The Broken Kingdoms

18 “The Gods’ Vengeance” (watercolor)

I think madding always suspected the truth.

Throughout my childhood, I had a strange memory of being someplace warm and wet and enclosed. I felt safe, yet I was lonely. I could hear voices, yet no one spoke to me. Hands would touch me now and again, and I would touch back, but that was all.

Many years later, I told this story to Madding, and he looked at me oddly. When I asked him what was wrong, he didn’t answer at first. I pressed him, and finally he said, “It sounds like you were in the womb.”

I remember laughing. “That’s crazy,” I said. “I was thinking. Listening. Aware.”

He shrugged. “So was I, before I was born. I guess that happens sometimes with mortals, too.”

But it isn’t supposed to, he did not say.

“What do you intend to do?” Shiny asked me the next morning.

He stood at the window across the room, glowing softly with the dawn. I sat up blearily, stifling a yawn.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I wasn’t ready to die. That was easier to admit than I’d thought. I had killed Madding; to live with that knowledge would be—had been—almost unbearable. But killing myself, or letting Shiny or the Arameri do it, felt worse somehow. In the wake of Madding’s death, it felt like throwing away a gift.

“If I live, the Arameri will use me for the gods know what. I won’t have more deaths on my conscience.” I sighed, rubbing my face with my hands. “You were right to want to kill us. You should’ve gotten us all, though. That was the only mistake the Three made.”

“No,” said Shiny. “We were wrong. Something had to be done about the demons—that I will not deny—but we should have sought a different solution. They were our children.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Stared, though he was now little more than a pale relief against the dimmer sheen of the window. I wasn’t really sure what to say. So I changed the subject. “What do you plan to do?”

He stood as he had on so many mornings at my house, facing the rising sun with back straight and head high and arms folded. Now, however, he let out a soft sigh and turned to me, leaning against the window with an almost palpable weariness. “I have no idea. Nothing in me is whole or right, Oree. I am the coward you named me, and the fool you did not. Weak.” He lifted his hand as if he’d never seen it before and made a fist. It didn’t look weak to me, but I imagined how a god might see it. Bones that could be broken. Skin that would not instantly heal if torn. Tendons and veins as fine as gossamer.

And underneath this fragile flesh, a mind like a broken teacup, badly mended.

“It’s solitude, then?” I asked. “That’s your true antithesis, not darkness. You didn’t realize?”

“No. Not until that day.” He lowered his hand. “But I should have realized. Loneliness is a darkness of the soul.”

I got up and went over to him, stumbling once over the rugs. Finding his arm, I reached up to touch his face. He allowed this, even turning his cheek against my hand. I think he was feeling alone in that very moment.

“I’m glad they put me here in this mortal form,” he said. “I can do no harm when I go mad. When I was trapped in that realm of darkness, I thought I would. Having you there afterward… Without that, I would have broken again.”

I frowned, thinking of the way he’d clung to me that day, barely able to let go even for a moment. No human being could bear solitude forever—I would’ve gone mad in the Empty, too—but Shiny’s need was not a human thing.

I thought of something my mother had said to me, many times during my childhood. “It’s all right to need help,” I said. “You’re mortal now. Mortals can’t do everything alone.”

“I wasn’t mortal then,” he said, and I could tell he was thinking of the day he’d killed Enefa.

“Maybe it’s the same for gods.” I was still tired, so I turned to lean against the window beside him. “We’re made in your image, right? Maybe your siblings didn’t send you here so you’d do no harm as a mortal, but rather so that you could learn to deal with this as mortals do.” I sighed and closed my eyes, tired of Sky’s constant glow. “Hells, I don’t know. Maybe you just need friends.”

He fell silent, but I thought I felt him look at me.

Before I could say anything more, there was a knock at the door. Shiny went to answer it.

“My lord.” A voice that I did not recognize, with the professional briskness of a servant. “I bear a message. The Lord Arameri requests your presence.”

“Why?” Shiny asked—something I would never have done myself. The messenger was taken aback, too, though he paused for only a beat before answering.

“Lady Serymn has been captured.”

As before, the Lord Arameri had dismissed his court. I suppose making bargains with demons and disciplining wayward fullbloods were not matters for public consumption.

Serymn stood between four guards—Arameri as well as High Norther—though they were not actually touching her. I could not tell if she looked any worse for the wear, but her silhouette stood as straight and proud as any other time I’d met her. Her hands had been bound in front of her, which seemed to be the only concession made to her status as a prisoner. She, the guards, Shiny, and I were the only people in the room.

She and the Lord Arameri regarded each other in stillness and silence, like elegant marble statues of Defiance and Mercilessness.

After a moment of this perusal, she looked away from him—even blind, I could tell this was dismissive—and faced me. “Lady Oree. Does it please you to stand beside those who let your father die?”

Once, those words would have bothered me, but now I knew better. “You misunderstood, Lady Serymn. My father didn’t die because of the Nightlord, or the Lady, or the godlings, or anyone who supports them. He died because he was different—something ordinary mortals hate and fear.” I sighed. “With reason, I’ll admit. But give credit where credit is due.”

She shook her head and sighed. “You trust these false gods too much.”

“No,” I said, growing angry. Not just angry but furious, incandescent with rage. If I’d had a walking stick, there would have been trouble. “I trust the gods to be what they are, and I trust mortals to be mortals. Mortals, Lady Serymn, stoned my father to death. Mortals trussed me up like livestock and milked me of blood until I nearly died. Mortals killed my love.” I was very proud of myself; my throat did not close and my voice did not waver. The anger buoyed me that far. “Hells, if the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we’ve earned a little annihilation.” At that, I couldn’t help looking at Lord T’vril, too.

He ignored me, sounding bored when he spoke. “Serymn, stop toying with the girl. This rhetoric might have swayed your poor, lost spiritual devotees, but everyone here sees through you.” He gestured at her, a graceful hand wave encompassing all that she was. “What you may not understand, Eru Shoth, is that this whole affair is a family squabble gotten out of hand.”

I must have looked confused. “Family squabble?”

“I am a mere halfblood, you see—the first who has ever ruled this family. And though I was appointed to this position by the Gray Lady herself, there are those of my relatives, particularly the fullbloods, who still question my qualifications. Foolishly, I counted Serymn among the less dangerous of those. I even believed she might be useful, since her organization seemed to give direction to those members of the Itempan faith who have been disillusioned lately.” I could not see him glance at Shiny, but I guessed that he did. “I did not believe they could do true harm. For this, you have my apologies.”

I stiffened in surprise. I knew nothing of nobles or Arameri, but I knew this: they did not apologize. Ever. Even after the destruction of the Maroland, they had offered the Nimaro peninsula to my people as a “humanitarian gesture”—not an apology.

Serymn shook her head. “Dekarta appointed you his heir only under duress, T’vril. Ordinarily you’d do well enough, halfblood or not. But in these dark times, we need a family head strong in the old values, someone who will not waver from devotion to Our Lord. You lack the pride of our heritage.”

I felt the Lord Arameri smile, because it was a brittle, dangerous thing, and the whole room felt less safe for it.

“Have you anything else to say?” he asked. “Anything worthy of my time?”

“No,” she replied. “Nothing worthy of you.”

“Very well,” said the Lord Arameri. He snapped his fingers, and a servant appeared from a curtain behind T’vril’s seat. He crouched beside T’vril’s chair, holding something; there was the faint clink of metal. T’vril did not take it, and I could not see what it was. I did, however, see Serymn’s flinch.

“This man,” said the Lord Arameri. He gestured toward Shiny. “You left Sky before the last succession. Do you know him?”

Serymn glanced at Shiny, then away. “We were never able to determine what he was,” she said, “but he is the Lady Oree’s companion and perhaps lover. He had no value to us, except as a hostage against her good behavior.”

“Look again, Cousin.”

She looked, radiating disdain. “Is there something I should be seeing?”

I reached for Shiny’s hand. He had not moved—did not seem to care at all.

The Lord Arameri rose and descended the steps. At the foot of the steps, he abruptly turned toward us in a swirl of cloak and hair and dropped to one knee, with a grace I would never have expected of a man so powerful. From this, he said in a ringing tone, “Behold Our Lord, Serymn. Hail Itempas, Master of Day, Lord of Light and Order.”

Serymn stared at him. Then she looked at Shiny. There had been no sarcasm in T’vril’s tone, no hint of anything other than reverence. Yet I could guess what she saw when she looked at Shiny: the soul-deep weariness in his eyes, the sorrow beneath his apathy. He wore borrowed clothing, as I did, and said nothing at T’vril’s bow.

“He’s Maroneh,” Serymn said, after a long perusal.

T’vril got to his feet, flicking his long tail of hair back with practiced ease. “That is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? Though it would not be the first lie our family has told until it forgot the truth.” He turned and went to her, stopping right in front of her. She did not step back from his nearness, though I would have. There was something about the Lord Arameri in that moment that made me very afraid.

“You knew he had been overthrown, Serymn,” he said. “You’ve seen many gods take mortal form. Why did it never occur to you that your own god might be among them? Hado tells me that your New Lights were not kind to him.”

“No,” Serymn said. Her strong, rich voice wavered with uncertainty for the first time since I’d met her. “That’s impossible. I would have… Dateh… We would have known.”

T’vril glanced back at the servant, who hurried forward with the metal object. He took it and said, “I suppose your pure Arameri blood doesn’t entitle you to speak for our god after all. Just as well, then. Hold her mouth open.”

I didn’t realize the last part was a command until the guards suddenly took hold of Serymn. There was a struggle, a jumble of silhouettes. When they stilled, I realized the guards had taken hold of Serymn’s head.

T’vril lifted the metal object so that I could see it at last, outlined by the glow of the far wall. Scissors? No, too large and oddly shaped for that.

Tongs.

“Oh, gods,” I whispered, understanding too late. I turned away, but there was no avoiding the horrible sounds: Serymn’s gagging cry, T’vril’s grunt of effort, the wet tear of flesh. It took only a moment. T’vril handed the tongs back to the servant with a sigh of disgust; the servant took them away. Serymn made a single, raw sound, not so much a scream as a wordless protest, and then she sagged between the guards, moaning.

“Hold her head forward, please,” T’vril cautioned. I heard him as if from a distance, through fog. “We don’t want her to choke.”

“W-wait,” I said. Gods, I could not think. That sound would echo in my nightmares.

“Yes, Eru Shoth?” Other than sounding a bit winded, the Lord Arameri’s tone was the same as always: polite, soft-spoken, warm. I wondered if I would throw up.

“Dateh,” I said, “and the missing godlings. She… she could have told us….” Now Serymn would say nothing, ever again.

“If she knew, she would never tell,” he said. He mounted the steps and sat down again. The servant, having disposed of the tongs behind the curtain, hurried back out and handed him a cloth for his hands, which he used to wipe each finger. “But most likely, she and Dateh agreed to separate in order to protect each other. Serymn is a fullblood, after all; she would have known to expect harsh questioning in the event of capture.”

Harsh questioning. Noble language for what I’d just witnessed.

“And unfortunately, the matter is out of my hands,” he continued. I caught a hint of a gesture. The main doors opened and another servant entered, carrying something that caught my eye at once because it glowed as brightly as the rest of this so-magical palace. And unlike the walls and floor, the object that the servant carried was a bright, cheerful rose color. A small rubber ball, like something a child might play with.

T’vril took this ball from the servant and continued. “Not only has my cousin forgotten that Bright Itempas no longer rules the gods, but she has also forgotten that we Arameri now answer to several masters rather than one. The world changes; we must change with it or die. Perhaps, after hearing of Serymn’s fate, more of my fullblood cousins will remember this.”

He turned his hand and let the pink ball fall. It bounced against the floor beside his chair and he caught it, then bounced it twice more.

A boy appeared before him. I recognized him at once and gasped. Sieh, the child-godling who had once tried to kick Shiny to death. The Trickster, who had once been an Arameri slave.

“What?” he asked, sounding annoyed. He glanced toward my gasp once, then looked away with no change in his expression. I prayed to no god in particular that he had not recognized me—though with Shiny standing beside me, that was a thin hope.

T’vril inclined his head respectfully. “Here is one of the killers of your siblings, Lord Sieh,” he said, gesturing at Serymn.

Sieh raised his eyebrows, turning to her. “I remember her. Dekarta’s third-removed niece or something, left years ago.” A wry, unchildlike smile crossed his face. “Really, T’vril, the tongue?”

T’vril handed the pink ball back to the servant, who bowed and took it away. “There are those in the family who believe I am… too gentle.” He shrugged, glancing at the guards. “An example was necessary.”

“So I see.” Sieh trotted down the steps until he stood before Serymn, though I saw him fastidiously step around the blood that darkened the floor. “Having her will help, but I don’t think Naha will restore the sun until you have the demon. Do you?”

“No,” said T’vril. “We’re still looking for him.”

Serymn made a sound then, and the little hairs on my skin prickled. I could feel her attention, could see her straining toward me as she made the sound again. There was no way to make out words, or even be certain she had tried to speak, but somehow I knew: she was trying to tell Sieh about me. She was trying to say, There is a demon.

But T’vril had seen to it she would never tell my secret, not even to the gods.

Sieh sighed at Serymn’s struggles to speak. “I don’t care what you have to say,” he said. Serymn went still, watching him in fresh apprehension. “Neither will my father. If I were you, I’d save my strength to pray he’s not in a creative mood.”

He waved a hand, lazy, careless, and perhaps only I saw the flood of black, flamelike raw power that lashed out from that hand, coiling for a moment like a snake before it lunged forward and swallowed Serymn whole. Then it vanished, and Serymn went with it.

And then Sieh turned to us.

“So you’re still with him,” he said to me.

I was very aware of my hand, holding Shiny’s. “Yes,” I replied. I lifted my chin. “I know who he is now.”

“Do you really?” Sieh’s eyes flicked to Shiny, stayed there. “Somehow I doubt that, mortal girl. Not even his children know him anymore.”

“I said I know him now,” I said, annoyed. I had never liked being patronized, regardless of who was doing it—and I had been through enough in recent weeks to no longer fear a godling’s temper. “I don’t know what he was like before. That person is gone, anyway; he died the day he killed the Lady. This is just what’s left.” I jerked my head toward Shiny. His hand had gone slack, I think with shock. “It’s not much, I’ll grant you. Sometimes I want to kick him senseless myself. But the more I get to know him, the more I realize he’s not as much of a lost cause as all of you seem to think.”

Sieh stared at me for a moment, though he recovered quickly. “You don’t know anything about it.” He clenched his fists. I half expected him to stamp his feet. “He killed my mother. All of us died that day, and he’s the one who killed us! Should we forget that?”

“No,” I said. I could not help it; I pitied him. I knew how it felt to lose a parent in a way that defied all sense. “Of course you can’t forget. But”—I lifted Shiny’s hand—“ look at him. Does it look like he spent the centuries gloating?”

Sieh’s lip curled. “So he regrets what he did. Now, after we’ve freed ourselves, and after he’s been sentenced to humanity for his crimes. So very remorseful.”

“How do you know he didn’t regret it before?”

“Because he didn’t set us free!” Sieh thumped a hand against his chest. “He left us here, let humans do as they pleased with us! He tried to force us to love him again!”

“Maybe he couldn’t think of another way,” I said.

“What?”

“Maybe that was the only thing that made sense, mad as it was, after the mad thing he’d already done. Maybe he wanted time to fix things, even though it was impossible. Even though he was making things worse.” My anger had already faded. I remembered Shiny the night before, on his knees before me, empty of hope. “Maybe he thought it was better to keep you prisoner and be hated than lose you entirely.”

I knew it was a pointless argument. Some acts were beyond forgiveness; murder, unjust imprisonment, and torture were probably among them.

And yet.

Sieh closed his mouth. He looked at Shiny. His jaw tightened, eyes narrowing. “Well? Does this mortal speak for you, Father?”

Shiny said nothing. His whole body radiated tension, but none of that found its way into words. I wasn’t surprised. I loosened my hand from his to make it easier for him to let me go when he walked away.

His hand snapped closed on mine, suddenly, tightly. I couldn’t have pulled away if I’d wanted to.

While I blinked and wondered at this, Sieh sighed in disgust. “I don’t understand you,” he said to me. “You don’t seem stupid. He’s a waste of your energy. Are you the sort of woman who tortures herself to feel better or who takes only lovers who beat her?”

“Madding was my lover,” I said quietly.

At that, Sieh actually looked chagrined. “I forgot. Sorry.”

“So am I.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes, which were aching again. Too much magic in Sky; I wasn’t used to being able to see like this. I missed the familiar magic-flecked darkness of Shadow.

“It’s just that… all of you will live forever.” Then I remembered and amended myself, smiling bleakly. “Barring murder, I mean. You’ll have forever with one another.” As Madding and I could never have had, even if he hadn’t been killed. Oh, I was tired; it was harder to keep the sorrow at bay. “I just don’t see the point of spending all that time full of hate. That’s all.”

Sieh gazed at me, thoughtful. His pupils changed again, becoming catlike and sharp, but this time there was no sense of threat accompanying the transformation. Perhaps, like me, he needed strange eyes to see what others couldn’t. He turned those eyes on Shiny then, for a long, silent perusal. Whatever he saw didn’t make his anger fade, but he didn’t attack again, either. I counted that as a victory.

“Sieh,” Shiny said suddenly. His hand tightened more on mine, on the threshold of pain. I set my teeth and bore it, afraid to interrupt. I felt him draw in a breath.

“Never apologize to me,” Sieh said. He spoke very softly, perhaps sensing the same thing that I did. His face had gone cold, devoid of anything but a skein of anger. “What you did can never be absolved by mere words. To even attempt it is an insult—not just to me, but to my mother’s memory.”

Shiny went stiff. Then his hand twitched on mine, and he seemed to draw strength from the contact, because he spoke at last.

“If not words,” he said, “will deeds serve?”

Sieh smiled. I was almost sure his teeth were sharp now. “What deeds can make up for your crimes, my bright father?”

Shiny looked away, his hand loosening on my own at last. “None. I know.”

Sieh drew in a deep breath and let it out heavily. He shook his head, glanced at me, shook his head again, and then turned away.

“I’ll tell Mother you’re doing well,” Sieh said to T’vril, who had sat silent throughout this conversation, probably holding his breath. “She’ll be glad to hear it.”

T’vril inclined his head, not quite a bow. “And is she well, herself?”

“Very well, indeed. Godhood suits her. It’s the rest of us who are a mess these days.” I thought I saw him hesitate for a moment, almost turning back to us. But he only nodded to T’vril. “Until the next time, Lord Arameri.” He vanished.

T’vril let out a long sigh in his wake. I felt that this spoke for all of us.

“Well,” he said. “With that business out of the way, we are left with only one matter. Have you considered my proposal, Eru Shoth?”

I had latched on to one hope. If I lived and let the Arameri use me, I might someday find a way free. Somehow. It was a thin hope, a pathetic one, but it was all I had.

“Will you settle things with the Order of Itempas for me?” I asked, trying for dignity. Now it was I who clung to Shiny for support. It was easier, somehow, to give up my soul with him there beside me.

T’vril inclined his head. “Already done.”

“And”—I hesitated—“can I have your word that this mark, the one I must wear, will do nothing but what you said?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You have little room to bargain here, Eru Shoth.”

I flinched, because it was true, but I clenched my free hand, anyhow. I hated being threatened. “I could tell the godlings what I am. They’ll kill me, but at least they won’t use me the way you mean to.”

The Lord Arameri sat back in his chair, crossing his legs. “You don’t know that, Eru Shoth. Perhaps the godling you tell will have her own enemies to get rid of. Would you really risk exchanging a mortal master for an immortal one?”

That was a possibility that had never occurred to me. I froze, horrified by it.

“You will not be her master,” Shiny said.

I jumped. T’vril drew in a deep breath, let it out. “My lord. I’m afraid you weren’t privy to our earlier conversation. Eru Shoth is aware of the danger if she remains free.” And you are in no position to negotiate on her behalf, his tone said. He did not have to say it aloud. It was painfully obvious.

“A danger that remains if you lay claim to her,” Shiny snapped. I could hardly believe my ears. Was he actually trying to fight for me?

Shiny let go of my hand and stepped forward, not quite in front of me. “You cannot keep her existence a secret,” he said. “You can’t kill enough people to safely make her your weapon. It would be better if you had never brought her here—then at least you could deny knowledge of her existence.”

I frowned in confusion. But T’vril uncrossed his legs.

“Do you intend to tell the other gods about her?” he asked quietly.

And then I understood. Shiny was not powerless. He could not be killed, not permanently. He could be imprisoned, but not forever, because he was supposed to be wandering the world, learning the lessons of mortality. At some point, inevitably, one of the other gods would come looking for him, if only to gloat over his punishment. And then T’vril’s plan to make me the Arameri’s latest weapon would come apart.

“I will say nothing,” Shiny said softly, “if you let her go.”

I caught my breath.

T’vril was silent for a moment. “No. My greatest concern hasn’t changed: she’s too dangerous to leave unprotected. It would be safer to kill her.” Which would erase Shiny’s leverage, besides ending my life.

It was a game of nikkim: feint against feint, each trying to outplay the other. Except I had never paid attention to such games, because I could not see them, so I had no idea what happened if there was a draw. I definitely didn’t like being the prize.

“She was safe until the Order began to harass her,” Shiny said. “Anonymity has protected her bloodline for centuries, even from the gods. Give that to her again, and all will be as it was.” Shiny paused. “You still have the demon blood you took from the House of the Risen Sun before you destroyed it.”

“He took—” I blurted, then caught myself. But my hands clenched. Of course they would never have let such a valuable resource go to waste. My blood, Dateh’s blood, the arrowheads—perhaps they had even learned Dateh’s refining method. The Arameri had their weapon, with or without me. Damn them.

Shiny was right, though. If the Lord Arameri had that, then he didn’t need me.

T’vril rose from his chair. He descended the steps and walked past the guards, moving to stand at one of the long windows. I saw him pause there, gazing out at the world that he owned—and at the black sun, warning sign of the gods who threatened it. He clasped his hands behind his back.

“Make her anonymous, you say,” he said, and sighed. At that sigh, my heart made an uneasy leap of hope. “Very well. I’m willing to consider it. But how? Shall I kill anyone in the city who knows her? As you say, that would require more deaths than is practical.”

I shuddered. Vuroy and the others from Art Row. My landlord. The old woman across the street who gossiped to the neighbors about the blind girl and her godling boyfriend. Rimarn, the priests of the White Hall, a dozen nameless servants and guards, including the ones standing here listening to all this.

“No,” I blurted. “I’ll leave Shadow. I was going to do it anyway. I’ll go somewhere no one knows me, never talk to anyone, just don’t—”

“Kill her,” Shiny said.

I flinched and stared at his profile. He glanced at me. “If she is dead, her secrets no longer matter. No one will look for her. No one can use her.”

I understood then, though the idea made me shiver. T’vril turned to look at us over his shoulder. “A false death? Interesting.” He thought for a moment. “It would have to be thorough. She could never speak to her friends again, or even her mother. She could no longer be Oree Shoth at all. I can arrange for her to be sent elsewhere, with resources and a concocted past. Perhaps even hold a magnificent funeral for the brave woman who gave her life to expose a plot against the gods.” He glanced at me. “But if my spies hear any rumor, any hint of your survival, then the game ends, Eru Shoth. I will do whatever is necessary to prevent you from falling into the wrong hands again. Is that understood?”

I stared at him, and at Shiny, and then at myself. At the body that I could see, as a shadowy outline against the constant glow of Sky’s light. Breasts, gently rolling. Hands, fascinatingly complex as I lifted them, turned them, flexed the fingers. The tips of my feet. A spiraling curl of hair at the edge of my vision. I had never seen myself so completely before.

To die, even in this false way, would be terrible. My friends would mourn me, and I would mourn even more the life I’d already lost. My poor mother: first my father and now this. But it was the magic, the strangeness of Shadow, all the beautiful and frightening things that I had learned and experienced and seen, that would hurt most to leave behind.

I had once wanted to die. This would be worse. But if I did it, I would be free.

I must have stayed silent too long. Shiny turned to me, his heavy gaze more compassionate than I had ever imagined it could be. He understood; of course he did. It was a hard thing, sometimes, to live.

“I understand,” I said to the Lord Arameri.

He nodded. “Then it shall be done. Remain here another day. That should be sufficient time for me to make the arrangements.” He turned back to the window, another wordless dismissal.

I stood there unmoving, hardly daring to believe it. I was free. Free, like old times.

Shiny turned to leave, then turned back to me, radiating irritation at my failure to follow. Like old times.

Except that he had fought for me. And won.

I trotted after him and took his arm, and if it bothered him that I pressed my face against his shoulder as we walked back to my room, he did not complain.