“Some metaphors are as real as the world itself,” said Iso. “Never dismiss something simply because it is used to make a point.”
I sighed, a long, slow exhalation that caught their attention. “The world is a bit too real for me right now. My troubles are very much not metaphorical.”
Osi made that small sign with his right hand again. “We are not of this city, and know little of its people and their cares, but we can hear you out, if you wish.”
So I explained, as much for my own benefit as theirs, about my exile from Kalimpura, more of the fall of Choybalsan, and my time away. Then I touched on the arrival of the Selistani embassy, and Mother Vajpai’s attempt to kidnap me. I told them of Surali, the Bittern Court woman, and how her thirst for vengeance in the matter of Michael Curry’s gems fit into the appearance of the Dancing Mistress and the pardine Revanchists, drawn by their own interest in those same gems. They liked my thought that the problems of the embassy and the Revanchists might be turned toward one another. Then I began explaining my complex relationship to Blackblood. That quieted the twins to a deep and thoughtful silence.
In time, my words ran out. They stared like a pair of cats on a fence. We watched one another awhile. Finally, I said softly, “Thus I run from one problem to another, and solve none of them.”
“By your own statements,” Osi said, “we take you to be a fighter.”
“Yes.”
Iso: “You do not run from opponent to opponent, slapping first one then another, only to leave them to cut at you from behind.”
“No…”
His brother, again. “It is not our way to fight. Our rites are strict.” I should have known that for a lie then, by the way they moved. “But as your path is that of the application of force, you might consider applying force.”
“Just as we would apply our rites and meditations,” said Iso.
“Force does not mean a fight,” I answered. “Force can be so many other things.”
“Precisely,” they replied in unison.
Osi glanced at the deepening orange light now flooding almost vertical across the upper part of the warehouse. Outside the sun was setting. “Time comes for our deeper observances. Perhaps we shall encounter you again soon?”
I stood, bowed, and thanked them. “You gentlemen have granted me a needed respite, and given me time to consider my situation. Thank you.”
Each pressed his palms together as if praying. “Of this, think nothing,” said Osi.
Walking away, I mused that they had given me no useful advice at all concerning Blackblood. Another time, perhaps. Or just as likely, their unwillingness to speak to the question was advice in and of itself.
I passed slowly through the streets, pretending to be a tired lad at the end of his workday. That was not far wrong, and hunger called. The baby wanted food and so did I.
The endless errand these twins pursued in life was poetic enough to fascinate. It reminded me of the Dancing Mistress’ words not so long ago about how far one might flee in the world, when I’d wondered if taking a fast ship and sailing away truly was the wisest option. She’d said, “Until you reached a desert or a mountain spine your hull could not cross. There you would not speak the language, or know the money. You would wind up begging beside some purple dock amid people who speak with feathers and curse one another with flowers.”
Even then, that had seemed an almost desirable fate. Wandering the world, witnessing legends of the fall of the titanics so that the splatter of collapsing godhead could be rendered across a map of the world-such an errand that would be. A quest for the ages.
Much better than breaking oneself over and over to rescue ungrateful cities from their self-created oppressors. The Interim Council could go hang.
I never would do it, though. My daughter needed me here, in a place that could be made safe. For good or ill, this city was for me. And Copper Downs had its own needs. Not to mention all the children who continued to be lost every year in that distant homeland of mine. Someday I would have to return for the little girls and boys who daily saw fates worse than mine.
Amid the wandering of my mind, I realized my feet had carried me once more to the Velviere District. That suggested that some part of me felt safer under Endurance’s protection than otherwise. I could not argue too much with this wisdom, though I feared to bring the same peril that had slain Amitra and Nitsa on to their fellow acolytes.
Still, I called at the temple. The gatekeeper I had met the very first time was yet absent, but I entered the grounds to discover most of the acolytes at prayer inside of the wooden hutch of the temple.
The ox god might be my creation, but I did not feel any overwhelming need to bow to him. Instead I wandered to the cooking area, outside the ruined kitchen tent. There I found a pair of grumpy Selistani men in traditional dress stir-frying spinach and then mixing the resultant crispy leaves with some Hanchu sauce.
“A dish for a countryman?” I asked in Seliu.
One of the cooks, a tallish fellow with a small scar on his cheek, looked up at me. “Take a bowl, but be quick, before the little preachers return.”
I followed his advice and apportioned myself a goodly serving of the crunchy spinach. “Are you not followers of the ox god?”
The other cook, a much smaller fellow with narrow eyes and a mournful cast to his face, answered as he tossed spinach in his hot pan. “What does it mean to follow a god, boy? There are no Selistani temples in this cold stone place. A Bhopuri ox is what we have, if we wish to pray.” He nodded toward the temporary wooden temple. “ Their view of prayer is much different than ours.”
That was fascinating to me. “What of the priest, Chowdry? He is one of us.”
“He spends all his time with the whitebellies.”
“Excuse me?” I did not know the word.
“The pale folk here,” the other cook said. “And the browns who try to act like them. Not good, honest children of the sun like us.”
They both laughed. I became very conscious of their kurtas and my own corduroy breeches and canvas shirt. If anyone of my people was a whitebelly, it would be me. Raised here, speaking Petraean better than Seliu.
That was when I realized they’d meant to insult me. I looked into their snickering faces and for a sharp moment considered hurling my bowl at them, and following it up with my fists and blades. These two combined would not stand three blows against me.
Instead I placed my mostly full bowl down on the edge of the rickety table where they’d been prepping their cookery. “I thank you for the time,” I said stiffly.
I stalked off into the twilit field beyond the tents, on the far side of the foundation work around the gaping minehead. The brambles had been cleared here, too, but the ground had not been stamped down or graveled over as out front, so they were coming back in sharp, green shoots. A dangerous place, like walking on spikes. Not where one would wish to take a fall.
Skinning out of my shirt and pants, I squatted to put the blocky workboots back on. Now I wore only them and a pair of linen drawers. The bulge of my belly seemed much more pronounced than the last time I’d stood considering myself naked. I took up my short knives and began to spar with an imaginary opponent. Mother Argai, perhaps. The sight of my breasts swaying as I moved would distract her slightly. And while I was swifter than she, the woman fought like a snake, always just a little to the side and curved off from where you expected her to be.
I began to work faster and faster, dashing back and forth across my claimed area. The wall loomed not so far behind me, so I incorporated jumps and climbs. The imaginary Mother Argai chased me, I chased her. I avoided only falls, for taking a roll in my bare skin across these new brambles amid the cut-down stalks of their elders would have been beyond foolish.