Terrifying. Impossible. Familiar. I drew in a long, careful breath, and was proud that it did not shake.
“May I assume,” I said softly, out of respect for the stillness, “that your presence means there’s been some relaxing of the rules?”
For a moment there was only silence in response. I wondered, of course, if I’d been wrong. One does get funny notions after a certain age. At least if I was hallucinating, though, there was no one around to catch me at it.
Then he spoke. Same voice, even and soft, tenor. “Not so much a relaxation as …” I imagined, rather than heard, the infinite sift of his thoughts, choosing among a million languages and a thousand suitable phrases, of which a dozen were all equally appropriate for the moment. “… a reordering of priorities.”
I nodded. Put my hands on the porch railing, lightly, so he wouldn’t realize I needed it to stand. Just resting my hands. “All that business with the Maelstrom, then? They tell me you acquitted yourself well.”
“Sufficiently.” I could not help smiling at his perfectionism. He was closer now. Not on the porch yet, still on the ground below, probably on the cobble path that led to my garden terraces. I had not heard his feet move. Which meant …
“I am free now,” he said, in the same moment that I guessed it. “Permanently.”
I nodded. “After only a century and change. Congratulations.”
“It was not my doing. But I am grateful, nevertheless.” He
moved closer again, right in front of where I stood at the railing. I could feel him looking up at me. Studying me, perhaps remembering the beauty I had once been. “I feared I would not see you again.”
At this I could not help a single laugh, which sounded more harsh than it should have in the still air. “And here I feared you would. You couldn’t just appear at my deathbed, could you? That would’ve been nice and romantic — fulfilling a last wish, saying good-bye to an old flame. No, now I’ve got to live on for however damned long, creaky and half toothless …” I shook my head. “Demons.”
“Ephemerality is meaningless, Oree.” Gods, gods, his voice. I had forgotten how nice it sounded, my name, when he spoke it. “You remain the same in all essential ways.”
“But I’m not the same. You’re not the same. My name is Desola now, remember? Oree Shoth is long dead.” My hands had tightened on the railing. I forced them to relax. “Ephemerality is meaningless except to us mortals. Being mortal for a hundred years should’ve taught you that.”
He smiled. I had forgotten that, too. The way I’d always been able to feel him. “It did. But I do not change.”
I sighed and lifted my hands to blow on them. At least I had an excuse for shaking the way I was, in all this damned cold.
He moved again. I heard him this time, his footsteps heavy and sure on the cobbles. Then on the porch steps. Then on the porch itself, hollow, measured thuds along the old wood. Then he was beside me, right there, and my whole left side tingled at the warmth of his presence. I felt warmer all over, in fact, as though I stood beside a chimney.
A tall, breathing chimney that gazed at me like I was the only person in the world who mattered.
I let out a deep sigh, and it was shaky this time. “I got married, you know. A local man. We were together almost forty years.” Unnecessarily, I added, “That’s a long time, for mortals.”
In fact, Cingo had been with me long enough to notice that I was not aging — not at the rate I should have, anyhow. By the end he’d been making jokes about trophy wives, and I’d finally remembered that my father had been the same, young-looking even when he was old. And I had begun to mourn early, because by then I’d known I would have to move to a new town, give up everything and start over yet again, as soon as Cingo died. Couldn’t have people asking questions or making gossip. I still had nightmares about T’vril Arameri coming to get me — though that was foolish because he was decades dead, too, and his descendants had done a thorough job of stomping all over his grave. My secrets had probably died with him. Probably.
Cingo had come with me to this town, helped me pick out a new house. Fixed the damn chimney, however badly. And then he’d died, commanding me to find someone else so I wouldn’t be lonely. I hadn’t obeyed.
My companion nodded. “You were happy with him. Good.”
“As happy as anyone can be after forty years of marriage.” But I had been very happy. Cingo had been just what I’d needed, steady and reliable. I’d just wished he’d lived longer. I sighed again, inadvertently relaxing in the warmth, which made me feel boneless and sleepy. Perhaps that was why I
said what I meant, instead of what was tactful. “I knew better than to wait for you.”
I’d meant it to hurt, but he gave no sign that it did. “That was a wise decision.” A pause. Everything he did had meaning. “You’ve had no husband since, Glee mentioned.”
As bad as her father, that girl, both of them forever meddling in people’s lives and expecting them not to mind. Then I scowled, hearing the implication underneath his words. Everything he said had more than one meaning. “No. And that had nothing to do with you. I just didn’t want to outlive another man, pretend to be something other than what I was … Darkness and daylight, you’re still a bastard, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer, because his silence was answer enough. As was his presence, even though I was sure it couldn’t mean what I feared it meant. (Hoped it meant? No no no.) But I knew him, I knew him, and it was not his nature to act without purpose. He had done so occasionally back then, but that was only because he’d been broken. Symptoms of a greater malaise. Now he was whole, and he was here, and I needed to figure out why.
I could’ve just asked him. He would’ve told me. But I was not the bold girl I had been. With age comes caution, and perhaps cowardice. I changed the subject. “Did Glee know you were planning this?”
“We never discussed it.”
I nodded. No answer was its own answer. “She’s recovered well, if you’re wondering. Her magic is still weak, but physically, she’s almost as good as she was before the coma.” I stretched my shoulders, unable to keep myself from basking
in the warmth. “That man of hers is a piece of work, but he’ll walk through all the hells for her.”
I heard the faint movement of his shrug. “He is a child of Nahadoth. That will make him … difficult.” I did not imagine the sour note that entered his tone. It made me smile that he liked our daughter’s choice no better than I did.
“You would know.” Which made the next question hard to avoid. “Speaking of Nahadoth … and Yeine, I suppose …”
His voice grew as matte-soft as the predawn air for a moment. “We mourn our son. We repair the damage done by the Maelstrom. We contemplate the full complexity of existence, now that its shape has been revealed to us.” He paused. “Nahadoth does not forgive me, and Yeine does not trust me. It is possible this cycle will not repeat in the expected permutation.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and meant it. However incomprehensible his words, I had heard the pain in them. He was a family man at heart. “But if the Nightlord and Gray Lady still aren’t keen on you, then why —” Ah, but he had said. Priorities. The Maelstrom running amok. Loss and horror. For some things, terrible things, even an estranged lover was better than none. But being tolerated, even needed, was not the same thing as being welcomed home. “Well. Sorry.”
He shrugged. I wondered what he was wearing. It sounded creaky, like leather, though it smelled only of his usual (I had never forgotten that) dry-spice-hot-metal scent.
“They will do you no harm,” he added. “Regardless of how long I stay.”
And there it was.
Bastard. Idiot asinine infuriating son of a demon. “Don’t. Be. Ridiculous,” I snapped. “This isn’t some soppy tale for noble ladies. I raised your child, made a new life for myself, outgrew even that — all without you. I don’t need you now.”
“Glee has made us both proud. And you have never needed me.”
“Damn straight.” His agreement made me even more irritable. I turned to face him, orienting on all that radiant warmth. Had he always been so big? Maybe I’d shrunken. I hated that he was immortal, that I was not, that my entire life had been nothing but a moment to him—to be resumed, as if without interruption, as soon as the moment passed. “I don’t want you, either. My life has been magnificently god-free for decades, and I like it this way. I’ve even begun to hope that I will die a quiet, boring death.”
“God-free?” I heard him shift a little. Turning, I guessed, to glance at the house’s western window. Glee’s room.
“He’s in Glee’s life, not mine. I’m just the old woman who sneaks him cheroots and pretends she doesn’t hear when he has sex with her daughter. He doesn’t matter, Shi—”
I faltered to silence, appalled at what I had almost called him, even though … I was talking to him as if … but if he was here, then he could not be …
Damn. Five minutes in his presence and I couldn’t even think simply anymore.
His smile was like the moon’s reflected sunlight on my skin. “Most gods have many names. I, however, have only ever accepted one. Before you.”
For a moment I was touched. Then I sighed and rubbed
my eyes with one hand. The memory of pain, and weariness, were making me foolish.
“I’m too old for this,” I murmured. “I don’t need this kind of madness in my life anymore.”
He said nothing, turning away slightly to face the yard and the trees beyond it. I waited, growing angry as the silence wore on, because he wasn’t bothering to argue with me and I wanted him to. When it finally became clear that he wouldn’t, I opened my mouth to tell him to leave and never return.
Before I could speak the words, however, they died in my mouth. Because, faint against the darkness, I could suddenly see something. Him, a pale shadow, pulsing in a gradual rhythm that in no way resembled a heartbeat; too slow. Too even and precise. Building, though — brightening — with each passing moment.
Dawn. I had forgotten, but … oh, gods. I had not allowed myself to think about this for so long. I didn’t even watch Glee when it happened to her, because she was too much his daughter as it was and at dawn it was impossible to forget. How I’d missed the sight of morning magic.
He turned to me, now that I could see him, letting me absorb the changes. His hair was long; that was the strangest thing. It had been cabled like a Teman’s, the great mass of it falling out of sight behind his shoulders in a heavy mantle, the forelocks tied neatly back from his face. He wore a long leather coat, and boots, both of which matched his hair in color. His face — I stared at this the longest, trying to understand why it was not quite what I remembered. And then I knew. There was a little less firmness to the jaw, a crow’s-foot
or two around the eyes, and his hairline was just a bit farther back than it had been. He hadn’t overdone it. There were just enough details to suggest the passage of time, the earning of wisdom. Distinguished strength.
Of course. It wouldn’t do for an old woman to take up with a man who looked half her age; that would be scandalous. The Bright Lord of Order would naturally be concerned about propriety.
I groaned. “I thought you didn’t change?”
“Ephemerality is—”
“Yes, yes, I know. Did you give yourself rheumatism and a bad back, too? Since ephemerality is so meaningless.”
He looked amused at my reaction, but his gaze was serious. “I will bring no madness into your life, Oree,” he said, very gently. “Quiet, serenity, the comfort of routine … these things are my nature, after all.” He paused, his expression hardening in warning. “As is stubbornness.”
I closed my eyes and turned away from him, though he had not yet reached sufficient brightness that I had to. “Barging into my life and insisting that I accept you —”
“Are the most expedient means to achieve what we both desire,” he finished, with so-familiar curtness. “You said a quiet, boring death. You did not include lonely.”
At this I stiffened, wishing that I had my stick. It would’ve done no good whatsoever, and I didn’t need it; I knew the porch like my own hand. But it would’ve given me something to clench, as I tried my damnedest to set him on fire by will alone. I was out of practice with magic. It didn’t work.
“I can’t stop you,” I snapped. “You’ve made your wishes
clear. But I will not tolerate your lying to me. Do as you like around the house — Glee will be pleased to see you, at least — but leave me alone.” I walked to the door and tried to open it. Predictably, it would not budge.
“I do not lie,” he said. There was, to my surprise, no anger in his tone. He almost sounded hurt, but that was likely my imagination.
I turned back, sighing. “What we both desire? Do you think I’m a fool? You’re free, Sh —” I shook my head and laughed. “Itempas. The Three are whole once more. So you’re in the doghouse for the next aeon or two; you know that won’t last forever. And you.” I gestured at him as he stood there, shining, so bright I could barely look at him, so beautiful that he made my heart ache. I wanted to cry. Hadn’t done that in years. Damn him. “You come here, to the back end of beyond in the mortal realm, and say you want to keep some old woman company in her last days? You expect me to believe that’s anything but pity?”
He stared at me for a moment, then sighed with an almost human exasperation. “Oree Shoth, you were a devout Itempan, once. Tell me, when has pity ever been my nature?”
I paused then, because this was true.