Rimarn Dih’s voice was distraught, almost unintelligible with horror. “What did you do, Maro bitch? What in the Father’s name have you done?”
“Wh-what?” My eyes hurt. My head hurt. The smell was making me ill. I felt wrong, off balance, all my skin aprickle. My mouth tasted of guilt, and I did not know why.
Rimarn was shouting for someone to help him. He sounded like he was exerting himself, pulling at something heavy. There was a sound, something wet… I shuddered. I did not want to know what that sound was.
Two presences suddenly appeared on either side of me. They took me by the arms, gingerly.
“Time to go, little one,” said a bright male voice. Madding’s lieutenant. Where the hells had he come from? Then the world flared and we were somewhere else. Quiet settled around us, along with warm, scented humidity and a blue-green feeling of calm and balance. Madding’s house.
It should have been a sanctuary for me, but I did not feel safe.
“What happened?” I asked the godling beside me. “Please tell me. Something… I did something, didn’t I?”
“You don’t know?” Madding’s other lieutenant, the female one, on my other side. She sounded incredulous.
“No.” I did not want to know. I licked my lips. “Please tell me.”
“I don’t know how you did it,” she said, speaking slowly. There was something in her tone that was almost… awed. That made no sense; she was a god. “I’ve never seen a mortal do anything like that. But your drawing…” She trailed off.
“It became enarmhukdatalwasl, though not quite shuwao,” said the male godling, his godwords briefly stinging my eyes. I shut them in reflex. Why did my eyes hurt? It felt like I’d been punched in the back of each. “It carved a path across half a billion stars and connected one world with another, just for a moment. Damnedest thing.”
I rubbed at my eyes in frustration, though this did no good; the pain was inside me. “I don’t understand, damn you! Speak mortal!” I did not want to know.
“You made a door,” he said. “You sent the Order-Keepers through it. Not all the way, though. The magic wasn’t stable. It burned out before they passed through completely. Do you understand?”
“I…” No. “It was just a chalk drawing,” I whispered.
“You dropped them partway into another world,” snapped the female godling. “And then you closed the door. You cut them in half. Do you understand now?”
I did.
I began to scream, and kept screaming until one of the godlings did something, and then I passed out.
5
“Family” (charcoal study)
I HAVE A FAVORITE MEMORY of my father that I sometimes recall as a dream.
In the dream, I am small. I have only recently learned to climb the ladder. The rungs are very far apart and I cannot see them, so for a long time I was afraid I would miss a rung and fall. I had to learn not to be afraid, which is much harder than it sounds. I am very proud of having accomplished this.
“Papa,” I say, running across the small attic room. This is, by my parents’ mutual agreement, his room. My mother does not come here, not even to clean. It is neat anyhow—my father is a neat man—yet it is permeated all over with that indefinable feeling that is him. Some of it is scent, but there is something more to his presence, too. Something that I understand instinctively, even if I lack the vocabulary to describe it.
My father is not like most people in our village. He goes to White Hall services only often enough to keep the priest from sanctioning him. He makes no offerings at the household altar. He does not pray. I have asked him whether he believes in the gods, and he says that of course he does; are we not Maroneh? But that is not the same thing as honoring them, he sometimes adds. Then he cautions me not to mention this to anyone else. Not the priests, not my friends, not even Mama. One day, he says, I will understand.
Today he is in a rare mood—and for a rare once, I can see him: a smaller-than-average man with cool black eyes and large, elegant hands. His face is lineless, almost youthful, though his hair is salt-and-pepper and there is something in his gaze, something heavy and tired, that shows his long life more clearly than wrinkles ever could. He was old when he married Mama. He never wanted a child, yet he loves me with all his heart.
I grin and lean on his knees. He’s sitting down, which puts his face in reach of my searching fingers. Eyes can be fooled, I have learned already, but touch is always sure.
“You’ve been singing,” I say.
He smiled. “Can you see me again? I thought it would have worn off by now.”
“Sing for me, Papa,” I plead. I love the colors his voice weaves in the air.
“No, Ree-child. Your mother’s home.”
“She never hears it! Please?”
“I promised,” he says softly, and I hang my head. He promised my mother, long before I was born, never to expose her or me to the danger that comes of his strangeness. I am too young to understand where the danger comes from, but the fear in his eyes is enough to keep me silent.
But he has broken his promise before. He did it to teach me, because otherwise I might have betrayed my own strangeness out of ignorance. And because, I later realize, it kills him a little to stifle that part of himself. He was meant to be glorious. With me, in these small private moments, he can be.
So when he sees my disappointment, he sighs and lifts me into his lap. Very softly, just for me, he sings.
* * *
I awoke slowly, to the sound and smell of water.
I was sitting in it. The water was nearly body temperature; I barely felt it on my skin. Under me, I could feel hard, sculpted stone, as warm as the water; nearby was the smell of flowers. hiras: a vining plant that had once been native to the Maroland. Its blooms had a heavy, distinctive perfume that I liked. That told me where I was.
If I hadn’t been to Madding’s place before, I would’ve been disoriented. Madding owned a large house in one of the richer districts of Wesha, and he had brought me here often, complaining that my little bed would give him a bad back. He had filled the ground floor of the house with pools. There were at least a dozen of them, carved out of the bedrock that underlay this part of Shadow, sculpted into pretty shapes and screened by growing plants. It was the sort of design choice godlings were infamous for; they thought first of aesthetics and lastly of convenience or propriety. Madding’s guests had to either stand or strip and get into a pool. He saw nothing wrong with this.
The pools were not magical. The water was warm because Mad had hired some mortal genius to concoct a mechanism that kept boiled water in the piping system at all times. Madding had never bothered to learn how it worked, so he couldn’t explain it to me.
I sat up, listening, and promptly became aware that someone was with me, sitting nearby. I saw nothing, but the breathing pattern was familiar. “Mad?”
He resolved out of the darkness, sitting at the pool’s edge with one knee drawn up. His hair was loose, clinging to his damp skin. It made him look strangely young. His eyes were somber.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
The question puzzled me for a moment, and then I remembered.
I sat back against the side of the pool, barely feeling the throb of my old bruises, and turned my face away from him. My eyes still ached, so I closed them, though that didn’t help much. How did I feel? Like a murderess. How else?
Madding sighed. “I suppose it does no good to point this out, but what happened wasn’t your fault.”
Of course it did no good. And it wasn’t true.
“Mortals are never good at controlling magic, Oree. You weren’t built for it. And you didn’t know what your magic could do. You didn’t intend to kill those men.”
“They’re still dead,” I said. “My intentions don’t change that.”
“True.” He shifted, putting the other foot into the water. “They probably intended to kill you, though.”
I laughed softly. It echoed off the s
hifting surface of the water and sounded demented. “Stop trying, Mad. Please.”
He fell silent for a while, letting me wallow. When he decided I’d done enough of that, he slipped into the waist-high water and came over, lifting me against him. That was all it took, really. I buried my face in his chest and let myself turn to noodle in his arms. He rubbed my back and murmured soothing things in his language while I cried, and then he carried me out of the room of pools and up curving stairs and laid me down in the tumbled pile of cushions that served as his bed. I fell asleep there, not caring whether I ever woke up again.
* * *
Of course, I did wake up eventually, disturbed by voices talking softly nearby. When I opened my eyes and looked around, I was surprised to see a strange godling sitting beside the cushion pile. She was very pale, with short black hair molded like a cap around a pleasant, heart-shaped face. Two things struck me at once: first, that she looked ordinary enough to pass for human, which marked her as a godling who regularly did business with mortals. Second, for some reason, she sat in shadow, though there was nothing nearby that could have thrown a shadow on her, and I shouldn’t have been able to see the shadow in any case.
She had been talking with Madding but paused as I sat up. “Hello,” I said, nodding to her and rubbing my face. I knew all his people, and this one wasn’t one of them.
She nodded back, smiling. “So you’re Mad’s killer.”
I stiffened. Madding scowled. “Nemmer.”
“I meant no insult,” she said, shrugging, still smiling. “I like killers.”
I glanced at Madding, wondering whether it was all right for me to tell this kinswoman of his to go to the infinite hells. He didn’t seem tense, which told me she was no threat or enemy, but he wasn’t happy, either. He noticed my look and sighed. “Nemmer came to warn me, Oree. She runs another organization here in town—”
“More like a guild of independent professionals,” Nemmer put in.
Madding threw her a look that was pure brotherly annoyance, then focused on me again. “Oree… the Order of Itempas just contacted her, asking to commission her services. Hers specifically, not one of her people.”
I picked up a big pillow and pulled it against me, not to hide my nudity but to cover my shiver of unease. Madding noticed and went to his closet to fetch something for me. To Nemmer I said, “Not that I know much about it, but I was under the impression that the Order could call upon the Arameri assassin corps whenever they had need.”
“Yes,” said Nemmer, “when the Arameri approve of, or care about, what they’re doing. But there are a great many small matters that are beneath the Arameri’s notice, and the Order prefers to take care of such matters itself.” She shrugged.
I nodded slowly. “I take it you’re a god of… death?”
“Oh, no, that’s the Lady. I’m just stealth, secrets, a little infiltration. The sort of business that takes place under the Night-father’s cloak.”
I could not help blinking at this title. She was referring to one of the new gods, the Lord of Shadows, but her term had sounded much like Nightlord. That could not be, of course; the Nightlord was in the keeping of the Arameri.
“I don’t mind the odd elimination,” Nemmer continued, “but only as a sideline.” She shrugged, then glanced at Madding. “I might reconsider, though, given how much the Order is offering. Probably a big unexploited market in taking out godlings who piss off mortals.”
I gasped and whirled toward Mad, who was coming back to the bed with a robe. He lifted an eyebrow, unworried. Nemmer laughed and reached over to poke my bare knee, which made me jump. “I could be here for you, you know.”
“No,” I said softly. Madding could take care of himself. There was no reason for me to worry. “No one would send a godling to kill me. Easier to pay some beggar twenty meri and make it look like a robbery gone wrong. Not that they need to hide it at all; they’re the Order.”
“Ah, but you forget,” Nemmer said. “You used magic to kill those Keepers at the park. And the Order thinks you killed three others who’d been assigned to discipline a Maro man, reportedly your cousin, for assaulting a previt. They couldn’t find the bodies, but word’s going around about how your magic works.” She shrugged.
Oh, gods. Madding knelt behind me, putting a robe of watered silk around my shoulders. I slumped back against him. “Rimarn,” I said. “He thought I was a godling.”
“And you don’t hire a mortal to kill a godling. Even one who’s apparently goddess of chalk drawings come to life.” Nemmer winked at me. But then she sobered. “It’s you they want, but you’re not the one they think is behind Role’s death, not ultimately. Little brother, you should’ve been more discreet.” She nodded toward me. “All her neighbors know about her godling lover; half the city knows it. You might’ve been able to save her from this otherwise.”
“I know,” Mad said, and there was a millennium’s worth of regret in his tone.
“Wait,” I said, frowning. “The Order thinks Madding killed Role? I know a godling must have done it, but—”
“Madding is in the business of selling our blood,” Nemmer said. Her tone was neutral as she said this, but I heard the disapproval in it, anyway, and heard Madding’s sigh. “And I hear business is good. It’s not a far stretch to think he might want to increase production, maybe by obtaining a large amount of godsblood at one time.”
“Which would be a fair assumption,” Madding snapped, “if Role’s blood had been gone. There was plenty of it left in and around her body—”
“Which you took away, in front of witnesses.”
“To Yeine! To see if there was any hope of bringing her back to life. But Role’s soul had already gone elsewhere.” He shook his head and sighed. “Why in the infinite hells would I kill her, dump her body in an alley, then come back to fetch it, if her blood was what I wanted?”
“Maybe that wasn’t what you wanted,” Nemmer said very softly. “Or at least, you didn’t want all her blood. Some of the witnesses got close enough to see what was missing, Mad.”
Madding’s hands tightened on my shoulders. Puzzled, I covered one of them with my own. “Missing?”
“Her heart,” said Nemmer, and silence fell.
I flinched, horrified. But then I remembered that day in the alley, when my fingers had come away from Role’s body coated thickly with blood.
Madding cursed and got up; he began to pace, his steps quick and tight with anger. Nemmer watched him for a moment, then sighed and returned her attention to me.
“The Order thinks this was some sort of exotic commission,” she said. “A wealthy customer wanting a more potent sort of godsblood. If the stuff from our veins is powerful enough to give mortals magic, how much stronger might heartblood be? Maybe even strong enough to give a blind Maroneh woman—known paramour of the very godling they suspect—the power to kill three Order-Keepers.”
My mouth fell open. “That’s insane! No godling would kill another for those reasons!”
Nemmer’s eyebrows rose. “Yes, and anyone who knows us would understand that,” she said, a note of approval in her voice. “Those of us who live in Shadow enjoy playing games with mortal wealth, but none of us needs it, nor would we bother to kill for it. The Order hasn’t figured that out yet, or they wouldn’t have tried to hire me, and they wouldn’t suspect Madding—at least, not for this reason. But they follow the creed of the Bright: that which disturbs the order of society must be eliminated, regardless of whether it caused the disturbance.” She rolled her eyes. “You’d think they’d get tired of parroting Itempas and start thinking for themselves after two thousand years.”
I drew up my legs and wrapped my arms around them, resting my forehead on one knee. The nightmare kept growing, no matter what I did, getting worse by the day. “They suspect Madding because of me,” I murmured. “That’s what you’re saying.”
“No,” Madding snapped. I could hear him still pacing; his voice was jagged with suppressed fu
ry. “They suspect me because of your damned houseguest.”
I realized he was right. Previt Rimarn might have noticed my magic, but that meant little in and of itself. Many mortals had magic; that was where scriveners like Rimarn came from. Only using that magic was illegal, and without seeing my paintings, Rimarn would’ve had no proof that I’d done so. If he had questioned me that day, and if I’d kept my wits about me, he would’ve realized I couldn’t possibly have killed Role. At worst, I might have ended up as an Order recruit.
But then Shiny had intervened. Even though Lil had eaten the bodies in South Root, Rimarn knew that four men had gone into that alley and only one had emerged, somehow unscathed. Gods knew how many witnesses there were in South Root who would talk for a coin or two. Worse, Rimarn had probably sensed the white-hot blast of power Shiny used to kill his men, even from across the city. Between that and what I’d done to the Order-Keepers with my chalk drawing, it did not seem so far-fetched a conclusion: one godling dead, another standing to profit from her death, and the mortals most intimately connected with him suddenly manifesting strange magic. None of it was proof—but they were Itempans. Disorder was crime enough.
“Well, I’ve said my piece.” Nemmer got up, stretching. As she did so, I saw what her posture had hidden: she was all wiry muscle and acrobatic grace. She looked too ordinary to be a spy and an assassin, but it was there when she moved. “Take care of yourself, little brother.” She paused and considered. “Little sister, too.”
“Wait,” I blurted, drawing a surprised look from both of them. “What are you going to tell the Order?”
“What I already told them,” she said with firm emphasis, “was that they’d better never try to kill a godling again. They don’t understand: it’s not Itempas they have to deal with now. We don’t know what this new Twilight will do. No one sane wants to find out. And Maelstrom help the entire mortal realm if they ever ignite the Darkness’s wrath.”