“Ah.” Serymn’s soft voice cut through my anger. “Not just lost faith, but broken faith. The Bright has failed you, and you reject it in turn.”
I hated her patronizing, sanctimonious, knowing tone. “You don’t know anything about it!”
“I know how your father died.”
I froze.
She continued, oblivious to my shock. “Ten years ago—on the very day, it seems, that the Gray Lady’s power swept the world—your father was in the village market. Everyone felt something that day. You didn’t need magical abilities to sense that something momentous had just occurred.”
She paused as if waiting for me to speak. I held myself rigid, so she went on.
“But it was only your father, out of all the people in that market, who burst into tears and fell to the ground, singing for joy.”
I sat there, trembling. Listening to this woman, this Arameri, dispassionately recite the details of my father’s murder.
* * *
It wasn’t the singing that did him in. No one but me could detect the magic in his voice. A scrivener might have sensed it, but my village was far too poor and provincial to merit a scrivener at its small White Hall. No, what killed my father was fear, plain and simple.
Fear, and faith.
* * *
“The people of your village were already anxious.” Serymn spoke more softly now. I did not believe it was out of respect for my pain. I think she just realized greater volume was unnecessary. “After the morning’s strange storms and tremors, it must have seemed as though the world was about to end. There were similar incidents that day, in towns and cities elsewhere in the world, but your father’s case is perhaps the most tragic. There had been rumors about him before that day, I understand, but… that does not excuse what happened.”
She sighed, and some of my fury faded as I heard genuine regret in her tone. It might have been an act, but if so, it was enough to break my paralysis.
I got up from my chair. I couldn’t have sat any longer, not without screaming. I put the teacup down and moved away from Serymn, seeking somewhere in the room with fresher, less constricting air. A few feet away, I found a wall and felt my way to a window; the sunlight coming through it helped to ease my agitation. Serymn remained silent behind me, for which I was grateful.
* * *
Who threw the first stone? It is something I have always wondered. The priest would not say, when I asked him over and over again. No one in town could say; they did not remember. Things had happened so quickly.
My father was a strange man. The beauty and magic that I loved in him was an easily perceptible thing, though no one else ever seemed to see it. Yet they noticed something about him, whether they understood it or not. His power permeated the space around him, like warmth. Like Shiny’s light and Madding’s chimes. Perhaps we mortals actually have more than five senses. Perhaps along with taste and smell and the rest there is detecting the special. I see the specialness with my eyes, but others do it in some different way.
So on that long-ago day, when power changed the world and everyone from senile elders to infants felt it, they all discovered that special sense, and then they noticed my father and understood at last what he was.
But what I had always perceived as glory, they had seen as a threat.
* * *
After a time, Serymn came to stand behind me.
“You blame our faith for what happened to your father,” she said.
“No,” I whispered. “I blame the people who killed him.”
“All right.” She paused a moment, testing my mood. “But has it occurred to you that there may be a cause for the madness that swept your village? A higher power at work?”
I laughed once, without humor. “You want me to blame the gods.”
“Not all of them.”
“The Gray Lady? You want to kill her, too?”
“The Lady ascended to godhood in that hour, it’s true. But remember what else happened then, Oree.”
Just Oree this time, no “Lady.” Like we were old friends, the street artist and the Arameri fullblood. I smiled, hating her with all my soul.
She said, “The Nightlord regained his freedom. This, too, affected the world.”
My heart hurt too much for politeness. “Lady, I don’t care.”
She moved closer, beside me. “You should. Nahadoth’s nature is more than just darkness. His power encompasses wildness, impulse, the abandonment of logic.” She paused, perhaps waiting to see if her words had sunk in. “The madness of a mob.”
Silence fell. In it, a chill laced around my spine.
I had not considered it before. Pointless to blame the gods when mortal hands had thrown the stones. But if those mortal hands had been influenced by some higher power…
Whatever Serymn read on my face must have pleased her. I heard that in her voice.
“These godlings,” she said, “the ones you call your friends. Ask yourself how many mortals they’ve killed over the ages. Far more than the Arameri ever did, I’m quite certain; the Gods’ War alone wiped out nearly every living thing in this realm.” She stepped closer still. I could feel her body heat radiating against my side, almost a pressure. “They live forever. They have no need of food or rest. They have no true shape.” She shrugged. “How can such creatures understand the value of a single mortal life?”
In my mind, I saw Madding, a shining blue-green thing like nothing of this earth. I saw him in his mortal shape, smiling as I touched him, soft-eyed, longing. I smelled his cool, airy scent, heard the sound of his chimes, felt the purr of his voice as he spoke my name.
I saw him sitting at a table in his house, as he had often done during our relationship, laughing with his fellow godlings as they drew their blood into vials for later sale.
It was a part of his life I’d never let myself consider deeply. Godsblood was not addictive. It caused no deaths or sickness; no one ever took too much and poisoned himself. And the favors Madding did for people in the neighborhood—for those of us who were too unimportant to merit aid from the Order or the nobles, Madding and his crew were often our only recourse.
But the favors were never free. He wasn’t cruel about it. He asked only what people could afford, and he gave fair warning. Anyone who incurred a debt to him knew there would be consequences if they failed to repay. He was a godling; it was his nature.
What did he do to them, the ones who reneged?
I saw Trickster Sieh’s child eyes, as cold as a hunting cat’s. I heard Lil’s chittering, whirring teeth.
And from the deepest recesses of my heart rose the doubt that I had not allowed myself to contemplate since the day Madding had broken my heart.
Did he ever love me? Or was my love just another diversion for him?
“I hate you,” I whispered to Serymn.
“For now,” she replied, with terrible compassion. “You won’t always.”
Then she took my hand and led me back to my room, and left me there to sit in silent misery.
10
“Indoctrination” (charcoal study)
THAT AFTERNOON, Hado put me on a work crew to help clean the large dining hall. This turned out to be a group of nine men and women, a few older than me but most younger, or so I judged by their voices. They watched me with open curiosity as Hado explained about my blindness—though he did not, I noticed, tell them that I had been forced into the cult. “She’s quite self-sufficient, as I’m sure you’ll find, but of course there will be some tasks she can’t complete,” was all he said, and by that I knew what was coming. “Because of that, we’ve assigned several of our older initiates to shadow the work crew in case she needs assistance. I hope all of you don’t mind.”
They assured him that they did not in tones of such slavish eagerness that I immediately loathed all of them. But when Hado left, I made my way to the work crew’s designated leader, a young Ken woman named S’miya. “Let me handle the mopping,” I said. “I feel like working h
ard today.” So she handed me the bucket.
The handle of the mop was much like a walking stick in my hands. I felt more secure with it, in control of myself for the first time since I’d come to the House of the Risen Sun. This was an illusion, of course, but I clung to it, needed it. The dining hall was huge, but I put my back into the work and paid no heed to the sweat that dripped down my face and made my shapeless tunic stick to my body. When S’miya finally touched my arm and told me we were done, I was surprised and disappointed it had gone so quickly.
“You do Our Lord proud with such effort,” S’miya said in an admiring tone.
I straightened to ease my aching back and thought of Shiny. “Somehow I doubt that,” I said. This earned me a moment of puzzled silence, and more when I laughed.
With that done, one of the older initiates led me to the baths, where a good soak helped ease some of the soreness I would certainly feel the next day. Then I was led back to my room, where a hot meal waited on the table. They still locked the door, and there was only a fork to eat with, no knife. But as I ate, I reflected on how quickly one could grow used to this sort of captivity—the simplicity of honest labor, soothing hymns echoing throughout the halls, free food and shelter and clothing. I had always wondered why anyone would join an organization like the Order, and now I began to see. Compared to the complexities of the outside world, this was easier on the body and the heart.
Unfortunately, this meant that once I’d bathed and eaten, the silence closed in. But as I sat miserable in my chair at the window, my head leaning against the glass as if that would somehow ease the ache in my heart, Hado returned. He had another person in tow, a woman I had not met before.
“Go away,” I said.
He stopped. The woman paused as well. He said, “We’re in a mood, I see. What’s the problem?”
I laughed, once and harshly. “Our gods hate us. Aside from that, everything’s right as rain.”
“Ah. A philosophical mood.” He moved to sit somewhere across from me. The woman, whose perfume was quite unpleasantly strong, took up position near the door. “Do you hate the gods?”
“They’re gods. It doesn’t matter if we hate them.”
“I disagree. Hate can be a powerful motivator. Our whole world is the way it is because of a single woman’s hate.”
More proselytizing, I realized. I didn’t feel like talking to him, but it was better than sitting alone and brooding, so I replied. “The mortal woman who became the Gray Lady?”
“One of her ancestors, actually: the founder of the Arameri clan, the Itempan priestess Shahar. Do you know of her?”
I sighed. “Nimaro might be a backwater, Master Hado, but I did go to school.”
“White Hall lessons skim the details, Lady Oree, which is a shame, because the details are so very delicious. Did you know she was Itempas’s lover, for example?”
Delicious, indeed. My mind tried to conjure an image of Shiny—stony, coldhearted, indifferent Shiny, indulging in a passionate affair with a mortal. Or anyone, for that matter. Hells, I couldn’t even imagine him having sex. “No, I didn’t. I’m not sure you know that, either.”
He laughed. “For now, let’s simply assume it’s true, hmm? She was his lover—the only mortal he ever saw fit to honor in that way. And she truly loved him, because when Itempas fought his sibling gods, she hated them, too. Much of what the Arameri did after the war—forcing the Bright on every race, persecuting those who’d once worshipped Nahadoth or Enefa—is the result of her hate.” He paused. “One of the gods we’ve captured is your lover. Isn’t that also true?”
I made a great effort and did not react or speak.
“Apparently, you and Lord Madding were quite an item. Word is your relationship ended, but it doesn’t escape me that you ran to him when you were in need.”
From across the room, the woman who’d come in with Hado made a faint sound of disgust. I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“How do you feel now that someone’s attacked him?” Hado asked. His voice was gentle, compassionate. Seductive. “You said the gods hate us, and for the moment I think you hate them, too, at least a little. Yet somehow I find it hard to believe your feelings have changed so completely toward the one who shared your bed.”
I looked away. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think at all. Why had Hado and the woman come, anyhow? Didn’t a Master of Initiates have other duties?
Hado leaned forward. “If you could, would you fight us to save your lover? Would you risk your life to set him free?”
Yes, I thought immediately. And just like that, the doubts I’d felt since my conversation with Serymn faded.
Someday, when Madding and I were free of this place, I would ask him about his treatment of mortals. I would ask about his role in the Gods’ War. I would find out what he did to people who failed to repay. I had been remiss in not doing this before. But would it make a difference, in the end? Madding had lived thousands of years to my few. In that time, he had surely done things that would horrify me. Would knowing about those things make me love him any less?
“Whore,” said the woman.
I stiffened. “Excuse me?”
Hado made a sound of annoyance. “Erad, Brightsister, you will be silent.”
“Then hurry up,” she snapped. “He wants the sample as soon as possible.”
I was already tense, ready to throw some harsh words—or the chair under me—at Erad. This caught my attention. “What sample?”
Hado let out a long sigh, plainly considering a few choice words of his own. “The Nypri’s request,” he said finally. “He has asked for some of your blood.”
“Some of my what?”
“He’s a scrivener, Lady Oree, and you have magical abilities no one has ever seen. I imagine he wants to study you in depth.”
I clenched my fists, furious. “And if I don’t want to give a sample?”
“Lady Oree, you know full well the answer to that question.” There was no patience left in Hado now. I considered resisting, anyway, to see whether he and Erad were prepared to use physical force. That was stupid, though, because there were two of them and one of me, and there could easily be more of them if they just opened the door and called for help.
“Fine,” I said, and sat down.
After a moment—and probably a last warning look from Hado—Erad came over and took my left hand, turning it over. “Hold the bowl,” she said to Hado, and a moment later I gasped as something stabbed me in the wrist.
“Demons!” I cried, trying to jerk away. But Erad’s grip was firm, as if she’d been expecting my reaction.
Hado gripped my other shoulder. “This won’t take long,” he said, “but if you struggle, it will take longer.” I stopped fighting only because of that.
“What in the gods’ names are you doing?” I demanded, yelping as Erad did something else, and it felt like my wrist was stabbed again. I could hear liquid—my blood—splattering into some sort of container. She had jabbed something into me, opening the wound further to keep the blood flowing. It hurt like the infinite hells.
“Lord Dateh requested about two hundred drams,” muttered Erad. A moment passed, and then she sighed in satisfaction. “That should be enough.”
Hado let go of me and moved away, and Erad took the painful thing out of my arm. She bandaged my wrist with only marginally more gentleness. I snatched my arm away from her as soon as her grip lessened. She uttered a contemptuous snort but let me go.
“We’ll have someone bring you dinner shortly,” Hado said as they both went to the door. “Be sure to eat; it will prevent weakness. Rest well tonight, Lady Oree.” Then they closed the door behind them.
I sat where they’d left me, cradling my aching arm. The bleeding hadn’t quite stopped; a stray droplet had seeped through the bandage and begun to thread its way down my forearm. I followed the sensation of its passage, my thoughts meandering in a similar way. When the droplet fell off my arm to the fl
oor, I imagined its splatter. Its warmth, cooling. Its smell.
Its color.
There was a way out of the House of the Risen Sun, I understood now. It would be dangerous. Possibly deadly. But was it any safer for me to stay and find out whatever they planned to do with me?
I lay down, my arm tucked against my chest. I was tired—too tired to make the attempt right then. It would take too much of my strength. In the morning, though, the Lights would be busy with their rituals and chores. There would be time before they came for me.
My thoughts as dark as blood, I slept.
11
“Possession” (watercolor)
SO, THERE WAS A GIRL.
What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.
“I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please, Great Lord, make him die.”
You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.
So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.
She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.