Shades in Shadow (4 page)

His nature, as gods call it. His affinity, his focus, whatever, he doesn't know the secret special thing that nourishes and completes him and will make him strong. He's spent a while trying to teach himself the gods' language, which makes no sense to him beyond the most rudimentary level, and all of its vocabulary and conceptualizations are laced through with this understanding. Maybe if gods weren't all
crazy
, their language wouldn't be such an exercise in futility for him.

“Thanks for telling me what I already know,” he says nastily, rising and dusting off his butt. No telling what, or who, he might pick up here. “You're always so good at that.”

Her jaw muscles flex so sharply that he wonders what she almost said—or almost became—in reaction to his words. But what she says is, “This is hard for me, too, all right?” Then she sighs. “I'd been hoping we could help each other, you and I.”

“Help? What the hells do
you
need help with?”

She looks truly annoyed now. “We two are the youngest of the gods, right now. And we were both human—more or less.” She adds this quickly when he sneers. “It's a handicap that none of the other gods know how to cope with. But we share it, and so maybe…if we work together…”

She holds out a hand then, and he looks at it. An offer. An appeal. A friend. He wants to reach for it. Oh gods, how he wants to reach for it.

But he's tried such things before. Tried to care about others, only to find that he is unimportant to them. Tried to trust, and been betrayed. So he hesitates.

Then his lungs lock and his belly twists and all his muscles twist and fray apart, and he can do nothing but clutch himself and flee before he falls to pieces in front of her. (Of all of them, he cannot bear to seem weak to her.) The realm, which is half alive anyway, pulls him to a place that is better for him, full of silence and dark closeness and comfort, and there over time he is able to recover. When he does, he re-forms a material body so that he can laugh, bitterly, to himself.

He doesn't know his nature, but now he knows his antithesis. And isn't it perfect?
Fear
is what will one day destroy him.

The god without a name experiments, because after all, he is curious.

There's a problem right away: not much really frightens him. Nihilism apparently has that effect. He does not fear pain because he's known too much of it. Likewise degradation, mutilation, despair, or anything of the sort. What would frighten him is not merely the experience of these things, but the possibility that they might
continue
. If he can see an end, anything is easy to endure.

And what is the opposite of fear? Courage, maybe. No, too easy. Gods are never simple. (
He
will not be simple.) Apathy? If that was his nature, he would be the most powerful godling in all creation. He tries on each of these anyway, placing himself in test scenarios. He picks a fight with a stronger godling and loses badly. Takes him several years to recover. Then he visits a number of hells, deliberately spending a few days in each of the ones he finds most distasteful. Alas, they are nothing compared to Sky's worst, and just knowing he can leave whenever he wants dulls their sting. He visits the Maelstrom, and oh yes, it's frightening, not the least because it may not actually kill him. Fall into it and suffer eternal joy, maybe, or eternal bad jokes told by a wooden-eared comedian. But the greatest likelihood of being swallowed by it is instant death, and that is something he's craved too long to fear now.

All this tells him one thing, though: not just any fear will harm him. Only a
particular
sort of fear does the trick. He feels discomfort whenever he fears actions that could have the effect of making him closer to others. It is the fear of intimacy that counteracts his nature. So he travels back to the mortal realm and becomes a whore.

That does not go well. He stops because he detests cleaning up bodies.

Still, he learns from the experience. Users of any kind will always be in danger from him. Too much like his old life, parasites gnawing at sore spots in his scarred vitals, but he is not Yeine; he will not abide such filth. Anyway, he's not a nautilus; gods do not evolve through their children. He must develop his own immunity to what hurts him.

He finds that other whores are safe from him. He does not accidentally kill them, even when he couples with them. This is because they know what it is to be used, and they share the loathing of users with him; this becomes something they can bond over. An adjustment: he becomes a pimp instead, quietly driving away the other pimps, taking good care of his girls and his boys and his ask-me-firsts in ways that no mere mortal could.

The ones who crave drugs or drink, he heals or satisfies as they wish. He kills those users who would do more than the usual harm—and he can be in many places at once to do so. The streets he works acquire a reputation. Other whores come begging him to take over their streets, and he expands his territory cautiously. But no other godlings are interested in this particular demesne of mortal life; he has no competition. A few times mortal criminals try to kill him. Mercilessly he obliterates their organizations' leadership and takes over, mostly because he's bored and partly because stupidity annoys him. Thus does he accidentally end up in control of nearly all the city's organized crime.

Well. That's something new.

It is fascinating. There are intimacies to be courted here, too, the bonds that keep hard people together in a hard business, and those bonds are strong—like family, like comrades in war, like love, though leavened with generous portions of resentment and ambition and greed. He mostly lets them do whatever they like so long as they don't hurt too many people and don't destroy the business. Despite such careless control, the organization thrives and grows wealthy and strong.

There's a problem one day. The lieutenants report it and he grows curious enough to go and investigate. In one area of town where he has found no pimps to kill, there are many whores. They run themselves and have fought hard for their independence. When he approaches their spokeswoman, she curses him, tells him they would rather die than be owned. “Yes,” he says admiringly, and feels the first surge of something that must be his nature. It is too unfocused for him to grasp.

The passion of his response surprises her into silence. (It surprises him, too.) He asks the woman what she and her comrades want. She gives him a list of demands that would make most criminal lords laugh. Her hand trembles as she hands it to him, in fact. She expects to die—but she did not lie; she is willing, if by her death her comrades can be protected. Yes, yes, gods yes. He considers the logistics only long enough to figure out how it might be done, vanishes and has a few conversations, then comes back and offers her his hand. Bemused, she takes it. “Partners?” he suggests, and when she nods, that flutter is there again. He feels good. This is good for him. He wants more.

He gives his new partner everything she wants. He buys houses all over the city and lets her choose the staff. The whores may live in them or off-site as they choose. Their housing is paid for—because after all, their beds are a place of work. Their medical care is paid for. He hires servants to see to their material needs, nannies to tend their children. His foot soldiers are permitted to visit the houses only if they can behave. He kills the ones who don't; he has precious little patience. They mostly behave anyway, because they already know this about him.

Thugs gossip like fishermen. They go away satisfied and awed and spread the word, and others quickly begin to come. Some are hungry to sample whores who regard themselves and are treated as people—such a rare thing in this world. Some are merely curious. His women have stretch marks and fat rolls, and his men don't have giant prehensile penises or lantern jaws, but the sex is apparently amazing anyway. There's a house for everyone: those who crave simple pleasures and those whose driving impulses are more complex. Those who
need
and those who have only vague interest. If there is pain, it is by mutual agreement. If there is perversion…well, that is a matter of perspective.

He stops calling them whores. What they do is too skillful a thing for such a simplistic word. They are the residents who make these houses homes; they are sexual engineers; they are artisans of flesh and emotion. He is unsurprised, therefore, when one of his godling siblings comes to him, sheepishly requesting aid. She has always been curious, but mortals make her nervous. So delicate, so strange. He pairs her with his partner, that so-wise woman who demanded the earth from him and got the heavens…and then it all goes wrong.

They fall in love.

They
fall in love
, damn it.

It's so wrong. How can she do this to him? He has given her everything. He accepts his partner's resignation with bitter, bitter grace; it is only another betrayal. She should know better. Her lover will only turn on her. Lovers always do. He tells her this, along with a choice few other cruel things, until she gives him a look so pitying that it shuts him up.

“You have to try anyway,” she says gently. “Even if you know they'll hurt you. That's the whole point.”

But he
was
trying.

It hurts so much when she leaves that he is sick with it. He curls alone in the room he rarely visits, in the enormous bed that he never sleeps in—he hates sleep—and shakes for hours, with the door and windows sealed shut and blackened so that no one will see.

Time heals. The god without a name recovers, slowly. Not fully.

Other godlings come, after the first one's glowing report. Some want to be clients and some want to join the artisans, and finally he realizes he'll have to do something about this.

So he sets up one last house, this one in the poorest area of the city—but quietly, because he is perverse, he makes it the most special of them. He works magic into the walls as they are built: whatever the clients bring with them will be returned threefold. Beauty for beauty, contempt for contempt. He requires the godlings to learn their trade from the mortals. The mortals think this is hilarious, but it is only wisdom; mortals are the experts in this. Mortals are strong…and he knows, better than anyone, how utterly useless gods can be.

But the experiment, the experiment! He glories in it, quietly. Once his special house is ready, he sends invitations to the sorts of people he wants as clients and turns away most who come soliciting. This must be a thing of privilege, he thinks, feels instinctively—but not the sort of privilege that can be bought with money or fortune of birth. When clients come, he charges whatever they can afford. Once, on impulse, he brings in a homeless woman, who does nothing but weep in his arms all night. That's all she needs. When she is done, though, she's better. Not healed, but happy. He hires her as the housekeeper.

He names the house the
Arms of Night
. Perhaps Nahadoth finds it amusing, if Nahadoth is paying attention at all.

(He sometimes wishes he'd taken Yeine's hand. She does not return to him again. Beyond this regret, he feels nothing. It is safer this way.)

Meanwhile, the house's reputation grows. His criminal enterprise does, too, until his power rivals that of the Arameri. He works mostly through proxies now, having long since turned over management of the syndicate and his various businesses to others (because it got boring), though he retains direct proprietorship of the Arms (because it isn't). One day there are overtures from a rival group, seeking alliance. He ignores them. The rival group sends him a message anyway—via his own shadow, which comes to life and speaks to him. They are an organization of godlings, and they have a proposition that they are certain will interest him. Curiosity outweighs annoyance. He agrees.

The woman who walks into his office is everything he should hate. She radiates strength like a shroud of flame and wears her beauty as a shield for the blades of her tongue and mind. The way that she looks at him puts him instantly on edge. Arameri looked at him like that, back when he belonged to them. But then he sees her frown and twitch her gaze away, and instantly he understands. Mortals should not have natures, not like gods, but this one almost does. She is so much her father's daughter that she wants him instantly—he is the shadow of her father's lover, after all. But. She is so much her
mother's
daughter that she rejects that echoed desire as simplistic and base.

How interesting that she refuses to merely lust for him. A perverse part of him wants to test this. Seduction will not work, he guesses at once; she will reject that, too. But something more than seduction perhaps…? Something he has never tried before. He will befriend her, then, if she can be friended. He will…
like
her. As an academic exercise.

Ah, and she tries the same with him. She will not lust, will not be driven like an animal by half-divine instincts…but she will
consider
. She will, if she finds him worthy, choose.

The proposal she brings is ridiculous. He's not interested in protecting gods or mortals; let them all kill each other. It's laughable that Itempas has chosen this method for his atonement. It will never work.

He agrees anyway so that he can see her again.

The Maelstrom pays a visit. The world doesn't end. Alas. Sieh does end, though; stupid, ridiculous Sieh. Took him long enough.

Glee gives him a name.

Perhaps being immortal…is not wholly pointless.

Much, much later, the god whose name no one else will ever know stands atop the Pier of Sky, which now is little more than a shard of rubble jutting out from the world's most magnificent grave cairn. It's not very stable, but he'll be all right. He's a god. That's…all right, too. Not terrible, at least. Could be better.

He knows the manifestation of his other, former self the way he knows his own skin. (When he has skin.) It's strange, and always will be, to
see
a face that so reflects his own, though of course his is the inferior copy. For countless aeons they communicated with each other only through messages written on fogged mirrors and the like. (Toward the end, the only thing he ever wrote was, “How much longer?” And Nahadoth would answer, “Not long now.”) They stand in silence awhile, looking at each other for the second time.