The rooftop door opens, and the child comes out. Strange-looking creature, disproportionate with his big head and long legs. (Do I look like that in my mortal form? I resolve to make my head smaller.) He is brown-skinned and blond, freckled. From here, I can see his eyes, as green as the leaves that hide me. He is eight or nine years old now — a good age, my favorite age, old enough to know the world yet young enough to still delight in it. I have heard his name, Shinda, whispered by the other children of this dusty little village; they are frightened of him. They can tell, as I can with just a glance, that he might be mortal, but he will never be one of them.
He comes to stand behind Itempas and wraps his arms around Itempas’s shoulders, resting his cheek against his father’s densely curled hair. Itempas does not turn to him, but I see him reach up to touch the boy’s arms. They watch the sun rise together, never saying a word.
When the day is well begun, there is another movement at the rooftop door; a woman comes to stand there. She is Remath’s age, similarly blonde, similarly beautiful. In two thousand years, I will join hands with her descendant and namesake and become mortal. They look much alike, this Shahar, that Shahar, except for the eyes. This Shahar watches Itempas with an unblinking steadiness that I would find frightening if I had not seen it in the eyes of my own worshippers. When her son straightens and comes over to greet her, she does not look at him, though she absently touches his shoulder and says something. He goes inside and she remains there, watching her lover with a high priestess’s fanaticism. But he does not turn to her.
I leave, and report back to Nahadoth and Enefa as I have been bidden. Parents often send children as spies and peacemakers when there is trouble between them. I tell them that Itempas is not angry, if anything he seems sad and a bit lonely, and, yes, they should go and bring him home because he has been away too long. And if I do not tell them of his mortal woman, his mortal son, what of it? Why should it matter that the woman loves him, needs him, will probably go mad without him? Why should we care that his return means the destruction of that family and the peace he seems to have found with them? We are gods and they are nothing. I am a far better son than some half-breed demon boy. I will show him, as soon as he comes home.
9
I FELL.
It happens like that sometimes, when one travels through life without a plan. In this case I was traveling through space, motion, conceptualization — same difference, except that mortals cannot survive it. Half mortal that I was, I shouldn’t have. But I did, possibly because I did not care.
So it was that I drifted through Sky’s white layers, passing through some of the Tree’s wooden flesh in the process, down, down, down. Past the lowest layer of clouds, damp and cold. Because I was incorporeal, I saw the city with both mortal and godly eyes: humped silhouettes of buildings and streets aglow with flickers of mortal light, interspersed now and again by the brighter, colored plumes of my brothers and sisters. They could not see me because I had not lost all sense of self-preservation and because even when I am not sulking, my soul’s colors are shadowy. That is my father’s legacy and a bit of my mother’s as well. I am good at sneaking about because of it. Or hiding, when I do not wish to be found.
Down. Past a ring of mansions attached to the World Tree’s trunk, devastatingly expensive tree houses, these, without even ladders or GIRLZ KEEP OWT signs to make them interesting. Below this was another layer of city, this one new: houses and workshops and businesses built atop the Tree’s very roots, perched precariously on wildly sloping streets and braced platforms. Ah, of course; the esteemed personages of the mansions above could not be left without servants and chefs and nannies and tailors, could they? I witnessed bizarre contraptions, gouting steam and smoke and metallic groans, connecting this halfway city to the elegant platforms above. People rode up and down in them, trusting these dangerous-looking things to convey them safely. For a moment, admiration for mortal ingenuity nearly distracted me from my misery. But I kept going, because this place did not suit me. I had heard Shahar refer to it, and understood its name now: the Gray. Halfway between the bright of Sky and the darkness below.
Down. And now I blended with the shadows, because there were so many here between the Tree’s roots and beneath its vast green canopy. Yes, this suited me better: Shadow, the city that had once been called Sky, before the Tree grew and made a joke of that name. It was here at last that I felt some sense of belonging — though only a little. I did not belong anywhere in the mortal realm, really.
I should have remembered that, I thought in bitterness as I came to rest and turned to flesh again. I should never have tried to live in Sky.
Well. Adolescence is all about making mistakes.
I landed in a stinking, debris-strewn alley, in what I would later learn was South Root, considered to be the most violent and depraved part of the city. Because it was so violent and depraved, no one bothered me for the better part of three days while I sat amid the trash. This was good, because I wouldn’t have had the strength to defend myself. My paroxysm of rage in Sky and subsequent magical transit had left me too weak to do much but lie there. As I’d been hungry before leaving Sky, I ate: there were some moldy fruit rinds in the bin nearest me, and a rat came near to offer me its flesh. It was an old creature, blind and dying, and its meat was rank, but I have never been so churlish as to disrespect a sacred act.
It rained, and I drank, tilting my head back for hours to get a few mouthfuls. And then, adding the ultimate insult to injury, my bowels moved for the first time in a century. I had enough strength to get my pants down, but not enough to move away from the resulting mess, so I sat there beside it and wept awhile, and just generally hated everything.
Then on the third day, because three is a number of power, things finally changed.
“Get up,” said the girl who’d entered the alley. She kicked me to get my attention. “You’re in the way.”
I blinked up at her to see a small figure, clad in bulky, ugly clothing and a truly stupid hat, glaring down at me. The hat was a thing of beauty. It looked like a drunken cone on top of her head and had long flaps to cover her ears. The flaps could be buttoned under her chin, though she hadn’t done so, perhaps because it was late spring and as hot as the Dayfather’s temper, even in this city of noontime shadows.
With a sigh, I pulled myself laboriously to my feet, then stepped aside. The girl nodded too curtly for thanks, then brushed past me and began rummaging through the pile of garbage I’d sat beside. I started to warn her about my small addition to the refuse, but she avoided it without looking. Deftly plucking two halves of a broken plate out of the trash, she made a sound of pleasure and stuck them into the satchel hanging off her shoulder, then moved on. As she shuffled away, I saw one of her feet scrape the ground even though she’d lifted it; it was larger than the other and misshapen, and she’d made it larger still by bundling rags about the ankle.
I followed her down the alley as she poked through the piles, picking up the oddest of items: a handleless clay pot, a rusted metal canister, a chunk of broken windowpane. This last seemed to please her the most, by the look of delight on her face.
I leaned in to peer over her shoulder. “What will you do with it?”
She whipped about and I froze, as she had placed the tip of a long and wickedly sharp glass dagger at my throat.
“This,” she said. “Back off.”
I did so quickly, raising my hands to make it clear that I meant no harm, and she put the knife away, resuming her work.
“Glass,” she said. “Grind it down for knives, use the leftovers to grind other things. Get it?”
I was fascinated by her manner of speaking. Shadow dwellers’ Senmite was rougher than that of the people in Sky, and quicker spoken. They had less patience for long, flowery verbal constructions, and their new, briefer constructions contained additional layers of attitude. I began adjusting my own speech to suit.
“Got it,” I said. “Then?”
&nb
sp; She shrugged. “I sell them at the Sun Market. Or give ’em away, if people can’t pay.” She glanced at me, looking me up and down, and then snorted. “You could pay.”
I looked down at myself. The black clothing I had manifested back in Sky was filthy and stank, but it was made of fine-quality cloth, and the shirt and pants and shoes all matched, unlike her clothes. I supposed I did look wealthy. “But I don’t have any money.”
“So get a job,” she replied, and resumed work.
I sighed and moved to sit down on a closed muckbin, which squelched when my weight bore down on it. “Guess I’ll have to. Know anyone who might need” — I considered what skills I had that might be valuable to mortals. “Hmm. A thief, a juggler, or a killer?”
The girl stopped again, looking hard at me, and then folded her arms. “You a godling?”
I blinked in surprise. “Yes, actually. How did you know?”
“Only they ask those kinds of crazy questions.”
“Oh. Have you met many godlings?”
She shrugged. “A few. You going to eat me?”
I frowned, blinking. “Of course not.”
“Fight me? Steal something? Turn me into something else? Torture me to death?”
“Dear gods, why would I—” But then it occurred to me that some of my siblings were capable of all that and worse. We were not the gentlest of families. “None of those things are my nature, don’t worry.”
“All right.” She turned back to examine something she’d found, which I thought might be an old roof shingle. With an annoyed sigh, she tossed it aside. “You’re not going to get many worshippers, though, just sitting there like that. You should do something more interesting.”
I sighed and drew my legs up, wrapping arms around them. “I don’t have a lot of interesting left in me.”
“Hmm.” Straightening, the girl pulled off her stupid hat and mopped her brow. Without it, I saw that she was Amn, her white-blonde curls cropped short and held back with cheap-looking barrettes. She looked ten or eleven, though I saw more years than that in her eyes. Fourteen, maybe. She hadn’t eaten enough in those years, and it showed, but I could still feel the childhood in her.
“Hymn,” she said. A name. My skepticism must have shown, because she rolled her eyes. “Short for Hymnesamina.”
“I like the longer name, actually.”
“I don’t.” She looked me up and down perfunctorily. “You’re not bad-looking, you know. Skinny, but you can fix that.”
I blinked again, wondering if this was some sort of flirtation. “Yes, I know.”
“Then you’ve got another skill besides thieving, juggling, and killing.”
I sighed, feeling very tired. “No whoring.”
“You sure? You’d make a lot more money than with the rest, except killing, and you don’t look very tough.”
“Looks mean nothing for a god.”
“But they do mean something to mortals. You want to make money as a killer, you need to look like one.” She folded her arms. “I know a place where they’d let you pick your clients, you being what you are. If you can make yourself look Amn, you’d make even more.” She cocked her head, considering this. “Or maybe the foreign look is better. I don’t know. Not my thing.”
“I just need enough to buy food.” But I would need more mortal things as I grew older, wouldn’t I? There would come a time — soon, probably — when I would no longer be able to conjure clothing or necessities, and someday shelter would be more than just a pleasant accessory. Winters in central Senm could kill mortals. I sighed again, resting my cheek on my knees.
Hymn sighed, too. “Whatever. Well … see you.” She turned and headed toward the mouth of the alley — then froze, her gaze going sharp and alarmed. Her tension thickened the already-ripe air further when she stepped back, out of the alley’s entrance and into the shadows.
This was just enough to pull me out of my mood. I uncurled and watched her. “Muggers, bullies, or parents?”
“Muckrakers,” she said, so softly that no mortal would have heard her, but she knew I could.
By the way she said it, I realized she expected me to know what muckrakers were. I could guess, though. There was money to be made from any city’s refuse, from charging to get rid of it to selling its useful bits. Curious, I hopped up and came over to where she was standing, out of the slanting light from the torchlamps. When I peeked around her at the street beyond, I saw a group of men near an old mulecart, on the other side of the potholed street. Two of them were laughing and hefting muckbins, dumping them into the cart; two more stood idle, talking, while a fifth was in the cart with a pitchfork and a mask over his face, stirring something that steamed.
I glanced down at the junk in Hymn’s bag. “Would they really begrudge you a few small things?”
She glared at me. “The muckrakers don’t care if it’s just a little bit; it’s theirs. They pay the Order for the rights, and they don’t like it when anybody messes with what’s theirs. They warned me once already.” Despite her show of anger, I could smell the fear underneath. She looked past me, around the alley, but there was no way out. It stood at the intersection of three buildings, and the nearest window was twenty feet up. She could try to sneak out of the alley, and there was a chance the men wouldn’t see her. They were preoccupied with their work and chatter. But if they spotted her, she would not get far with her misshapen foot.
The men were a rough-smelling crew, even without the stench of refuse, and had the unmistakable look of people who have no qualms against harming a child. I bared my teeth at them, for I had always hated such mortals.
At this stirring of my old self, I began to grin.
“Hey!” I shouted. Beside me, Hymn jumped and gasped, whirling to try and escape. I caught her arm and held her in place so they would see her. Sure enough, when the muckrakers looked around, they spotted me — but it was the sight of Hymn that made them scowl.
“What the hells are you doing?” she cried, trying to jerk free.
“It’s all right,” I murmured. “I won’t let them hurt you.” The men near the wagon were turning now, heading toward us with purposeful strides and dire intent. Only three of them, though; the two who’d been working had stopped to watch. I grinned at them and raised my voice again. “Hey, you like shit, right? Have some!” And I turned and yanked my pants down to flash my backside. Hymn moaned.
The muckrakers shouted, and even the two who’d been watching ran around the wagons, the whole lot charging toward our little alley. Laughing, I pulled my pants up and grabbed Hymn’s arm again. “Come on!” I said, and hauled her toward the back of the alley.
“Where —” She couldn’t get out more than that, stumbling over a pile of fungus-covered firewood that someone had dumped between the muckbins. I helped her stay upright, then hauled her back until we were pressed against the alley’s rear wall. A moment later, the alley, already dim, went darker still as the men’s silhouettes blocked the torchlamps.
“What the hells is this?” one of the men asked Hymn. “We warn you not to steal our stuff, and you not only come back but also bring a friend? Huh?” He stepped over the funguswood, clenching his fists; the others closed in behind him.
“I didn’t mean …” Hymn’s voice trembled as she started to speak to the men.
“This girl is under my protection,” I said, stepping in front of her. I was grinning like a madman; I felt power around me like a wafting shroud. Mischief is a heady thing, sweeter than any wine. “Never touch her again.”
The lead man stopped, staring at me in disbelief. “And who in demons are you, brat?”
I closed my eyes and inhaled in pleasure. How long had it been since anyone had called me a brat? I laughed and let go of Hymn and spread my arms, and at the touch of my will, the lids blasted off every bin and crate in the alley. The men cried out, but it was too late; they were mine to toy with.
“I am the son of chaos and death,” I said. They all heard me, as intimate
ly as if I’d spoken into their ears, despite the noise of their startled cries and the falling lids. A brisk wind had begun to blow through the alley, stirring the looser refuse and blowing dust into all our eyes. I squinted and grinned. “I know all the rules in the games of pain. But I will be merciful now, because it pleases me. Consider this a warning.”
And I curled my fingers into claws. The bins exploded, the refuse contained in each rising into the air and swirling and churning in a circle, a hurricane of debris and foulness that surrounded the five men and herded them together. When I brought my hands together in a clap, all of it sucked inward — plastering them from head to toe with every disgusting substance mortalkind has ever produced. I made sure a bit of my own ordure was in there, too.
I could have been truly cruel. They’d meant to hurt Hymn, after all. I could have shattered the fungus log and speared them with spore-covered splinters. I could have broken their bodies into pieces and stuffed the whole mess back into the bins, muck and all. But I was having fun. I let them live.
They screamed — though some of them had the wit to keep their mouths closed for fear of what the scream would let in — and flailed at themselves with remarkable vigor given what their jobs entailed. But I supposed it was one thing to shovel and haul shit; quite another to bathe in it. I had made certain the stuff went into their clothes and various crevices of their bodies. A good trick is all about the details.
“Remember,” I said, stalking forward. Those who could see me, because they had managed to get the muck out of their eyes, yelled and grabbed their still-blind companions and stumbled back. I let them go and grinned, and made a chunk of wood spin like a top on one of my fingertips. A waste of magic, yes, but I wanted to enjoy being strong for however long it lasted. “Never touch her again, or I will find you. Now go!” I stomped at them, mock-threatening, but they were horrified and wise enough to scream and turn and run out of the alley, some of them tripping and slipping in the slime. They fled down the street, leaving behind their wagon and mule. I heard them yelling in the distance.