“What in demons?” murmured Datennay Canru. I followed his gaze, and my mouth went dry: a third masker had appeared, this one on the steps of the nearby Itempan White Hall. He wore the uniform of an Order-Keeper, but unlike the first two, his mask was the deep splashy crimson of blood, with stylized white and gold designs and an open mouth that suggested a roar of vengeful fury. This man, too, began to run toward us — and with the crowd thinning and the guards occupied, nothing stood in his way.
Nothing but me.
“Oh gods, no,” I whispered. What could I do? En pulsed hot against the skin of my chest. I grabbed for it; then I remembered. En’s power was mine; when I was strong, so was it. But I was only mortal now. If I used En, drained the last of its strength …
No. I would not kill my oldest friend, not for this. And I would not let my new friends, even if one of them had betrayed me, die. I was still a god, damn it, even without magic. I was still the wind and caprice, even bound into dying flesh. I would fear no mere mortal, no matter how powerful.
So I bared my teeth and lashed the tail I no longer possessed. Shouting a challenge, I ran down the steps to meet the crimson masker.
My words had been in the First Tongue, a command, though I hadn’t expected the man to listen. But to my shock, the crimson masker stopped and turned toward me.
This mask was beautiful and horrid, the runnels and paint suggesting fouled rivers, the strange-angled eyes like crooked mountains. Its mouth — a stylized thing of lips and teeth with a dark pit of an opening beyond which I could not see its wearer’s face — was twisted, a wail of utmost despair. Murderer, its markings whispered to me, and suddenly I thought of all the evils I’d done during the Gods’ War. I thought of the evils I’d done since — sometimes at the Arameri’s bidding, sometimes out of my own rage or cruelty. Forgetting my own challenge amid crushing guilt, I stumbled to a halt.
I felt a jolt. Sudden restriction and pain. Blinking, I looked down and found that the man had made a blade of his hand and had thrust it into my body at the midriff, nearly up to the wrist.
I was still staring down at this when Dekarta reached me. He grabbed my arm and spoke without words, whipping his head in a wide, vicious arc. Sound and force flooded from his throat, a roar of denial powered by the living energy of his skin and blood and bone. Better than many gods could have done. Where the power struck the crimson-masked man, I saw it cancel the mask’s message. The mask split down the center with a faint crack, and an instant later he flew backward a good fifty feet, vanishing amid the fleeing crowd. I could not see precisely where he landed because then Deka’s power struck the steps of the Salon, which erupted, shattering into rubble and bursting upward in an arcing spray.
There could be no precision to such a strike. Guards and soldiers went flying, screaming, along with the enemy. Through all this I saw another white-masked man, one I hadn’t noticed, run into the barrier of broken, flying stone and tumble back. But as the dust and rubble returned to earth, he sat up.
Nemmer appeared swathed in shadows, facing me. I saw her eyes widen at the sight of my wound. Beyond her, I saw the fallen white-masked man get to his feet and come charging again, this time leaping with godlike strength over the channel of rubble that Deka had created. I willed a warning, since I could not muster the breath, and to my astonishment Nemmer seemed to hear me. She turned and met the man as he struck.
Then I was in Deka’s arms, being carried like a child, bump te bump te bump. It was nice that he was so much bigger than me. He ran up the steps to the rest of the Arameri party, who had finally — finally! — begun to hurry up the curving steps toward the nearer gate. From Deka’s embrace, I tried to shout at them to go faster, but I couldn’t lift my head. So strange. It was like my first day as a mortal, when Shahar had summoned me to this realm as the cat, or the day two thousand years before that, when Itempas had thrown me down in chains of flesh and given my leash to a woman, one of Shahar’s daughters, who looked equal parts horrified and elated at the power she held.
Then we reached the top of the steps, and the world folded into a blur, and I passed out in its rippling crease.
16
I SEE SOMETHING I SHOULD NOT.
I see as gods do, absorbing all the world around us whether we have eyes to see it or ears to hear it or a body at all present. I know things because they happen. This is not a mortal thing, and it should not happen while I am in the mortal realm, but I suppose it is proof that I am not completely mortal yet.
We have reached Sky. The forecourt is chaos. The captain of the guard is shouting and gesturing at a gaggle of men who crossed the gate with us. Soldiers and scriveners are running, the former to surround the Vertical Gate with spears and swords in case the maskers follow, the latter bringing brushes and inkpots so that they can seal it off before that happens. While this occurs, Wrath and Ramina try to pull Remath into the palace, but she shakes them off. “I will not retreat in my own home,” she says, so the soldiers and scriveners make ready to defend her with their lives.
Amid all this running and shouting, I flop about in Deka’s arms, dying. Dying faster, that is, instead of the decades-long death that aging has imposed on me. The crimson masker has punched a hole through many of my organs and a good chunk of my spine. If I somehow survive, which is highly unlikely, I will never walk again. Yet my heart still beats, and my brain still fires sparks within its wrinkled meat, and as long as those things continue, there is an anchor for my soul to hold on to.
I’m glad it will be like this. I died protecting those I cared for, facing an enemy, like a god.
Deka has carried me off the Vertical Gate, onto the unblemished white daystone of Sky’s forecourt. He falls to his knees, shouting for someone to hold me, he can save me if he has help, help him, damn it.
It is Shahar who comes to her brother’s call. She kneels at my other side, and their long-awaited reunion is a quick and panicked meeting of eyes across the gore of my open belly. “Get his clothes open,” he commands, though she is the heir and he is nothing, just a fancy servant. (I am useless, aside from the part of me that watches. My eyes have rolled back in my head, and my mouth hangs open, ugly and inelegant. Some god.) While she struggles to lift my shirt — she tried to tear it first, thinking that would disturb the wound less, but the cheap material is surprisingly strong — Deka pulls a square of paper and a capped brush from wherever scriveners keep such things, and sketches a mark that means hold. He means for it to hold in my blood, hold back the filth that is already poisoning my body. That will give him time to write more sigils, which might actually heal me. (Has he only painted offensive magic into his skin? Silly boy.)
But as he completes the mark and reaches for me, putting his hand on Shahar’s to brace himself so that he can lay the sigil in place, something happens.
The universe is a living, breathing thing. Time, too. It moves, though not as mortals imagine. It is restless, twitchy. Mortals don’t notice because they’re restless and twitchy, too. Gods notice, but we learn to ignore these things early on, the same way mortal newborns eventually ignore the lonely silence of a world without heartbeats. Yet suddenly I notice everything. The slow, aeons-deep inhalation of the stars. The crackle of the sun’s power against this planet’s veil of life. The minute scratching of mites too small to see on Shahar’s pristine white skin. The lazy, buzzy jolt of hours and days and centuries.
And between them, beneath their hands, I open my eyes. My mouth opens. Am I shouting? I cannot hear the words. I reach up, my hands covering Shahar’s and Dekarta’s, and there is a flicker of something, like lightning, along their skins. Shahar gasps, her eyes going wide. Dekarta stares at her, opening his mouth to cry out.
There is a blurring. White lines, like the streaking of comets, run through the shapes of our flesh. It is like before, the watching-me realizes — like the time of our oath, when we touched and they made me mortal. But this is different. This time, when the power comes, it is not a wild concussion. There
is a will at work: two wills, with one purpose. Something bursts within me and is funneled to a fine point.
Then
it
becomes
I flopped about in Deka’s arms, pissed. “Put me down, Maelstrom, damn you. I’m a god, not a sack of potatoes —”
He stumbled to a halt just beyond the Vertical Gate. A few paces ahead, Shahar had done the same. Eight of Captain Wrath’s men surrounded her, trying to hurry her into the palace as they had already done Remath, but she shook them off. “I will not retreat in my own —”
She paused. Deka did, too. He set me on my feet. I swept marble dust off my clothes and hair and straightened my clothing, and then froze.
Oh.
Oh.
I understood, and did not. Many combinations in existence had meaning, and meaning has always imbued power — whether purely of an existential nature, or materially, or magically. There were the Three, of course, omnipotent on the infinitely rare occasions that they worked together. Twins. Male and female. God and mortal and the demons between.
But there was no reason for this. No precedent. They’d changed the universe. A pair of mortals.
They’d changed the universe to heal me.
They had changed the universe.
I stared at them. They stared back. Around us the chaos continued. All the other mortals seemed oblivious to what had happened, which was unsurprising. To them, it hadn’t happened. There was no blood on the ground where I’d lain. My clothes weren’t torn, because there had never been a wound. If I tried to remember, my mind conjured a glimpse of the crimson masker, hand poised before the blow, flying backward as Deka’s blast of raw magic struck. But I could also remember the blow happening first.
A moment later Nemmer appeared, dropping something heavy to the ground. A body. I blinked. No, a masker; one of the white ones. Trussed up in what looked like huge writhing snakes formed of translucent shadow. This was Nemmer’s magic. The instant she appeared, half of Wrath’s soldiers moved to attack, and the other half realized the mistake and tried to stop them. There was a flurry of shouts and aborted lunges and then a great deal of confused milling. I suspected that if Wrath got through this day with his position intact, he would soon put his soldiers through a heavy training course on Gods, the Quick Recognition and Not Attacking Of.
“Got them,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. She glanced at me and grinned. “Tell your mortals to stand down, Sieh. The danger has passed.”
I stared at her, mute with shock. Her grin faltered. She glared at me, then snapped her fingers at my face. I jumped.
“What the hells is wrong with you?” Her smile turned vicious. “Were you so frightened by your first taste of mortal danger, big brother?”
I felt no real anger at her taunt because I had been in mortal danger a thousand times more than she had ever been. And I had far stranger things to occupy my thoughts.
But I was not the Trickster for nothing, and my mouth moved automatically while my brain continued to churn. “I was frightened by the incompetence I saw down there,” I snapped. “Did you plan to let them nearly achieve their goal, or were your much-vaunted professionals caught napping?”
Nemmer did not lose her temper, but it was a near thing. At least she stopped smiling. “There were ten of them,” she said, which broke some of my shock and brought me back to the present. “Counting the one your pet scrivener killed. All coming from different directions, all unstoppable — unless their bodies are completely destroyed or the masks are broken. You’re lucky only one got through. We weren’t prepared for a strike of this magnitude.”
Ten of them. Ten mortals, tricked into donning the masks and turning themselves into living weapons. I shook my head, sickened.
“All the mortals up here are fine?” She spoke in a neutral tone. We were back to the unspoken truce, then.
I looked around, noting Shahar and Dekarta standing together nearby, listening to our conversation. Not far beyond them was Canru, looking uncomfortable and alone. Across the courtyard, Remath had stopped on the steps and seemed to be arguing with Ramina. Wrath faced us, his hand on his sword hilt, his gaze riveted on the masked creature at Nemmer’s feet.
“The mortals who matter are fine,” I said, feeling weary and full of grief. Ten who did not matter had died. And how many soldiers and innocents among the crowd? “We are all fine.”
She looked uneasy at my wording but nodded, gesturing at the trussed-up man in the white mask. He was not dead; I saw him fighting the bonds, panting with the effort. “This one’s for you, then. I figure the scrivener boy might be able to figure out something about this magic. Mortals understand how mortals think better than I ever will.” She paused, then lifted her hand; something else appeared in it. “I’ll give you this, too. Be careful of the intact masks, but once they’re broken, the magic dies.”
She held it out: the broken halves of the crimson mask.
I felt hard fingers punch through my flesh.
I took the mask pieces from her.
“Got to go,” she said. She sounded just like a common mortal, right down to the Wesha accent. “Things to do, secrets to gather. We’ll talk soon.” With that, she vanished.
Remath was walking back, unhurried, as if she strolled through the aftermath of an attack on her family every day. While I could speak without her hearing, I went to Shahar and Dekarta, handing the pieces of the mask to Deka. He did not take them with his bare hands, quickly pulling his sleeves down to take the halves, gingerly, by the edges.
“Say nothing of what happened,” I said, speaking low and quickly.
“But —” Shahar began, predictably.
“No one remembers but us,” I said, and she shut up. Not even Nemmer, whose nature it was to sense the presence of secrets, had noticed anything. Dekarta caught his breath; he understood what this meant as well as I had. Shahar flicked a glance at him and at me, and then — as if she had not spent ten years apart from him, and as if she had not once broken my heart — she covered for us both, immediately turning to face her oncoming mother.
“The situation has been controlled,” she said as Remath drew to a halt before us. Wrath positioned himself directly between me and Remath, his hard brown gaze fixed on me. (I winked at him. He did not react.) Ramina remained behind her, his arms folded, showing no hint of relief that his son and daughter were alive and well.
“Lady Nemmer reported there were ten assailants in all,” Shahar continued. “Her organization captured the rest and will be conducting its own investigation. She would like mortal input, however.” With a look of distaste, Shahar glanced at the immobilized masker.
“How considerate of her,” said Remath, with only the faintest hint of sarcasm. “Wrath.” He flinched and left off glaring at me. “Return to the city and oversee the investigation there. Be certain to find out why so many of these creatures were able to make it through our lines.”
“Lady …” Wrath began. He glanced at me.
Remath lifted an eyebrow and faced me as well. “Lord Sieh. Are you planning to try and kill me again?” She paused, and added, “Today?”
“No,” I said, letting my voice and face show that I still hated her, because I was not an Arameri and I saw no point in hiding the obvious. “Not today.”
“Of course.” To my surprise, she smiled. “Do stay awhile, Lord Sieh, since you’re here. If I recall, you are prone to boredom, and I have plans of my own to set in motion, now that this unpleasantness has occurred.” She glanced at the masker again, and there was an odd sort of sorrow in her expression for the most fleeting of moments. If it had lasted, I might have begun to pity her. But then it vanished and she smiled at me and I hated her again. “I believe you will find the next few days most interesting. As will my children.”
While Shahar and I digested this in silence, Remath glanced at Deka, who stood just behind Shahar, his expression so neutral that he reminded me, at once, of Ahad. There was a long, silent moment. I saw Sha
har, wearing her own careful mask, glance from one to the other.
“Not the homecoming you were expecting, I imagine.” Remath’s tone surprised me. She sounded almost affectionate.
Deka almost smiled. “Actually, Mother, I was expecting someone to try and murder me the instant I arrived.”
The look that crossed Remath’s face in that instant would have been difficult for anyone to interpret, mortal or immortal, if they were not familiar with Arameri ways. It was one of the ways they trained themselves to conceal emotion. They smiled when they were angry and showed sorrow when they were overjoyed. Remath looked wryly amused, skeptical of Deka’s apparent nonchalance, mildly impressed. To me her feelings might as well have been written into the sigil on her forehead. She was glad to see Deka. She was very impressed. She was troubled — or bitterly empathetic, at least — to see him so cold.
Shahar loved her. I wasn’t sure about Deka. Did Remath love either of her children back? That I could not say.
“I’ll see both of you tomorrow,” she said to Shahar and Dekarta, then turned and walked away. Wrath bowed to her back, then strode off with a final glance at us before raising his voice to call his men. Ramina, however, lingered.
“Interesting stylistic choice,” he said to Deka. As if in response to his words, a stray breeze lifted Deka’s black cloak behind him like a living shadow.
“It seemed fitting, Uncle,” Deka replied. He smiled thinly. “I am something of a black sheep, am I not?”
“Or a wolf, come to feast on tender flesh — unless someone tames you.” Ramina’s eyes drifted to Deka’s forehead, then to Shahar, in clear implication. Shahar’s brows drew down in the beginnings of a frown, and Ramina flashed a loving smile at both of them. “But perhaps you’re more useful with sharp teeth and killer instincts, hmm? Perhaps the Arameri of the future will need a whole pack of wolves.” And with this, he glanced at me. I frowned.