She looked me up and down. “What happened?”
“Someone tried to make trouble.”
“And?…”
“And I made trouble for them.” I grinned manically. “Let us be away.”
“Green…” Her voice trailed off. She and Chowdry followed me off the quay in silence. The Dancing Mistress plucked at my arm. “If it is your aim not to be known, perhaps you should be discreet.”
She had the right of it. I could have outrun those oafs easily enough. Simply sprinted the other way, then dodged down a cross-street or taken to the roofs. It had felt good to stretch out and really work . I hadn’t cared to play the victim.
“As may be,” I said.
She let it drop and so did I. We stood in the street, Chowdry close by.
“You do not want to go to the Council yet,” the Dancing Mistress finally said. “We have landed almost without notice. What would you do instead?”
I’d given that some thought aboard Lucidinous. Wandering streets almost unknown to me wasn’t a worthwhile way to learn anything of value. While the empty halls of the Ducal Palace had certainly been tempting, I knew my earlier logic about venturing there held true.
“Let us visit the Pomegranate Court,” I told her. “Look over the Factor’s house. See some of the city. Then if we find nothing, go Below. You told me time and again that the underground was the dreaming mind of the city. Let us learn what Copper Downs thinks on now as it drowses.”
Two years of running the streets of Kalimpura had taught me something of how to read a city and her people.
“We will need to settle Chowdry first,” the Dancing Mistress replied. “I know a tavern where he can work the kitchen, sleep beneath the tables in the mornings, and be out of harm’s way.”
Turning to him, I said in Seliu, “You are ashore now. Will you cook in a tavern for a time, to stay hidden?”
“I-I will.” His voice was stricken. “I did not know we came so far. I shall never go home.”
Clapping him on the shoulder, I felt in his sorrow an echo of my own despair. “We will see you settled for now, and return in a few days’ time to figure a better arrangement.” My attention back on the Dancing Mistress, I added, “Is this tavern peaceful, or full of brawls?”
“Oh, very peaceful,” she said. “Let us both take him there, so you can explain to the keeper. Then we will go on together.”
The place she had in mind was run by one of her people, mostly for her people. The inn had no sign, and it stood off a quiet alley near a district of breweries. Chowdry was made welcome with little fuss. I met the first man of the Dancing Mistress’ people I had ever seen.
He kept the bar, though in this place, that did not mean quite what it did elsewhere in the city. Scattered tables held deep stone bowls filled with scented waters. It felt welcoming. Like returning to a home I’d never known.
The bartender, whom I was to know only as the Tavernkeep, stood taller than the Dancing Mistress. His shoulders were no broader than hers, but he was rangier, with longer arms and legs, and larger hands and feet.
“You are she.” He studied me. My costume meant nothing here. Besides, I was fairly sure these people saw almost as much with their noses as with their eyes.
“I am who I am. I am also responsible for this sailor far from home. He believes he may already be in the land of the dead.”
We settled the former Selistani pirate into a very quiet house after some small chaffer. I gave him his duties in his own language, made sure he and the Tavernkeep knew one another’s look-and smell-and then we were back out into the rain. That had turned from the earlier curtains of mist to a vigorous shower, a cold cousin of Kalimpura’s monsoon.
Together we passed through streets vacated by the rain. Another difference: in Kalimpura the traffic barely changed for the weather, except in the face of the occasional full-on typhoon. Here we might almost have been alone in the city.
We passed close to the remains of the old wall with its cap of strange wooden structures, then into a neighborhood of wider streets that showed little sign of regular use. A district of wealth. Finally we found a street with a very familiar block of town houses. A bluestone wall rose on the other side. I drifted to a stop and stared upward.
“I should think we may use the gate now,” the Dancing Mistress said.
“Perhaps. That somehow seems less fitting.” I sprinted for the drainpipe at the far end of the block and swarmed up, much as I had on our night runs long ago. She was half a dozen heartbeats behind me.
On the broad walkway atop the outer wall, I looked down into the yard next to the Pomegranate Court. Whatever tree had stood there-I could not remember now-was gone. Even its base had been torn out. Weeds thrived in the jumbled pile of soil and stone where it had once grown.
Copper had been stripped from the roof beneath my feet. The exposed beams sagged, covered with rot and mold.
Something inside me fell. “This place is empty,” I whispered.
“Which is why we could have used the front gate.”
“Still…” I don’t know what I’d thought to find. Girls in captivity. Perfidy. Bandits living in the rooms of my youth. This was almost as bad as seeing Papa in his hut, Endurance dying in the mud beyond, while that desperate woman Shar looked on me as the thief who would steal her tiny, tiny future.
I had learned cooking and dance and the stories of old here. The swell of regret was surprising.
With dread I stalked down the wall toward the Pomegranate Court. I didn’t want to compass the strides. Rather I wanted to remain safely distant, closed off from whatever had happened there.
You left the place with a corpse cooling behind you, I thought. What do you expect now?
My home had burned. My tree was shattered, spread across the court to rot. The horse box still stood, fairly intact and apparently spared from the fire. The building below my feet was a total loss. There was no body in the yard, at least.
The Dancing Mistress folded me into her shoulder. I was the scourge of this city. I had come to defend, to attack, to right wrongs-not to shed tears for a hated youth from which I had struggled to escape every minute I’d spent here.
“Wh-what happened?”
She hugged me tight, then set me at arm’s length. “His men mutinied.” Her voice was quiet. “The day you met the Duke, once the spells were gone and the word flew across the city on wings of rumor, the guards slew the residential Mistresses. They raped the older girls to death. For their beauty, I suppose. A few of the younger girls escaped. A handful of the visiting Mistresses were trapped as well. Of them, I believe only Mistress Danae emerged alive.”
I was on my knees, heaving as I had done the night I killed Mistress Tirelle. Oh, Goddess. All I had meant to do was find my way out, not call down death on a house full of women. The girls were innocents, just as I had been. Even the Mistresses…
Goddess, have a mercy for their souls, if it is not too late, I prayed. These people do not follow the Wheel as they do in Your south, but there must be some balm for them.
The rain fell on me like a benediction. My hair was plastered to my head. It felt as if the Goddess’ hand were pressing down on me. I listened for a long time to see if She would guide my heart. She told me nothing that I wanted to hear. That silence meant more than words might have been able to say.
“It is my doing,” I finally said, wiping the bile from my mouth. My heart felt ground to shattered glass. “I wrought this.”
The Dancing Mistress knelt before me. “Green. We know now that the Duke created this disaster, in his guise as the Factor. He set men to guard these girls as if they were treasures out of legend, and treated the guardians harshly. The girls were doomed the moment he was gone. If someone else had done the deed, you would have met your end as well.”
“I did it,” I repeated stupidly. Killed them all, with a few words.