The Kingdom of Gods (20 page)

“Oh,” I said, smiling sheepishly at Morad. She sighed, though I thought I saw a hint of amusement on her face.

“I’ll run you a bath,” she said, and paused, looking particularly at my head. “And summon a stylist. And the tailor. And a manicurist.”

I touched my stringy, gritty hair with a weak laugh. “I suppose I deserve that.”

“As you like, my lord.” Morad touched the servant, who had
almost finished the bed, and murmured something. He nodded and exited the apartment at once. To my surprise, Morad then rolled up her sleeves and finished tucking the sheets. When that was done, she went into the bathroom; a moment later, I heard water run.

Curious, I followed her into the room and watched while she sat on the tub’s edge, testing the water with her fingers. It was even more noticeable with her back turned and all that hair of hers visible in full riot. It was clear that she was not fully Amn; her hair had the kind of tight, small coils that wealthy Amn spent hours and fortunes to achieve, and it was as black as my father’s soul. Her skin was pale enough, but the marks of
other
were in her features, plain to anyone who looked. It was also plain that she was not ashamed of her mixed blood; she sat as straight and graceful as a queen. She could not have been raised in Sky or any Amn territory; they would have beaten her spirit down with cruel words long before now.

“Maroneh?” I guessed. “You must’ve gotten the hair from them, at least. The rest … Teman, maybe? Uthre, a bit of Ken?”

Morad turned to me, lifting one elegant eyebrow. “Two of my grandparents were part Maroneh, yes. One was Teman, another Min, and there are rumors that my father was actually a half-Tok who pretended to be Senmite to get into the Hunthou Legions. My mother was Amn.”

More proof of the Arameri’s desperation. In the old days, they would barely have acknowledged a woman with such jumbled bloodlines, let alone make her Steward. “Then how …”

She smiled wryly, as if she got such rude questions all the time. “I grew up in southern Senm. When I came of age, I petitioned
to come here on the strength of my fourth grandparent — an Arameri highblood.” At my grimace, she nodded. It was an old story. “Grandmama Atri never knew my grandfather’s name. He was passing through town on a journey. Her family had no powerful friends, and she was a pretty girl.” She shrugged, though her smile had faded.

“So you decided to come find Grandpapa the rapist and say hello?”

“He died years ago.” She checked the water once more and stopped the taps. “It was Grandmama’s idea that I come here, actually. There’s not much work in that part of Senm, and if nothing else, her suffering could bring me a better life.” She rose and went to stand pointedly beside the washing area’s bench, picking up the flask that held shampoo.

I got up and undressed, pleased that my nudity didn’t seem to bother her. When I sat down, before I could warn her, she lifted the cord that held En from around my neck and set it on a counter. I was relieved that En tolerated this without protest. It must have been tired after its earlier exertion. Plus, it had always had odd taste in mortals.

“You didn’t have to come
here
for a better life,” I said, yawning as she wet my hair and began washing it. Sending the message to Nemmer had left me tired, too, and Morad’s fingers were skillful and soothing. “There must be a thousand other places in the world where you could’ve made a living and where you wouldn’t have had to deal with this family’s madness.”

“There were no other places that paid as much,” she said.

I swung around to stare at her. “They
pay
you?”

She nodded, amused at my reaction, and gently pushed my
head back into place so that she could resume work. “Yes. Old Lord T’vril’s doing, actually. As a quarterblood, I can retire in five more years with enough money to take care of my whole family for the rest of my life. I’d say that’s worth dabbling in madness, wouldn’t you?”

I frowned, trying to understand. “They are your family,” I said. “The ones you left behind, in the south. The Arameri are just employers to you?”

Her hands paused. “Well. I’ve been here fifteen years at this point; it’s home now. Some aspects of life in Sky aren’t so terrible, Lord Sieh. I suspect you know that. And … well, there are people I love here, too.”

I knew then. She resumed work in silence, pouring warm water over me and then lathering again, and when she leaned past me to pick up the flask of shampoo, I got a good mouthful of her scent. Daystone and paper and patience, the scents of efficient bureaucracy, and one thing more. A complex scent, layered, familiar, with each element supporting and enriching the other. Dreams. Pragmatism. Discretion. Love.

Remath.

It was my nature to use the keys to a mortal’s soul whenever they fell into my hands. If I had still been myself, the child or the cat, I would have found some way to torment Morad with my knowledge. I might even have made a song of it and sung it everywhere until even her friends found themselves humming the tune. The refrain would have been
see wow, you silly cow, how dare you lose your heart.

But though I would always be the child, and the child was a
bully, I could not bring myself to do this to her. I was going soft, I supposed, or growing up. So I kept silent.

Presently Morad finished with my hair, whereupon she handed me a soapy sponge and stepped back, plainly unwilling to wash the rest of my body. She had wrapped my hair in a damp towel that was tied like a beehive atop my head, which made me giggle when I finished and stood and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Then my eyes drifted down. I saw the rest of me and fell silent.

It was the same body I had shaped for myself countless times, sometimes deliberately, sometimes in helpless response to moments of weakness. Short for “my age”; I would grow another two or three inches but would never be tall by Amn standards. Thinner than I usually made myself, perhaps from years of not eating while I gradually became mortal within Nahadoth. Long-limbed. Beneath my brown skin, there were bones poking out at every juncture, like blemishes. The muscles that lined them were attenuated and not very strong.

I leaned closer to the mirror, peering at the lines of my face critically. Not very attractive, either, though I knew that would improve. Too disproportionate for now. Too tired-eyed. Shahar was much prettier. And yet she had kissed me, hadn’t she? I traced the outline of my lips with a finger, remembering the feel of her mouth. What had she thought of mine, on hers?

Morad cleared her throat.

Did Shahar ever think of —

“The water will get cold,” Morad said gently. I blinked, blushing, and was abruptly glad I hadn’t made fun of her. I got into
the tub, and Morad exited the bathroom to go speak with the tailor, who’d just arrived and announced himself.

When I emerged in a fluffy robe — I looked ridiculous — the tailor measured me, murmuring to himself that I would need looser clothing to conceal my thinness. Then came the manicurist, and the shoemaker, and one or two others whom Morad had somehow summoned, though I hadn’t seen her use magic. By the time it was done, I was exhausted — which Morad thankfully noticed. She dismissed all the craft servants and turned to head for the door herself.

Belatedly it occurred to me that she’d been unbelievably helpful. Who knew how many duties she had as steward, and how many of those had she neglected to see to my comfort? “Thank you,” I blurted as she opened the door.

She paused and looked back at me in surprise, then smiled in such a genuine, generous way that I suddenly knew what Remath saw in her.

Then she was gone. I sat down to eat the meal the servants had left. Afterward, I sprawled naked across Deka’s bed, for once looking forward to sleep so that I could perhaps dream of love and

forget

I stood upon a plain like a vast glass mirror. Mirrors again. I had seen them in Nahadoth’s realm, too. Perhaps there was meaning in this? I would ponder it some other time.

Above me arced the vault of the heavens: an endlessly turning cylinder of clouds and sky, vast and limitless and yet somehow
enclosed. Clouds drifted across it from left to right, although the light — from no source I could ascertain — shifted in the opposite direction, waxing light and waning dark in a slow and steady gradient.

The gods’ realm, or a dream manifestation of it. It was an approximation, of course. All my mortal mind could comprehend.

Before me, rising from the plain, a palace lay impossibly on its side. It was silver and black, built in no recognizable mortal architectural style and yet suggesting all of them, a thing of lines and shadow without dimension or definition. An impression, not reality. Below, instead of a reflection, its opposite shone in the mirror: white and gold, more realistic but less imaginative, the same yet different. There was meaning in this, too, but it was obvious: the black palace ascendant, the white palace nothing but an image. The silvery plain reflecting, balancing, and separating both. I sighed, annoyed. Had I already become as tiresomely literal as most mortals? How humiliating.

“Are you afraid?” asked a voice behind me.

I started and began to turn. “No,” the speaker snapped, and such was the force of his command — commanding reality, commanding my flesh — that I froze.
Now
I was afraid.

“Who are you?” I asked. I didn’t recognize his voice, but that meant nothing. I had dozens of brothers and they could take any shape they chose, especially in this realm.

“Why does that matter?”

“Because I want to know, duh.”

“Why?”

I frowned. “What kind of question is that? We’re family; I want to know which one of my brothers is trying to scare the hells out of me.” And succeeding, though I would never admit such a thing.

“I’m not one of your brothers.”

At this, I frowned in confusion. Only gods could enter the gods’ realm. Was he lying? Or was I simply too mortal to understand what he really meant?

“Should I kill you?” the stranger asked. He was young, I decided, though such judgments meant little in the grand scale of things. He was oddly soft-spoken, too, his voice mild even as he delivered these peculiar not-quite-threats. Was he angry? I thought so, but couldn’t be sure. His tone was all flat emotion-lessness edged in cold.

“I don’t know. Should you?” I retorted.

“I’ve been contemplating the matter for most of my life.”

“Ah,” I said. “I suppose you and I must have gotten off on the wrong foot from the beginning, then.” That happened sometimes. I’d tried to be a good elder brother for a long time, visiting each of my younger siblings as they were born and helping them through those first, difficult centuries. Some of them I was still friends with. Some of them I’d loathed the instant I’d laid eyes on them, and vice versa.

“From the very beginning, yes.”

I sighed, slipping my hands into my pockets. “Must be a difficult decision, then, or you’d have done it already. Whatever I did to make you angry, either it can’t have been all that bad, or it’s unforgivable.”

“Oh?”

I shrugged. “If it was really bad, you wouldn’t be waffling about whether to kill me. If it was unforgivable, you’d be too angry for revenge to make any difference. There’d be no
point
in killing me. So which is it?”

“There’s a third option,” he said. “It was unforgivable, but there
is
a point in killing you.”

“Interesting.” In spite of my unease, I grinned at the conundrum. “And that point is?”

“I don’t simply
want
vengeance. I require and embody and evolve through it.”

I blinked, sobering, because if vengeance was his nature, then that was another matter entirely. But I did not remember a sibling who was god of vengeance.

“What have I done to earn your wrath?” I asked, troubled now. “And why are you even asking the question? You have to serve your nature.”

“Are you offering to die for me?”

“No, demons take you. If you try to kill me, I’ll try to kill you back. Suicide isn’t
my
nature. But I want to understand this.”

He sighed and shifted, the movement drawing my eye toward the mirror below our feet. It didn’t help much. The angle of the reflection was such that I could see little beyond feet and legs and a hint of elbow. His hands were in his pockets, too.