Paper Cities, an Anthology of Urban Fantasy by Ekaterina Sedia

away.”
    “No…” Sister Architect smiled, her eyes glimmering in the pale moonlight. “Pride, I suppose. You’ve already made your goal.” Her goal, in this case, was a scale across the rooftops from the bakery on Forth Street to the Cambists’ Hall on Maldoror Street a block over, and there up the false steeple on the old Water Bureau office to make the jump across Maldoror and down to the edge of the Limerock Palace’s south wall. From there, it was trivial to slip over the rampart and enter the building — the real work was in the run up and the leap, the parkour-pace practiced to deadly precision by the Gray Sisters among the Tribade. The false steeple was one of the two or three hardest runs practiced by the sisterhood.
    To run the false steeple days before a baby was due was the hardest way to make the course. No one could scale and jump with her usual speed and precision while her belly was distended and full of sloshing life.
    Little Gray Sister had, and fetched out the Third Counselor’s privy seal to prove it. Not for the sake of the theft — the Tribade had their own copy of the seal, accurate right down to the wear marks along the left edge and the three nicks in the bottom petal of the rose — but for the sake of doing the thing.
    Pregnant and due.
    In this moment she was already minor legend. If she did what Sister Architect suggested, and she succeeded, her legend would grow.
    “Vanity,” said Little Gray Sister, leaning backward to ease her spine. “I have already proven all that I need to.”
    “Hmm.” Sister Architect sounded disappointed, but did not press her case. “Perhaps you are not quite so much flash as some of the younger sisters claim you are.”
    Another test, she realized. But true. There were many kinds of sisters in the Tribade — red, white, blue, black, and more. Sister Architect was a blue sister, one of the professions, though her skills were mostly put to plotting and revising the rooftop runs, rather than any new construction.
    Only the grays were trained to die and to kill. Only the grays were given the bluntest and sharpest weapons and trusted to use them. Only the grays were trained between hinge and post in secrecy and ignorance, that their true mettle might be known.
    Only the gray sisters became Big, Bigger, or Biggest Sisters, to lead the Tribade into the uncertain future.
    She smiled with pride at the thought.
    Her abdomen rippled, a muscle spasm that caught Little Gray Sister by surprise. She sucked in her breath.
    Sister Architect tugged at her arm. “Sister Midwife awaits within the Quiet House.”
    “I — ” Little Gray Sister stopped cold, fighting a wave of pain so intense it roiled into nausea. She took a deep, long breath. “Yes.”
    •
    Big Sister — like all Big Sisters, a gray sister — sat on the edge of Little Gray Sister’s cot. Big Sister was almost a heavy woman, unusual in the Tribade, with roan hair fading to sandy gray and glinting gray eyes. “You’re a mother now,” she said. “Would you like to see the baby?”
    Little Gray Sister had thought long and hard on that question. Her breasts ached for the child, weeping a pale bluish fluid. Her loins felt shattered. Even her blood seemed to cry out for her offspring.
    Like everything, this was a test, though of late she had been her own examiner more and more. “I would, but I shan’t,” she told Big Sister.
    Big Sister took Little Gray Sister’s hand in her own, clenched it tightly. “You can, you know,” she whispered.
    Little Gray Sister fancied she heard a burr in Big Sister’s voice, some edge of old emotion. It was possible — the Tribade were neither monsters nor ghosts, just women of a certain purpose living within the walls of the City Imperishable. “I could hold her… ” She stopped again, realizing she didn’t even know if she’d birthed a boychild or a girl.
    A girl
, she decided. The baby had been a girl. Just as she had been, once.
    “I could hold her,