Kalimpura (Green Universe) (19 page)

“Better to overthrow the evening in favor of sleep,” she said.

And so in a short while, each in our own fashion, we did that thing.

*   *   *

I was up before the dawn, brushing away tears. This was not a day to weep for my children. Who, at that moment, were far safer than I.

Ponce, Ilona, and Mother Argai did not have a backup plan. If Mother Vajpai and I were taken or slain, their best safety might well be in sailing on with
Prince Enero
. I tried to imagine my children fostered in one of the Sunward cities. At such a distance, Selistan would be barely a rumor except to a few far-ranging sailors.

That would not happen, I told myself, and went for a walk among the thornbushes to avoid waking Mother Vajpai with my fidgeting worries.

The faintest predawn light lent a shadowless cast to the mists that clung to the bushes. These rose a good deal taller than my own height, their branches a crazed reach like dozens of bony arms scrabbling toward the sky. It was easy to see monsters or demons in the odd-shaped gaps, but I’d witnessed sufficient true strangeness Below in Copper Downs to render such phantoms of the senses laughable.

The ground was lush in some places, bare or trampled in others. I did not know enough of the lives of plants to say why, but I did treasure the pale flowers that peeked from among the clumps of wiry grass.

In the near distance, Kalimpura glowed above the predawn mists. There were always torches, lanterns, the business of the streets that never slept. On first arriving, I had marveled at the slow carts that circled the city streets, not stopping except to change teams of mules or oxen, wherein one could rent a bunk for a half paisa and sleep awhile. So many people so close together that one person must rise up so another might rest.

The Temple of the Silver Lily was truly a refuge. Much as the houses of the wealthy could be. Even the meager poor of Copper Downs had more space to themselves than most people here. That city had buildings standing
empty
. In Kalimpura, if you left a crate standing empty on a street corner, an hour later, it would be occupied by a family raising chickens for the market.

In this early morning stillness, I could hear the city as well, in a way that was not possible in daylight. The sound was a murmur, like the distant sea. Hooves and voices and squawks and shouting and barking and clattering all combined into that susurrus. Even the scent came over the walls in darkness, though from this distance it was largely woodsmoke and a generic gutter reek.

Someone approached through the darkness. I drew my god-blooded short knife and faded close to a tree, but then I realized by his footfalls that it was Penagut.

“Green?…” Anyone could have pegged him from twenty paces by the noise alone.

“Why are you here?” I asked quietly from almost behind his ear.

I heard the hiss and thump as he caught his breath, startled by me. “Looking for you,” he said after a short, shocked interval.

In point of fact, I’d meant the question more generally, but that was a fair answer. I slid my knife back into my sleeve. “You have found me. Are the boys awakening?”

“Little Kareen decreed we would begin to pass through the Landward Gate starting at dawn. A few at a time, to avoid attention.”

Kalimpura did not have a city watch or any such formal policing. Nonetheless, the walls and gates were guarded by the Prince of the City’s men. Not those foolish peacock warriors who served him as bodyguards, but real guards who might have been watchmen in a city that wanted its streets overseen, as Kalimpura did not. Once you were past the walls, you were on your own here. But they had the right to inspect at the gate. Not just that, but also the right to turn people back.

It was Kalimpura’s way of setting itself apart from the rest of Selistan. Other cities of substance rose to the west and south, but Kalimpura stood alone in this northeast corner of the continent, and served as a port of entry for those coming from beyond the Storm Sea. As well as those arriving from the interior villages.
We are different,
the gates proclaimed.
We are proud.

“So you send them out already?”

“Yes. We think it best if you go early as well.”

Not that the Street Guild kept working hours, but he had a point. They were unlikely to be out in force during the first part of the day. Especially not those who had been drinking last night. Men were men, after all.

“I am coming back,” I said. “We will go robed as servants.”

*   *   *

My plan of storming the docks with the dawn had melted into the middle hours of the morning by the time I shuffled through the Landward Gate with my basket in my arm and my eyes upon my feet. The guards did not even give me a first glance, let alone a second. That was fine with me. Not that I could not have taken them down handily, but that would have started the fighting too soon.

Penagut and the other senior boys had each escorted a drawn-out string of excited youngsters through the gate, then gone recruiting. Little Kareen knew of the other child-gang bosses, and they certainly knew of him. I’d learned more in the past few hours than I’d ever known there was to learn about their secrets.

Rollers, I now understood, were the younger children who moved in groups and swarmed drunks, the ill, and the unlucky. A man could have his purse taken, his pockets picked, and the sandals off his feet in less than a quick five-count, and be left shouting and swinging his fist at nothing but shadows.

Slitters worked alone or in pairs, walking through the crowds to cut open purses and money pouches from behind and below. In pairs, the second slitter would make a deliberately clumsy pass at the victim while the first finished the job.

Likewise the dodgers, runners, dog-boys, crust-eaters, pickers, flickers, and more. Every one of these boys had a specialty, and some of them were quite good at it. So did the bosses—different gangs tended to concentrate on different aspects of the trade, with a rough division of activities and territories.

It was rarely in any of their interests for the child-gangs to fight openly. In that way, their structure mirrored the Courts and Guilds into which the wealthy and powerful of Kalimpura were organized.

Much like the hierarchy of the gods: as above, so below.

Through his lieutenants, Little Kareen had put out the word that there would be a beggars’ run today. All the rollers and slitters and dodgers and the rest of them, from all over town, were easing toward the docks. Not in a great, armed stream—that would have been obvious. Rather, a general movement of boys and girls aged from three to thirteen or so, edging all in one direction for a change.

If one knew what to look for, it was like watching the turn of the tide.

And as I’d promised Little Kareen, in their numbers, any of them would be anonymous. Even the Street Guild could hardly hunt down and kill every child in the city. No matter how put out they or their masters were.

Mother Vajpai was not with me. She’d entered Kalimpura with another group perhaps half an hour ahead of me. Our plan was to meet at the foot of Agina’s Pier, waiting until the last moment to find each other. We walked apart because the Street Guild were surely looking for a pair of Blades.

I moved along with the mounting flood of children until Penagut had us stop near the Ragisthuri Ice and Fuel bunker. We sidled into an alley, me the tallest of them except for Penagut himself, and took up dicing for a bit. None of them had much notion of the time—a close watch of the hours was more of a Petraean fixation—but even the smallest child could tell when noon arrived.

And so my dawn raid on the docks became a midday riot. When Penagut judged the time to be right, he signaled Little Kareen’s boys with a series of low whistles. Chaos moved out among the merchants and sailors and half a hundred other trades working the waterfront.

In moments, the uproar had transcended deafening. I pushed through the swirl of outraged adults and racing children and rank opportunists of various sorts, intent on finding Mother Vajpai before any of this riot happened to me personally.

*   *   *

She was right where we’d agreed to meet, close to the spot where we’d fought off our welcoming committee just the day before.
So little time for so much to happen,
I marveled briefly.

I signaled for us to move up the pier. Some of the stevedores were rapidly setting a makeshift barrier of cargo and timber baulks, but they let two serving women through. If we’d been walking openly as Lily Blades, I wondered if they would have done the same.

Clear of them, we pushed through the crowds toward
Prince Enero
. Something cracked loudly ahead. A weapon, perhaps, though it sounded more like a small, intense firework. Or possibly thunder of a sort. Wisps of blue smoke eddied from the kettle ship’s deck.

Fire?

Or guns?

That second thought was sickening.

I redoubled my efforts, shedding my robe for the advantage the leathers beneath would give me in clearing my way. Even that did not avail me much, because by now the people on the pier were in full panic. Most of the ships tied up had already pulled in their planks, and I saw more than one crew cutting their lines so as to stand off from the riot.

More thunder echoed ahead. Someone fell screaming from
Prince Enero
’s rail.

Mother Vajpai was close behind me. She simply could not run as I, not on her poor, mutilated feet. I no longer cared. My long knife I drew into my left hand, the god-blooded short knife in my right.

Now
people cleared the way. Some jumped right into the stinking harbor to give me passage.

Moments later, I pushed two armed men into the water between hull and pier to rush up
Prince Enero
’s ladder. A Street Guildsman climbed ahead of me. I glanced down to confirm the first pair were the same.

By all the Smagadine hells and the broken Wheel besides, they are.

I stabbed up through the nail-studded sole of his boot. The god-blooded blade slid in. He shrieked and looked down at me.

All I had to do was grin, and the man kicked away from the hull to drop toward the water, rather than face me. Unfortunately, he pushed too hard, and smacked his head and shoulders into the stone edge of the pier with a sickening thump.

My grin broadened as I cleared the rail and laid into the two of his Street Guild fellows before me. They’d been fighting several of Lalo’s men, so I had a clear swing at both their backs, and was not afraid to use it.

Honor was for people who could afford to lose. Winning was for the rest of us.

One of the sailors lowered his cutlass, looked at me in amazement, then pointed aft toward our cabin. He tried to tell me something. Even though we shared no language between us, I already knew what he meant.

I charged past the bridge tower, into the breezeway I’d struggled through during the storm, and from there through the hatch that opened on the passengers’ mess. Sounds of fighting echoed from beyond, and a short, sharp scream.

“No!” I could not run fast enough. The Street Guild were closing in on my children and their protectors.

Perhaps a dozen men clogged the passageway before me. From the far side I saw several more of
Prince Enero
’s crew with a dismounted iron hatch for a shield. About half the Street Guild present were engaging them, forcing the shield back. The rest shouted into a door, blades stabbing within.

I was close enough to hear Ilona shrieking, and a rhythmic grunting that could only be Mother Argai laying to.

My babies were in there.

The next minute or so passed in a spattering blur and the echo of more guns firing. My long knife snagged on the mailed collar of one Street Guildsman, so I left it there and gutted him like perch with the short knife. From the back I severed spines, slashed through ribs, punctured kidneys, and opened necks the hard way. The first ones died before they could turn to face me. They fell so fast that their fellows did not realize what was come behind them.

The last two by the door I killed to their faces. Screaming, I was screaming, though even then I did not know what words I uttered, and years of memory have not unlocked that since. Whatever I said, they perished with terror bleeding from their eyes.

Mother Argai looked at me, her face stark and pale, then shouted something. It was enough to keep me moving. By now, the five Street Guild farther down the passageway had realized their peril and turned to face me, ignoring the ship’s defending crew.

That was fine. I could kill from the front quite as well as from behind. I kicked off a blood-soaked step to rush them. At my second step, one’s chest exploded from within. Then another’s head. More of that thunder echoed, and the stink of burning and sulfur filled the passageway as if magic were going wrong. The survivors turned one way and the other, knowing they were fatally trapped.

I obliged, breaking two necks and slashing a third. My next strike nearly landed on Lalo, but I pulled my blow to bury the short knife in his ship’s iron bulkhead.

“Enough,” the mate breathed in his Seliu, his voice barely audible over the frightened wailing of my children. I could read terror in his face as well, but also strength. “The deck is ours,” he added.

“I am taking my children and departing.” The snarl hung in my voice as I worried my long knife free.

He nodded. His men, two of them holding long wooden batons with metal rods, just looked terrified as well. No, not batons. Guns, just as I’d thought. But big like crossbows rather than Malice Curry’s little pistol. Only firearms made the stinking, magical thunder.

Spinning once more, I stepped back to the cabin as Mother Vajpai entered the corridor from the far end. “We go now,” I called at Ilona and Ponce and Mother Argai.

All three of them were struck to openmouthed silence as well.
“Now!”
I repeated.

They moved.

Not two minutes later, we were back on the deck looking down at Agina’s Pier. The riot had stopped, frozen. Everyone on the pier and along the docks ahead was staring at
Prince Enero
.