Yetinau shook his head dismissively. “Sorry, man. Just saying what I see. Phenomena like you isn’t my specialty, though you’re not the only one who’s torn up inside.” He glanced cryptically at Poe, who sat patiently at the opposite end of the table.
“Said you made a haven here,” Shea interjected. “Why worry at being found?”
“Depends on who’s doing the finding,” he replied. “If such fine, fine ladies of the local flavor—like yourself, soldier—come in, of course they’re welcome, no question.” Jean wrung the armrest of her chair but said nothing. “But when an off-worlder shows up, well … there are things that make even a god nervous.”
“Where are your fellow gods?” Zella asked. Yetinau looked at her, and she clarified, “I’m sorry, I just recalled what circle your power stems from. Yours is a Trinity of Laws, and your companions are Order and Chaos.”
“Ha ha, right!” he affirmed, snapping his fingers as though just now recalling. “Never met the guys. Are they guys? Never caught any names.”
“Never…?” Zella was baffled.
“You are new blood, then?” Poe asked. “You’ve simply not had the circumstance yet to know your counterparts?”
Yetinau shook his head as if there were nothing strange about that. “Not new blood. I mean, maybe a little. I’ve been doing this, oh—” He counted on his fingers. “Couple decades. Four years, by our calendar,” he added for Zaja’s benefit. “But I’m betting they’re not looking for me for the same reason I’m not looking for them. All safer staying put. That much power gathering in one place? I don’t need a target painted on my back.”
“What exactly are you afraid of?” Zella asked.
“Don’t you know, Zella Renivar?”
Jean tensed as Yetinau reached across the table, clasping a hand on Zella’s forearm and guiding it toward the center of the table. Jean intended to put a stop to it right then, but found herself sitting calmly instead. Why the fuck isn’t anyone else doin’ anything?
“I never gave my name,” Zella replied, unnerved.
“It was easy to guess,” Yetinau said as he tugged at the uneven threads holding the sleeve of her shirt together, unraveling stitches that had been replaced just days earlier. Jean instinctively averted her eyes—she hadn’t forgotten the brain-searing pain that those runic carvings could cause. “Can’t actually read this, admittedly,” he said before throwing Zella’s arm back toward her, “but even here, there’s a grapevine. I know of Taryl Renivar’s living sacrifices, and I know the only one left alive is his own daughter. If I could, I would kill you here and now to stop him.”
Jean stood as she asked, “Why the hell don’t you?” It hadn’t come across with the hostility she’d have liked, but at least it came out.
Yetinau looked at her and smiled. “I would love to bend you over and fuck you on this table in front of all your friends until the break of dawn.”
Jean was outraged, and wanted to jump across the table and beat the tar out of him. Just like before, however, the impulse was there, but the follow-through was entirely absent. Her threat of “You even fuckin’ try…” came off limp as a result. Yetinau only smiled in satisfaction.
“Normally, you’d be dead now,” Flynn pointed out to him.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he agreed.
“Your divinity staves off violence,” Chari realized. “That is why the surrounding lands are at peace. Any army that comes here would find themselves unwilling to fight.”
“It does a lot of things,” Yetinau agreed. “But … yeah. In a nutshell. Even if I don’t do anything, I give off this kind of aura. This whole place is a sacred circle, and long as I don’t upset said circle, no one gets hurt. It took years to get this much space protected, and I’ve got something too good going on to mess it up now.”
“So where does that leave us?” Flynn asked.
Yetinau shook his head in irritation. “Do what you want. I can’t force you to leave, but I’m asking you not to stay.”
* * *
Yetinau’s request was clear, but had no teeth. There was little desire among the others to keep moving, and it wasn’t difficult for Shea to understand why. As she stepped outside and listened to the wind, all she saw was nature surrounding her. There were no flames on the horizon, no scent of smoke in the wintry air, no sounds of gunfire. They hadn’t known such peace since leaving the Cavonish border. Shea pulled her cigarette case from her coat and lit a smoke as she stared up at the stars.
“Shea.”
She instinctively twitched, even as she knew there was no danger. “Bit embarrassing,” she said. “For weeks, thought you one of mine. Two looks by that wanker, knows you’re not.” She studied Flynn for a moment. “Still hardly see it.”
“We talked about this after leaving the ship,” Flynn said, curious that she was bringing it back up.
“Just a wonder: Chance to get back what you were, would you?”
“Anywhere else, I think I’m better off as I am,” he replied. “But if I settled on your world, I think I’d have to go back to the way I was.”
“Just have to be different, eh, mate?” she replied teasingly.
Flynn nodded somberly. “I think it’s better that I am.”
Shea shook her head in disagreement. “Fancy you more as you are.” She paused to reflect on the weight of those words, then glanced at Flynn, who was looking back at her. Neither said anything on it. “’Sides, your mates are used to this; ‘magine waking up tomorrow, no recognition?”
As he looked up at the sky, he replied, “That’s not going to be a problem forever.”
Shea worried briefly that something more sinister was being insinuated. It only took a moment’s thought about their situation to realize what he meant. “War’s been won, soldiers go home.”
“Or they die,” he added, courting the risk of failure Shea had opted to leave unspoken. “Zaja is going to one day, regardless, but she nearly quit after we survived that clash. Poe has no intention of looking back once he gains what we’ve been searching for. Jean and Zella are tolerating me in their own ways, and I’ll be lucky if we part amicably.”
Shea shook her head piteously. “Not so good at making friends, are you?”
Flynn suppressed a small laugh. “I’ve had years of practice making them. It’s keeping them that I’m not so rehearsed in.” His humor dried up. “I thought it would be simple, when it was just me, Jean, and Mack. I’ve lost one and estranged the other.”
“Afraid of being alone, yeah?”
“What kind of life will I lead once I am?” He shook with uncertainty. “It can’t be a normal one, after the places I’ve seen and the things I’ve done.” He looked at his hands and asked, “After what I’ve become?”
Shea empathized more than she could put into words; every day on the front she had prayed to go home and rescue some semblance of life with her adopted family. But war had changed her; it had killed her second father, possibly her second mother. It had almost certainly changed her more valiant brothers, if they were still alive. Her return to Selif had been a rude awakening: the life she’d been hoping to return to was long gone. The only certainty she had left was that the den Vier line ended with her.
Flynn looked at Shea, who glanced at her hand and the half-burnt cigarette pinched between her fingers. She offered it, but Flynn held his hand up and declined.
“No plans to go home here,” she said as she took another drag. “Think I planned to clear off once we’re done? Worlds ahead, mate—don’t see us splitting company for some time.”
Flynn’s face was fighting a losing battle not to smile. “You might change your mind if you knew me better.”
“Might not,” she countered. “Know you better than a few months back. Ugly deeds, right, but not cruel.”
“I can be cruel,” he admitted, “If there’s a reason for it.”
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Shea tried not to be dissuaded. “Better than the sake of it, I guess. Say I want to know you: Innit on me to find out?”
He gave her no response, and Shea didn’t prod. They just watched the night sky together, looking at worlds so distant she had only begun to conceive of their existence. It still sounded so far-fetched, to think one day she might walk on one.
* * *
It was later in the night when Guardian Poe returned to Yetinau’s throne room. The chamber was vacant, and in the quiet Poe could hear the faint sound of running water. He approached the throne and caressed it, entranced by the possibilities it represented. It was crude and seemed uncomfortable to sit on, but meant liberation from mortality, escape from moral obligation. Divine right.
“Some seat, isn’t it?”
Yetinau had returned, cradling a fresh snifter of wine.
“The Yet-man,” Poe acknowledged with gravitas.
His host grew visibly disparaged. “Somehow, you just sucked all the pizazz out of that. Stick with calling me Yetinau, kid.” Poe wanted to take offense at being referred to as a child, but it was hard to find any ire at one who was so clearly his better. Yetinau leaned on the opposing armrest of his throne, examining Poe from head to foot. “First time I’ve met someone with the vim to become one of us and … and you can just see it, you know?”
“It is this I wish to speak of,” Poe replied. “I stand to inherit a lofty position. What council might you offer, from your own experiences?”
Yetinau jerked suddenly, snorting out the wine he was drinking. After a raucous cough, he pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Immortal, nigh unkillable, and it still stings when something goes out the wrong way! Anyway, I’m really not the best guy to get advice from. Didn’t even know I’d become a god until months after the fact.”
This rightly bewildered Poe. “How does one unknowingly ascend?”
“Well… ” Yetinau settled into his throne. “Used to be a machinist back in Stoten. Get off work one day and I’ve got a few hours left before the cold sets in. Stayed in the bar waaaaay too long when this broad walks in and—and something’s just off about her, you know? She’s eying me, comes up and tells me I’m ‘unique’ and she ‘needs me,’ and … actually it gets fuzzy for a bit after that. Wake up the next morning not nearly as hungover as I should’ve been. She’s gone and I’ve got no idea what she passed me while we were doing the beast with two backs.”
“She taught you nothing of your station, your responsibilities?” Poe asked incredulously.
“Left me like a newborn babe with a chunk of the universe in my hands.” Yetinau shrugged. “So how about you, kid? I know you’re not in my league yet, but how did you get to this point?”
“Three among my present company were sent as messengers by Airia Rousow,” Poe replied, pausing to see if Yetinau responded to the name. “She had uniquely chosen me to inherit her mantle, which has waited unclaimed for centuries. It is … it has been more complicated than I was prepared for. Despite my intended role as Taryl Renivar’s assassin, he and his followers wish me to take the power Airia intends I should claim.”
“To stabilize the trinity that his own divinity is tied to,” Yetinau concluded, to Poe’s relief. Not only was he following the story, but he wasn’t as ignorant as Poe had briefly feared.
“How they have interpreted this wish has fluctuated greatly—while as of late they have expressed content with allowing me to find my own way, my first encounter with the Reahv’li saw me bound and tortured.”
This sparked interest. “Tortured?”
“I was bound naked for days, strung up in the path of a caustic blue light.”
Yetinau approached Poe, examined him. “Hmm … yeah, I see it. There’s a blackness in you, like—like a storm cloud. But there’s light buried within and—just to guess here—maybe they were trying to bring that light back up.”
“And if that light extinguishes?”
“Not an expert here, remember?” Yetinau pointed out. “But … just to field a guess? I’d say you’d lose the stuff.”
“The stuff?” Poe asked.
“To become a god. You could only ever be, well … you.”
Poe didn’t know whether to feel relief or dread. He had clutched so firmly to this entitlement that he’d never before considered his innate qualification was something that could be extinguished. Though he did not understand the nature of it, he held some suspicion. Poe drew the Dark Sword, presenting it to Yetinau.
“This is the Dark Sword, which I tethered to my soul when I was a boy,” Poe explained. “Ever since my torture, it has become subtly heavier.”
Yetinau recoiled. “Keep that thing away. I don’t know why, but somethin’ about it bothers me.”
Though he found this reaction troubling, Poe sheathed the weapon and set some distance between them.
As Yetinau calmed, he continued their conversation. “I’d mentioned before that what’s-her-face passed her godhood to me without asking. After the stories I heard about Taryl Renivar, of the gods who challenged him and fell, I figured that was probably why. Rather than fighting an unwinnable battle, she chose to pass it on to some other guy and let him deal with it.”
“That sounds to be the case,” Poe concurred.
“So tell me,” Yetinau said as he approached Poe once more. “What if I were to retire here and now, and pass the burden of being the God of Neutrality on to you?”
The offer took Poe aback. He’d not forgotten Yetinau’s story of how he’d inherited the power in the first place.
“Would that mean we are obligated to…?”
“To sleep together?” Yetinau asked. “No. I don’t think so.” He didn’t seem bothered by the prospect. “What d’ya say?”
It was tempting. Poe’s quest to find Hapané Maraius had thus far proven fruitless, and if becoming a god was the only step necessary to assuage his guilt for the lives he’d taken, then his journey could end here and now.
“And to be honest, all this hokum about Renivar making a new world and getting rid of all the others—like this fine rock we’re all on right now—do you really think he can pull it off?”
Poe couldn’t deny it seemed far reaching, and hesitated to believe a man like Taryl Renivar had the nerve to follow through even if presented with the possibility. But why not just take this power then? Poe asked himself. Even as he wondered, he doubted Yetinau would so freely offer it up unless he was more afraid than he would admit.
“I cannot,” Poe at last concluded. “There is something out there that is intended to be mine and, in truth, I do not have the will to play the neutral party. I would be a poor god, in that capacity.”
Yetinau cracked half a smile. “Don’t think I would have given it up anyway. Like I said before, I’ve got a good thing going here. Why settle for less?”
* * *
Several days had passed. Yetinau’s worshippers did nothing to aid their stay, but could do nothing to make them leave. The group took up residence in an unused chamber and provided their own food; so long as they were safe here, there was no urgency to leave.
As Chari walked down the mountain corridor, a pair of Yetinau’s servants passed her by.
“…and they dress so strangely,” one was saying, her voice lowering as Chari approached. “Like that one who’s walking by—is she even wearing anything under those wraps? What if the beads she’s tied up in come loose?”
“Her hair’s weird,” the other added. “How does one have purple hair?”
“Don’t look back, she’ll notice!” the first hissed.
Chari shook her head but paid the two no mind. She stepped into their shared bedchamber, its dark recesses lit by the flickering of oil lanterns scavenged from an abandoned encampment nearby. Shadows danced across the walls, and across the faces of Poe and Zella, who were already engaged in con
versation.
“They’ve no idea we can understand them, do they?” Chari asked.
“Most have assumed that because we do not look as they do, we cannot speak as they do,” Poe replied. “They have little interest in any of us, save for Zaja.”
“Whom they mainly bow their heads to in deference,” Zella continued. “I advised her to spare any protestations—they will believe what they wish to believe.”
As Chari walked past them to search her satchel for something to eat, Poe spoke to her. “Have we any notion when we are to move again? I’ve asked Flynn more than once, but he only ever tells me it’s for the group to decide.”
Chari sighed heavily before asking, “Yourself aside, Guardian, are any among us ready?” She stood up and turned to him to add, “Are you?”
Poe’s hand touched his left shoulder where he’d been injured. “These last weeks have been harrowing. We were bound to meet a breaking point eventually.”
“Perhaps you should make the best of our time here,” Zella suggested. “You may not have another opportunity to safely share the company of a god.”
He fidgeted uncomfortably at this suggestion. “I … I feel I’ve learned all Yetinau wishes to impart, and I yet have no right to challenge his methods and experiences.”
Chari shook her head in disgust. “Disregard his status for a moment,” she requested. “I’d hear your opinion of the man himself.”
He faltered, and looked to Zella for help. “He was not born a god,” she reminded him. “He was a mortal man, once, as you are now.”
It was another moment before Poe at last admitted, “…He’s a philanderer. He has sequestered a cadre of young women away and nothing is done in this mountain that does not serve his own pleasures.”
Chari expected to feel some satisfaction in hearing someone like Poe tear a god down, but found none. Instead, a sense of familiarity and guilt pervaded her.
“He reminds me of myself,” she confessed. At her companions’ curious glances, she explained, “When I was High Priestess to the Goddess Hapané, all of Cordom revered me. That power came with privilege, and I felt no remorse for exercising it. I had my own lusts, yes, and I would use members of my laity to slake them. They were only a means to satisfy my own urges.”
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