The Kingdom of Gods (43 page)

The whole tavern was silent as I stumbled out after Glee.

She turned to walk with me as I reached the foot of the steps. I had not drunk so much that I couldn’t walk, but steadiness was another matter. As I had expected, Glee made no compensation for my weaving and stumbling, and for the first block or so, I lagged about three paces behind her. “Your legs are very long,” I complained. She was almost a foot taller than me.

“Make yours longer.”

“I can’t. My magic is gone.”

“Then move them faster.”

I sighed and did so. Gradually I drew alongside her. “Did you inherit anything from your mother? Or are you just him done over with breasts?”

“I have my mother’s sense of humor.” She glanced at me, contempt clear in her face. “I expected rather more of
you
, though.”

I sighed. “I’ve had a hard day.”

“Yes. When you cut off the messaging sphere, Ahad asked me to find you. He suggested I search the gutters. I suppose I should be glad he was wrong about that.”

I laughed, though a moment later my laughter faltered silent and I glared at her, affronted. “Why are you doing his bidding? Aren’t you his boss? And what does it matter if I relax a little? I’ve spent the past two years running that bastard’s errands, trying to help that pathetic little group of his keep this world from falling apart. Don’t I deserve a night off?”

She stopped. By this point we stood on a quiet street corner in a residential neighborhood. It was late enough that no one was about. Which is perhaps why, for just an instant, her eyes seemed to flare red-gold like a struck match. I started, but then they were brown again, and more than a little angry.

“I have spent nearly this past
century
trying to keep this world from falling apart,” she snapped. I blinked in surprise; she looked no older than thirty. I had forgotten that demons usually lived longer than humans, though both were mortal. “I’m not a god. I have no choice but to live in this realm, unlike you. I will do whatever I must to save it — including working with godlings like you who claim to despise Itempas, though in reality you’re just as selfish and arrogant as him at his worst!”

She resumed walking, leaving me behind because I was too stunned to follow. By the time I recovered, she had disappeared around a corner. Furious, I ran after her, only to nearly trip when I rounded the corner and found her there, waiting.

“How dare you!” I hissed the words. “I am nothing like him!”

She sighed, shaking her head, and to my greater fury she
decided not to argue with me. That sort of thing has always driven me mad. “Has it even occurred to you to ask why I came? Or are you too inebriated to think that far?”

“I don’t —”
I blinked. “Why are you here?”

“Because, as Ahad would have told you if you’d given him the chance to finish, we have work to do. Dekarta Arameri is altering and accelerating his route to proceed directly to Shadow in light of the engagement. When he and his escort arrive at Shadow —
tomorrow
, to foil potential troublemakers — there will be a grand procession through the city. Shahar Arameri is scheduled to appear publicly, on the steps of the Salon, for the first time since she gained her majority. The official announcement of the engagement will be made then, before the Nobles’ Consortium and half the city, and Dekarta will be officially welcomed home at the same time. It should be quite the event.”

Despite Glee’s needling, I was not, in fact, too inebriated to think. The Arameri were not given to public spectacle — or at least they hadn’t been during my time of servitude — mainly because it hadn’t been necessary. What could top the glory of their unstated, rarely seen, utterly devastating power? And Sky was symbol enough of who they were. But times had changed, and their power now derived at least partially from their ability to awe the masses who had once been beneath their notice.

And … I shivered as I realized it. What better opportunity could there be for the Arameri’s enemies to strike?

Glee nodded as she saw that I understood at last. “We will need everyone in the city, to watch for trouble.”

I licked my lips, which were suddenly dry. “I don’t have any
magic left,” I said. “Not a drop. I can do a few tricks, things maybe scriveners can do, but that’s nothing much. I’m just a mortal now.”

“Mortals have their uses.” She said this with such delicate irony that I grimaced. “And you love them, don’t you? Shahar and Dekarta.”

I remembered the mask-decayed bodies I had seen two years before, during my disastrous few days in Sky. I tried to imagine Shahar’s and Dekarta’s corpses laid out in the same way, their faces obscured by burned masks and their flesh too destroyed even to rot.

“Take me there,” I said softly. “Wherever you’re going. I want to help.”

She inclined her head and extended a hand to me. I took it before it occurred to me to wonder what she could do. She wasn’t a godling, just a demon. A mortal.

Then her power clamped down on the world around us, taking us in and out of reality with a god’s deft strength. I could not help admiration; she had our father’s touch.

Glee had rented an inn room in the northern Easha section of Shadow, a thriving business district near the city’s center. I realized at once that it was one of the nicer inns — the kind of place I couldn’t afford even on the salary Ahad gave me, and especially not before a major event in the city. It sounded as though there was a large and raucous crowd in the common room downstairs. Every inn in the city was probably filling up as people from the surrounding lands poured in to see the spectacle.
Even Hymn’s place would be getting some business amid this; I was glad, if so. Though hopefully they wouldn’t be so crass as to rent out
my
room.

Glee went to the window and opened the shutters, revealing the reason she’d brought us here. I went to stand beside her and saw that the window overlooked the Avenue of Nobles, at the distant end of which stood the imposing white bulk of the Salon. We had a good view: I could see the tiny figures of people milling about the avenue near the Salon’s wide steps and Order-Keepers in their conspicuously white uniforms setting up barriers to keep the onlookers back. Arameri did not appear in public often, though their faces were known thanks to the Order’s news scrolls and the currency. Everyone in a hundred-mile radius had probably traveled to the city, or was on their way, to catch a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse.

Glee pointed along the avenue in the opposite direction, since it ran past the building we were in. “Dekarta’s procession will enter the city from there. The route hasn’t been published, but it will be in the news scrolls tomorrow morning. That makes it difficult for assassins to plan. But the procession will have to travel along the avenue this far; there’s no other way for a large party to reach the Salon.”

“Which means they might strike anywhere along this street?” I shook my head, incredulous. Even if I’d still had magic, it was an impossible scenario to try and plan for. In the morning, the dozens of mortals around the Salon would have grown to hundreds; by afternoon, when the event was to take place, there would be thousands. How to find just one amid the morass? “Do you know how the assassins get their victims to don the masks?”

“No.” She sighed, and for an instant her stoic face slipped. I realized she was very tired, and troubled. Was Itempas doing nothing, fobbing all the work of protecting the world off on her? Bastard.

Turning from the window, Glee went to the room’s handsome leather chair and sat down. I turned to sit on the windowsill, because I have always been more comfortable on such perches than in any conventional seat.

“So, we stay here until tomorrow, and then … what?” I asked.

“Nemmer has a plan in place,” she said. “Her people have done such things before. She knows how best to utilize the strengths of both godlings and mortals. But since you and I are neither, she’s suggested that perhaps we could contribute most usefully by circulating through the crowd and keeping watch for anything unusual.”

I shifted to prop one leg against the window frame, sighing at her characterization of me. “I still
think
like a godling, you know. I’ve tried to adjust, be more mortal, but —” I spread my hands. “I have been the Trickster for more years than most mortals know how to count. I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to become anything else, in my head.”

She rested her head on the chair back and closed her eyes, evidently planning to sleep there. “Even gods have limits; yours are just different. Do what you can within them.”

Silence fell between us, but for the soft stir of a night breeze through the open window and the mortals in the common room below, who were singing some sort of song in lusty and off-beat cadence. I listened to them for a while, smiling as I recognized the song as a variation on one I’d taught their ancestors. I
hummed the tune along with them until I grew bored, and then I glanced at Glee to see if she was asleep — to find her eyes open, watching me.

So I sighed and decided to address the matter directly. “So, little sister.” She lifted an eyebrow at this, and I smiled. “How old are you?”

“Older than I look, like you.”

Nearly a century, she’d said. “You’re Oree Shoth’s daughter.” I vaguely remembered her. A beautiful mortal girl, blind and brave. She had loved one of my younger brothers, who’d died. And she’d loved Itempas, too, apparently. I couldn’t see him coupling with her otherwise. Ephemeral intimacy offended him.

“Yes.”

“She still call him ‘Shiny’?”

“Oree Shoth is dead.”

“Oh.” I frowned. Something about her phrasing was odd, but I couldn’t figure out what. “I’m sorry.”

Glee was silent for a moment, her gaze disconcertingly direct. Another thing she’d gotten from him. “Are you really?”

“What?”

She crossed her legs primly. “I was always told that you were one of mortalkind’s champions, in the old days. But now you don’t seem to like mortals much.” She shrugged as I scowled. “Understandably. But given that, I can’t see you getting especially upset about one more death.”

“Well, that would mean you don’t know me very well, wouldn’t it?”

To my surprise, she nodded. “That’s precisely what it means.
Which is why I asked: are you sorry for my mother’s death? Honestly.”

Surprised, I closed my mouth and considered my answer. “I am,” I said at last. “I liked her. She had the kind of personality that I think I could’ve gotten along with, if she hadn’t been so devoted to Itempas.” I paused, considering. “Even so, I never would’ve expected him to
respond
to that devotion. Oree Shoth must’ve been pretty special to make him take a chance on a mortal woman again …”

“He left my mother before I was born.”

“He —” Now I stared at her, flummoxed, because that was not at all like him. His heart did not change. But then I remembered another mortal lover and child he’d left behind, centuries ago. It was not his nature to leave, but he could be persuaded to do so, if it was in the best interests of those he cared for.

“Lord Nahadoth and Lady Enefa demanded it,” Glee said, reading my face. “He left only to save her — our — lives. So, later, when I was old enough, I went looking for him. Eventually I found him. I’ve traveled with him ever since.”

“I see.” A tale worthy of the gods, though she wasn’t one of us. And then, because it was in my mind and she knew it was there and there was no point in my trying to conceal the obvious, I asked the question that had hovered between us for the whole two years since we’d met. “What is he like now?”

She took her time answering, appearing to consider her words carefully. “I don’t know what he was like before the War,” she said, “or even during the years of your … incarceration. I don’t know if he’s the same as he was then, or different.”

“He doesn’t change.”

Another of those odd silences. “I think he may have.”

“He
can’t
change. It’s anathema to him.”

She shook her head, with familiar stubbornness. “He can. He did when he killed Enefa, and I believe he’s changed again since. He’s
always
been able to change, and he’s always done it, however slowly or reluctantly, because he’s a living being and change is part of life. Enefa didn’t make it that way; she just took the common qualities her brothers already possessed and put those into the godlings and mortals she created.”