This was not a real sparring match, far from it. But I had not in truth sparred since leaving the Temple of the Silver Lily. Fought in earnest, yes. Run for my life. Lain lazy in bed. All of those things. Here in Copper Downs, only two mortals could match me, and those two overmatched me. Mother Argai, over at the Haito mansion with the Selistani embassy, was probably the only fighter I could meet face-to-face and make the workout count without embarrassment to one or the other of us.
Still, I slammed myself about, used the wall as both an enemy and a friend, swung my short knives till my wrists ached, and leapt till I had worn myself to shivering exhaustion. Finally I stopped, worried about weakness and balance, and realized this was an autumn night and the air had grown cold and damp.
I looked up to see a solitary girl watching from a short distance. After a long moment of trembling silence, she called out in Petraean, “Are you finished?”
“Yes,” I said shortly, then mopped my face with my shirt before tugging it over my head.
“Chowdry sent all the men to their tents and told the women to mind their own business until you were done. I was ordered to watch for you.”
That I had to laugh at. “He was concerned about my corrupting the men with my breasts? If any of these boys haven’t seen a nipple by now, they have larger problems than me.” It wasn’t as if anyone here could take anything from me I didn’t care to offer. I tucked the short knives into my sleeves, more to make the point to myself than for any other reason.
“I cannot say, Mistress.” She approached slowly. A Stone Coast woman, a few years older than me. Not a Selistani whitebelly. It was hard to tell in the gathering dark, but I thought her eyes might be blue. Her hair was some pale color that silvered oddly in the faint light.
“Do not call me ‘mistress.’” Sweating and thinking of Mother Argai had put me in a fey mood. My loins were stirring, for no one in particular. I was curious to see her close enough to tell if she would catch my eye. Or I would catch hers. To that end, I said, “Here. Balance me so I can get these boots off and the trousers on.”
The woman hurried toward me and grasped my elbow. I stank, I knew I stank, but it was the sweat of good, honest work. Building up my body to defend the god Endurance. I hopped from one foot to the other, standing in the loosed boots to tug the pants on while she clutched at my elbow.
“So what is your name?” I gasped.
“Lucia,” she said, releasing my arm to reach down and help me with my waistband.
That was more like it. I stood straight and raised my arms out of her way. Lucia bent around me to fasten my pants.
Surely she would not have done that without some interest in me.
“Tell me, Lucia, do you think I might have another bath?”
She giggled faintly. “They would deny you nothing now.”
I decided to be blunt. “Then scrub me. I shall do the same for you.”
“Mistr-” Lucia stared a moment at her feet. “Green. I am not supposed-”
Touching her lips, I hushed her. “Do what you wish, but I am having a bath and would be glad of the company.”
Soon enough, Lucia brought me hot water in the tent with the large copper tub. The air was buttery warm now in the light of two oil lamps and a squat-bellied stove, and smelled pleasantly of the burning. Then she brought me soap and a sponge. Then she brought me a long-handled brush. Finally, she brought me herself. The light made her skin yellow, but her hair flowed downward and her breasts gathered firm as she slipped into the water with me.
We were a long time coming out again, and quite chilled when we finally did, but I fancied her smile was just as large as mine.
Chowdry was not pleased with me the next morning. “This is not your temple of harridans back in Kalimpura,” he grumbled in Seliu. “Everyone in the camp knows about you and Lucia. It will be a scandal when her parents hear.”
“What?” I laughed at him. We sat with our breakfast bowls on the steps at the front of the wooden temple, ignoring the morning’s chill. By the Wheel, I was no whitebelly. “You were a pirate cook when I first met you. What do you care now what some parents think?”
“This project…” He waved around him to indicate everything within the walls of the old minehead grounds. “It costs money. A great deal of money. Young people like Lucia are blessed with older parents who are having a great deal of money to give.”
“Utavi would have your head.” Chowdry’s old captain aboard Chittachai, and as unpleasant a small-time pirate as ever skulked along a waterfront.
“Utavi is not here.”
“He might be,” I said. “I saw Little Baji when I first returned to town almost a week ago.”
That got Chowdry’s attention. “Where!?”
His surprise seemed genuine enough, which served to further lessen my distrust. “The Tavernkeep’s place. Where you cook. Which is full of Selistani men. It would not be so great a trick to hide one or another there. And the opportunity to learn too much about you, and me, is great.”
“Ah.” His face was a study in misery. “This is why I am needing people like Lucia’s parents. Their money will be keeping this temple and the god Endurance safe. That safety is my safety.”
I punched Chowdry in the shoulder hard enough to make him flinch. His foolishness would not ruin my good mood. “Just think of them all as wallowing coastal ships carrying payroll. You know how to make a raid.”
“This temple will do a poor job of sailing to the next port to escape retribution,” he complained.
“Then learn more, sir priest.” I leaned close. “And listen to Endurance. He’s rarely wrong, I am certain of it.” I stood, whistling.
“Green,” said Chowdry. Something sharp lay in his voice.
I leaned forward, hands on my knees, and let him pretend not to think about my breasts. “Yes?”
“Twice now a girl has called in the name of the Prince of the City. One of your Blades, but being younger and softer than you.”
Samma, of course. Though in fact she was my elder, she was one of those girls who always looked as if she’d been raised on warm milk with a good blanket. Whereas I knew perfectly well that I was a walking battlefield. “Did she present herself with swords at her back?”
Though even Samma alone would be quite dangerous to anyone in this group. She might be among the weakest of the Blades, but a Blade she was.
“No. Just nerves. And always looking over her shoulder.”
“Interesting.” My cocky mood deserted me with the news as I was once more caught up in figuring odds and probabilities. Why would Mother Vajpai send Samma to me? Few of the answers that presented themselves seemed sensible. And surely Samma had not sent herself. “What did she say she wanted?”
“To be speaking with you.”
“I’m not going anywhere near the Selistani embassy again. Not without plentiful swords at my back.” The memory of Mother Vajpai in the process of taking me down was still fresh. Samma, too. “Did she limp?”
“She walked with a cane.”
Hah.
As Chowdry moved on to his tasks, I returned to consideration of my own troubles. Comfortably seated on the wooden temple’s steps in warm daylight, I found that they did not seem so bad. Osi and Iso were not my friends, not in any meaningful sense, but their wise and disinterested counsel had already opened my eyes to certain nuances of the situation. If Samma truly was looking for me, I could turn her against the pardines, and perhaps the other way around.
That mutual leverage appealed to my sense of orderliness, but it also felt like a double betrayal. The pardines, even the Revanchists, were not my enemies. Nor would it be fair to think of them as enemies of Copper Downs. If they were fighting anything, the Revanchists struggled against the weight of history and the tangled mass of their own resentments.