“It isn’t just us, Sieh.” Shahar again, quiet again. “Deka and I
have touched many times, and nothing came of it. It’s only when we touch
you
that there’s any change.”
I nodded bleakly. I had figured that out as well.
Silence fell as they digested everything I’d said. It was broken by the loud grumbling of my empty belly and my louder yawn. At this, Dekarta shifted uncomfortably. “Why did you come here, Sieh? There are no servants this far down, and this room is … foul.” He looked around, his lip curling at the pile of ancient rags.
A foul place for a fouled god
, I thought. “I like it here,” I said. “And I’m too tired to go anywhere else. Go away now, both of you. I need to rest.”
Shahar turned toward the hole in the floor, but Deka lingered. “Come with us,” he said. “Have something to eat, take a bath. There’s a couch in my new quarters.”
I looked up at him and saw the bravery of his effort. I had jarred his fantasies badly, but he would try, even now, to be the friend he’d promised to be.
You are the one who did this to me, beautiful Deka.
I smiled thinly, and he frowned at the sight.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Go on. Let’s all be ready to face your mother in the morning.”
So they left.
As the daystone of the floor resealed itself, I lay down and curled up to sleep, resigning myself to stiffness by morning. But as soon as I closed my eyes, I realized I was no longer alone.
“Are you really afraid of me?” asked Yeine.
I opened my eyes and sat up. She sat cross-legged in my old nest, dainty as always, beautiful even amid rags. The rags were
no longer dry-rotted, however. I could see color and definition returning to what had been a gray mass and could hear the faint tightening of the thread fibers as they regained cohesion and strength. Along one of Yeine’s thighs, a line of barely visible mites had begun to crawl, vanishing over the rise of her flesh. Sent packing, I imagined, or she might be killing them. One never knew with her.
I said nothing in response to her question, and she sighed.
“I don’t care if mortals grow powerful, Sieh. If they do, and they threaten us, I’ll deal with that then. For now” — she shrugged —“maybe it’s a good thing that some of them have magic like this. Maybe that’s what they really need, power of their own, so they can stop being jealous of ours.”
“Don’t tell Naha,” I whispered. At this she sobered and grew silent.
After a moment, she said, “You used to come to me whenever we were alone.”
I looked away. I wanted to. But I knew better.
“Sieh,” she said. Hurt.
And because I loved her too much to let her think the problem was her, I sighed and got up and went over to the nest. Climbing into it brought back memories, and I paused for an instant, overwhelmed by them. Holding Naha on a moonless night — the one time he was safe from both Itempas and the Arameri — as he wept for the Three that had been. Endless hours I’d spent weaving new orbits for my orrery and polishing my Arameri bones. Grinding my teeth as another guard-captain, this one a fullblood and cruel, ordered me to turn over for him. (I had gotten his bones, too, in the end. But they had
not made as good toys as I’d hoped, and eventually I’d tossed them off the Pier.)
And now Yeine, whose presence burned away the bad and burnished the good. I wanted to hold her so much, but I knew what would happen. It amazed me that she didn’t. She was so very young.
She frowned at me in puzzlement, reaching out to cup my cheek. My self-control broke, and I flung myself against her as I had done so many times, burying my face in her breast, gripping the cloth at the back of her vest. It felt so good, too, at first. I felt warm and safe and young. Her arms came around me, and her face pressed into my hair. I was her baby, her son in all but flesh, and the flesh didn’t matter.
But there is always a moment when the familiar becomes strange. It is always there, just a little, between any two beings who love one another as much as she and I. The line is so fine. In one moment I was her child, my head pillowed on her breast in all innocence. In the next I was a man, lonely and hungry, and her breasts were small but full. Female. Inviting.
Yeine tensed. It was barely perceptible, but I had been expecting it. With a long sigh I sat up, letting her go. When her eyes — troubled, uncertain — met mine, I turned away. I am not a complete bastard. For her, I would stay the boy that she needed and not the man I had become.
To my surprise, however, she caught my chin and made me look at her again.
“There is more to this than you being mortal,” she said. “More than you wanting to protect those two children.”
“I want to protect
mortalkind
,” I said. “If Naha finds out what those two can do …”
Yeine shook her head, and shook mine a little, refusing to be distracted. Then she searched my face so intently that I began to be afraid again. She was not Enefa, but …
“You’ve been with Nahadoth and many of your siblings,” she said. Her revulsion crawled along my skin like the evacuating mites. She was trying to resist it, and failing. “I know … things are different, for godkind.”
If she had only been older. Just a few centuries might have been enough to reduce the memory of her mortal life and her mortal inhibitions. I mourned that I would not have time to see her become a true god.
“I was Enefa’s lover, too,” I said softly. I did not look at her at first. “Not … not often. When Itempas and Nahadoth were off together, mostly. When she needed me.”
And because there would be no other time, I looked up at her and let her see the truth.
You might have needed me, too, in time. You’re stronger than Naha and Tempa, but you’re not immune to loneliness. And I have always loved you.
To her very great credit, she did not recoil. I loved her more than ever for that. But she did sigh.
“I’ve felt no urge to have children,” she said, grazing her knuckles along my cheek. I leaned into her touch, closing my eyes. “With so many angry, damaged stepchildren already, it seems foolish to complicate matters further. But also …” I felt her smile, like starlight on my skin. “You are my son, Sieh. It makes no sense. I should be your daughter. But … that’s how I feel.”
I caught her hand and pulled it against my chest so she could feel my mortal heartbeat. I was dying; it made me bold. “If I can be nothing else to you, I am glad to be your son. Truly.”
Her smile turned sad. “But you want more.”
“I always want more. From Naha, from Enefa … even from Itempas.” I sobered at that, shifting to lie against her side. She permitted this, even though it had gone wrong before. A sign of trust. I did not abuse it. “I want things that are impossible. It’s my nature.”
“Never to be satisfied?” Her fingers played with my hair gently.
“I suppose.” I shrugged. “I’ve learned to deal with it. What else can I do?”
She fell silent for so long that I grew sleepy, warm and comfortable with her in the softness of the nest. I thought she might sleep with me — just sleep, nothing more — which I wanted desperately and no longer knew how to ask for. But she, goddess that she was, had other things in mind.
“Those children,” she said at last. “The mortal twins. They make you happy.”
I shook my head. “I barely know them. I befriended them on a whim and fell in love with them by mistake. Those are things children do, but for once I should have thought like a god, not a child.”
She kissed my forehead, and I rejoiced that there was no reticence in the gesture. “Your willingness to take risks is one of the most wonderful things about you, Sieh. Where would you and I be, if not for that?”
I smiled in spite of my mood, which I think was what she’d wanted. She stroked my cheek and I felt happier. Such was her power over me, which I had willingly given.
“They are not such terrible people to love,” Yeine said, her tone thoughtful.
“Shahar is.”
She pulled back a little to look at me. “Hmm. She must have done something terrible to make you so angry.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She nodded, allowing me to sulk for a moment. “Not the boy, though?”
“Dekarta.” She groaned, and I chuckled. “I did the same thing! He’s nothing like his namesake, though.” Then I paused as I considered Deka’s body-markings, his determination to be Shahar’s weapon, and his relentless pursuit of me. “He’s Arameri, though. I can’t trust him.”
“
I’m
Arameri.”
“Not the same. It isn’t an inborn thing. You weren’t raised in this den of weasels.”
“No, I was raised in a different den of weasels.” She shrugged, jostling my head a little. “Mortals are the sum of many things, Sieh. They are what circumstance has made them and what they wish to be. If you must hate them, hate them for the latter, not the former. At least they have some say over that part.”
I sighed. Of course she was right, and it was nothing more than I had argued with my own siblings over the aeons, as we debated — sometimes more than philosophically — whether mortals deserved to exist.
“They are such fools, Yeine,” I whispered. “They squander every gift we give them. I …” I trailed off, trembling inexplicably. My chest ached, as though I might cry. I was a man, and men did not cry — or at least Teman men did not — but I was also a god, and gods cried whenever they felt like it. I wavered on the brink of tears, torn.
“You gave this Shahar your love.” Yeine kept stroking my hair with one hand, absently, which did not help matters. “Was she worthy of it?”
I remembered her, young and fierce, kicking me down the stairs because I’d dared to suggest that she could not determine her own fate. I remembered her later, making love to me on her mother’s orders — but how hungry she’d looked as she held me down and took pleasure from my body! I had not abandoned myself so completely with a mortal for two thousand years.
And as I remembered these things, I felt the knot of anger in me begin to loosen at last.
With a soft, amused chuckle, Yeine disentangled herself from me and sat up. I watched her do this wistfully. “Be a good boy and rest now. And don’t stay up all night thinking. Tomorrow will be interesting. I don’t want you to miss any of it.”
At this I frowned, pushing myself up on one elbow. She ran fingers through her short hair as if to brush it back into place. A hundred years and still so much the mortal: a proper god would simply have willed her hair perfect. And she did not bother to hide the smug look on her face as I peered at her now.
“You’re up to some mischief,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“Indeed I am. Will you bless me?” She got to her feet and
stood smirking with one hand on her hip. “Remath Arameri is as interesting as her children, is all I’ll say for now.”
“Remath Arameri is evil, and I would kill her if Shahar did not love her so.” As soon as I said this, however, Yeine raised an eyebrow, and I grimaced as I realized how much I had revealed — not just to her, but also to myself. For if I loved Shahar enough to tolerate her horror of a mother, then I loved Shahar enough to forgive her.
“Silly boy,” Yeine said with a sigh. “You never do things the easy way, do you?”
I tried to make a joke of it, though the smile was hard to muster. “Not if the hard way is more fun.”
She shook her head. “You almost died today.”
“Not really.” I flinched as she leveled A Look at me. “Everything turned out all right!”
“No, it didn’t. Or rather, it shouldn’t have. But you still have a god’s luck, however much the rest of you has changed.” She sobered suddenly. “A good mother desires not only her children’s safety, but also their happiness, Sieh.”
“Er …” I could not help tensing a little, wondering what she was going on about. She was not as strange as Naha, but she thought in spirals, and sometimes — locked in a mortal’s linear mind as I was — I could not follow her. “That’s good, I suppose. …”
Yeine nodded, her face still as unfathomable thoughts churned behind it. Then she gave me another Look, and I blinked in surprise, for this one held a ferocity that I hadn’t seen from her in a mortal lifetime.
“I will see to it that you know happiness, Sieh,” she said. “
We
will do this.”
Not she and Naha. I knew what she meant the way I knew the Three merited capital-letter status. And though the Three had never joined in the time since her ascension, she was still one of them. Part of a greater whole — and when all three of them wanted the same thing, each member spoke with the whole’s voice.
I bowed my head, honored. But then I frowned as I realized what else she was saying. “Before I die, you mean.”
She shook her head, just herself again, then leaned over to put a hand on my chest. I felt the minute vibration of her flesh for just an instant before my dulled senses lost the full awareness of her, but I was glad for that taste. She had no heart, my beautiful Yeine, but she didn’t need one. The pulse and breath and life and death of the whole universe was a more than sufficient substitute.
“We all die,” she said softly. “Sooner or later, all of us. Even gods.” And then, before her words could bring back the melancholy that I’d almost shed, she winked. “But being my son should get you
some
privileges.”