She went limp, surrendering as she used to on the practice floor and in our shared bed. “ Greeeeeeen,” she gasped in whining misery.
I rolled off her and stood, wary of some last-minute trickery on her part. “Not a word of this to anyone, not even Mother Vajpai.” Especially not Mother Vajpai.
Betrayal was written large upon Samma’s face, scratching open a sense of guilt which I rarely experienced. “I was trying to help you,” she sniffed.
“You have.” I glanced down at the velvet bag, then tugged at the drawstring until the Eyes of the Hills spilled out once more, this time into my waiting hand. They tingled with that familiar metal-in-the-mouth feeling of something touched by the divine. It was all I could do not to glance skyward and look for the lightning strike to come.
Instead I leaned forward and kissed Samma gently. “Go home. Back to the embassy, then back to Selistan.”
Her lips surged against mine, an old habit of sexual hunger between us; then she tore away, saying, “I hate you.” But the tone of her voice told me differently.
Watching her totter out, limping yet, I wondered if I should have sent for a carriage. When she disappeared past the far side of the gate, I turned my attention to the pair of gems in my hand. Once again, I had a feeling I’d paid too much for too little reward. Except for their size, the stones were unremarkable enough to casual inspection. Blue and green, a pair of eyes that reminded me muchly of Michael Curry. I was fairly certain no one but a priest would sense the power that buzzed against my hand like a trapped wasp.
What if I had not killed him then? Would all this be different now? What if I had not just bullied Samma, hurt her to force the girl to my will?
I dismissed all of that as fruitless. It occurred to me that my very best source of information would be the Factor’s ghost, for in his guise as the Duke, he had first stolen these away from the pardines.
The flaws in that idea were readily apparent, and so I abandoned it. No, I was done with turning to those who had once held authority over me to ask for help and more help. To the Smagadine hells with the Interim Council, the Factor, and even Mother Vajpai. Armed once again with the power of a god, I would seek out Osi and Iso and craft a response of my own.
Out on the streets once more in my guise as a lad of Copper Downs, I ignored my fading guilt about Samma and instead mused on Erio’s fears. Surely the Eyes of the Hills were what had caught at the old ghost’s attention. His own years far predated the late Duke’s appropriation of the pardine artifacts, but Erio, much like the tulpas of Below, had been focused on the city throughout the entire sorry history of the gems. Their power, both as legacy and whatever remained directly invested in them today, was now too closely tied to Copper Downs. That these gems drew the pardine Revanchists with their atavistic ways back into the city would be deeply frightening to a soul who remembered the older days of pardine Hunts and the brutal wars with the human settlers of this land.
The feral aspect of the Dancing Mistress and her cohorts in the Tavernkeep’s place was surely a pathway to a much darker facet of her people, harkening to those older days. I had loved her for years in various ways, but she always held a frightening depth.
Sometimes I preferred a person of simple intentions. Samma, for example. Or me. I grew tired of outguessing the inscrutable motives of those taken up with ancient, invisible agendas. Looking back, I find it amazing how unaware of myself I was in those years.
As I turned onto Calabar Street, the air around me seemed to pop. Strange shadows danced on the walls even in broad daylight. For a moment my mouth filled with the metallic taste of power. Then a sound rumbled by, loud enough that it overwhelmed all the noise of the city. I had in the past been mere handspans away from lightning strikes, thanks to the kind attentions of Federo. This was worse.
Some around me fell, mostly through fear, as the ground did not buckle. Noting the alignment of the new shadows, I turned and sprinted back toward their source. Once I was heading that way, the column of smoke and rising, multicolored sparks was easy enough to spot.
The Temple Quarter? Had Blackblood done himself a mischief? My troubles could surely not be so easily solved.
I raced toward the Street of Horizons, leaping over people huddled by the curb, pushing past the more alert who fled in the opposite direction. This was no explosion of alchemical powders, I was certain. Nothing a man or woman could create would cause such a flash of light. This was magic, the divine, something supernatural.
I approached the Temple Quarter, my sprint converted to the ground-eating lope of a Blade run. I could see that the cloud rose from a block behind the Street of Horizons. That was a smaller road of which I did not know the name. I arrived at the scene to find a few dozen stunned acolytes and priests of several orders staring at a rubble pile out of which the last of the smoke and dust was boiling.
The remaining air was strangely clear, as if wiped of all impurities. Like the garden before time, when the birds and animals had not yet been awoken to breathe it in. The metal-in-mouth taste was strong here. I could see by the expressions of several of the watchers that they shared it.
Puffing, I pulled up to the group. I never breathe hard. Not like this! An argument with the baby, for later. One hand on my belly, trying not to be obvious, I asked, “Whose place was this?”
None of them even looked at me, until I plucked at one young boy’s robed arm. He turned and opened his mouth, popping his lips like a carp in a pond. I realized his ears were bleeding. He must have been deafened by the explosion.
All of them seemed to have been.
I hoped they had a god of hearing to pray to.
Instead of addressing them, I pushed through to the front of the semicircle of onlookers. “Go home!” I shouted, letting the words form large upon my lips. I touched my ears, then pointed to them, then shooed them away.
Even the older priests nodded, somewhat to my surprise. In my experience, men of a certain age simply don’t surrender authority to women or boys. Their willingness to heed me was a mark of how overwhelmed they felt.
I turned around and looked again. Their departure was also a mark of how utterly unlikely I was to find any survivors.
Given the intense nature of the explosion, I knew I would probably have a few minutes to myself. Especially with the smoke plume almost vanished, which would reduce the likelihood of a bucket brigade arriving.
Looking around, I realized that the damage had indeed been contained. While windows were shattered in all directions, only one building had collapsed. Rubble smoldered in front of me, beams shattered, bricks broken and ground to dust, the contents of the inside mixed into the mess-plates, a splintered table, a length of cloth.
I moved closer. The length of cloth enclosed a human leg, protruding from under a still-intact chunk of masonry the size of a large trunk. Now I wished I hadn’t sent the priests away so quickly. Still, the chunk was balanced precariously on a pile of smaller wreckage. And there was no lack of loose wood for levers.
Swiftly I wedged a seven-foot length of milled lumber into place under the high edge of the masonry. Even as I worked to that, I confirmed my impression that this place had been targeted very specifically.
Was this the Temple of Marya? That hand had been played before, after all.
Someone had tried to attack this temple several years ago, not long after the fall of the Duke. I’d heard the story when I was staying with Ilona, twice, about a long night of light and flame, and a horrid creature slain in the street, only to have the body vanish with the sunrise. This had all taken place during the brass-ape races, which were a time of debauchery and general foolishness. While I’d recognized the importance of the story, I’d discounted most of the details.