“Worse, perhaps,” he added as he straightened and focused his attention.
I looked into his brown Selistani eyes and wondered what he saw of me. Had the goddess left Her mark? The very touch of a titanic was like walking into a bonfire. Despite the evidence of my own experiences, I knew that in these latter days of the world, they were not worshipped directly. Or indeed thought to be present at all. I wondered if this acolyte could spy Her words yet upon me. “What is worse?”
“A woman cries for you.”
A handful of responses crowded my thinking, none of them respectful or appropriate. I swallowed what would surely have been a smirk, settling for “What does she say?”
“She pulls at her hair and shouts your name, then bursts into tears.” He appeared baffled. “None of us have ever seen her before. She is not known in the temple.”
With a long, slow sigh I unfolded myself from my rubble pile. Whatever Desire had intended, that moment had passed, taking the goddess’ plans with it. I found myself hard-pressed to care overmuch about divine ambitions. As for the crying woman… “Is this a trick? Did you spy bravos lurking in the bushes nearby?”
“No,” said Ponce gravely. “And if we did, we would not offer up our fists. This is done as Endurance wills.”
Endurance is an ox, I thought scornfully, then felt guilty over the words. When Ponce steadied my arm, I did not even notice. My balance was just strange lately.
I broke into a trot. Not a hard run, for my escort was already winded, but something to move my body with the newfound energy Desire seemed to have imparted to me. I could not help but be grateful for that. On the other hand, too soon these boy’s pants would have to be let out or replaced. I might as well maintain what I could of my poor body in some useful shape.
Ponce kept up with me. I could hear the breath shuddering ragged in his chest as he ran, but his legs pistoned every time mine did and more. He proved to be a magnificent pacekeeper.
We ran down Whitetop Street and over Durand Avenue, straight into the Velviere District. I watched again for Skinless, or others on my trail, but saw only the business of the day.
I slowed down as we approached the area around the temple. Traffic thinned there. This was a part of town that named street runners “thief” without waiting to see if anything had actually been stolen. The temple surely already had unhappy neighbors, simply for drawing any traffic at all through those recently opened gates, where only a blank wall had for so very long guarded nothing but empty mine galleries rotting beneath a layer of brambles.
Still, our approach was brisk. The same old Selistani man sat on the chair outside the gate. Endurance already with an avatar? He nodded us in with no acknowledgment from Ponce and a bare answering nod in return from me.
Inside, the temple seemed to be in its usual state of disarray, except for the quarryman’s low-bedded wagon with its team of four enormous draft horses. Foundation stones were being unloaded.
That explained the ash on Ponce’s forehead-dust.
“She’s at the kitchen. Asti is pouring kava down her, or was when I left to find you.”
Something that had been nagging at my mind leapt to the front. “How did you know where I was?”
He grinned. “Endurance told me.”
The god was mute. I wondered if my ox was manifesting new powers. More likely Ponce was very close to his patron deity’s dreaming mind. That was where this god spoke-not in thundering visions and declamatory exhortations forced from the fumbling mouths of arrogant priests, but directly through the thoughts and deeds of his followers. I had to admit that this seemed an elegant solution to the corruption of priests.
We walked toward the kitchen tent. My heart beat cold and hard for the span of half a dozen breaths. Ilona sat at one of the long tables. Her orange dress was torn, soiled, bloodied. Her hair trailed in a madwoman’s messy cloud, like dreams escaping from a mind overheated with confusion. A mug shivered in her hands, spilling steam and brown drops on the trestle tabletop before her.
I did not see Corinthia Anastasia anywhere about.
Shoving past Ponce, I raced to Ilona’s side, full of unnamed dread. “I am here.” I plucked at her elbow. “What has happened?”
She looked at me and dropped her mug. It bounced on the table, sending chips of ceramic and a spray of kava flying. “Green,” Ilona gasped, then collapsed sobbing into my arms.
I looked across her bare head toward Ponce as I stroked her neck and back. “Have you gotten any more from her? Where is her daughter?”
He shrugged, hands spread wide, face a mask of wordless regret.
“Ilona,” I whispered, holding her close. “Listen to me, Ilona. Where is Corinthia Anastasia?”
She mumbled something into my shoulder that ended in a shriek and a sob. My heart hardened in that moment. My enemies had gone hunting among my friends. I would pay them out in rich, hot blood.
“If you do not tell me,” I crooned, patting her hair, “I cannot help you.”
The older woman broke away from my shoulder to look me in the face. Her own dark eyes were rimmed with ragged red. One was bruised, as from a blow. “They took her.” Ilona’s voice was so plain and stark that it carried more weight of grief than an army of tears could have borne.
I gripped her shoulders tight, forcing her to keep looking at me. “Who did?”
“I d-don’t know. Men. Dark-skinned. Selistani.”
“Looking for me?”
“They didn’t say.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “They didn’t say anything at all. Just beat me, laid Corinthia Anastasia across their saddlebags, and set fire to my cottage. Then they were g-gone.”
My rage blossomed like oil burning in a scorching pan. Whoever did this would pay, body and soul. I would piss on their corpses instead of lighting the candles or painting them with the red and the white.
This was aimed at me, a trap laid with a single prey in mind, but it was sprung about a child stolen away to snatch at my attention. No one could have conceived of a harder strike to my heart, short of ripping my own babe from my womb.
I’d been attacked here at the Temple of Endurance, to the cost of two lives, and shrugged it off. I’d been confronted to the point of riot at the Tavernkeep’s place and continued about my business. This, though…
The only question was whether it was the Selistani embassy behind this-Surali, to be specific, whose face I should have smashed instead of her fingers-or some other player.
Clutching tight to Ilona, I forced the fire of my thoughts to burn slower. If the Interim Council wanted me they would simply send for me. Blackblood might have hired the men who’d killed the girls, but I could not see that god causing his nervous priests to hire Selistani migrants-who could not possibly know these High Hills-as freelance raiders to commit such dirty work among the ancestral graves of his own people.
No, this was the work of whoever had been asking after me at Briarpool right before my return. Whomever Corinthia Anastasia had spied on that day, and showed herself to in the process. Possibly the pardine Revanchists. But again-why would they use Selistani agents? My mind came back to the embassy, Surali, and the people who would know how child stealing overset my heart.
Mother Vajpai.
No.
Not possible.
Not her.
Regardless of my banishment, or the political situation between the Temple of the Silver Lily and the Bittern Court, I could not credit Mother Vajpai, even now, with setting such a vile trap. But I could credit her with informing Surali of my feelings for children and the uses to which they were put. And the Bittern Court woman was quite able to make such a disaster for me, laughing all the while. They’d certainly brought their own bravos from across the sea. Little Baji and some other pirate toughs, or the Prince of the City’s men.
I would bar the doors of their rented mansion and burn it to ash with everyone roasting inside.