Our usual fight trainer was Mother Anai. She had been working with me on attacks, and I’d touched her three times already. I was getting better, and I thought I was ready to try Mother Vajpai again.
A feint was pointless. She was far more experienced. Likewise her reach of arm beat mine by a good margin. If I were fighting for my life, without the rules of the room, I might have gone for her face. As it was, I bowed, spun left, locked my eyes on her right side, then dove out of my own line of vision toward her left leg.
She stepped right through my attack, slapping me on the head to show the blow she could have landed.
“What is being so strange about you, Green,” she said once more in that conversational voice, “is that you are so natural at defense, but are so struggling with offense.”
I hopped up from the floor. “I learned in a different school, Mother.”
“Were you taught to fight at all?”
“No,” I admitted. I’d managed to avoid this question so far, out of sheer embarrassment. “I was taught to dodge the attack, then flee.”
“Ah.” She looked thoughtful a moment. “I will speak to Mother Anai. We will find a way for you. You are being strong and fast as any Blade we have ever trained. There are merely certain arrows which have not yet been placed within your quiver.”
Though I did not glimpse then what this would portend for me, I saw the Lily Goddess for the first time in those months. We knelt to prayers every evening at sundown unless something urgent excused us. There were services every day, at which the priestly aspirants spent almost all their time. The Blades and their aspirants were expected mostly on Monday and Friday. Monday is the moon’s day, of course, and the moon governs women during the years of motherhood. Friday is the Goddess’ day, honoring the beauty best displayed by youth.
On ordinary days, when there was no feast or presentation, the Temple Mother-an old woman with frosted hair and strangely pale eyes for a Selistani-or one of her senior priestly Mothers would come into the sanctuary before dawn and consecrate the altar amid the sacred circle. The altar itself was a great silver lily, almost six feet wide, sculpted as a flower yet half-opened. The sanctuary stood at the core of the temple building, so that the soaring, tapered roof was like a chimney above the circular walls. Benches rose along the walls, with a steep drop from layer to layer so that we aspirants looked at the tops of the heads of the women below us.
There was always a great deal of praying and incense and scented smoke; then the Temple Mother would address the Lily Goddess directly through the altar. For the first weeks, I thought that just another form of prayer. But one Monday, the Temple Mother was following her order of service when a wind came up in the sanctuary. It ruffled the pages of the prayer books, which I could not read, for the crawling Seliu script was still a mystery to me at that time. It tugged at hair and sleeves and trailing hymns.
This was a whirlwind, I realized, circling on the Temple Mother. She seemed to get larger and larger, until she towered above us all. I understood this even at the same time that my eyes plainly saw her standing before the silver lily just as always.
When her voice boomed, it should have ground stone. The Goddess pronounced words that were not meant for me, but concerned rather justice for a house I did not then recognize the name of. The very sound of Her echoed in my head, made my knuckles ache, buzzed in the stone of the bench on which I sat.
I said nothing when prayers resumed, but as we rose after the final chantry in order to find our way out, I poked Samma. “That was very strange.”
She brushed my hand away with a little smile. “What?”
“How the Goddess…” My voice trailed off when I saw her blank look. She not only had not noticed, but she also seemed unable to understand what I was telling her.
Later, I sought out Mother Vajpai. Our nine were taking the midday meal down in the dining hall, but I’d skipped the seating to find a quiet moment with her. She was in one of the public offices, reviewing accounts with a bursar from the Court of Starlings. That court dealt with trade in textiles and leather goods, and oversaw justice, banking, and regulation for those trades and their castes within Kalimpura, as well as dyers, scriveners, and the lesser toymakers.
When the old man, bent but bright, shuffled out of the little room, Mother Vajpai nodded to me. I arose from my bench in the hall amid other appointments and supplicants and stepped within.
“What is it, Green?” she asked, not unkindly. “In moments, I must see the adjudicator from the Frutiers’ Guild about a Death Right matter, so I shall ask you to be quick.”
“This morning, at the services…” My words felt strangely foolish, even in my own mouth. “I thought I saw the Goddess.”
“You give Her no more credit than you are giving the ice-sellers in the street, Green. Even so, I have no doubt that if you are thinking you saw Her, then you saw Her. She appears within the mind of anyone to whom She speaks.”
“She wasn’t speaking to me, Mother. Her words were about justice for a noble house. The Temple Mother was tall as a tree, while a great wind bore in circles around us all.”
“Really?” Mother Vajpai was rarely surprised, but she seemed so that day. “Interesting. Perhaps you are in the wrong order. I am certain that the priestesses would love to have you on the strength of this report alone.”
“N-no thank you, Mother.” I turned to leave.
“Green.”
I looked back at her.
Mother Vajpai smiled sweetly, the silver edges of her teeth shining wetly. “I am pleased you are telling me such things.”
And so began my long troubled journey on the path of the Lily Goddess.
Kalimpura was a city of festivals. The Lily Goddess had Her own, of course, a day that involved flowers raining from the rooftops and women in silver veils pouring from houses great and small. The Temple of the Silver Lily decanted a special violet wine that was carried in trays atop the heads of dancing dwarves and children hired for the occasion from the Mummers’ Guild.
Every week, it seemed, some god or goddess or harvest or ruler out of history or famous battle was to be celebrated. Someone was constantly parading through the streets with a bobbling serpent riding the backs of forty men, or a giant ship made of gutta-percha and oiled canvas, or great juggernauts bearing caged tigers and demon statues. Once, I thought I saw caged demons and tiger statues.
The usual crowds were thick as spring mud. A person could run across the heads and shoulders of a festival crowd.
The nearly continuous state of celebration also meant that there were always people in outlandish costumes. To my eye, trained always to the seriousness of state, this was akin to living amid an everchanging field of flowers. Every step outside the temple was a chance to encounter a beaked head larger than the Factor’s coach, or stiltwalkers bound for their luncheon from a parade rehearsal, or a troupe of false foreigners in costumes meant to evoke Hanchu or the Saffron Tower or the Smagadine city-states.
The natives of Kalimpura did not need to go see the world. The world came to them. All you required here was a good seat and a cool drink. Eventually everyone would pass by your corner.
My favorite times were within the dormitory. I had always slept alone before my time there, but the Blade aspirants slept together. We shared a room with mats spread out on a floor covered with thick straw slabs. At first, Samma was my bedmate, just to see me through the routine, but it took me no time at all to crave the circle of her arms at night.
We were not yet at the point of playing at lovers, but some of the older girls did. Jappa and Rainai would spread themselves wide in the moonlight from our dormitory’s single high window and explore each other with moaning abandon. Samma and I would sit side by side and watch them until we grew bored with the business and giggled ourselves to sleep.