If I were not careful, I could make a true enemy out of once-friendly strangers. And in the Dancing Mistress’ case, much more than that to me.
Likewise the Selistani embassy. I was nothing to the Prince of the City. Mother Vajpai could not have turned on me so thoroughly, I simply didn’t believe that; she must be playing a deeper, doubled game. Or redoubled, perhaps. Only Surali, the Bittern Court woman, was seriously out to overset me and bring me low.
Now if I could manage to focus her and Blackblood on one another, I might truly be free.
All that made me wish I’d explained myself to Iso and Osi better, that they might have given me wiser counsel now.
A motion in the edge of my vision made me glance up. I saw Samma walking toward me. She definitely limped badly. When she realized that I was looking at her, she halted.
“I believe I kicked you in the belly,” I said by way of greeting. This was not a moment likely to incline me to charity.
“Yes. You nearly dislocated my hip.” She grimaced. “I have bruised black as a coal demon’s face.”
“Surely you have not been loitering outside the gate?”
“I was not bid to wait here for you. I have been to a kava house three times so far to while away the hours.”
That there was a kava house anywhere near our gate was news to me. I continued to peer up at her, deliberately not inviting her to sit. “You would have betrayed me, alongside Mother Vajpai. Why should I welcome you, even as a negotiator? Especially so?”
Samma looked miserable-sad and nervous, her regrets writ upon her face in the not-so-secret language of her heart. “You have no reason. B-but I have tried to bring you some.”
Resting my hands on my belly, I considered that. Soon I would be too pregnant to fight properly-terribly unbalanced, for one. Then even this weak sister would take me down. Better to listen for a while, perhaps. I resolved to consider new attack strategies even as we spoke. In a way, I was maturing, though then I would have scarcely admitted to a need for such. “Illuminate me, Blade.”
She almost shuddered at my words. “I departed Kalimpura less than a month after you. Aboard a ship called Atchaguli. Sister hull to poor Chittachai.”
That was very interesting news, indeed. I bent forward, thinking hard. “To what errand?” I asked softly.
Samma glanced about almost theatrically. She would never do for a spy, or even a decent lookout. “Mother Vajpai put me on your track. The Lily Goddess wanted you to return to Copper Downs.”
Suspicious now, I probed. “The Lily Goddess? Not the Bittern Court?”
“Th-that happened later. After I left.” Her misery deepened. “Please, may I sit with you?”
I relented and patted the step next to me. Samma stumbled over and lowered herself painfully. It was like watching a woman of seventy-six instead of sixteen.
“Did I truly kick you that hard?” I asked softly, my fingers brushing along her thigh.
“You kicked me so hard that Mother Argai probably felt it.”
“I am sorry.” Surprisingly, I found I meant that. “I was rushed.”
“I know. We wronged you.”
We. “Whose idea was it to take me hostage?”
“L-let me tell it from the beginning. As I understand the tale, at least.”
I could not help myself; I leaned over and hugged my very first lover ever. “Speak, friend,” I whispered in her ear. She even smelled like home.
“Weeks I voyaged aboard Atchaguli. Until we caught up with Chittachai. The crews knew one another-Captain Padma was cousin to Captain Utavi, I think.”
Was cousin. She gave away a great deal in her assumptions and phrasing. “How was Chittachai when you found her?” I asked gently.
“Still floating,” Samma replied absently. “Then. Utavi was an ass, but he took me aboard. Made me prove myself with that poor giant of his.”
“Tullah.”
“Yes.” Our eyes met, and hers shone with something like gratitude. She’d understood my tone. “I fought the man. A large baby, in truth.”
I thought sadly on Tullah, whom I had liked. “Grown enough for Utavi’s hungers.”
“Mayhap. It was the captain’s hungers that did us in. However else you left him, you also left him angry. I thought he’d sold you. Instead he made to sell me. The crew tried to ambush me after a while, meaning to bind me over to someone searching for you.”
Now we come to the crux of the matter. “What happened?” I circled her with my arm again.
“I k-killed them all. Except for Little Baji. B-but Atchaguli was close by. They would know my deeds, and ch-chase me. So Little Baji and I took the boat deep into the southern sea, to wait among the shipping lanes.”
Keeping myself very still, I asked, “You killed Tullah?”
“N-no. He died defending me. I did kill the others, including Utavi.” She rubbed her hand at some remembered injury. Or blow.
“How did you make it from an empty ship on the open ocean to here?”
“We were picked up in the shipping lanes by Winter Solace. Bound for Kalimpura to transport the Selistani embassy. I came back to the docks at her rail only to meet Mothers Vajpai and Argai.” Her misery seemed to deepen. “They never even let me return to shore. I suppose I know too much now.”
“Too much of what?”
“Of your story! Of you!” Samma’s voice pitched up sharply, the anger of a little girl. “It is always you at the heart of everything. It’s you who the mothers gossip about and linger to say how much they miss. No one cared half so much when Jappa was killed by that drunken carter.”
I did not know Jappa had died. Some impulse to guilt surged briefly inside me, but I pushed it aside. “I am sorry,” I told her.
“Of course you are. Green the magnificent. Green the perfect. There was never a better fighter nor a more goddess-favored aspirant than you!” She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm herself.
“None of that was earned by me.” My voice pitched soft, trying to reach past her anger. Not to soothe, but only so that she could hear what I was saying. “Nor wanted. I was never consulted.”
Samma sniffed. “None of us were ever consulted. We only did as we could. When old Mother Umaavani died, the goddess spoke through her last breaths. She wants you back.”
“ She sent me away,” I said bitterly, wondering who the new Temple Mother was with Mother Umaavani passed on.
“Politics,” muttered Samma. “Even now. Especially now. Whatever you did to the Bittern Court has not faded from their memories. They hate you beyond reason.”
“Hate me enough to suborn Mother Vajpai and chase me across an ocean? Who has been named to Umaavani’s office? And who could care so much?”
“Mother Srirani.”
One of the senior Justiciary Mothers. I’d barely ever spoken to her, but she was a traditionalist, I knew. The Blades had not cared for her so much. Someone whose will could be turned against Mother Vajpai, then.
“As for who could care so much… well, Surali could.” Samma took a breath, then blurted as if she were afraid of her own words: “That woman has been bargaining with certain parties-maybe those cat people of yours-for aid in some affair the Bittern Court pursues. I cannot say what it is. They always talk in whispers, using little codes. I don’t think even Mother Vajpai knows the story. Just that her hand was forced, and the Temple Mother’s, to come here and reclaim you.”
And so now we arrive at why the Revanchists have descended from their quiet hills and announced themselves, I thought. A ship-borne flow of prior messages had arranged the apparent coincidence of their presence here at this time. “But Surali is not here for me? She is here in pursuit of this other bargain?”
“Oh, she will take you as bonus and be quite pleased with herself, if she can.”
“So why are you here?” I asked.
“They would never let me off Winter Solace.”
“No, why are you here now, with me? Instead of plotting my capture with Mother Vajpai.”