“Maroneh?” I guessed. “You must’ve gotten the hair from them, at least. The rest … Teman, maybe? Uthre, a bit of Ken?”
Morad turned to me, lifting one elegant eyebrow. “Two of my grandparents were part Maroneh, yes. One was Teman, another Min, and there are rumors that my father was actually a half-Tok who pretended to be Senmite to get into the Hunthou Legions. My mother was Amn.”
More proof of the Arameri’s desperation. In the old days, they would barely have acknowledged a woman with such jumbled bloodlines, let alone make her Steward. “Then how …”
She smiled wryly, as if she got such rude questions all the time. “I grew up in southern Senm. When I came of age, I petitioned to come here on the strength of my fourth grandparent — an Arameri highblood.” At my grimace, she nodded. It was an old story. “Grandmama Atri never knew my grandfather’s name. He was passing through town on a journey. Her family had no powerful friends, and she was a pretty girl.” She shrugged, though her smile had faded.
“So you decided to come find Grandpapa the rapist and say hello?”
“He died years ago.” She checked the water once more and stopped the taps. “It was Grandmama’s idea that I come here, actually. There’s not much work in that part of Senm, and if nothing else, her suffering could bring me a better life.” She rose and went to stand pointedly beside the washing area’s bench, picking up the flask that held shampoo.
I got up and undressed, pleased that my nudity didn’t seem to bother her. When I sat down, before I could warn her, she lifted the cord that held En from around my neck and set it on a counter. I was relieved that En tolerated this without protest. It must have been tired after its earlier exertion. Plus, it had always had odd taste in mortals.
“You didn’t have to come here for a better life,” I said, yawning as she wet my hair and began washing it. Sending the message to Nemmer had left me tired, too, and Morad’s fingers were skillful and soothing. “There must be a thousand other places in the world where you could’ve made a living and where you wouldn’t have had to deal with this family’s madness.”
“There were no other places that paid as much,” she said.
I swung around to stare at her. “They pay you?”
She nodded, amused at my reaction, and gently pushed my head back into place so that she could resume work. “Yes. Old Lord T’vril’s doing, actually. As a quarterblood, I can retire in five more years with enough money to take care of my whole family for the rest of my life. I’d say that’s worth dabbling in madness, wouldn’t you?”
I frowned, trying to understand. “They are your family,” I said. “The ones you left behind, in the south. The Arameri are just employers to you?”
Her hands paused. “Well. I’ve been here fifteen years at this point; it’s home now. Some aspects of life in Sky aren’t so terrible, Lord Sieh. I suspect you know that. And … well, there are people I love here, too.”
I knew then. She resumed work in silence, pouring warm water over me and then lathering again, and when she leaned past me to pick up the flask of shampoo, I got a good mouthful of her scent. Daystone and paper and patience, the scents of efficient bureaucracy, and one thing more. A complex scent, layered, familiar, with each element supporting and enriching the other. Dreams. Pragmatism. Discretion. Love.
Remath.
It was my nature to use the keys to a mortal’s soul whenever they fell into my hands. If I had still been myself, the child or the cat, I would have found some way to torment Morad with my knowledge. I might even have made a song of it and sung it everywhere until even her friends found themselves humming the tune. The refrain would have been see wow, you silly cow, how dare you lose your heart.
But though I would always be the child, and the child was a bully, I could not bring myself to do this to her. I was going soft, I supposed, or growing up. So I kept silent.
Presently Morad finished with my hair, whereupon she handed me a soapy sponge and stepped back, plainly unwilling to wash the rest of my body. She had wrapped my hair in a damp towel that was tied like a beehive atop my head, which made me giggle when I finished and stood and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Then my eyes drifted down. I saw the rest of me and fell silent.
It was the same body I had shaped for myself countless times, sometimes deliberately, sometimes in helpless response to moments of weakness. Short for “my age”; I would grow another two or three inches but would never be tall by Amn standards. Thinner than I usually made myself, perhaps from years of not eating while I gradually became mortal within Nahadoth. Long-limbed. Beneath my brown skin, there were bones poking out at every juncture, like blemishes. The muscles that lined them were attenuated and not very strong.
I leaned closer to the mirror, peering at the lines of my face critically. Not very attractive, either, though I knew that would improve. Too disproportionate for now. Too tired-eyed. Shahar was much prettier. And yet she had kissed me, hadn’t she? I traced the outline of my lips with a finger, remembering the feel of her mouth. What had she thought of mine, on hers?
Morad cleared her throat.
Did Shahar ever think of —
“The water will get cold,” Morad said gently. I blinked, blushing, and was abruptly glad I hadn’t made fun of her. I got into the tub, and Morad exited the bathroom to go speak with the tailor, who’d just arrived and announced himself.
When I emerged in a fluffy robe — I looked ridiculous — the tailor measured me, murmuring to himself that I would need looser clothing to conceal my thinness. Then came the manicurist, and the shoemaker, and one or two others whom Morad had somehow summoned, though I hadn’t seen her use magic. By the time it was done, I was exhausted — which Morad thankfully noticed. She dismissed all the craft servants and turned to head for the door herself.
Belatedly it occurred to me that she’d been unbelievably helpful. Who knew how many duties she had as steward, and how many of those had she neglected to see to my comfort? “Thank you,” I blurted as she opened the door.
She paused and looked back at me in surprise, then smiled in such a genuine, generous way that I suddenly knew what Remath saw in her.
Then she was gone. I sat down to eat the meal the servants had left. Afterward, I sprawled naked across Deka’s bed, for once looking forward to sleep so that I could perhaps dream of love and
forget
I stood upon a plain like a vast glass mirror. Mirrors again. I had seen them in Nahadoth’s realm, too. Perhaps there was meaning in this? I would ponder it some other time.
Above me arced the vault of the heavens: an endlessly turning cylinder of clouds and sky, vast and limitless and yet somehow enclosed. Clouds drifted across it from left to right, although the light — from no source I could ascertain — shifted in the opposite direction, waxing light and waning dark in a slow and steady gradient.
The gods’ realm, or a dream manifestation of it. It was an approximation, of course. All my mortal mind could comprehend.
Before me, rising from the plain, a palace lay impossibly on its side. It was silver and black, built in no recognizable mortal architectural style and yet suggesting all of them, a thing of lines and shadow without dimension or definition. An impression, not reality. Below, instead of a reflection, its opposite shone in the mirror: white and gold, more realistic but less imaginative, the same yet different. There was meaning in this, too, but it was obvious: the black palace ascendant, the white palace nothing but an image. The silvery plain reflecting, balancing, and separating both. I sighed, annoyed. Had I already become as tiresomely literal as most mortals? How humiliating.
“Are you afraid?” asked a voice behind me.
I started and began to turn. “No,” the speaker snapped, and such was the force of his command — commanding reality, commanding my flesh — that I froze. Now I was afraid.
“Who are you?” I asked. I didn’t recognize his voice, but that meant nothing. I had dozens of brothers and they could take any shape
they chose, especially in this realm.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because I want to know, duh.”
“Why?”
I frowned. “What kind of question is that? We’re family; I want to know which one of my brothers is trying to scare the hells out of me.” And succeeding, though I would never admit such a thing.
“I’m not one of your brothers.”
At this, I frowned in confusion. Only gods could enter the gods’ realm. Was he lying? Or was I simply too mortal to understand what he really meant?
“Should I kill you?” the stranger asked. He was young, I decided, though such judgments meant little in the grand scale of things. He was oddly soft-spoken, too, his voice mild even as he delivered these peculiar not-quite-threats. Was he angry? I thought so, but couldn’t be sure. His tone was all flat emotion-lessness edged in cold.
“I don’t know. Should you?” I retorted.
“I’ve been contemplating the matter for most of my life.”
“Ah,” I said. “I suppose you and I must have gotten off on the wrong foot from the beginning, then.” That happened sometimes. I’d tried to be a good elder brother for a long time, visiting each of my younger siblings as they were born and helping them through those first, difficult centuries. Some of them I was still friends with. Some of them I’d loathed the instant I’d laid eyes on them, and vice versa.
“From the very beginning, yes.”
I sighed, slipping my hands into my pockets. “Must be a difficult decision, then, or you’d have done it already. Whatever I did to make you angry, either it can’t have been all that bad, or it’s unforgivable.”
“Oh?”
I shrugged. “If it was really bad, you wouldn’t be waffling about whether to kill me. If it was unforgivable, you’d be too angry for revenge to make any difference. There’d be no point in killing me. So which is it?”
“There’s a third option,” he said. “It was unforgivable, but there is a point in killing you.”
“Interesting.” In spite of my unease, I grinned at the conundrum. “And that point is?”
“I don’t simply want vengeance. I require and embody and evolve through it.”
I blinked, sobering, because if vengeance was his nature, then that was another matter entirely. But I did not remember a sibling who was god of vengeance.
“What have I done to earn your wrath?” I asked, troubled now. “And why are you even asking the question? You have to serve your nature.”
“Are you offering to die for me?”
“No, demons take you. If you try to kill me, I’ll try to kill you back. Suicide isn’t my nature. But I want to understand this.”
He sighed and shifted, the movement drawing my eye toward the mirror below our feet. It didn’t help much. The angle of the reflection was such that I could see little beyond feet and legs and a hint of elbow. His hands were in his pockets, too.
“What you have done is unforgivable,” he said, “and yet I must forgive it, because you did not know.”
I frowned, confused. “What does my knowledge have to do with anything? Harm committed unknowingly is still harm.”
“True. But if you had known, Sieh, I’m not certain you would have done it.”
At his use of my name, I grew more confused, because his tone had changed. For an instant, the coldness had broken, and I heard stranger things underneath. Sorrow. Wistfulness? Perhaps a hint of affection. But I did not know this god; I was certain of it.
“Irrelevant,” I said finally, turning my head as much as I could. Beyond a certain point, my neck simply would not bend; it was like trying to turn with two pillows braced on either side of my head. Pillows formed of nothing but solid, unyielding will. I tried to relax. “You can’t base decisions on hypotheticals. It doesn’t matter what I would have done. You know only what I did.” I paused meaningfully. “Perhaps you could tell me.” For once I wasn’t in the mood for games.
Unfortunately, my companion was. “You chose to serve your nature,” he said, ignoring my hint. “Why?”
I wished I could look at him. Sometimes a look is more eloquent than any words. “Why? What the hells — are you kidding?”
“You are the oldest of us and must pretend to be the youngest.”
“I don’t pretend anything. I am what I must be, and I’m damn good at it, thanks.”
“So we are weaker than the mortals, then.” His voice grew soft, almost sad. “Slaves to fate, never to be freed.”
“Shut the hells up,” I snapped. “You don’t know slavery if you think this is the same thing.”
“Isn’t it? Having no choice —”
“You have a choice.” I lifted my gaze to the shifting firmament above. The gradient — night to day, day to night — did not change at a constant rate. Only mortals thought of the sky as a reliable, predictable thing. We gods had to live with Nahadoth and Itempas; we knew better. “You can accept yourself, take control of your nature, make it what you want it to be. Just because you’re the god of vengeance doesn’t mean you have to be some brooding cliché, forever cackling to yourself and totting up what you owe to whom. Choose how your nature shapes you. Embrace it. Find the strength in it. Or fight yourself and remain forever incomplete.”
My companion fell silent, perhaps digesting my advice. That was good, because it was clear that I’d done him a disservice, besides whatever wrong he felt I’d committed. I did not remember him; that meant I hadn’t bothered to find him, guide him, after his birth. And he’d needed such guidance, because it was painfully clear that he did not like the hand fate, or the Maelstrom, had dealt him. I didn’t blame him for that; I wouldn’t have wanted to be god of vengeance, either. But he was, and he was going to have to find a way to live with that.
In the mirror, I saw the man behind me step closer, raising a hand. I braced myself to fight — purely on principle, since I already knew there was nothing I could do. It was clear his power superseded what little god-magic I had left, or I would have been able to break his compulsion and turn around.
But his hand touched my hair, to my utter shock. Lingered there a moment, as if memorizing the texture. Then fingers grazed the back of my neck, and I jumped. Was this some kind of threat? But he made no attempt to harm me. His finger traced the knots of spine along the back of my neck, stopping only when my clothing interfered. Then — reluctantly, I thought — his hand pulled away.
“Thank you,” he said at last. “That was something I needed to hear.”
“Sorry I didn’t say it sooner.” I paused. “So are you going to kill me now?”
“Soon.”
“Ah. Good vengeance takes time?”
“Yes.” The coldness had returned to his voice, and this time I recognized it for what it was. Not anger. Resolve.
I sighed. “Sorry, too, to hear that. I think I might’ve liked you.”
“Yes. And I you.”
There was that, at least. “Well, don’t dither too long about it. I’ve only got a few decades left.”
I thought he smiled, which I counted as a victory. “I have already begun.”
“Good for you.” I hoped he didn’t think I was mocking him. It always made me feel good to see the young ones do well, even if that meant they would inevitably threaten me. That was the way of things, after all. Children had to grow up. They did not always become what others wanted. “Do me a favor, though?”
He said nothing, in keeping with his newfound resolve. That was all right. I could be his enemy, if that was what he needed from me. I just didn’t see any point in being an ass about it.
“I don’t belong here anymore.” I gestured around us at the mirrored plain, the palaces, the sky. “Not even in this watered-down dream of reality. Wake me up, will you?”
“All right.”
And suddenly a hand ripped through me from behind. I cried out in surprise and agony, looking down to see my mortal heart clenched in a sharp-nailed hand —
I jerke
d awake to the sound of my own cry, echoing from the vaulted ceiling.
Glowing vaulted ceiling. It was night. Above me loomed Shahar, who had a hand on my chest and a worried look on her face. I was still sleepy, disoriented. A quick check of my chest verified that my heart was still there. Inadvertently, I looked at Shahar’s chest, thinking muzzily that my dream-enemy might have tried to harm her, too. Her dress lay in cut strips down to her waist, half undone, and she held a loose sleep shift over her breasts with her free arm, which she must have grabbed to cover herself when she’d come into my room. This did nothing to hide the other beautiful parts of her: the gentle sweep of neck into shoulder, the slight curve of her waist. Of her breasts, I could still see one rounded shadow near her elbow.
I reached up to pull her arm out of the way and stopped with my fingers two inches from her arm. It took her a moment to realize. She stared at my reaching hand uncomprehendingly; then her eyes widened and she jerked away.
I lowered my hand. “Sorry,” I muttered.
She glared at me. “You started screaming so loud I could hear you through the adjoining door. I thought something was wrong with you.”
“A dream.”
“Not a pleasant one, obviously.”
“Actually, it wasn’t so bad, ’til the end.” The fear was fading quickly. My dream-companion hadn’t been gentle about it, but he’d chosen an excellent way to send me back to the mortal realm. I felt none of the heartrending sorrow that I might have on realizing that the gods’ realm was now forbidden to me. Instead I was just annoyed. “Little mortalfucking bastard. If I ever get my magic back, I’m going to break every bone in whatever body he manifests. Let him avenge that.”
The Kingdom of Gods Page 14
