After that, it was a quick run for the stairs and through the upper baths, which were occupied as normal, at least until my bloody-handed appearance set people to a panic. I rushed with them out into the street.
I needed to reach the Tavernkeep’s place quickly. Tucking my head down and sprinting, I looked for some place to climb unseen. Shouting echoed behind me. I took two corners hard, jumped onto an unattended cart, and from there rolled myself onto the flat roof of some portico. I tucked close against the building as the chase pounded by just below.
After a quick twenty count to let them get ahead, I wriggled to the end of the portico and dropped into the street between the cart and the building. A fat man in an apron over a denim shirt, wearing a straw boater, stared at me with a crate of something in his hands.
“Blessings on your house,” I said in Seliu, then turned into the nearest alley.
Next it was a simple matter to gain the roofs two storeys up. I found a wooden water tank and cleaned myself thoroughly within, then broke the bottom. The flood would greatly trouble the people in the building below, but less so than drinking the water I’d fouled. I climbed down in the other end of the alley, stole a white shirt off a line, and quietly walked the rest of the way to the Tavernkeep’s place.
When I found the tavern, Chowdry was in the main room serving something that smelled very much like home. The scent set my stomach to gurgling. Chowdry looked up and broke into a smile.
“Green, you are being alive!”
“Please,” I replied in Seliu. “I must eat a little, and speak to the Tavernkeep at once.”
“He is marketing.” Chowdry looked around the room. A pair of pardines sat near the fireplace at table with a stoneware bowl and a scattering of flowers. One was the Rectifier, though I did not recognize the other. “You are knowing the Sentence, yes?”
The Sentence? “The Rectifier?”
“I say what his name means, I am thinking.” Chowdry looked apologetic.
That fit. In a strange way.
“Please,” I said. “Some curry.”
He nodded, fidgeted through part of a bow, then ran back into the kitchen. I quickly stepped to the table.
The Rectifier looked up at me. “You should take trophies, you know.” He gave me a feral smile. “I smell the killing on you.”
“I cannot wear the knucklebones so elegantly as some.” Taking a seat, I said to the other pardine, “I am Green. Known to this one a little, and known better to the Tavernkeep.”
She returned my small nod. “You are known.”
As was the manner of their people, she offered no name. She was rangy, perhaps the thinnest of them I’d seen, with tan fur that shaded almost white down her chest and belly. Neither she nor the Rectifier wore much in the way of clothing, unlike the city dwellers such as the Tavernkeep or the Dancing Mistress.
“You are in the midst of a battle?” the Rectifier asked politely.
“In a sense.” I saw no point in coyness. “I seek to throw down the bandit-king who hunts your people near extinction. We hope to catch him before the end of the day, unawares and unprepared.”
“You have an army?” the brown woman asked.
“No. But he is in the city today under guise, and does not have his army, either.” My next words caught in my throat. I forced them out anyway. “I have fought him once already, with the Dancing Mistress beside me. We escaped with our lives. I believe I know how to fight him again.”
The Rectifier grinned wider. “Where will this battle be, so that I might avoid the site at the proper time?”
“The Textile Bourse. Just before the sun downs.” I laid my hands flat on the table. “I have an ally seeking help that can meet Choybalsan on his own terms. I am more concerned with whatever corporeal protection he has with him there. I will need to clear his shields before we can bear him down.”
“So you wish to fight the city’s own guards,” the brown woman said. “After they beat you senseless and leave you in the cells beneath Penitent’s Rest, what plan will you have then?”
“If we succeed, peace for Copper Downs and your people,” I said promptly. “If we fail, I doubt we’ll live to be arrested.”
“Go raise your army of thugs,” the Rectifier said. “We will think on this awhile.”
Then Chowdry came with the curry: fish in masaman, coriander, and Hanchu parsley over steamed rice. It met my gut with a delicious rumble, and recalled me to the hot, wet air of Selistan. I said almost nothing as I ate. The pardines made no answer at all.
The food sufficed.
When I had cleaned my bowl dry, I stood and bowed. “Sometimes it is worth being on the side of the good.”
“If only you know which side that is,” the brown woman answered.
I nodded at them both and departed.
The crux of the problem came back to Skinless, and with it the seed of my solution. Mother Iron and the other sendings might well be able to mob and drive down Choybalsan, but Blackblood’s avatar had the god’s cruel strength. The avatar was almost an aspect, in truth. And Choybalsan was something more than a northern tulpa.
The god wore the man like a cloak.
I did not think that Blackblood would hold any use for me now. I had slain at least two of his priests, and perhaps more in the baths. His cult was not large. Of how much had I robbed him?
Sanity argued that even approaching the Algeficic Temple under these circumstances bordered on suicide.
My hopes for any success in the coming battle argued that I make the approach.
I wandered, going closer to the Temple Quarter in wide passages across city blocks as I tried to convince myself to do this thing. I prayed for guidance. The Lily Goddess was never so neat as to send me a sign at a time such as this, except for the blessing of my continued existence.
Septio could not advise me. The Dancing Mistress could not advise me. The Blade Mothers were not here.
In the end, I fell back on my oldest guides of all. What would Endurance have me do? What would my grandmother have me do?
That was when I knew I must find a way to make all this end decently. Whatever the cost to me. I could not let this city fall.
I found a quiet park a few blocks from the Temple Quarter. It wasn’t much more than an unbuilt corner planted with elms and rhododendrons. A stele stood at the center of a little square of grass in commemoration of some long-vanished personage.
Drifting past it, I sat under the tree in the farthest corner. There I toyed with the bell. I wondered why I was carrying it now.
To remind you of what you lost, said a voice within my head. Of what every child loses, even if they stay at their mother’s hearth all the days of their life.
That was said so clearly that I looked around, expecting to find someone close by. Conscience, I supposed. Or my Goddess finally answering me.
I still felt troubled, but less so. Comforted, even. Like a prayer, come the other way to feed my soul. Was this how it had been for the Temple Mother? To be a vessel, not for some priest’s lust, but for the Goddess Herself?
Looking at the sky, I saw that I had lost all but my last hour. I needed to be afoot and quickly. Stepping out of the park, I trotted toward the Temple Quarter and the Street of Horizons. I would meet Blackblood in his own house and tell him of the deaths of his priests.
You killed the Pater Primus, the voice said, but did he not conspire against his own god?
The tall metal doors of the pain god’s temple were drawn shut. There were no handles on the outside. Somehow, knocking did not seem to be the answer.
I stepped back and looked at the black-tiled face of the building. It was certainly climbable, but the rumor of war had put a number of people on this street looking for comfort or counsel. I did not wish to be quite so public as all that.