Samma looked pained. “Mother Vajpai came to this city in large part because the Temple Mother thought it far better you be taken by your sisters than by the Bittern Court and their Street Guild toughs.”
“I thought the Lily Goddess wanted me back?”
“She does. But the goddess did not pay for this expedition.”
“So you Blades serve two masters.” As usual, I thought with nasty glee. I knew myself to be unfair. Too bad.
“We s-serve two intentions, say rather.”
That line sounded rehearsed to me. I wondered how much of this little errand Mother Vajpai had put Samma up to. There seemed small point in asking. I hugged her gently again, recalling the best of our times together in the Blade aspirants’ dormitory. “And you came only to tell me this?”
“Mother Vajpai and I fought,” she said in a rush.
“I doubt that, as you are still walking.”
“N-no! Hard words, not sparring. I-I think this bargaining Surali does is aimed at the Lily Goddess. M-Mother Vajpai does not believe me.”
Samma never was one for holding strong ideas of her own, not when there was someone of character nearby to follow along with. I wondered how she’d hit upon this notion, and held to it in the face of Mother Vajpai’s demurral. “Why do you know this?”
“I don’t know it,” she said, her voice laced with misery. “I th-think it. Some of the ways they talked aboard the ship. How Surali glares at me, as if she could hit me to bruise you. The old rivalry between the Bittern Court and the Temple of the Silver Lily.”
The Lily Blades certainly had their own rivalry with the Street Guild of Kalimpura, which was itself closely allied to the Bittern Court. The Bittern Court controlled the docks, took in moorage fees and levied excise on goods coming and going. Enormous amounts of ready money passed back and forth in those endeavors. The Street Guild were essentially licensed footpads, keeping the general peace against freelancers in return for the freedom to conduct shakedowns and outright muggings of their own.
That latter rivalry was obvious enough-weapons carriers against weapons carriers, each with a very different notion of justice and fairness. But the rivalry between the Temple of the Silver Lily and Bittern Court went back well before my time in Kalimpura, rooted in long-ago betrayals and old hatreds of which I knew nothing.
Would they truly plot to bring down a goddess? Who thought in those terms?
Me, for one, I realized with unintended irony. I’d done for Choybalsan myself, although with a great deal of help. And someone had laid a trap for Marya not long after I had first fled Copper Downs.
That was who Surali was looking for. With whom was she bargaining? The Rectifier? Somehow god killing didn’t quite seem his mode. He had priests to hunt, but that was a different matter.
But what of the rest of the Revanchists? My blood ran cold. Surely the Dancing Mistress had small reason to love the Lily Goddess. There had been nothing kind about her treatment at the hands of my temple sisters and Mothers.
It all fit together, but somehow was still too neat. I had trouble believing in this plot. Who could conspire across the breadth of an ocean, given the excruciating pace at which messages traveled? And some pieces of it had to stretch back years. The Eyes of the Hills, for example, if they were indeed involved.
“I find it more likely that Mother Vajpai has encouraged you to think this,” I told Samma. “To bait me into her grasp once more. I will not return to her again.”
“No, Green.” Samma sounded almost desperate now. Close to tears. “Please listen to me. The plots in the embassy are as thick as silkworm webs on a mulberry bush.”
“That is the way of Kalimpuri politics,” I told her. “And everywhere else, too, I suppose. This does not mean some great effort is being made to slay our goddess. They work for advantage, that their names may be ascendant.”
I was loyal to the Lily Goddess, albeit very irregular in my observances, but I was not dedicated to Her political power, or the particular fortunes of Her temple. If the Temple Mother and the Justiciary Mother and Mother Vajpai wanted to fritter their years on those disputes, it was no game of mine.
There were gods aplenty here in Copper Downs to trouble me.
“I-I brought you something,” Samma said, her voice very small indeed. “By way of proof.”
She reached inside her Blade leathers and pulled forth a small velvet sack that had been lying close to her left breast. I knew how she favored that one when at play, so perhaps she had drawn comfort from having her secrets there.
Samma hefted the sack. I could see it was light. Money? It was not so heavy, not at all. Some ancient sigil, perhaps. But when she tugged the drawstring, two gems spilled into the palm of her left hand: a green tourmaline and a cobalt spinel.
“The Eyes of the Hills,” I whispered.
They had returned to Copper Downs. No wonder the Revanchists were down out of their high forests and meadows. I felt ill as I realized how much of that supposed plot had to be real.
Maybe Osi and Iso were right after all. Set the Selistani embassy and the pardine factions on one another, then simply clear the streets.
“Where did you get those?” I asked her.
Samma shook her head, miserable, as she tucked the Eyes of the Hills back into their velvet bag. “I h-had some gems, to barter for cash or goods or passage, as I began to pursue you. I stole these from Mother Vajpai, but left her with two other gems so she would not note the theft so quickly.”
“You stole from Mother Vajpai?” This was not the Samma I had known.
“I’m no longer the scared girl you dumped when you became a star among the Blades,” she said in a determined voice. “All we do is police Kalimpura, and spend our time there. When Mother Vajpai sent me after you alone, with Captain Padma and those t-terrible men, I think I learned some things. Maybe I grew up.”
“You may not be a scared girl,” I said simply, “but you are a frightened young woman.”
“Possibly. But I c-couldn’t just let it be. Not once I knew Mother Vajpai carried something Surali wanted real bad.”
Ah-ha.
“So they argued over these?”
“Surali has been beside herself for this whole trip.”
Which made me wonder all over again if Mother Vajpai had manipulated Samma into even this betrayal. A way to secure my help without asking me.
Oh, the wheels inside the wheels of this were making my head ache.
A solution of sorts came unbidden into my thoughts. “Give the gems to me.”
She stank of a sudden surge of fear sweat, then closed her fist. “No. I might need to put them back.”
“I can keep them far safer from Surali than Mother Vajpai can.” Which was almost certainly not literally true, but I was willing to hang on to the thought for right now. “Also, I know what to do with them, to ensure that no harm comes to the Lily Goddess through the agency of these gems.”
“They’re powerful, aren’t they?” Every now and then, Samma showed something of what the training mothers had seen in her. She slipped the sack back within her leathers.
I could not allow her to leave with them. “All by themselves, perhaps not.” I grabbed hold of her wrist. “But they have the power of a symbol, and are connected to an ancient magic here in the city which has been stolen and re-stolen.”
“They’re not yours, Green.” Samma tried to pull away from my grip.
Tugging her toward me, I leaned in close. “They’re not yours, either. And they are dangerous.”
Samma yanked herself almost free, rising to her feet. I came up with her, then tripped her ruthlessly by the bad leg I’d injured previously. That dumped her to the ground in front of the temple steps with a hiss of pain. I followed with a body pin of my own weight, pressing her into the graveled soil as my right hand snaked inside her leathers to retrieve the gems in their sack.
Recovering her breath, Samma kicked up with her knee, catching me painfully in the thigh. I dug a thumb into the edge of her eye. “Do not try me further.” I was not pleased with myself, but I had neither time nor patience for her foolishness.