Kalimpura (Green Universe) Read Online Free

energy were well known now. Even Lucia had not followed me out past the temple foundations to watch me scramble among the weeds and piled dirt. Only Mother Argai, her face quirked into a curious expression.
    “What, indeed,” she said softly. “What?”
    “I don’t know,” I confessed. Now I was ashamed of my mood. Anger was not power. It was just anger. A disease of the soul, if one indulged the emotion overmuch.
    Mother Argai sat on my broken pile of wood. “What don’t you know? What it is you should be doing?”
    “Oh, I know that. We return to Kalimpura.”
    “When?”
    “As soon as…” As soon as what? When the babies were ready? When I was ready? My voice was small and shamed as I finished my thought. “As soon as I am able.”
    “Breaking weapons does not increase the likelihood of you being able.” Her tone was mild, but I could hear the scorn as she tugged my long knife free of a shattered baulk of timber and flipped it toward me.
    That was an old Blade teaching trick. Throw a weapon at a student and see what they did. Most people needed stitches only once or twice.
    Not me. I’d never been cut that way. I snatched the spinning knife out of the air, whipped it against my forearm to sight down the edge, then sheathed it. “A dull blade.”
    “And you?”
    A dulled Lily Blade, of course. I’d stepped right into that bit of rhetorical trickery. “We are going,” I told her. “As soon as I can arrange passage. Will you inform Mother Vajpai?”
    I had missed being so decisive. This was as if I’d woken up from a longer sleep than was reasonable.
    “If you wish,” Mother Argai said quietly. “She has gone back to rest.” The amputation of Mother Vajpai’s toes at Surali’s orders was one of the many sins I held higher than the value of that wretched woman’s life. “What of your friends and enemies here?”
    “For the most part, they are the same people.” I snorted. “Still, you have the right of it. I must make my farewells.” And parting bargains, it would seem.
    That appeared to satisfy Mother Argai. “I will pass the word. The women of the Bustle Street Lazaret will wish to know.”
    “I shall call there in the next day or so.” My arms were flaccid and my body ached, but I felt like me for the first time in months.
    “Farewell,” she said in passable Petraean, and walked away.
    Stumbling toward my own tent, I called for Lucia to help me bathe and rub liniment into my back and legs. And other things besides, no doubt, once we were snugged together and touching.
    Of course, I had not reckoned on the babies crying and Federo learning a new trick of vomiting into his cradle while lying down. Neither bath nor gentle caress was mine that night.
    *   *   *
    The next day after having fed my children, I passed over breakfast and forced myself into my leathers for the first time since my pregnancy. They stank a bit of molder and old sweat. Sunlight and use would do them good. Not to mention the good such exposure would do for me.
    It was time to go calling, remind Copper Downs who I was, and make my farewells to those who might care to hear them. I would start with the hardest parting of all—the god Blackblood, whose boy-priest had fathered my children, and who had prophesied to claim my son. Threatened to do so, speaking more accurately.
    Ilona had goat’s milk for the children and Lucia to argue with. I tucked spare rags into my sleeve to clean myself if my milk ran hard while I was away, and headed into the streets outside the temple walls.
    At the time, I had not left Endurance’s compound in almost two months, I realized. To simply feel cobbles beneath my feet was such a privilege. It was a delight to be passed in the street by total strangers. Horses! Wind! The rising scents of the slowly warming weather were welcome, as evidence of the wider world.
    My children I already loved foolishly, in fact beyond reason, but these first few hours of escape since their birth were a