The bell lay next to me, I realized. Most of the mercury was gone, but a few drops showed a throne on my other side. A small shadowed figure perched on the edge of the seat.
It took three tries, but I managed to force my head to turn the other way. My body possessed little strength.
In the guttering light of the lamps-which smelled like no oil I knew-I could see that the throne had been made of tiny skulls. Babies, perhaps, or monkeys. I could not tell. Blackblood sat on the edge, tapping his heels.
Where Skinless was a horror out of the depths of nightmare, the god was a child. He was robed, his head hairless. His eyes were filled with blood, as after a solid beating to the head. They glinted red in the flickering light of the lamps. Otherwise, he seemed almost normal.
“I see you have arisen.” Amazingly, I managed to spit the words out without howling the pain that racked my body.
“To my surprise.” He frowned. “Much has changed.”
“Even in the last few hours.” I had to stop, close my eyes, and let my heart race a moment. This would be a very inconvenient time for it to burst. At least let me say my piece, I prayed.
“You have seen my theopomp. Skinless smells him upon you.”
“I t-told your servant. He died in my arms, after I gave him a mercy. Choybalsan had w-wounded him beyond healing.”
The lights glittered with the tears that returned to my eyes.
Blackblood made a small noise. Then: “You are not one of mine.”
“No. I follow a distant Goddess.”
“Skinless smells Her upon you, too.”
“Soon, oh god, there will be no more for you. We were to fight Choybalsan today.”
He laughed. The sound was small, light, as the twittering of birds, yet it set all my joints to grating. I was lost in that wave of pain for a while.
When I focused again, the god looked pleased with himself.
“You do not understand time, little foreign girl. You are not of us. Your offering of pain is well enough done, but I cannot and will not take you up.”
Several kinds of hope bloomed. “What of Choybalsan? Will you send Skinless to fight him, if it is not too late?”
Blackblood leaned toward me, then slipped from his throne to squat barely a handspan away. I would not have touched him even if I could move, but here he was.
“Why should I?” he whispered.
This was my moment. “To preserve yourself.”
His eyes slid shut. He did not breathe, any more than Skinless did, but something rippled through the god’s body. Without looking at me again, he spoke. “You value continued existence differently than I, because you do not understand time. There will always be pain. There will always be me, or something in my place no different.”
“Even your priests have turned against you. The Pater Primus conspired with Choybalsan, and brought his brother priests along. You have little left. Is today the day you wish to die?” Then, thinking on what he had said, “Does Skinless miss its theopomp? Do you miss Septio?”
This time he giggled. Another wave of pain washed over me like the tide tugging at a body on the beach. “So asks the girl who claimed his life.” His smile widened. I wished I had not looked within his mouth. “You claimed his seed, too.” A pale hand stretched toward my belly. “I should not be so hard on myself, were I a woman in your condition.”
My gut roiled in panic. He could not mean it so. Not me. Not here. Not now.
Not Septio.
How could any woman be pregnant the very first time she ever lay with a man? Mistress Cherlise would have laughed to hear me say so. But it was too soon even to begin to suspect.
Unless the god had known from the beginning…
Blackblood brushed his fingers over my shoulder. The pain bloomed like one of his priests’ bombards, then left me. “You will bring my theopomp’s child to me in time. For now, go and do what seems best to you.”
I somehow expected him to vanish as the Factor had, but he hopped back upon his throne and sulked. When Skinless took me up again, this time carrying me as if I were the baby, I began to cry.
Moments later, with no labyrinth in our way, we were in the upper hall. Priests scattered, shouting. A pistol cracked. Skinless ignored them all, until it reached the outer doors. My heart thrilled to see that it was still daylight outside.
The avatar turned and stared back at the cowering priests who had rebelled against its god. Hefting me to its shoulder as if it meant to burp me like an infant, it closed the doors with its other hand. I peered around, away from my view of the knobs of its spine and the muscle of its back.
Skinless pressed its palm against the doors until they smoked.
When we turned away, the doors were bulged and cracked and brazed shut. Within, the screaming began.
The screaming began as well on the Street of Horizons as people scattered in wild fear of my new protector.
Skinless loped through the city. I discovered that I once more clutched my ox bell. The boning knife was gone, and with it the lives that weapon had claimed, but this reconstructed memory clopped in time to its footfalls.
In daylight, I realized how tall Skinless truly was-twice the height of a normal man, and closer to three times my own. I also understood it carried me for speed. My pain had lifted, especially the shattering in my shoulder. Even the older aches, ghosts of prior wounds, were banished.
Such a gift the pain god had given me.
Thank you, I prayed.
A great pale eye ringed with muscle fibers and little folds of fat turned toward me a moment.
Its passage left a trail of shouting and fear, but no one tried to follow. I even saw some of the Interim Council’s civil guards fleeing. Fewer people were about as we approached Lyme Street. The sun stood nearly at the appointed time when I glimpsed the Textile Bourse.
A mob roared before the temporary seat of government. Either the Factor or the Rectifier had done good work. Perhaps both of them.
Then I understood my error. He had said to meet at the cistern three fingers before the sun sets. The sort of powers the Factor could bring to this fight would likely not walk in daylight.
We would need to trap Choybalsan half an hour, perhaps longer, before our forces arrived. Even Skinless was not so powerful as all that.
It dropped me gently in front of him, then stood behind me with arms folded. The edges of the mob noticed the two of us. Their shouting trailed to uneasy silence.
I brandished the bell. That was foolish, but I had no weapon, and needed to raise a sign. “I am Green!” I shouted. “I am come to aid you in throwing down this bandit god-king out of the north.”
Some people jeered. The Rectifier and the Tavernkeep stepped to the front of the press.
“Welcome,” the pardine barbarian’s voice boomed like an explosion in the street.
Bell held high, we advanced. With my hand on the rim of the sounding cup, it did not clop, but still it was my standard. I tried not to consider that I was stepping into an unwinnable fight with the unwanted burden of life just beginning to take root in my belly.
I tried not to think of children and what could happen to them in this world. I tried not to think at all. This was a time to stall for reinforcements, then fight.
The door to the Textile Bourse banged open. Nast, the old clerk, stepped out. Half a dozen guardsmen crowded around him and past him to fill the little landing at the top of the front steps.
They had pistols and crossbows in their hands, and swords across their backs. The council meant for there to be no rushing of their halls of state.
“The Interim Council takes notice of the fears of the people of Copper Downs.” His voice was reedy with fatigue and stress, but it carried. I noticed Nast did not even read from the paper in his hand. “We are making favorable terms even now with the tribes who have come among us. Return to your homes, put away your fears, and await a new day of peace and prosperity. Any who leave now will be pardoned, their faces forgotten.”