The Kingdom of Gods (35 page)

He looked hard at me. “You have childish secrets and adult ones, Sieh, because you have never been as simple as you claim or wish to be. And this one —” He slapped the tower, making a sound that echoed from the empty streets around us. “This one is something you’ve kept even from yourself.”

I laughed, but it was uneasy. “I can’t keep a secret from myself. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“When have you ever made sense? It’s something you’ve forgotten.”

“But I —”

forget

I faltered, silent. It was cold all of a sudden. I began shivering, though Nsana — who wore only his hair — was fine. But his eyes had narrowed suddenly, and abruptly I realized he’d heard that odd little burp of my thoughts.

“That was Enefa’s voice,” he said.

“I don’t …” But it had been. It had always been Mother whispering
in my soul, nudging my thoughts away from this place when they got too close. Her voice:
forget
.

“Something you’ve forgotten,” Nsana said softly, “but perhaps not by your own will.”

I frowned, torn between confusion and alarm and fear. And above us, in the white tower, the dark thing shifted with a low rumbling groan. There was the faintest sound of stone shifting, and when I looked up at the tower, I spied a series of fine, barely noticeable cracks in its daystone surface.

Something I had forgotten. Something Enefa had
made me
forget. But Enefa was gone now, and whatever she had done to me was beginning to wear off.

“Gods and mortals and demons in between.” I rubbed my face. “I don’t want to deal with this, Nsa. My life is hard enough right now.”

Nsana sighed, and his sigh transformed the City into a playground of delights and horrors. A high, steep slide ended in a pit of chewing, flensing, disembodied teeth. The chains on a nearby swing set were wet with oil and blood. I could not see the trap in the seesaw, but I was certain there was one. It was too innocent-looking — like me, when I am up to something.

“Time for you to grow up,” he said again. “You ran away from me rather than do it before. Now you have no choice.”

“I had no choice before!” I rounded on him. “Growing old will kill me!”

“I didn’t say grow old, you fool. I said grow
up
.” Nsana leaned close, his breath redolent of honey and poisonous flowers. “Just because you’re a child doesn’t mean you have to be immature, for
the Maelstrom’s sake! I have known you long and well, my brother, and there’s another secret you hide from yourself, only you do a terrible job so everyone knows: you’re lonely. You’re always lonely, even though you’ve left more lovers in your wake than you can count. You never want what you have, only what you can’t!”

“That’s not —”

He cut me off ruthlessly. “You loved me before I learned my nature. While I needed you. Then when I found my strength and became whole, when I no longer
needed
you but still
wanted
you —” He paused suddenly, his jaw flexing as he choked back words too painful to speak. I stared back at him, rendered speechless. Had he really felt this way, all this time? Was that how he’d seen it? I had always thought
he
had left
me
. I shook my head in wonder, in denial.

“You cannot be one of the Three,” he whispered. I flinched. “It’s long past time you accepted that. You want someone you can never leave behind. But
think
, Sieh. Not even the Three are like that. Itempas betrayed all of us and himself. Enefa grew selfish, and Nahadoth has always been fickle. This new one, Yeine, she’ll break your heart, too. Because you want something that she can never give you. You want perfection.”

“Not perfection,” I blurted, and then felt ill as I realized I had confirmed everything else he’d said. “Not … perfection. Just …” I licked my lips, ran my hands through my hair. “I want someone who is
mine
. I … I don’t even know …” I sighed. “The Three, Nsana, they are
the Three
. Three facets of the same diamond, whole even when separate. No matter how far apart they drift, they always, always, come back together eventually. That closeness …”

It was what Shahar had with Deka, I realized: a closeness
that few outsiders would ever comprehend or penetrate. More than blood-deep — soul-deep. She hadn’t seen him for half her life and she’d still betrayed me for him.

What would it be like to have that kind of love for myself?

I wanted it, yes. Gods, yes. And I did not really want it from Yeine or Nahadoth or Itempas, because they had each other and it would have been wrong to interfere with that. But I wanted something like it.

Nsana sighed. Here in my dream, he was supreme; he could know my every thought and whim if he wanted, without even trying. So of course he knew now that he had never been enough for me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, very softly.

“You certainly are.” Looking sour, Nsana turned away for a moment, contemplating his own thoughts. Then he sighed and faced me again.

“Fine,” he said. “You need help, and I’m not so churlish that I’d ignore your need. So I’ll try to find out more about this secret of yours. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be dead before you figure it out.”

I lowered my eyes. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, Sieh.” He gestured, and I followed this movement to see a little patch of flowers on one side of the playground. Amid dozens of black daisies that bobbed and swayed in the cool breeze, a single white-petaled flower stood utterly still. It was not a daisy. I had seen such a flower before: an altar-skirt rose, one of a rare variety bred in High North. The white tower of my secret, repeating itself across theme and form.

“This secret will hurt when it is finally revealed,” he said.

I nodded slowly, my eyes on that single frightening flower. “Yes. I can see that.”

The hand on my shoulder caught me by surprise, and I turned to see that Nsana’s mood had changed again: he was no longer exasperated with me, but something closer to pitying. “So many troubles,” he said. “Impending death, our parents’ madness, and I see someone has broken your heart recently, too.”

I looked away at this. “It’s no one. Just a mortal.”

“Love levels the ground between us and them. When they break our hearts, it hurts the same as if the deed were done by one of our own.” He cupped the back of my head, ruffling my hair companionably, and I smiled weakly and tried not to show how much I really wanted a kiss instead. “Ah, my brother. Do stop being stupid, will you?”

“Nsana, I —”

He put a finger over my lips, and I fell silent.

“Hush,” he murmured, then leaned close. I closed my eyes, waiting for the touch of his lips, but they came where I had not been expecting them: on my forehead. When I blinked at him, he smiled, and it was full of sorrow.

“I’m a god, not a stone,” he said. I flushed in shame. He stroked my cheek. “But I will love you always, Sieh.”

I woke in the dark and cried myself back to sleep. If I dreamt again before morning, I did not remember it. Nsa was kind like that.

My hair had grown again, though not as much as before. Only a couple of feet. Nails, too, this time; the longest was four inches,
jagged and beginning to curl. I begged scissors from Hymn and chopped off both as best I could. I had to get Hymn’s father to teach me how to shave. This so amused him that he forgot to be afraid of me for a few minutes, and we actually shared a laugh when I cut myself and yelled out a very bad word. Then he started to worry that I would cut myself and blow up the house someday. We don’t read minds, but some things are easy for anyone to guess. I excused myself then and went off to work.

I offended the Arms of Night’s housemistress immediately by coming in through the main door. She took me back out and showed me the servants’ door, an unobtrusive entrance at the house’s side, leading to its basement level. It was a better door, quite frankly; I have always preferred back entrances. Good for sneaking. But my pride was stung enough that I complained, anyway. “What, I’m not good enough to come in the front?”

“Not if you’re not paying,” she snapped.

Inside, another servant greeted me and let me know that Ahad had left instructions in case of my arrival. So I followed him through the basement into what appeared to be a rather mundane meeting room. There were stiff-backed chairs that looked as though they had absorbed years’ worth of boredom, and a wide, square table on which sat an untouched platter of meats and fruits. I barely noticed all this, however, for I had stopped, my blood going cold as I registered who sat at the room’s wide table with Ahad. Nemmer.

And Kitr. And Eyem-sutah. And Glee, the only mortal. And, of all the insanities, Lil.

Five of my siblings, sitting about a meeting table as though they had never spun through the vortices of the outermost
cosmos as laughing sparkles. Three of the five hated me. The fourth might; no way of knowing with Eyem-sutah. The fifth had tried to eat me more than once. She would very likely try again, now that I was mortal.

If there’s anything edible left when the others get done with me, that is.
I set my jaw to hide my fear, which probably telegraphed it clearly.

“About time,” said Ahad. He nodded to the servant, who closed the door to leave us alone. “Please, Sieh, sit down.”

I did not move, hating him more than ever. I should have known better than to trust him.

With a sigh of mild annoyance, Ahad added, “None of us are stupid, Sieh. Harming you means incurring Yeine’s and Nahadoth’s displeasure. Do you honestly think we would do that?”

“I don’t know, Ahad,” said Kitr, who was smiling viciously at me. “I might.”

Ahad rolled his eyes. “You won’t, so be silent. Sieh, sit
down
. We have business to discuss.”

I was so startled by Ahad’s shutdown of Kitr that I forgot my fear. Kitr, too, looked more astonished than affronted. Any fool could tell that Ahad was the youngest of us, and inexperience meant weakness among our kind. He
was
weak, lacking the crucial means of making himself stronger. Yet there was no hint of fear in his eyes as he met her glare, and to my amazement — and everyone else’s, to judge by their expressions — Kitr said nothing in reply.

Feeling vaguely unimportant in the wake of this, I came to the table and sat down.

“So what the hells is this?” I asked, choosing a chair with no one on either side of me. “The weekly meeting of the Godlings’ Auxiliary, Lower Shadow Chapter?”

They all glowered. Except Lil, who laughed. Good old Lil. I had always liked her, when she wasn’t asking for my limbs as snacks. She leaned forward. “We are
conspiring
,” she said. Her raspy voice was filled with such childlike glee that I grinned back.

“This is about Darr, then.” I looked at Ahad, wondering if he had told them about the mask already.

“This is about many things,” he replied. He alone had a comfortable chair; someone had carted in the big leather chair from his office. “All of which may fit into a larger picture.”

“Not just the pieces you’ve discovered.” Nemmer smiled sweetly. “Isn’t that why you contacted me, Brother? You’re turning mortal, and it’s making you pay attention to more than your own ass for a change. But I thought you were staying in Sky. Did the Arameri throw you out?”

Kitr laughed hard enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. “Gods, Ahad, you said he was powerless, but I never dreamt it would be this bad. You’re
mortal
, Sieh. What good can you do in all this? Nothing but run to Daddy and Mommy — who aren’t here now to protect you.” Her eyes fixed on me, her smile fading, and I knew she was remembering the War. I was remembering it, too. Beneath the table, my hands clenched into fists and I wished I had my claws.