High Hills were far enough away for me, frankly. At least there we knew where you were.” After a moment, Jeschonek added with rueful honestly, “And could find you at need.” He drummed the table again. “But here is my problem with you now. We bring our own enemies into being. When the Duke held the throne and kept all our politics and religion quiet, trade came to the city and little disrupted us. There has been more riot and trouble in the past four years since his fall than in the previous four centuries combined.
“You enter the city, and forces follow to oppose you. Green, I do not know what you are. Surely your tale is not yet fully told. God-touched, a storm of blades, or just a freakishly determined young woman, it does not matter. But your strength draws opposition. And that is what my city does not need.”
It is my city, too, I wanted to say. This I had realized when speaking with the Dancing Mistress earlier. These people had bought me away from my father and my home, but they had also raised me to be one of them.
Councilor Kohlmann stepped into the room as I was considering my next words. I was glad enough it was not Lampet, for whom I already lacked patience. “Have you told her?” he asked Jeschonek.
We both spoke at once. “Told me what?” “I was doing so.”
Kohlmann gave me a long look. “It is clear to me that the Selistani embassy is a sham. They are only here for you. We cannot order them to leave, for we would be embarrassed of resources to compel them to our will. The council has voted to withdraw the protection offered to you before. You are charged instead with disposing of your personal matters without further harm to the city of Copper Downs.”
“These troubles belong to you, Green,” Jeschonek added. “You must take them away from our door.”
“You bastards,” I shouted, leaping to my feet with my short knife in hand. To their credit, neither man flinched. My blood boiled, but to what end? I slipped the weapon away, glaring at both of them as if my eyes could slice their skin. “You disgust me. I never mistook the Interim Council to be friendly to me, but my faith in our common interests was clearly misplaced.”
Kohlmann stepped back as I reached the door. He was afraid of me. Good. I gave him a flesh-rending smile. Even more hard words rolled in my head, but I kept them to myself and departed without further discussion. They did not trouble to call me back.
In the upper hallway, the clerks cowered. I had not realized we were so loud. When they cowered downstairs as well, I understood it was me that frightened them, not the shouting. I stalked out into Lyme Street, holding back tears that shamed me horribly.
Me.
Crying!
Not now, not for insults as foolish and petty as these.
But they were still bastards.
All I could do was walk off the tension. I needed to drain my anger before I could sensibly take further action. There was risk to me, and the ghost Erio had believed there to be risk to the city. Too many players, too many plots. I had to deal with the Selistani embassy, with the pardines, and with Blackblood’s moves against me. The Interim Council would be no help. The next most obvious answer was to turn my enemies against one another.
But in my current state of agitation, I could not manage to conceive of a decent plan, let alone hope to carry it out.
I stomped toward the Dockmarket instead. Some piece of homely cheese might do me good. Likewise a crowd of indifferent people about their occasions, happy or sad as the mood took them, none bearing arms with my name written on the back of their hand. No one at the Dockmarket would care who or what I was. I could lose myself for an hour or two in their pressing mass, be distracted by chandlers or toymakers or weaponsmiths, then find myself sufficiently recovered to survey what must follow. At least the day was decent, a late gasp of autumn granting us all warm sun and clear skies without the knife-edged winter wind.
The Dockmarket was busy as ever. Trade might be down, but there were few vacant stalls. Tired old women hawked handfuls of trinkets from the tops of bollards. A clown juggled pigeons, tossing the birds like stones until they fluttered back into his hands. Fruitiers and greengrocers occupied wide spreads of stalls, their produce ranked in colorful arrays like a nursery paint box. Laughing children ran through the market clutching brown-spotted summer apples and thin coins stolen from the careless. I smelled food frying, flowers rotting, machine oil, spices, the acrid scent of blades being sharpened on a grinding wheel, the dung of a dozen kinds of animals. The sounds likewise made such a distraction. Blue-robed memory men squatting on the distorted faces of ancient, fallen idols chanted histories. Hogs bellowed their fear before the sledge took them in the skull. Chains jingled, babies shrieked, hammers fell.