I turned to Shahar, who stood on one of the elevated tiers around the chamber’s edge. She had wrapped her arms around herself as if cold; her expression was too blank to be intentional. In the whole room, where her relatives clustered in twos and threes and comforted each other, she stood alone.
I considered for a moment, then stepped away from Deka and went to her. Her head turned sharply toward me as I approached. She was not at all in shock. A subtle shift transformed her posture from the lost girl of a moment before to the cold queen who had tried to enslave her brother. But I saw the wariness in her. She had lost that battle.
Deka watched me go to her but did not join us.
“Shouldn’t you contact Remath?” I asked. I kept my tone neutral.
She relaxed fractionally, acknowledging my unspoken offer of truce. “I’ve tried. Mother hasn’t answered.” She looked away, through the translucent walls, at the lowering sun. West, toward Sky. “There’s no point, in any case. The army is there and under Mother’s command as it should be, along with the bulk of the scrivener and assassin corps and the nobles’ private forces. Echo is barely functional and understaffed as it is. We have no help to offer.”
“Not all support must be material, Shahar.” It still felt strange to remember that Remath and Shahar loved each other. I would never get used to Arameri behaving like normal people.
She glanced at me again, not so sharply this time. Considering. Then Ramina said, “Something’s happening,” and we all grew tense.
There was a blur in the air, a few feet above and to one side of the image we’d been watching. The soldiers reached for their weapons. The highbloods gasped and one cried out. Deka and the other scriveners tensed, some pulling out premade, partially drawn sigils.
Then the image resolved, and we saw Remath. The image was angled oddly—over her shoulder and slightly behind her. The sphere must have been set into her stone seat.
Facing her, in Sky’s audience chamber, was Usein Darr.
Shahar caught her breath and moved down the steps, as if she meant to step through the image and aid her mother. The soldiers in Sky’s audience chamber had drawn their weapons, swords and pikes and crossbows. They did not attack, however. Remath must have warned them off, though two of her guards, Darre women, had moved to stand between Remath and Usein, crouching with hands on their knives. Usein stood proud and fearless at the center of the room, ignoring the guards. She had come unarmed, though she did wear traditional Darre battle dress: a leather-wrapped waist, a heavy fur mantle that marked her as a battlefield commander, and armor made of thin plates of flakespar—a light, strong material the Darre had invented a few decades back. She looked taller when she wasn’t pregnant.
“I take it we have you to thank for the spectacle below,” said Remath. She drawled the words, sounding amused.
Usein inclined her head. I thought she would speak in Darre, given her nationalism, but she used clear, ringing Senmite instead. “It is not our preferred way of doing battle, we in the north. To use magic, even our own, feels cowardly.” She shrugged. “But you Arameri do not fight fair.”
“True,” said Remath. “Well, then. I expect you have demands?”
“Simple ones, Arameri.” Family name only was the way Darre addressed formidable opponents, a mark of respect by her terms. To Amn, of course, it was blatant disrespect. “I—and my allies, who would be here if it had not taken all our dimmers and magicians to get even one person through your barriers—demand that your family give up its power and all trappings thereof. Your treasury: fifty percent of it is to be given to the Nobles’ Consortium, to be distributed equally among the nations of the world. Thirty percent will go to the Order of Itempas and all established faiths that offer public services. You may retain twenty percent. You may no longer address the Nobles’ Consortium. It is for them to say whether Sky-in-Shadow can retain its representative. Disband your army and distribute its generals among the kingdoms; relinquish your scriveners and spies and assassins and all your other little toys.” Her eyes flicked toward the Darre guards, full of contempt. I did not see whether the women reacted to this or not. “Send your son back to the Litaria; you don’t want him anyway.” (Nearby, Deka’s jaw flexed.) “Send your daughter to foster in some other kingdom for ten years so that she can learn the ways of some people other than you murderous, high-handed Amn. I will leave the choice of kingdom to you.” She smiled thinly. “But Darr would welcome her and treat her with such respect as she is capable of earning.”
“Like hells will I live among those tree-swinging barbarians,” snapped Shahar, and the other highbloods murmured in angry agreement.
Usein went on. “In short, we demand that the Arameri become just another family and leave the world to rule itself.” She paused, looking around. “Oh. And leave this palace. Sky’s presence profanes the Lady’s Tree—and frankly, the rest of us are tired of looking up at you. You will henceforth dwell on the ground, where mortals belong.”
Remath waited a moment after Usein fell silent. “Is that all?”
“For now.”
“May I ask a question?”
Usein lifted an eyebrow. “You may.”
“Are you responsible for the murders of my family members?” Remath spoke lightly, but only a fool would not have heard the threat underneath. “You in the plural, obviously.”
For the first time, Usein looked unhappy. “That was not our doing. Wars of assassination are not our way.” Left unspoken was that wars of assassination were very much the Amn way.
“Whose, then?”
“Kahl.” Usein smiled, but it was bleak. “Kahl Avenger, we call him—a godling. He has been of great help to us, me and my forbears and our allies, but it has since become clear that this served his own agenda. He merely used us. We have broken ways with him, but I’m afraid the damage is done.” She paused, her jaw tightening briefly. “He has killed my husband and numerous members of our Warriors’ Council. Perhaps that will seem a consolation to you.”
Remath shook her head. “Murder is never a thing to be celebrated.”
“Indeed.” Usein regarded Remath for a long moment, then bowed to her. It was not a deep bow, but the respect in the gesture was plain. An apology, unspoken. “Kahl has been declared an enemy by the peoples of the north. But that does not negate our quarrel with you.”
“Naturally.” Remath paused, then inclined her head, a show of great respect in Amn terms, since the ruler of the Amn had no need to bow to anyone. By Darre standards, it was probably an insult.
“Thank you for your honesty,” Remath added. “Now, as to the rest, your demands regarding my family: no.”
Usein raised her eyebrows. “That’s all? ‘No’?”
“Were you expecting anything else?” I could not see Remath’s face well, but I guessed that she smiled.
Usein did, too. “Not really, no. But I must warn you, Arameri: I speak for the people of this world. Not all of them would agree with me, I will admit, as they have spent too many centuries under your family’s control. You have all but crushed the spirit of mortalkind. It is for their sake that I and my allies will now fight to revive it—and we will not be merciful.”
“Are you certain that’s what you want?” Remath sat back, crossing her legs. “The spirit of mortalkind is contentious, Usein-ennu. Violent, selfish. Without a strong hand to guide it, this world will not know peace again for many, many centuries. Perhaps ever.”
Usein nodded, slowly. “Peace is meaningless without freedom.”
“I doubt the children who starved to death, before the Bright, would agree.”
Usein smiled again. “And I doubt the races and heretics your family have destroyed would consider the Bright peace.” She made a small gesture of negation with her hand. “Enough. I have your answer, and you will soon have mine.” She lifted a small stone that bore a familiar mark. A gate sigil. She closed her eyes, and a flicker later she was gone.
The lower image—of Shadow and the silent
maskers—jolted abruptly, drawing our eyes. There was a brief blur of motion, which grew still as the soldier who held the sphere set it down. We saw him then, a young man in heavy armor marked with seven sigils: one on each limb, one on his helmet, one on his torso, and one on his back. Simple magic of protection. He held a pike at the ready, as did the other men—all in the same armor—that we could see. Their armor was white. I suppose Remath hadn’t gotten around to reequipping her army to symbolize the family’s new divine allegiance.
And beyond them, the maskers had begun to move. Slowly, silently, they walked toward the soldiers that we could see. I could only assume that beyond the image, the scene was being repeated throughout Shadow. All of the masks that we could see, in every color, were tilted upward, paying no attention to the soldiers before them. Fixed on Sky.
“How does she command them?” Deka murmured, frowning as he peered at the image. “We were never able to determine…”
His musings were drowned out by noise from both images. Out of view, someone shouted to the soldiers, and the battle began as volleys of crossbow bolts shot toward the masked ranks. Already we could see that the bolts did almost nothing. The maskers continued forward with arrows jutting from chests, legs, abdomens. A handful went down as their masks were split or cracked, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
In the higher image, Remath barked orders to the soldiers in her audience chamber. We saw hurried movement, chaos. Amid this, however, Remath rose from her throne and turned to face it. She leaned forward and touched something we could not see. “Shahar.”
Shahar started, coming forward. “Mother? You must come here, of course. We are ready to accommodate—”
“No.” Her quiet negative struck Shahar silent, but Remath smiled. She was calmer than I had ever seen her. “I have had dreams,” she said, speaking softly. “I’ve always had them, for whatever reason, and they have always, always, come true. I have dreamt this day.”
I frowned in confusion. Dreams that came true? Was that even possible for mortals? Remath was a godling’s granddaughter…
In the image below her face, the maskers charged forward, running now. The sphere’s range was too small to capture more than a segment of chaos. For brief stretches there was nothing to see, interspersed with blurring glimpses of shouting men and still, inhuman faces. We barely noticed. Shahar stared at her mother, her face written with anguish as if there were no one else in the room, nothing else that she cared about. I put a hand on her shoulder because for a moment it looked as though she might climb onto the table to reach Remath. Her shoulder, beneath my hand, was taut and trembling with suppressed tension.
“You must come here, Mother,” she said tightly. “No matter what you’ve seen in some dream—”
“I have seen Sky fall,” said Remath, and Shahar jerked beneath my hand. “And I have seen myself die with it.”
In the other image, the one in the large sphere, there were screams. A sudden loud concussion that I thought might have been an explosion. And suddenly the sphere was jostled from its place, falling toward the Salon steps. We heard the crunch as it broke, and then the image vanished. The other image—Remath’s image—shuddered a moment later, and she looked around as people exclaimed in alarm behind her. They had felt the explosion, too.
“Why did you have the Lady build Echo, if not to come here?” Shahar was shaking her head as she spoke, wordless negation despite her effort to speak reasonably. “Why would you do this, Mother?”
“I have dreamt of more than Sky.” Remath suddenly looked away from Shahar, her gaze settling on me and Deka. “I have seen all existence fall, Lord Sieh. Sky is merely the harbinger. Only you can stop it. You and Shahar and you, my son. All three of you are the key. I built Echo to keep you safe.”
“Mother,” said Deka in a strained voice. “This—”
She shook her head. “There’s no time.” She paused suddenly, looking away as a soldier came close and murmured to her. At her nod, he hurried away, and she looked at us again, smiling. “They are climbing the Tree.”
Someone in the Marble Hall cried out. Ramina, his face taut, stepped forward. “Remath, gods damn it, there’s no reason for you to stay if—”
Remath sighed, with a hint of her usual temper. “I told you, I have seen how this must go. If I die with Sky, there is hope. My death becomes a catalyst for transformation. There is a future beyond it. If I flee, it all ends! The Arameri fall. The world falls. The decision is quite simple, Ramina.” Her voice softened again. “But… will you tell her…?”
I wondered at this as Ramina’s jaw flexed. Then I remembered: Morad. She wasn’t present, no doubt trying to assist Wrath in preparing for the possibility of an attack. I hadn’t realized Ramina knew about them, but then, I supposed, he was the only one Remath could have trusted with the secret. No doubt Morad knew about Ramina fathering Remath’s children, too. The three of them were bound together by love and secrets.
“I’ll tell her,” Ramina said at last, and Remath relaxed.
“I will, too,” I said, and she started. Then, slowly, she smiled at me.
“Lord Sieh, are you beginning to like me?”
“No,” I said, folding my arms. It was Morad whom I liked. “But I’m not a complete ass.”
She nodded. “You love my son.”
It was my turn to flinch. Very carefully I avoided looking at Deka. What the hells was she doing? If any of us got through this, the whole family would find some way to use my relationship with Deka against him. Perhaps she simply thought he could handle it.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good.” She glanced at Deka, then away, as if she could not bear to look at him. From the corner of my eye, I saw his fists clench. “I could protect only one of them, Lord Sieh. I had to make a choice. Do you understand? But I… I did what I could. Perhaps someday, you…” She faltered silent, throwing another of those darting glances at her son. I looked away so that I wouldn’t see what passed between them, and saw others doing the same around the room. This was too intimate. The Arameri had changed indeed since the old days; they no longer liked to see pain.
Then Remath sighed and faced me again, saying nothing. But she knew, I felt certain. I nodded, minutely. Yes, I love Shahar, too. For whatever good that did.
It seemed to satisfy Remath. She nodded back. As she did this, there was another shudder in Sky, and the image began to flicker. Deka muttered something in gods’ language and the image stilled, but I could see the instability of the message. Color and clarity wisped away from the image’s edges like smoke.
“Enough.” Remath rubbed her eyes, and I felt sudden sympathy for her. When she lifted her head again, her expression held its usual briskness. “The family and the world are yours now, Shahar. I have no doubt that you will do well by both.”
The image vanished, and silence fell.
“No,” Shahar whispered. Her knuckles, where her hands gripped the chair, were a sickly white. “No.”
Deka relented at last and came over. “Shahar—”
She rounded on him, her eyes wild. My first thought was, She’s gone mad.
My second thought, when she grabbed Deka’s hand, then mine, and I realized her intent in the same instant that magic washed through me like the arc of light that heralds a star’s birth—
—was demonshit, not again.
We became We.
As one, We reached forth with Our hand, unseen and yet vast, and picked up the bobbing, lonely mote that was Echo. And it was as one that We sent that mote west, hurtling across the world so rapidly that it should have killed everything inside. But part of Us (Deka) was smart enough to know that such speed was fatal for mortals, and We shaped the forces of motion around the mote accordingly. And another part of Us (me) was wise in the ways of magic, and that part murmured soothingly to the forces so they would be appeased, or else they would have backlashed violently against such abuse. But it was the will—Shahar, Shahar, O my magnificent Shahar—who drove us
forward, her soul fixed on a singular intent.
Mother.
We all thought this—even I, who hated Remath, and even Deka, whose feelings toward her were such a morass that no mortal language could encompass it. (The First Tongue could: maelstrom.) And for all of Us, mother meant different things. For me it was a soft breast, cold fingers, the voice of a god with two faces—Naha, Yeine—whispering words of love. For Shahar it was fear and hope and cold eyes warming, fleetingly, with approval, and a single hug that would reverberate within her soul for the rest of her life. For Deka—ah, my Deka. For Deka, mother meant Shahar, a fierce little girl standing between him and the world. It meant a child-godling with old, tired eyes, who had nevertheless taken the trouble to smile kindly at him, and stroke his hair, and help him be strong.
For this, We kept control.
The palace slowed as We approached Sky-in-Shadow. We saw everything, everywhere within the scope of Our interest. On the ground just outside the city: a small force of warriors, northerners from many nations. Usein Darr was among these, sitting on the back of a small, swift horse, watching the city through a long contraption of lenses that made the distant seem closer. Like a nautilus spiral, We cycled inward, seeing all the sane folk of the city evacuating, bottlenecks of traffic on every major street. Further in: a dead masker. Beside his body crouched a woman, alone, weeping. (Mother.) In. Godlings in the streets, helping their chosen, helping any who asked, doing what they could, not doing enough. We have always been far better at destroying than protecting. Further in. Maskers now, the ones whose bodies had been old or infirm; they straggled behind their more able comrades, hobbling toward the Tree. In, in. Dead soldiers here, in the sigil-marked white of the Hundred Thousand Legions. They littered the Salon steps, lay disemboweled on the Promenade stones, hung from the windows of nearby buildings—one with a crossbow still in his hand, though his head was gone. In.
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