Iso pounced. “Consider that the Urges gave a framework for the titanics, and the titanics gave a framework for the splintered gods, and the gods give a framework for their avatars.”
“And people give a framework for the entire spectrum of the divine,” I pointed out. “This is a circle, not a slope. If they help us with our purposes, surely we help them with theirs? How else will a sailor’s goddess know that the sea is her domain if sailors and their widows do not bring her their prayers?” Surely drowning men saw someone.
“Yet some purposes are higher and deeper.” Osi again. “And stand outside the small needs.”
“Our rite is such a one,” Iso added. “We pursue a map of the dispersion. In doing so, we seek to redress an ancient wrong so that the world might be better balanced.”
But they would speak no more of that. Foolishly, I let the matter drop.
In the course of three days we ranged across theory, practice, and purpose. Along with the rest of my abbreviated lessons-such a syllabus, to cram into so few words and scant hours-they showed me how the view of a god into the world is colored by his worshippers and his purposes, and thus how one might hide oneself away from a god’s eye with crafty misdirections. A certain symbol scratched upon a wall might draw aside the mystic power present in a place. The one who placed it there could pass through unobserved. A prayer or rite, if known, could be turned in on itself and to a degree the effects would be reversed. A gathering-in of both the spirit and the body, following certain signs, could make one as silent and small as a shadow on the wall. Walking in curves provided no angles to reflect the attention of the divine.
Strange and useful lore, much of it with applications in the more mundane world of Blades and runs and street violence. Further proof to my thinking that the gods were not so different from us. Just… more.
We also talked directly about how to thwart Blackblood in his purposes, given the manner in which I understood them at the time. Or at least we did so as directly as Iso and Osi ever spoke of anything. “Even gods may be trapped, stopped.”
Killed, I thought, recalling Marya, and Desire’s grief amid Her ruined temple. Who would cry so for Blackblood should he depart the world? The fall of Choybalsan had not riven the city both because he was so new, and because his power had been preserved in the form of Endurance. In a sense, this was true of Marya as welclass="underline" The grief of the titanic Desire served to focus Her attention, likely providing the energy that kept the death of Marya from echoing far more widely. Who would hold Blackblood’s place in matters divine?
I knew from my readings in my younger years that the cost of god killing was high, not necessarily to the killers, but to those who lived on after. Nothing Iso and Osi had said now led me to believe otherwise.
At that price, would I be willing to strike Blackblood down if he did not give me and my daughter his leave to pursue our lives as we would? This is what my newfound teachers hinted at.
“I have much to do in this city,” I said. “And soon. My enemies abide, plotting and awaiting the plots they expect of me.” Or simply the attack. I laugh to think of it now, but I was late to subtlety. “You aid me in understanding Blackblood’s needs and purposes. I suspect he will not be turned aside by suasion, no matter how cogent the argument. Better that he be stopped and directed away from me permanently.”
It occurred to me that I did not wish them to strike Blackblood down like some bandit on the road. God killing was not the answer. As I’d said, I merely needed to twist the god’s attention from me. Likewise the entire trail of divine affray that seemed to follow me through my days.
I craved the ordinary.
“What would you sacrifice to reduce a god?” Osi asked.
“I have nothing worth so much,” I replied, “except my own life and the life of my child. Those I will not lay down. Not even for this.”
“Think on it,” Iso said.
The Eyes of the Hills burned hot in the inner pocket of my shirt, and for a moment I imagined that the canvas smoldered. “I will, but I do not see much changing.”
“We shall think, as well,” Osi replied.
The evening of the third day, I bid them farewell. “I take a pause from our lessons and discussions tomorrow. I need to spend time seeing how far out of control my other fires have burnt.”
They promised to meditate further on the matter of Blackblood. I promised to return with such additional insights as my explorations brought to me. I believed I’d intrigued the twins, given them a pretty problem against which to exercise their theories.
That night I kept to the streets. The weather had grown sufficiently wet that I’d stolen a rather nice dark blue oilcloth coat from a banker’s coach. The broad collar I turned up against the cold, steady rain that had taken over from the squalls of earlier in the week. Gas lamps hissed and burned along some of the wider thoroughfares. The rest were lit haphazardly by house lights, carried torches, or were simply embedded in wet shadow. In the dreams Archimandrix had spoken of to me, the bottled lightnings of the kettle ships would snap and spark from each corner, until Copper Downs might have seemed some great trading metropolis of the Sunward Sea.
Listening to the city, I wandered up to Lyme Street to see if I could secure another cardamom roll. The little teahouse with its bakery was already closed for the day. That meant I would have to find something else to feed the baby. The last few days of living on lentils and flatbread had maintained me well enough without satisfaction. I wanted more. I would have given much for a well-stocked kitchen just then, that I could prepare myself a feast.
Likewise my balance had gone off a bit further just in a few days. Growth of the baby, growth of the woman carrying that child within her. “You will not pull me down,” I whispered in a low voice, patting my daughter before I trotted on into the night.
I would have loved to find the Rectifier now, but I was still not ready to simply barge into the Tavernkeep’s place again. Especially not with the Eyes of the Hills close against my breast. Still, absent a cardamom roll, I’d seek out such food as I could, then set myself to finding the old rogue on the sly. He’d not be too hard to locate. Surely he was looking for me by now, given the gossip to be had. And if anyone could triangulate the twins’ advice for me, it was the Rectifier.
I once again took my leave of Lyme Street, my back turned toward the Textile Bourse. Trotting through the rain in search of a chophouse, I twice thought I spied Skinless, but that did not seem likely. The avatar bulked far too large to be out in the streets unnoticed. His very size would have ignited a panic, let alone his rather gruesome aspect. Shadows at play? Or some trick of Blackblood’s seeming?
In time I found a laborers’ kitchen with a single shared stewpot serving duck soup, alongside brined eggs and a hard, dark bread that was not the most usual local style. It was outrageously cheap, in part because the ducks were actually pigeons. I did not care so much. They served from a small cart meant to be drawn by two people. That pair worked their little kitchen-an old woman and her much older mother. The mother tended the pot, took in the copper taels and half-taels, and ladled out the rations of soup. The daughter, still old as my grandmother had been, at least to my eye, wiped out the bowls and restocked them for use, kept a regular supply of dark braided dough shoved into the little oven at the base of the cart, and more or less continuously chopped vegetables and plucked pigeons to replenish the soup vat.
I resisted the strong urge to take over from her.