She gave a strangled little laugh. “They love you, you know. The servants and staff of Drak. They think you’re good at your job. They respect you.”
“And you thought I was such a villain.”
This time, Kassa’s laugh turned into a strangled sob.
Aragon carefully wiped some of the salt aside and crawled into the circle.
“I’ll have to do that again,” said Kassa.
“Later. It doesn’t matter now.”
“But if I can stop the storm…”
“Even the gods can’t do that without setting off some other stupid side-effect. Better to let it blow itself out.” Aragon placed the knife to one side of them both, then pulled Kassa to him. They were close enough for him to taste her tears. “I did not leave you by choice.”
“If you say so.” But she didn’t pull out of his arms.
“What happened to the ship?” he asked after a moment.
For a moment Kassa couldn’t quite think what he was talking about. “The Splashdance? I tried to give her to Daggar, but he didn’t have the heart to captain her without the rest of us.” She pulled at the long silver chain that hung around her neck, the end of it vanishing into her cleavage. “It’s jewellery now. The crew went their separate ways.”
“And you became a professor of magic?”
“I like teaching. Turns out I’m good at it. I’ve never been really good at anything before.” Kassa laughed suddenly. “I made such a bad pirate.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You had the right costumes, the right vocabulary, the training. Of course you never did much in the way of actual piracy…”
“I was a terrible witch, too.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
“Mind you, you weren’t a very good Champion,” she said.
“I was an excellent Champion. Don’t let a few betrayals here and there fool you.”
“You do realise that Lord Sinistre is the only employer you’ve ever had whom you haven’t betrayed?”
Aragon grinned bitingly. “There’s still time.”
“Look at us,” said Kassa. “We both grew up and found real jobs.”
“I suppose we did. So much for the outlaw and the traitor.” He tucked a stray red curl of her hair behind one ear.
The tent walls rattled wildly.
“I think it’s quieting down,” said Aragon, making light of the storm.
Kassa couldn’t joke about it. “How many people do you think died in that mess?”
“Hopefully most of those damned master warlocks. Don’t do this to yourself, Kassa. You are not responsible for every magical catastrophe in Mocklore. I’m not even entirely sure that you had much to do with the Second Glimmer, for all you keep taking the blame for it.”
“Don’t say that,” she protested, starting to laugh. “You’ll ruin my reputation.”
He touched her cheek with his fingers. “I did not leave you by choice.”
“You already said that.”
“I thought it was worth repeating.”
She kissed him, fiercely. He kissed her back. They had so much time to make up for.
What with one thing and another, they made a bit of a mess of the salt circle.
***
Some time later, Kassa opened her eyes and found herself standing in the bone-tiled hall of Skeylles the Fishy Judge, Lord of the Underwater. Shimmery lights danced around the room, reminding her that this place was a long way underwater.
“You Summoned Me?” boomed the huge voice of her godfather. The echoes went on for some time, bouncing from every tile on every wall. There was still no sight of the god himself.
“Well, I was going to,” said Kassa. “Then I got distracted.” Self-consciously, she brushed sea salt from the folds of her skirt. “Still, no point in wasting a good manifestation. What’s going on?”
Skeylles stepped out from behind a six foot abalone-plated statue of a whelk. He was thinner than ever, gaunt around the eyes and cheekbones. He seemed to be overly weighed down by the chain of fish skulls that he wore around his neck. “Generally, or specifically?” he asked.
Kassa stared at him. “What happened to your voice?”
“Oh, Sorry. Generally Or Specifically?”
“Don’t mess about. Drak, Harmony, the draklight, the Light Lords, the elemental storm, fire and ice falling from the sky. Do I have to continue?”
“Please Don’t,” Skeylles boomed quietly. He found a large rock with half of a shipwreck embedded in the side of it, and sat down upon it.
Kassa sighed. “Was Harmony built by the Mocklore gods to settle some kind of bet?”
“Yes,” said Skeylles.
“And as the Fishy Judge you were considered impartial enough to look after it, make sure nothing bad happened to the inhabitants but also make sure that no one from Mocklore could interfere.”
“Yes,” said Skeylles.
“So,” said Kassa. “What the hell happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Skeylles lifted a bone-thin arm and pointed towards a large pile of discarded scallop shells. An equally pitiful figure emerged from behind the shells.
It took Kassa a few moment to realise that it was Amorata, brunette goddess of love beads and naughty nightwear. Kassa had seen this goddess before — she was usually a flirtatious glamour queen with a curvaceous body generously crammed into something like a string bikini or a tiny pair of gold hotpants. Her chestnut hair was usually as bouncy as the rest of her, and she was never seen without a pair of stiletto sandals, her toenails prettily painted and bejewelled.
This new version of Amorata had lank, colourless hair that fell in knots and tangles to her waist. She wore a grimy bathrobe made from towelling fabric that had once been blue but was now a faded and grubby bluish grey. Her shuffling feet were shoved into falling-apart sheepskin boots. She was not so much weeping as snivelling. She pulled a wad of tissue from a pocket in order to blow her nose and blot her face.
“What happened to you?” Kassa asked
Amorata flopped on the bone-tiled floor and burst into noisy sobs.
Kassa edged away from her, turning to Skeylles instead. “What happened to her?”
“Drak,” said Skeylles. “Harmony. And the rest. She’s in it up to her pretty eyeballs.”
“They’re not that pretty right now,” said Kassa. “What with being all bloodshot.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Your voice has gone normal again.”
“I know. It’s part of what I’m going to tell you about.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Amorata came here every day to watch what was happening in Harmony,” Skeylles began. “I didn’t see any harm in it. She was fascinated by a world without love and sex and procreation. The people of Harmony didn’t bother about all that.”
“They have no idea what they’re missing,” said Kassa. It was strange, hearing Skeylles talk like a normal person. Almost as if he was a real godfather, not a god at all. Staring at his thin face, Kassa resolved to bring him a nice big pot of oyster stew. Or she would if she knew how to cook oyster stew. Maybe she should just bring him the oysters. On the other hand, he was the Lord of the Underwater. He had an unlimited supply of oysters. So much for that plan.
“Indeed. The false happiness provided by the Light Lords kept the Harmonyites content without the need to form romantic relationships. Eventually, Amorata — while I was not paying attention, I might add — stepped inside and introduced herself to one of the residents.”
“Quillsmith,” sniffed the snivelling wreck of a lust goddess. “Such a sweet boy.”
“She described exactly what they were missing,” said Skeylles. “She talked about attraction and seduction, dressing to impress, dancing the night away with someone you adore, fighting duels to defend your lady’s honour…”
“Oh crap,” said Kassa. She could see where this was going.
“I may have emphasised the dressing up part a litt
le too much,” sniffed Amorata.
“You’re responsible for all that velvet?” said Kassa.
“I like velvet,” said Amorata. “Anyway, he misinterpreted a lot of what I said. I don’t think he really understood.”
“I’m hardly surprised,” said Kassa.
“He added all the demon bits himself,” Amorata said quite viciously. “He turned my discussion about the essence of romance into a demon city of horribleness.”
“He and the Light Lords built Drak to be a conduit for dark magic,” said Kassa. “Demons were probably inevitable.”
“I didn’t know that at the time!”
“This is what you get for encouraging those creative types. They take perfectly rational things you may have said to them and put them down in fiction. Back when I had a poet in my crew I was always finding myself quoted in lyric metre.” Kassa looked from Skeylles to Amorata. “Tell me about Aragon, then. How did he end up there?”
Amorata hid her guilty face behind straggly hair.
“It’s an interesting story,” Skeylles began.
“Don’t you protect her,” Kassa growled. “I want to hear it from her own ruby red lips.”
“I meant well,” said Amorata in a small voice.
“Amazing how many disasters start out that way.”
“We gods can see into the future,” explained the goddess, biting her lip. “Not perfectly, just the occasional glimpse of a likely possibility. Half a year ago, I had a vision of a future where Quillsmith’s strange demon city had invaded Mocklore, and you were fighting against it.”
“So instead of telling the rest of us about the invasion so that we could do something before the possibility became a reality,” Skeylles contributed, “she used the opportunity to do a little matchmaking.”
“Well, it was so sad when Aragon disappeared!” Amorata burst out. “I loved your whole little star-crossed romance, with the bickering and the hating each other and the finally realising you were meant to be together. I almost bit my favourite temple in half when he vanished without warning. The ballads after that just weren’t the same.”
“I wasn’t too happy about it myself,” Kassa growled.
“I thought that if he was on one side of the battle with Drak and you were on the other,” the goddess said sadly, “you could start again with the bickering and the conflict and the falling in love all over again…”
“How did you find him?” asked Kassa. This was the interesting bit, the question which had been most closely on her mind. “Where was he?”
“I’m a god, not a surgeon,” Amorata snapped. “I don’t usually need to know what I’m doing in order to do something. I just waved my hand to make him appear in Drak.”
“It was the first sign,” said Skeylles. “Amorata’s little love miracle went wrong, my voice started losing its boom, Raglah the Golden lost interest in women, Binx the drunkard became a health-food nut over night.”
“I even heard that Dame Kind the Fairy Spritemother has started wearing leather and hanging out with a gang,” Amorata said tearfully.
“First sign of what?” asked Kassa. “What is going on? Mavis said something about the cosmos being fragile.”
“She’s the one who worked it out for us,” said Skeylles. “It helps, having a librarian in the family. Turns out that we have reached the exact centre of all time and space allotted to our particular cosmos.”
Kassa frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Amorata blew her nose noisily. “We’re at the halfway point between all the history that ever was and all the history yet to come. Apparently every god in the cosmos is experiencing a kind of mid-existence crisis.”
“We’re lucky, really,” said Skeylles. “There are only ten of us in Mocklore. We can keep an eye on each other. If we still had the hundreds of deities that were running around before the Decimalisation, there’s no telling what could have happened.”
“So you can’t help,” said Kassa. “That’s why Mavis said there was no point asking any gods to do something. Your powers are unreliable right now.” Typical.
“For now,” Skeylles agreed. “We believe we will start regaining our control some time during the next few years. I’m afraid that will probably be a little late to help with this particular situation, although with any luck the elemental storm will be the last of the damage caused to Mocklore.”
“We haven’t had a whole lot of luck lately,” Kassa said grimly. She glared at Amorata. “Aragon appeared in Drak like you planned. So what went wrong?”
Amorata gave a big sniff. “It was the timing that was out of whack,” she said. “The reason he vanished so unexpectedly three years ago is because I sent him into Drak six months ago. I accidentally moved him forward in time.”
“Oh,” said Kassa. She thought of the misery she had gone through three years ago when she thought he left without a word, without even an argument. Despite all that, she couldn’t stop herself smiling.
“I feel really bad about it,” Amorata assured her, bottom lip trembling.
“So you should,” said Kassa. I did not leave you by choice, he had insisted. Trust was all very well, but it was nice to have confirmation. “Couldn’t be helped. Blame the cosmos.” She was still smiling.
“Oh,” blubbered the goddess of elegant bubbled drinks and long walks on the beach. “You’re being so nice!”
“That’s me,” said Kassa. “Nice as pie.”
Amorata jumped to her feet, stretching out her hand. “I want to do something for you. To make up for it.” She smiled wanly. “It’s the only power I have left that still works…”
Kassa jumped hastily out of the way. “Oh, really, there’s no need. I’d be happy with a box of chocolates. No need to do anything strenuous!”
“Trust me,” said Amorata, touching Kassa’s face with soft fingers.
***
Everything lurched to the left. Kassa squeezed her eyes tightly shut and then opened them slowly.
It was a study, of sorts. Scroll buckets lined the walls. The view through the big glass windows was a bright green valley, with trees on all sides. Kassa half-recognised the area as being a little north of the Middens. It was a beautiful, calm day.
Aragon entered the study. He flicked through some papers, then sat in the large leather chair and started writing a letter. His hair was grey. His face was creased. He was perhaps twenty years older than her Aragon. He glanced up and through the window, not seeing Kassa though she stood between him and the glass.
It felt like being a ghost.
A girl burst in through the doorway, golden hair flying. Kassa thought at first that it was Clio, but the curve of her face was different and her hair far wilder than Aragon’s niece. Plus, if this was a vision of twenty years in the future, Clio would be in her late thirties.
“Dad, where is she?” The girl sounded panicky, worried.
Aragon laid down his pen and looked curiously at her. “Sorry, love. She took Kit to visit your grandparents.”
His daughter shook her hair back impatiently. “But we don’t have any … wait, do you mean our dead grandparents?”
“I’ve been trying not to think about it,” he said. “Can I help?”
“I really hope so,” said Aragon’s daughter.
Kassa reeled back, staring at the girl’s face. Her eyes were as golden as her hair.
Chapter 17 — The Calm Between Catastrophes
Snap! Kassa was back in the bone-tiled hall of Skeylles the Fishy Judge, Lord of the Underwater. She blinked rapidly, accustoming herself to the change. There had been far too much mysterious transportation lately. She was dizzy. “What the hell was that?”
“A possibility,” said Amorata, her eyes welling up with sentiment.
“Right,” said Kassa, trying to recover her equilibrium. She looked at Amorata and then at Skeylles. “So this time the gods have caused the catastrophe and the mortals have to clean up the mess.”
“Makes A Change,” he said, maki
ng an extra effort to restore the boom to his voice. It was still diminished.
“Charming as ever,” said Kassa. “Can you zap me back to the Axgaard tents, or is the mid-cosmos crisis likely to balls that up too?”
“It is easy to return you,” said Skeylles. “You Were Never Really Here.”
***
Kassa opened her eyes. She sat up, finding herself back in the little leather ante-tent. She brushed salt from her bodice and realised that it was half-unlaced. She stood up, tidying herself up a little, relacing her bodice and checking that the rest of her garments were fastened in a respectable manner.
There was no sign of Aragon, but she couldn’t blame him for that. She was the one who had left (in or out of her own body) to visit a godly realm.
Still picking granules of sea salt from her sleeves, she stepped out into the leather corridor.
“There she is,” she heard. Egg and Clio ran up to her.
“We’ve been looking for you,” said Egg.
“The storm is over,” said Clio.
“Thank the gods for that,” said Kassa in relief. “Or perhaps not,” she added, remembering that the gods had little to do with it. “We were due for some good news.”
“Singespitter said you were communicating with a god,” said Clio. “Did you find anything out?”
Aragon and I are going to have a daughter, Kassa thought. Or was she a possible potentiality of a daughter? “I found out that Aragon was telling the truth about where he has been all this time,” she said aloud. “It’s a good start. Let’s go and look at some storm damage.” They headed along the corridor. “Where is Aragon?” Kassa asked.
Egg and Clio looked at each other. “No one’s seen him for a while,” admitted Egg. “We thought he was with you.”
Kassa’s step didn’t falter. “Oh, I’m sure he’s around somewhere.”
***
Further investigation revealed that Aragon Silversword was, in fact, nowhere in the Axgaard encampment. Kassa took this news with a smile and a nod, her eyes gradually becoming glassier. After a while, people stopped mentioning him.
It was lunchtime, which meant that the dining hall was full of bearded, boisterous Axgaard warriors. Meat bones, bread crusts and various kinds of axe-shaped cutlery flew through the air.
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