The Kingdom of Gods

  “Out,” she said. “Now.”

  Wrath alone looked at Remath, who said nothing. Ramina and Morad held still for a breath, perhaps also waiting to see if Remath would counter Shahar’s command, but they carefully did not look at either woman. It was never wise to take sides in a battle between the head and heir. As soon as it was clear that Remath would not intervene, they left. The chamber’s heavy doors swung shut with an echoing silence.

  Shahar glared at Dekarta, who had gotten to his feet as well but remained where he was, his face set and hard. “No,” he said.

  “How dare you —”

  “Mark me,” he snapped, and she flinched, silent. “Put a true sigil on me, geld me like Ramina. Do this if you want me to obey. Otherwise, no.”

  Shahar’s lips tightened so much that I saw them turn white under the rouge. She was angry enough to say the words — in front of Remath, who might not let her take them back. Fools, her and Deka both. They were too young to play this game yet.

  With a sigh I strode forward, stopping between and to one side of them. “You took the oath to each other as well,” I said, and they both glared at me. If Remath had not been there, I would have cuffed them like the squabbling brats they were, but for the sake of their dignity, I merely glared back.

  With a dismissive hmmph, Shahar turned her back on us, striding up to the foot of the dais that held her mother’s chair. She stopped when they were eye to eye.

  “You will not do this,” she said, her voice low and tight. “You will not make plans for your own death.”

  Remath sighed. Then, to my surprise, she stood and walked down the steps until she stood before Shahar. They were of a height, I saw. Shahar might never be as full in breast or hip, but she did not turn aside as her mother drew near, her gaze clear and angry. Remath looked her up and down and slowly, smiled.

  Then she embraced Shahar.

  I gaped. So did Deka. So did Shahar, who stood stiff within her mother’s arms, her face a study in shock. Remath’s palms pressed flat against Shahar’s back. She even rested her cheek on Shahar’s shoulder, closing her eyes for just a moment. At last, with a reluctance that could not be feigned, she spoke.

  “The Arameri must change,” she said again. “This is too little, and perhaps too late — but you have always had my love, Shahar. I am willing to admit that, here, in front of others, because that, too, is part of the change we must make. And because it is true.” She pulled back then, her hands lingering on Shahar’s arms until distance forced her to let go. I had the sense that she would have preferred not to. Then she glanced at Deka.

  Deka’s jaw flexed, his hands clenching into fists at his sides, and though I doubt anyone else saw it, the marks on his body, beneath his clothing, flared in black warning. Remath would get no welcome there. She sighed, nodding to herself as if she’d expected nothing more. Her sorrow was so plain that I didn’t know what to think. Arameri did not show their feelings so honestly. Was this some sort of trick? But it did not feel like one.

  Her eyes fell on me then, and lingered. Uneasily I wondered if she would try to hug me, too. If she did, I decided I would goose her.

  “You will not distract me, Mother,” Shahar said. “Are you mad? Another palace? Why are you sending me away?”

  Remath shook off the moment of candor, her face resuming its usual family head mask. “Sky is an obvious and valuable target. Anyone who wants to damage Arameri influence in the world knows to come here. Just one masked assassin through the Gate would be sufficient; even if no one is harmed, the fact that our privacy can be breached would show our every potential enemy that we are vulnerable.” She turned away from us, heading over to the windows, and sighed at the city and mountains beyond. A branch of the Tree arced away, miles long. The blossoms had begun to disintegrate, the Tree’s time of flowering having ended. Petals floated away from the branch, dancing along an air current in a winding trail.

  “And our enemies include a god,” she said. “So we must take radical steps to protect ourselves, for the world still needs us. Even if it thinks otherwise.” She glanced back at us over her shoulder. “This is a contingency, Shahar. I have no intention of dying anytime soon.”

  Shahar — stupid, gullible girl — actually looked relieved.

  “That’s all well and good,” I said, rolling my eyes, “but building a secret palace is impossible. You’ll need workers, crafters, suppliers, and unless you mean for Shar and Deka to scrub their own toilets, servants. You don’t exactly have enough of those to go around here in Sky, so that means hiring locals from wherever your new palace is situated. There’s no way to keep a secret with that many people involved, even with magic.” Then it occurred to me how she could keep the secret. “And you can’t have them all murdered.”

  Remath lifted an eyebrow. “I could, actually, but as you’ve guessed, that would leave its own trail of questions to be answered. Such crimes are more difficult to hide these days.” She nodded sardonically to me, and I smiled bitterly back, because once it had been my job to help erase the evidence of Arameri atrocities.

  “In any case,” Remath said, “I have found another way.”

  Beyond the windows, the sun had begun to set. It hadn’t touched the horizon yet, and there were still a good twenty minutes or so to go before twilight officially began. This, I would later realize, when I recovered from the shock, was why Remath murmured a soft prayer of apology before she spoke aloud.

  “Lady Yeine,” she said, “please hear me.”

  My mouth fell open. Shahar gasped.

  “I hear,” Yeine said, appearing before us all.

  And Remath Arameri — head of the family that had remade the world in Bright Itempas’s name, great-granddaughter of a man who had thrown Enefa’s worshippers off the Pier for fun, many-times-great-granddaughter of the woman who had brought about Enefa’s death — dropped to one knee before Yeine, with her head bowed.

  I went over to Remath. My eyes were defective; they had to be. I leaned closer to peer at her but detected no illusion. I hadn’t mistaken someone else for her.

  I looked up at Yeine, who looked positively gleeful.

  “No,” I said, stunned.

  “Yes,” she replied. “A fine trick, wouldn’t you say?”

  Then she turned to Shahar and Dekarta, who kept looking from her to their mother and back at Yeine. They didn’t understand. I didn’t want to.

  “I will build your new palace,” she said to all of us. “In exchange, the Arameri will now worship me.”

  17

  IT WAS SIMPLE, REALLY.

  The Arameri had served Itempas for two thousand years. But Itempas was now useless as a patron, and Yeine was family, of a sort. I suppose that was how Remath rationalized it to herself — if she’d needed to. Perhaps it had been nothing more than pragmatism for her. Devout Arameri had always been rare. In the end, all most of them truly believed in was power.

  We would travel to the site of the new palace at dawn, Remath told us. There Yeine would build it according to Remath’s specifications, and the Arameri would enter a new era in their long and incredible history.

  I exited the audience chamber with the rest of them, leaving Remath and Yeine alone to discuss whatever family heads discussed with their new patron goddesses. Wrath, Morad, and Ramina, who had waited in the corridor outside, were called in as Shahar, Deka, and I left, probably to make their obeisance to Yeine as well. No doubt they would have tasks to complete by morning, as they would be traveling to the new palace with us. We would also take a minimal complement of guards, courtiers, and servants, because — according to Remath — we would need no more than that to establish ourselves. Shahar and Deka, respectively, were to choose those members of the family and the various corps who would accompany us. Unspoken in all of this was the fact that anyone who traveled to the new palace, for reasons of secrecy, might never be permitted to return.

  I informed Shahar that I had business in Shadow for a few hours and left. The Vertic
al Gate had been reconfigured in the days since the attack. Now it was set by default to transport in one direction only — away from the palace — and returning required a password sent via a special messaging sphere, which I was given as I prepared to leave. The scrivener on duty, who stood among the soldiers guarding the gate, solemnly reminded me not to lose the sphere, because I would be killed by magic the instant I stepped onto the Gate without it, or killed by the soldiers should I survive and somehow manage the transit, anyway. I made sure I didn’t lose the sphere.

  That done, I traveled to South Root, where I notified first Hymn and then Ahad that I would be staying at Sky for the time being.

  Hymn was more subdued about this than I’d expected, though her parents were plainly overjoyed to see the back of me. Hymn said little as she helped me pack my meager belongings; everything I owned fit into a single cloth satchel. But when I turned to go, she caught my hand and pressed two things into it. The first was a glass knife, the same faded-leaves color as my eyes. She had clearly worked on it for some time; the blade had been polished to mirror smoothness, and she’d even managed to fit it with a brass kitchen-knife handle. The other thing she gave me was a handful of tiny beads in different sizes and colors, each made from glass or polished stone, each etched with infinitesimal lines of clouds or continents. They had holes bored through them to go onto my necklace alongside En.

  “How did you know?” I asked as she spilled them into my hand.

  “Know what?” She looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “I just remembered that old rhyme about you. About how you stole the sun for a prank? I figured, suns need planets, don’t they?”

  Pathetic, compared to my lost orrery. Magnificent, given the love that had gone into making them. She turned away when I clutched them to my chest, though I managed — just — not to cry in front of her.

  Ahad was in an odder state when I found him at the Arms of Night. As it was afternoon at the time, and the house was about to open for its usual leisurely business, I had expected to find him in his offices. He was on the back porch, however, and instead of his usual cheroot, he held a plucked flower, turning it contemplatively in his fingers. By the troubled expression on his face, the contemplations were not going well.

  “Good,” was all he said when I informed him that I was moving back to Sky, and that the Arameri had become Yeinans instead of Itempans, and that, by the way, there was going to be a new palace somewhere.

  “Good? That’s all you have to say?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought of the half-dozen slurs and insults he should’ve thrown at me in place of that quiet affirmative, and frowned. Something was wrong. But I could not exactly ask him whether he was all right. He would laugh at my attempted concern.

  So I tried a different tack. “They’re yours, you know. Shahar, Dekarta. Your grandchildren. Great-grand, actually.”

  This, at least, drew his attention. He frowned at me. “What?”

  I shrugged. “I assume you slept with T’vril Arameri’s wife before you left Sky.”

  “I slept with half of Sky before I left. What does that have to do with anything?”

  I stared at him. “You really don’t know.” And here I’d thought he’d done it as part of some scheme. I frowned, putting my hands on my hips. “Why the hells did you leave Sky anyhow? Last I saw, you were on the brink of being adopted into the Central Family, maneuvering your way toward becoming the next family head. A bare century later, you’re a whoremonger, living among the commonfolk in the seediest part of town?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I got tired of it.”

  “Got tired of what?”

  “All of it.” Ahad looked away now, toward the center of town — and the great omnipresent bulk of the World Tree, a brown and green shadow limned by the slanting afternoon sun. Almost hidden in the first crotch of the trunk was a glimmer of pearlescent white: Sky.

  “I got tired of the Arameri.” Ahad turned the flower again. It looked like something common — a dandelion, one of the few flowers that still bloomed in Shadow’s dimness. He’d apparently plucked it from between the walkway stones that led up to the back door. I wondered why he was so fascinated by it. “T’vril married a fullblood to cement his rule. She was his third cousin on his father’s side or something. Didn’t give a damn about him, and the feeling was mutual. I seduced her on behalf of a branch family from outside Sky; they wanted their own girl married to T’vril instead. I needed the capital to boost my investments. So I took the money that they offered and made sure he found out about the affair. He wasn’t even upset.” His lip curled.

  I nodded, slowly. It amazed me that it had taken so much for him to understand. “Not much different from what you did when we were slaves.”

  Ahad’s glare was sharp and dangerous. “It was by my choice. That makes all the difference in the world.”

  “Does it?” I leaned against one of the porch columns, folding my arms. “Being used one way or another — does it really feel all that different?”

  He fell silent. That, and the fact that he’d left Sky afterward, was answer enough. I sighed.

  “T’vril’s wife must’ve been pregnant when you left.” I would look up the timing when I got back to Sky, though that was hardly necessary. Deka was all the evidence that mattered.

  “I can’t have children.” He said it wearily, with the air of something often repeated. Did so many women want his bitter, heartless seed? Amazing.

  “You couldn’t,” I said, “not while there was no goddess of life and death. Not while you were part of Naha, just a half-time reflection of him. But Yeine made you whole. She gave you the gift that gods lost when Enefa died. We all regained it when Yeine took Enefa’s place.” Except me, I did not add, but he already knew that.

  Ahad frowned at the flower that dangled in his fingers, considering. “A child …?” He let out a soft chuckle. “Well, now.”

  “A son, I’m told.”

  “A son.” Was there regret in his voice? Or just a different sort of apathy? “Come unknown and gone already.”

  “A demon, you fool,” I said. “And Remath, Shahar, and Dekarta are probably demons as well.” How far removed from a godly forbear did mortals have to be before their blood lost its deadly potency? Shahar and Dekarta were one-eighth god, and their blood had not killed me. Could only a few generations make such a difference? We had all overestimated the danger of the demons, if that was the case — but then, no god would ever have been stupid enough to sample a possible demon’s blood and find out.

  Ahad chuckled again. This time it was low and malicious. “Are they, now? From god-enslavers to god-killers. The Arameri are so endlessly interesting.”

  I stared at him. “I will never understand you.”

  “No, you won’t.” He sighed. “Keep me apprised on everything. Use the damned messaging sphere I gave you; don’t just play with it or whatever it is you do.”

  As this was positively friendly by his standards, and I was tired of the flower silliness, I finally gave in to my curiosity. “You all right?”

  “No. But I’m not interested in talking about it.”

  Ordinarily I would have left him to his brooding. But there was something about him in that moment — a peculiar sort of weight to his presence, a taste on the air — that intrigued me. Because he wasn’t paying any attention to me, I touched him. And because he was so absorbed in whatever he was thinking about, he allowed this.

  A lick of something, like fire without pain. The world breathed through both of us, quickening —

  At this point, Ahad noticed me and knocked my hand away, glaring. I smiled back. “So you’ve found your nature?”

  His glare became a frown so guarded that I couldn’t tell whether he was confused or just annoyed again. Had I guessed correctly, or had he not realized what he was feeling? Or both?

  Then something else occurred to me. I opened my mouth to breathe his scent, tasting the familiar disturbed ethers as best I could
with my atrophied senses. Particularly around that flower. Yes, I was sure.

  “Glee’s been here,” I said, thoughtful. She had worn the flower in her hair, to judge by the scent. I could tell more than that, actually — such as the fact that she and Ahad had recently made love. Was that what had him in such a mood? I held off on teasing him about this, however, because he already looked ready to smite.

  “Weren’t you going somewhere?” he asked, pointedly and icily. His eyes turned darker, and the air around us rippled in blatant warning.

  “Back to Sky, please,” I said, and before I finished the sentence, he’d thrown me across existence. I chuckled as I detached from the world, though he would hear it and my laughter would only piss him off. But Ahad had his revenge. I appeared ten feet above the daystone floor, in one of the most remote areas of the underpalace. The fall broke my wrist, which forced me to walk half an hour for a healing script from the palace scriveners.

  There had been no progress on determining who had sent the assassins, the scriveners informed me in terse, monosyllabic responses when I questioned them. (They had not forgotten that I’d killed their previous chief, but there was no point in my apologizing for it.) They were hard at work, however, determining how the masks functioned. In the vast, open laboratory that housed the palace’s fifty or so scriveners, I could see that several of the worktables had been allocated to the crimson mask pieces, and an elaborate framework had been set up to house the white mask. I did not see the mortal to whom the white mask had been attached, but it was not difficult to guess his fate. Most likely the scriveners had the corpse somewhere more private, dissecting it for whatever secrets it might hold.

  Once my wrist was done, I returned to my quarters and stuffed the clothes and toiletries Morad had given me into Hymn’s satchel and was thus packed.

  The sun had set while I did my business in Shadow. Night brought forth Sky’s glow in unmarked stillness. I left my room, feeling inexplicably restless, and wandered the corridors. I could have opened a wall, gone into the dead spaces, but those weren’t wholly mine anymore; I did not want them now. The servants and highbloods I passed in the corridors noticed me, and some recognized me, but I ignored their stares. I was only one murderous god, and a paltry one at that. Once, four had walked the halls. These mortals didn’t know how lucky they were.