Blood and Lotuses Read online

  Blood and Lotuses

  Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Copyright © 2014 by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2014

  Published by: Teresa Noelle Roberts, Mansfield, MA at Smashwords

  Inquiries should be addressed to Teresa Noelle Roberts

  mailto:[email protected]

  http://www.teresanoelleroberts.com

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover Design © Skyla Dawn Cameron

  Editing by: Dayle A. Dermatis, Soul’s Road Press

  ISBN-13 9781310343094

  “Anchali,” Thanom said, deciding bluntness might be his best weapon, “you’re the last person in Benire who ought to go into Dakura now. They kill people like you on sight. No one could possibly see you and not know you were a Chosen of Pichitra, a courtesan, or both.” Or just too beautiful. If her beauty puts me in awe, how much would she terrify someone who hates the flesh?

  “I won’t go in looking like this.” She gestured, a dancer’s gesture sweeping down from her face and the damp silk of her hair past her bare breasts down to her heavy green-and-yellow-striped cotton skirt. “I’ll cover myself like a farm girl until I can get some of the cult’s ugly robes. And it isn’t as if I’m going in alone.”

  Of course not. She was depending on his protection. That thought didn’t put him at ease, not at all. He wasn’t sure he could protect himself anymore, let alone anyone else. Wasn’t sure he wanted to. Wasn’t sure, at bottom, whether what he hoped to find in Dakura was justice or revenge or the oblivion of death.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Dayle Dermatis—critique partner extraordinaire, thorough and professional copy editor, and always an inspiration. Kudos to Skyla Dawn Cameron for the cover.

  And now and forever, gratitude and love to Jeff.

  Chapter 1

  In an almost-cool hour of the night, when the heat of one day had finally faded and the swelter of the next had not yet struck, the demon Nshlic’s first victim woke with a start in the child-brothel.

  For the time it took to draw a breath, the dockworker Beyun felt about as good as a man could possibly feel, aglow with the memory of the night’s near-perfect combination of scamming money, drinking, and whoring, and the possibility, based on the warm, sticky little forms curled up next to him, of the last of the three starting all over again.

  Then his dreams slammed back into him and he realized that everything in his life was wrong.

  The boy and girl Beyun had rented for the night, sensing his movements, began cooing and stroking at him even before they were fully awake. He shook them roughly off.

  “Sinners!” Beyun cried, his voice rough from drink and barbed with dreams. Then he looked down at his own naked body. “As I am, too.” He grabbed his knife from the bedside table. “Sinners, do you repent?”

  The two young whores looked at one another, then nodded, wide-eyed. They had grown up in the brothels of Dakura, and placating the customers, however odd their desires, was second nature. “Oh, we repent.” The girl, perhaps thirteen or so with the start of a woman’s curves, subtly gestured at the somewhat younger boy, but not so subtly that Beyun didn’t pick up on it. He’d learned when he was younger than these whores to pay attention to his surroundings, because you never knew when someone might be sneaking up on you.

  “We’re due for some praying, I’m sure,” the girl continued, her voice high and frantic. “We’ll go ’round to the temple of Pichitra with you, soon as you let us grab our clothes.” As she spoke, the boy slithered down between the wall and the bed and began crawling for the door to get the bouncer.

  “Not that whore-goddess Pichitra,” Beyun said, although some part of his brain wondered why. He’d always been partial to the temples of Pichitra. Pichitra’s Chosen were sweet-smelling and pretty and brightly colored as birds, and their charity meals came with a nice hot chili sauce and even a bit of mango or green papaya, not just rice and bland vegetables like the gray-clad, quiet Chosen of Jananya dished out. Still, he said, “we go to the temple of Jananya.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy had almost reached the door. Beyun wheeled around, threw his knife, aiming for the door just above the boy’s head.

  Since Beyun had made the money he’d spent for the evening’s extravagant entertainment in a knife-throwing contest, using that very knife, he should have done what he intended: scare the boy into staying put while he gave the oration that was filling his soul.

  The knife swerved and struck the boy through the heart.

  The girl opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Soundlessly, she dropped to her knees and pressed her face against her dead friend.

  Beyun started to panic. He hadn’t meant to kill anyone. He was supposed to be repenting, changing his life for the better. And now this… He’d done plenty of wicked things and he knew it was bad he liked to go to the child-brothels sometimes instead of the brothels with grown women and men, which were bad enough, but killing someone who wasn’t trying to hurt him was worse than anything he’d done before.

  Then a great calm filled him, the kind he’d heard pious people saying came with meditation and jhang addicts say came with smoking just the right amount.

  The boy’s death wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t have been his fault.

  Beyun knew knives. Beyun knew all about knives, and how they behaved, and what could go wrong if you played with them carelessly. What had just happened was impossible.

  Therefore, it was the will of Jananya—a sign, a lesson.

  And he knew what he had to do to fix the child and in the process, fix his own messed-up, sinful life.

  Beyun knelt down beside the two young whores, the living one and the dead. “Do you repent?” he asked the girl, putting his hand gently on her head. She nodded mutely, her almond eyes terrified but her young face otherwise expressionless, frozen with shock.

  She probably didn’t repent, not yet. She was just scared, more scared than he’d wanted her to be.

  “You don’t have too much to repent, I suppose,” he said, as softly as he could. “I mean, you and your friend were whores and all, but that’s because the world’s an awful place and it dragged you down before you had a chance to do better, just because you needed a way to put rice in your belly. The goddess understands that. But me, I’m a sinner, an evil man. Bear witness for me.” He retrieved the knife from the still-twitching corpse. “I repent my sins, Jananya, and sever myself from temptation!”

  He knew what he had to do. The goddess told him in his dreams, but he’d forgotten until just now.

  With one blow, without hesitation or flinching, he sliced off his own genitals.

  Beyun paled and shook as the pain overwhelmed him, but he didn’t ma
ke a sound.

  Holding his severed manhood in one hand, the knife in the other, he whispered to the dead boy, “I’m sorry. I’ve been a bad man all my life, but I’ve never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me first. Especially not a child.” He hesitated, not sure what to say next, but words came to him, big, important words in a big, important voice that sounded like it belonged to someone who hadn’t grown up a street rat and worked on the docks all his life because he wasn’t pretty enough to make a good whore. “Be healed by my sacrifice and repentance.”

  Beyun hadn’t even known, until the last sentence spilled from his lips, that he could speak so nicely. He knew what sacrifice and repentance meant—when he was a child himself, his parents had dragged him to the temple of Jananya whenever the goddess’s Chosen offered meals to the poor—but they weren’t words he ever used or even thought about. Yet now, with his own blood staining his hands and his view of his own life rearranged by the visions brought to him in the night, the words came easily to him. Must be the wisdom of Jananya making him smarter already.

  His blood mingled with that of the dead child.

  The boy stirred, groaned, and rolled over.

  *

  Somewhere in that nebulous place between the worlds, neither its own world, nor the mortal realm, nor yet the half-world where sorcerers and those chosen by a deity could walk, the place where such beings wait for entrance to the mortal realm, the demon Nshlic laughed its terrible laugh. It was a little closer to entering the mortal realm now—and then conquering it.

  Chapter 2

  “The child-brothels mock all the good lives lived in the city of Dakura. It is a disgrace that in this rich and fair city, there should be such poverty that selling a child to a brothel looks like salvation to some families.” Iana, the High Chosen of Jananya, set down her ink brush and read over what she had written by the flickering light of the low, dish-shaped oil lamp on her writing table and the three others, lit with perfumed oil, on the altar. As she read, she rubbed her gnarled, arthritic right hand—her brush-hand—with her left, which was less painful, but weaker.

  The rubbing wouldn’t would help for long, and neither would any liniment the temple healers could compound. The pain in her hand was a constant companion, but she would not stop writing.

  Even when her words did as little good as any remedy she could concoct for the pain, she had to keep trying to get her message across.

  This was a petition to the Negus to enforce the laws already in place against child prostitution, and to enact certain measures she had devised to develop free schooling and safe employment for the children in the poor quarters. It would no doubt go unread from the desk of some underling’s underling straight into the pile of scraps to be sold back to the papermakers. But if she petitioned often enough, worked hard enough, and, most of all, prayed hard enough, perhaps someday it would fall into the hands of someone who both cared and had the power to do something about it.

  Meanwhile, she would make sure the temples of Jananya did what they could.

  The problem was getting people in the lower city to go to a temple of Jananya in the first place. The poor would come to the temple to receive a free meal at the end of the service, but no one but the youngest and most zealous acolyte thought most of them took in much enlightenment or knowledge with the rice and vegetables.

  Those who went to a temple for anything but charity tended to be most devoted to Pichitra, which was natural enough from people fresh from rice paddies and little farming villages carved from the jungle, or from their descendants who never made it out of the lower city. In the countryside, Pichitra assured a bountiful harvest and blessed you with the many children you needed to tend the farm. In the city, though, those same large families just kept people in poverty.

  Pichitra gave food, creativity, and the gift of love in all its forms, and a peaceful passing at life’s end. Her gifts were vital; her worship, necessary. Iana herself always attended the harvest festivals at Pichitra’s main temple. But the people of the lower city also needed the way of Jananya: balance, moderation, education, reason, healing. All of which, Iana realized, sounded dry and abstract next to the promise of a good harvest (even if it was just peppers and herbs grown in pots on your windowsill), a lover in your bed, and healthy children. Unfortunately, without the blessings of Jananya in your life as well, you might not be able to provide for those children, or hang on to the windowsill and the dwelling to which it was attached.

  The Chosen of Pichitra did their best. They rescued children from the streets, fed them, gave them a chance to learn a trade instead of winding up as a street whore or a near prisoner in a brothel. Even if they ended up at the courtesans’ academy—because many of Pichitra’s Chosen started out as entertainers or courtesans and could always find places for their young charges in those schools—the children would be safe and well educated, and would not ply their trade until they were full-grown and then with clients of their own choosing, with the protection of a guild behind them. But Pichitra’s Chosen simply weren’t inclined to do anything in an organized way. Pichitra chose Her clergy for their passion and their compassion, for the way their natures echoed Her all-encompassing love and desire, not for common sense or political savvy. Not stupid, certainly not stupid—they had an earthy wisdom that complemented the more rational tendencies of Jananya’s clergy—but impulsive and not inclined to think things through in detail. Emjaroen, the High Chosen of Pichitra in this city and one of Iana’s closest friends, had been a courtesan before the Goddess chose him, and had some old clients in high places he could have called upon for help with pet projects, like the schools in the lower city, but it wouldn’t occur to him unless Iana suggested it.

  So, much as Iana would have loved to retire from politics and devote her last years to her studies and prayers, she couldn’t afford to do so. More to the point, the poor people of Dakura couldn’t afford for her to do so.

  Iana took a deep breath and said a brief prayer, steeling herself for more pain. Then she let herself slump to the side, away from the backrest she used at the low, teak writing table, and began to crawl toward her altar. More often than not, she could walk the short distance, but with no one awake nearby, she didn’t want to take the chance. An exercise in humility, she told herself, as well as common sense. It might feel undignified to crawl, but it would be far less dignified to fall and shatter her elderly bones, then lie there until Seya came to take her to the dawn service.

  It took all the focus and composure developed in fifty years as a Chosen of Jananya, however, not to curse the brain seizure that had weakened her left side and made her balance so shaky. Most of the time, she could thank Jananya for leaving her with her wits, her voice, and her brush-hand, but sometimes it was hard to keep that perspective.

  Inch by painful inch, she made her way across the clean-swept bamboo floor to her small personal altar. Although a rain-scented breeze had made the room seem pleasantly cool while she was sitting still, perspiration quickly drenched her flame-embroidered, saffron cotton wrap. By the time she reached the prayer cushion, she had to rest for a few moments.

  In an austere room, the altar stood out for its richness. Saffron silk embroidered with flames draped the table, layered over a longer blue cloth. The oil lamps were carved in the shape of lotus blossoms. Vases of white lotus blossoms, fragrant in the warm, rain-moist air, flanked a small statue of Jananya carved from precious amber imported from the far north. In each vase of white blossoms was one blue lotus, symbolizing the victory of spirit over the senses, and one red lotus for the heart, in honor of Pichitra, Jananya’s sister and necessary balance. Small pots of flowering plants filled in every available space—not because they were a traditional part of the altar decoration, but because Emjaroen had given them to her, knowing she missed being able to visit the public gardens near the main temple of Pichitra or to walk along the riverbank.

  Once Iana had caught her breath, she lit the incense on the altar. Breathing in
its heady fragrance that connected her with the heavens, she began to pray. Jananya, Dakura is a place of much brightness—but also much pain. Most people here are good, industrious souls who honor both You and Your sister. Yet we have so many people trapped in poverty and darkness, so many children lost to prostitution, so many adults willing to prey on them. I don’t know how to reach them. Jananya, grant me a sign! Grant me a vision of what I must do to cleanse this city.

  The old Chosen stayed cross-legged on the prayer cushion, repeating her petition, which quickly became shortened to Jananya, grant me the vision to cleanse my city.

  Even her well-trained fortitude had its limits, however. She dozed off half-tranced, the prayer still on her lips.

  *

  Whether Jananya heard Iana’s prayer, one of a thousand sent up that night by Her devotees, someone else did.

  In the half-world, the demon Nshlic prepared to answer someone’s prayer.

  The dock-worker had been an interesting exercise. This mortal, though, with her strong faith and her frail body, her sense of righteous purpose and her ability to walk in the half-world, would be Nshlic’s door into the mortal realm—and its aid in reshaping this corner of the mortal realm in its own image.

  Chapter 3

  Iana awoke with a start, a hymn of thanks on her lips. With one sweeping movement, she sent the plants and the vases of lotuses crashing to the floor.

  Then she stood up, steady on her legs as a girl of fifteen, and began to head toward her writing table.

  Three steps in, she turned aside to her untouched sleeping pallet, and grabbed the sheet and the coarse wool coverlet she kept for the rare cool evening in the rainy season.