Hado, who had gone to stand at the window, nodded. "I'll see if I can find him."
"What, you aren't keeping him locked up someplace?"
"No. He has the run of Sky if he wants it, by the Lord Arameri's own decree. That has been so since he was first made mortal here ten years ago."
I was sitting at the room's table. A meal had been laid out, but it sat untouched before me. "He became mortal… here?"
"Oh, yes. All of it happened here-the Gray Lady's birth, the Nightlord's release, and Itempas's defeat, all in a single morning."
My father's death, my mind added.
"Then the Lady and the Nightlord left him here." He shrugged. "Afterward, T'vril extended every courtesy to him. I think some of the Arameri hoped he would take over the family and lead it on to some new glory. Instead he did nothing, said nothing. Just sat in a room for six months. Died of thirst once or twice, I heard, before he realized he no longer had a choice about eating and drinking." Hado sighed. "Then one day he simply got up and walked out, without warning or farewell. T'vril ordered a search, but no one could find him."
Because he had gone to the Ancestors' Village, I realized. Of course the Arameri would never have thought to look for their god there.
"How do you know all this?" I frowned. "You don't have an Arameri mark."
"Not yet." Hado turned to me, and I thought that he smiled. "Soon, though. That was the bargain I struck with T'vril: if I proved myself, I could be adopted into the family as a fullblood. I think bringing down a threat to the gods should qualify."
"Adopted…" I'd had no idea such a thing was even possible. "But… well… You don't seem to like these people very much."
He did chuckle this time, and again I had an odd sense about him, of someone wise beyond his years. Of something dark and strange.
"Once upon a time," he said, "there was a god imprisoned here. He was a terrible, beautiful, angry god, and by night when he roamed these white halls, everyone feared him. But by day, the god slept. And the body, the living mortal flesh that was his ball and chain, got to have a life of its own."
I inhaled, understanding, just not believing. He was speaking of the Nightlord, of course-but the body that lived by day was…?
Near the window, Hado folded his arms. I saw this easily, despite the window's darkness, because he was darker still.
"It wasn't much of a life, mind you," he said. "All the people who feared the god did not fear the man. They quickly learned they could do things to the man that the god would not tolerate. So the man lived his life in increments, born with every dawn, dying with every sunset. Hating every moment of it. For two. Thousand. Years."
He glanced back at me. I gaped at him.
"Until suddenly, one day, the man became free." Hado spread his arms. "He spent the first night of his existence gazing at the stars and weeping. But the next morning, he realized something. Though he could finally die, as he had dreamt of doing for centuries, he did not want to. He had been given a life at last, a whole life all his own. Dreams of his own. It would have been… wrong… to waste that."
I licked my lips and swallowed. "I…" I stopped. I had been about to say I understand, but that wasn't true. No mortal, and probably no god, could comprehend Hado's life. Children of Nahadoth, Shiny had called Lil and Dateh. Here was another of the Nightlord's children, stranger than all the rest.
"I can see that," I said. "But"-I gestured around at the walls of Sky-"is this life? Wouldn't something more normal-"
"I've spent my whole life serving power. And I've suffered for it-more than you can possibly imagine. Now I'm free. Should I go build a house in the country and grow vegetables? Find a lover I can endure, raise a litter of brats? Become a commoner like you, penniless and helpless?" I forgot myself and scowled. He chuckled. "Power is what I know. I would make a good family head, don't you think? Once I'm a fullblood."
He sounded sincere; that was the truly frightening thing.
"I think Lord Arameri would be a fool to let you anywhere near him," I said slowly.
Hado shook his head in amusement. "I'll go find Lord Itempas for you."
How jarring, to hear Shiny called that. I nodded absently as Hado headed for the door. Then, when he was at the door, a thought occurred to me. "What would you do?" I asked. "If you were me. What would you choose? Life in chains or death?"
"I would be grateful to have that much of a choice."
"That's not an answer."
"Of course it is. But if you must know, I would choose life. So long as it was a choice, I would live."
I frowned, mulling this over. Hado hesitated a moment, then spoke again. "You've spent time among the gods, Eru Shoth. Haven't you noticed? They live forever, but many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think they bother with us? We teach them life's value. So I would live, if only to spite them." He let out a single mirthless laugh, then sighed and offered me a sardonic bow. "Good afternoon."
"Good afternoon," I said. After he was gone, I sat thinking for a long time.
***
I ate something, more out of habit than necessity, and then eventually I took a nap. When I woke up, Shiny was there.
I heard him breathing as I sat up, bleary and stiff. Still weary from my ordeals, I'd fallen asleep at the table beside the remains of my meal, cradling my head on my good arm. I bumped the sling-bound arm against the table as I lifted my head, but this elicited only a mild twinge. The sigil had nearly finished its work.
"Hello," I said. "Thank you for letting me sleep." He said nothing, but that didn't bother me. "What happened to you?"
He shrugged. He was sitting across from me, near enough that I could hear his movements. "I was questioned at the White Hall; then we came here."
Obviously. I did not say it, because one took what one could get with him. "Where did you go after they brought you here?" Silently I made a wager with myself that he would say nowhere.
"Nowhere that matters."
I could not help smiling. It felt good, because it had been a long time since I'd felt the urge to genuinely smile. It reminded me of days long past, a life long gone, when my only worries had been putting food on the table and keeping Shiny from bleeding on my carpets. I almost loved him for reminding me of that time.
"Does anything matter to you?" I asked, still smiling. "Anything at all?"
"No," he said. His voice was flat, emotionless. Cold. I was beginning to understand just how wrong that was for him, a being who had once embodied warmth and light.
"Liar," I said.
He fell silent. I picked up the paring knife they'd given me for my meal, liking the slightly rough texture of its wooden hilt. I would have expected something finer to be used in Sky-porcelain, maybe, or silver. Nothing so common and utilitarian as wood. Maybe it was expensive wood.
"You care about your children," I said. "You feared Dateh would harm your old love, the Nightlord, so it seems you still care about him. You could probably even get to like this new Lady, if you gave her half a chance. If she's willing to take a chance on you."
More silence.
"I think you care about a great many things, more than you want to. I think life still holds some potential for you."
"What do you want from me, Oree?" Shiny asked. He sounded… not cold, not anymore. Just tired. I heard Hado's words again: they're even more miserable than we are. With Shiny, I could believe it.
At his question, I shook my head and laughed a little. "I don't know. I keep hoping you'll tell me. You're the god, after all. If I prayed to you for guidance, and you decided to answer, what would you tell me?"
"I wouldn't answer."
"Because you don't care? Or because you wouldn't know what to say?"
More silence.
I put the knife down and got up, walking around the table. When I found him, I touched his face, his hair, the lines of his neck. He sat passive, waiting, though I felt the tension in him. Did it bother him, the idea of killin
g me? I dismissed the thought as vain on my part.
"Tell me what happened," I said. "What made you like this? I want to understand, Shiny. See, Madding loved you. He-" My throat tightened unexpectedly. I had to look away and take a deep breath before continuing. "He hadn't given up on you. I think he wanted to help you. He just didn't know how to begin." Silence before me. I stroked his cheek. "You don't have to tell me. I won't break my promise; you helped me escape, and now you can remove one more demon from the world. But I deserve that much, don't I? Just a little bit of the truth?"
He said nothing. Beneath my fingers, his face was marble-still. He was looking straight ahead, through me, beyond me. I waited, but he did not speak.
I let out a sigh, then reached for an empty soup bowl. It wasn't very big, but there was a glass, too, which had held the best wine I'd ever tasted. I was slightly tipsy because of it, though mostly I had slept that off. I set the bowl and glass in front of me and carefully shrugged my right arm out of the sling. I could use it now, though there was still an ache in the muscles of my upper arm. They had healed, but the memory of pain was still fresh.
"Wait until I'm unconscious before you do it," I said. I couldn't tell if he was paying any attention to me. "Then pour the blood down the toilet. Don't leave any for them to use, if you can."
That same stubborn silence. It didn't even make me angry anymore; I was so inured to it.
I sighed and raised the knife to make the first cut to my wrist.
Then the glass broke against the floor, and a hand gripped my wrist tight, and suddenly we were across the room, against the wall, me pinned by the wire-taut weight of Shiny's body.
He pressed against me, breathing hard. I tried to pull my wrist from his hand, and he made a tight sound of negation, shaking my arm until I stilled. So I waited. I had managed to graze my wrist, but nothing more. A drop of my blood welled around his gripping hand and fell to the floor.
He bent. Slow, slow, like a tall old tree in the wind, fighting it every inch of the way. Only when he had bent to his fullest did he stop, his face pressed against the side of mine, his breath hot and harsh in my ear. It must have been an uncomfortable posture for him. But he stopped there, torturing himself, trapping me, and only in this manner was he able, at last, to speak. It was a whisper the whole time.
***
"They did not love me anymore. He was born first, I came next. I was never alone because of him. Then she came and I did not mind, I did not mind, as long as she understood that he was mine, too. It was not the sharing, do you see? It was good having her with us, and then the children, so many of them, all perfect and strange. I was happy then, happy, she was with us and we loved her, he and I, but I was first in his heart. I knew that. She respected it. It was never the sharing that troubled me.
"But they changed, changed, they always changed. I knew the possibility, but after so long, I did not believe. He had been alone for eternities before me. I did not understand. Even when we were enemies, he thought of me. How could I know? In all the time of my existence, it had never occurred, not once! Even apart from them, I knew their presence, felt their awareness of me. But then… but then…"
***
At this point, he pulled me against him. His free hand, the one that wasn't holding my wrist, fisted in the cloth at the small of my back. It wasn't a hug; that much I was sure of. It didn't feel like a gesture of comfort. It was closer to the way he'd held me after his release from the Empty. Or the way I sometimes gripped my walking stick when I was adrift in some place I didn't know, with no one to help me if I stumbled. Yes, very much like that.
***
"I didn't think it possible. Was it a betrayal? Had I offended them somehow? I didn't think they could forget me so completely.
"But they did.
"They forgot me.
"They were together, he and she, yet I could not feel them. They thought only of each other. I was not part of it.
"They left me alone."
***
I have always understood bodies better than voices or faces or words. So when Shiny whispered to me of horror, of a single moment of solitude after an eternity of companionship, it was not his words that conveyed the devastation this had wreaked on his soul. He was pressed against me as intimately as a lover. There was no need for words.
***
"I fled to the mortal realm. Better human company than nothing. I went to a village, to a mortal girl. Better any love than none. She offered herself and I took her, I needed her, I have never felt such need. After, I stayed. Mortal love was safer. There was a child, and I did not kill him. I knew he was demon, forbidden, I had written the law myself, but I needed him, too. He was… I had forgotten how beautiful they could be. The mortal girl whispered to me, in the night when I was weak. My siblings were wrong, wicked, hateful to have forgotten me. They would betray me again if I went back to them. Only she could love me truly; I needed only her. I needed to believe it, do you understand? I needed something certain. I lived in dread of her death. Then they came for me, found me. They apologized-apologized! Like it was nothing."
***
He laughed once, here. It was half a sob.
***
"And they brought me home. But I knew: I could no longer trust them. I had learned what it meant to be alone. It is the opposite of all that I am, that emptiness, that… nothing. I fought ten thousand battles before time began, burned my soul to shape this universe, and never before have I experienced such agony.
"The mortal girl warned me. She said they would do it again. That they would forget they loved me. That they would turn to each other and I would be alone-left alone-forever.
"They would not.
"They would not.
"Then the mortal girl killed our son."
***
He fell silent here for just a moment, his body utterly still.
***
" 'Take it,' she told me, and offered me the blood. And I thought… I thought… I thought… when there were only two of us, I was never alone."
***
A final silence, fortelling the story's end.
Slowly, he let me go. All the tension and strength ran out of him, like water. He slid down my body to his knees, his cheek pressed to my belly. He had stopped trembling.
I have spent time studying the nature of light. It is part curiosity and part meditation; someday I hope to understand why I see the way I do. Scriveners have studied light, too, and in the books that Madding read to me, they claimed that the brightest light-true light-is the combination of all other kinds of light. Red, blue, yellow, more; put it all together and the result is shining white.
This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.
And thus a single moment of solitude had destroyed Bright Itempas. He might have recovered from that in time; even a river stone wears into new shapes. But in the moment of his greatest weakness, he had been manipulated, his already-damaged soul struck an unrecoverable blow by the mortal woman he'd trusted to love him. That had driven him so mad that he had murdered his sister to keep from ever experiencing the pain of betrayal again.
"I'm sorry," he said. It was very soft, and not meant for me. But the next words were. "You don't know how much I've thought of taking your blood for myself."
I folded my arm around his shoulders and bent down to kiss his forehead. "I do know, actually." Because I did.
So I straightened, took his hand, and pulled him up. He came without resistance, letting me lead him to the bed, where I pulled him to lie down. When we'd settled, I snuggled into the crook of his arm, resting my head on his chest as I'd so often done with Madding. They felt and smelled very different-sea salt to dry spice, cool to hot, gentle to fierce-but their heartbeats were the same. Steady, slow, reassuring. Could a son inherit such a thi
ng from a father? Apparently so.
I could always die tomorrow, I supposed.
18
"The Gods' Vengeance" (watercolor)
I THINK MADDING ALWAYS SUSPECTED THE TRUTH.
Throughout my childhood, I had a strange memory of being someplace warm and wet and enclosed. I felt safe, yet I was lonely. I could hear voices, yet no one spoke to me. Hands would touch me now and again, and I would touch back, but that was all.
Many years later, I told this story to Madding, and he looked at me oddly. When I asked him what was wrong, he didn't answer at first. I pressed him, and finally he said, "It sounds like you were in the womb."
I remember laughing. "That's crazy," I said. "I was thinking. Listening. Aware."
He shrugged. "So was I, before I was born. I guess that happens sometimes with mortals, too."
But it isn't supposed to, he did not say.
***
"What do you intend to do?" Shiny asked me the next morning.
He stood at the window across the room, glowing softly with the dawn. I sat up blearily, stifling a yawn.
"I don't know," I said.
I wasn't ready to die. That was easier to admit than I'd thought. I had killed Madding; to live with that knowledge would be-had been-almost unbearable. But killing myself, or letting Shiny or the Arameri do it, felt worse somehow. In the wake of Madding's death, it felt like throwing away a gift.
"If I live, the Arameri will use me for the gods know what. I won't have more deaths on my conscience." I sighed, rubbing my face with my hands. "You were right to want to kill us. You should've gotten us all, though. That was the only mistake the Three made."
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