After our talk, Deka rose. An hour or so had passed. Beyond the laboratory windows, the sun had moved through noon into afternoon. I was hungry again, damn it, but no one had brought food. Perhaps there were no servants in this place where learning created its own hierarchy.
As if guessing my thought (though my stomach had also rumbled loudly), Deka went to a cabinet and opened a drawer, taking out several flat loaves of bread and a chub of dry sausage. He began slicing this on a board. “So why have you come? It can’t just have been to see an old friend.”
He still thought of me as a friend. I tried not to let him see how this affected me. “I did just want to see you, believe it or not. I wondered how you’d turned out.”
“You can’t have wondered all that hard, since it took you two years to come.”
I winced. “After Shahar, what happened with her, I mean … I didn’t want to see you, because I was afraid that you would be … like her.” Deka said nothing, still working on the food. “I thought you would be back in Sky by now, though.”
“Why?”
“Shahar. She made a deal with your mother to bring you home.”
“And you thought I would go as soon as my sister snapped her fingers?”
I faltered silent, confused. As I sat there, Deka turned back to me and brought the sausage and bread over, setting it before me as if he were a servant and not an Arameri. No poor man’s gristle-and-scraps here, I found when I took a slice. The sausage was sweet and redolent of cinnamon, bright yellow in color per the local style. The Litaria might make Remath Arameri’s son serve his own food, but the food was at least suited to his station. He’d brought a flask of wine, too, light and strong, of equal quality.
“Mother sent a letter shortly after you left Sky, inquiring as to when I might return,” Deka said, sitting in the chair across from me and taking a slice of meat for himself. He swallowed and uttered a short, sour laugh. “I responded with a letter of my own, explaining that I intended to remain until I’d completed my research.”
I burst out laughing at his audacity. “You told her you’d come back when you were good and ready, is that it? And she didn’t force you home?”
“No.” Deka’s expression darkened further. “But she had Shahar write to me, asking the same question.”
“And you said?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
He sat back in his chair, crossing his legs and toying with the glass of wine in his fingers. I didn’t like that pose for him; it reminded me too much of Ahad. “There was no need. It was a warning. Shahar’s letter said, ‘I am told the standard course of study at the Litaria is ten years. Surely you can finish your research within that time?’”
“A deadline.”
He nodded. “Two years to wrap up my affairs here and go back to Sky — or, no doubt, Mother’s willingness to let me return would expire.” He spread his hands. “This is my tenth year.”
I thought of what he’d told me and shown me. The strange new magic he’d developed, his vow to become Shahar’s weapon. “You’re going back, then.”
“I leave in a month.” He shrugged. “I should arrive by midsummer.”
“Two months’ traveling time?” I frowned. The Litaria was a sovereign territory within the sleepy agrarian land of Wiru, in southern Senm. (That way only a few farmers would die if the place ever blew to the heavens.) Sky was not that far. “You’re a scrivener. Draw a gate sigil.”
“I don’t actually need to; the Litaria has a permanent gate that can be configured to Sky’s. But to travel that way would make it seem as though I was afraid of assault. There is the family pride to consider. And more importantly, I will not slink to Sky quietly, like a bad dog finally allowed back into the house.” He sipped from his glass of wine. Over the rim, his eyes were dark and colder than I’d ever expected to see. “Let Mother and the rest of them see what they have chosen to create by sending me here. If they will not love me, fear is an acceptable substitute.”
For a moment I was stunned. This was not at all the Deka I remembered, but then, he was no longer a child, and he had never been a fool. He knew as well as I did what he was going back to in Sky. I could not blame him for hardening himself to
prepare for it. But I did mourn, just a little, for the sweet boy I’d first known.
At least he had not become what I’d feared, though: a monster, worthy only of death.
Yet.
At my silence, Deka glanced up, gazing at me just a moment too long. Did he sense my unease? Did he
want
me to feel uneasy?
“So … what will you do?” I asked. I fought the urge to stammer.
He shrugged. “I informed Mother that I would be traveling overland and made note of the route. Then I sent it by standard courier, with only the usual privacy sigils in the seal.”
I whistled with a lightheartedness that I didn’t feel. “Every highblood in Sky will have seen it, then.” I frowned. “These mask-wielding assassins, though … And gods, Deka, if any of
your relatives
want you dead, you’ve given them a map for the best places to ambush you!”
“And if Mother stints me on an appropriate guard compliment, that’s precisely what will happen.” He shrugged. “As head, she must be seen to at least
try
to protect the Central Family, the Matriarch’s bloodline. To do any less would make her unfit to lead. So she’ll likely send a whole legion to escort me — thus the two months of travel.”
“Caught in your own trap. Poor Deka.” He smiled, and I grinned back. Yet I found myself sobering. “What if there
is
an attack, though? Assassins, regardless who sends them? A legion of enemy soldiers?”
“I’ll be fine.”
There was arrogance, and there was stupidity. “You should be afraid, Deka, no matter how powerful you’ve become. I’ve seen this mask magic. It’s like nothing the Litaria has prepared you for.”
“I’ve seen Shevir’s notes, and the Litaria has been closely involved in the investigation into this new magical form. The masks are like scrivening, like the gods’ language: merely a symbolic representation of a concept. Once one understands this, it is possible to develop a countermeasure.” He shrugged. “And these mask makers don’t know anything about
my
new magical form. No one does but me. And now you.”
“Um. Oh.” I fell silent again, awkwardly.
Abruptly, Deka smiled. “I like this,” he said, nodding toward me. “You’re different now, not just physically. Not so much the brat. Now you’re more …” He thought a moment.
“Heartless bastard?” I smiled. “Obnoxious ass?”
“Tired,” he said, and I sobered. “Unsure of yourself. The old you is still there, but it’s almost buried under other things. Fear, most noticeably.”
Inexplicably, the words stung. I stared back at him, wondering why.
His expression softened, a tacit apology. “It must be hard for you. Facing death, when you’re a creature of so much life.”
I looked away. “If mortals can do it, I can.”
“Not all mortals do, Sieh. You haven’t drunk yourself to death yet, or flung yourself into dangerous situations, or killed yourself in any of a hundred other ways. Considering that death is a new reality for you, you’re handling it remarkably well.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes boring
into my own. “But the biggest change is that you’re not happy anymore. You were always lonely; I saw that even as a child. But the loneliness wasn’t destroying you back then. It is now.”
I flinched back from him, my thoughts moving from stunned toward affronted, but they lacked the strength to go all the way there, instead flopping somewhere in between. A lie came to my lips, and died. All that remained was silence.
A hint of the old self-deprecation crossed Deka’s face; he smiled ruefully. “I still want to help you, but I’m not sure if I can. You aren’t sure you like me anymore, for one thing.”
“I —” I blurted. Then I got up and walked away from him, over to one of the windows. I had to. I didn’t know what to say or how to act, and I didn’t want him to say anything else. If I’d still had my power, I would have simply left the Litaria. Maybe the mortal realm entirely. As it was, the best I could do was flee across the room.
His sigh followed me, but he said nothing for a long while. In that silence, I began to calm down. Why was I so agitated? I felt like a child again, one with jittery buttons dancing on his skin, like in an old Teman tale I’d heard. By the time Deka spoke, I was almost myself again. Well, not
myself
. But human, at least.
“You came to us all those years ago because you needed something, Sieh.”
“Not two little mortal brats,” I snapped.
“Maybe not. But we gave you something that you needed, and you came back for it twice more. And in the end, I was right. You
did
want our friendship. I’ve never forgotten what you said that day: ‘
Friendships can transcend childhood, if the friends
continue to trust each other as they grow older and change.
’” I heard him shift in his chair, facing my back. “It was a warning.”
I sighed, rubbing my eyes. The meat and bread sat uneasily in my belly. “It was sentimental rambling.”
“Sieh.” How could he know so much, so young? “You were planning to kill us. If we became the kind of Arameri who once made your life hell — if we betrayed your trust — you knew you would
have
to kill us. The oath, and your nature, would have required it. You told us that because you didn’t want to. You wanted real friends. Friends who would last.”
Had that been it? I laughed hopelessly. “And now I’m the one who won’t last much longer.”
“Sieh —”
“If it was like you say, I would have killed Shahar, Deka. Because she betrayed me. She knew I loved her, and she used me. She …” I paused, then looked up at the reflection in the window. My own face in the foreground, pinched and tired, too big as always, shaped wrong, old. I had never understood why so many mortals found me attractive in this shape. In the background, watching me from the couch on which he sat, Deka. His eyes met mine in the glass.
“I slept with her,” I said, to hurt him. To shut him up. “I was her first, in fact. Little Lady Shar, so perfect, so cute. You should have heard her moan, Deka; it was like hearing the Maelstrom itself sing.”
Deka only smiled, though it seemed forced. “I heard about Mother’s plan.” He paused. “Is that why you didn’t kill Shahar? Because it was Mother’s plan and not hers?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why I didn’t kill her. There was no why. I do what feels good.” I rubbed my temples, where a headache had begun.
“And you didn’t feel like murdering the girl you loved.”
“Gods, Deka!” I rounded on him, clenching my fists. “Why are we talking about this?”
“So it was just lust? The god of childhood leaps on the first half-grown woman he meets who’s willing?”
“No, of course not!”
He sighed and got to his feet. “She was just another Arameri, then, forcing you into her bed?” The look on his face showed that he didn’t remotely believe that. “You wanted her. You loved her. She broke your heart. And you didn’t kill her because you love her still. Why does that trouble you so?”
“It doesn’t,” I said. But it did. It shouldn’t have. Why did it matter to me that some mortal had done precisely what I’d expected her to do? A god should not care about such things. A god …
…should not need a mortal to be happy.
Gods. Gods. What was wrong with me? Gods.
Deka sighed and came over to me. There were many things in his eyes: compassion. Sorrow. Anger, though not at me. Exasperation. And something more. He stopped in front of me, and I was not as surprised as I should have been that he lifted a hand to cup my cheek. I did not pull away, either. As I should have.
“
I
will not betray you,” he murmured, much too softly. This was not the way a friend spoke to a friend. His fingertips rasped along the edge of my jaw. This was not the touch of a friend. But — I did not think — Oh, gods, was he …
“I’m not going anywhere, either. I have waited so long for you, Sieh.”
I started, confused, remembering. “Wait, where did you hear —”
Then he kissed me, and I fell.
Into him. Or he enveloped me. There are no words for such things, not in any mortal language, but I will try, I will try to encapsulate it, confine it, define it, because my mind does not work the way it once did and I want to understand, too. I want to remember. I want to taste again his mouth, spicy and meaty and a little sweet. He had always been sweet, especially that first day, when he’d looked into my eyes and begged me to help them. I craved his sweetness. His mouth opened and I delved into it, meeting him halfway. I had blessed him that day, hadn’t I? Perhaps that was why, now, the purest of magic surged through him and down my throat, flooding my belly, overflowing my nerves until I gasped and tried to cry out, but he would not let my mouth go. I tried to back away but the window was there. We could not travel to other realms safely. My only choice was to release the magic or be destroyed. So I opened my eyes.
Every lantern in the room flared like a bonfire, then burst in a cloud of sparks. The walls shook, the floor heaved. One of the shelves on a nearby bookcase collapsed, spilling thick tomes to the floor. I heard the window frame rattle ominously at my back, and someone on the floor above cried out in alarm. Then Deka ended the kiss, and the world was still again.