I woke the next morning in a narrow bed, beneath a tall, thin triangular window. Sunlight blazed in along with the squabble of birds. Mother Meiko sat on a low stool, leaning upon one of her sticks.
“Do not be eating so much of that orange pepper powder,” she said. “Hillman’s bonnet, it is being called. It will be the death of you.”
I gasped for air. My mouth felt like one of those towering chicken coops out on the street. “Not yet, Mistress.”
“Not yet, girl.” She paused, pursed her lips, then came to some decision. “You are a girl, whomever you have killed.”
Suddenly I was very awake. I did not even know where the door was, let alone the path out of here. I could run rooftops all I wanted, but not fit through a window small as this.
She tapped me with her stick. “Listen, you. I am not here for anyone’s justice.”
I tried for straightforward. “My thanks for the night’s rest, and the aid. I would like to move onward.”
“No, you would not.” Mother Meiko tapped me again. “You are being foreign, and though your face is as Selistani as mine, you are knowing far too little of this place to be safe alone. You bear a great burden, and strange skills.” Another tap. “Skills that are being difficult to find in most places. Especially for a girl.”
Even in Seliu, that word gave me a shot of anger. Clearly such a reaction would not serve me here. “Please call me Green, Mother.”
“Green.” She leaned on her stick again and watched me awhile.
I watched her back, but I was tired and did not feel well. Curiosity and fear were a potent mix. Finally I had to ask. “How did you know I had killed a man?”
“Hmm.” Mother Meiko studied me awhile longer. “A chit of your age has no business with that knife.” With her words, I shifted my leg to test that the weight of my blade was still there. It was. “On the road, you looked at it sometimes as if it were being a snake, and sometimes as if it were being your best friend. So I knew the blade had done you a great service. What service could a blade be doing a girl, but to save her life? Or possibly her virginity?”
“Both,” I admitted.
“You know of the Death Right?”
“Yes.”
“To kill once is hard. To kill again, easier. To kill a third time, a habit.”
It was strange to hear this woman who could have been my grandmother talk so casually of murder. As if that were a normal part of life. She was drawing me toward honesty.
“I have killed… twice.”
Mother Meiko seized on my hesitation. “Only twice?”
“Only twice.”
“Hmm.” Another long thoughtful pause. “How did you celebrate your misdeeds?”
“By vomiting copiously, then crying great tears.” I sighed. “I prayed for both their souls, though likely neither deserved my regret.”
She reached forward so far, I feared she would topple from her stool, then took my hand. “In that case, you still have your own soul. There might be a place here for you.”
“If I can kill a third time?”
Mother Meiko’s smile chilled my blood. My heart slid within my chest. “Yes. If you can kill a third time.”
“Wh-what of those who guard the Death Right?”
“My dear Green, who do you think we are?”
I wondered then if it was she the cutpurses had worked for. Even Little Kareen might have answered to this woman. Grandmother or no, despite her twinkling eyes and apple cheeks, she was as fearsome as any plotter of the Duke’s court back in Copper Downs.
In that moment, I feared her as much as I’d feared anyone. There was nowhere for me to run, I knew. Not from her. Not in this city.
I forced a smile, though surely she knew it to be as false as I did. “I am delighted to accept more of your hospitality, then.”
“Never seen them take one so old as you,” said the sharp-faced girl. Her nose was as thin as my grandmother’s. She’d mumbled her name so fast, I hadn’t caught it. She wore a pale robe and sandals, was perhaps a year younger than I, and seemed to have been placed in charge of me. I followed her through a curving hall.
“How old are they… we… usually?”
“I was a baby,” she said proudly. “Brought to the Bone Door.”
I was taken as a baby, too. But no one brought me to a secret entrance of a women’s temple. “I am twelve, close to thirteen.”
“Yes. You’re from the east, right? Bhopura?”
“Well…”
She shook her head. “I saw your belled silk amid your things. Only the peasants out there do that. It’s such a waste, but sometimes you see them on the walls of the great houses here. As if farmers’ wives could do art.”
I took an instant and thorough dislike to this girl. “I’ve traveled.”
“Why would you do that? Everything worth having is right here in Kalimpura.”
Then we were in a chamber with a great alabaster bath set into the floor. The hatchet-faced girl slipped out of her pale robe and kicked away her sandals. She had no breasts yet, I saw, which made me ashamed of mine. “Come on, into the water with you.”
It took me a little longer to unwind the boy’s clothing I’d been wearing. When I kicked free of my sandal leggings and set my knife upon the floor, she whistled. “We don’t get metal like that until we’ve passed the Sixth Petal.”
“What?” The question slipped out of me. I didn’t really want to talk more than I had to with this awful girl.
“Tests. We have to hunt with certain weapons before we get better ones.” Her voice grew admiring. “You must have proved very well to someone.”
“Only in life,” I muttered. My arm drawn across the odd swell of my small breasts, I slipped into the bath.
The girl dropped balls of herbs and salts in with me before she followed me. The water was soon blessedly milky. She studied me for a while, meeting me eye to eye. “I saw your bruises,” she finally said. “Somebody really did it to you.”
I didn’t see how to avoid answering her. “About eight or ten of them.”
The girl leaned forward. “Did you make them sorry?”
“They were already sorry,” I said shortly. “That’s why they beat me.”
For some reason, this impressed her.
We sat awhile in silence. She obviously strained to fill it, but had acquired enough cunning to attempt entrapping me first. Finally she gave up. “I’m to wash your hair and give you robes and bring you to Mother Vajpai. I don’t think you’re supposed to carry your pigsticker around. None of the Blades do. Not inside the temple.”
Blades. That was an interesting term. Despite the slow leaching of my pain and fatigue by the bath, my mind was engaged. “What did you say your name was?” I asked reluctantly. I could hardly call her “girl.”
“Samma,” she answered in a small voice.
“That’s a nice name.”
“No, it’s not.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “You are from far away. It’s what they call dogs here, mostly.”
“What should I call you instead?”
“It’s my name,” Samma said unhappily.
“Names can change. Trust me.” I’d killed for mine, after all.
“You’re a strange one, Green.”
I leaned forward from the rolled edge of the tub. “As may be. My arms hurt. Can you help me with my hair?”
Her touch on my head, the brush of her chest against my back, was like balm for a pain I hadn’t known I’d been feeling. Were ordinary children raised in their parents’ arms? When Samma began to trace her fingers on my neck and shoulders, I shivered so hard, I nearly passed out.
In time we went to see Mother Vajpai, properly attired. My pigsticker was wrapped in a bath towel so it would not be presented as a weapon on our arrival.
She turned out to be the woman I had met briefly on my arrival here at the Temple of the Silver Lily. Today she stood dressed in red silks and chenilles chased with silver threads. Her hair was drawn up in a tight net of rubies, and her eyes rimmed with a powder the same color.
“Mother Vajpai,” I said, bowing my head.
Samma touched me once on the shoulder, for luck perhaps, then retreated. She closed the curved double doors through which she had just led me.