And there were other smells here, stronger and even less pleasant. Smoke. Charcoal. Burned meat and hair. I could hear something still sizzling faintly.
Near this sound stood a tall, languid female figure, the only thing I could see aside from Madding. Her back was to me, so at first I noticed only her long, ragged hair, straight like a High Norther’s but an odd mottled gold in color. This was not the gold of Amn hair; it was somehow not pretty at all. She was also thin—disturbingly, unhealthily so. She wore an incongruously elegant gown with a low back, and the shoulder blades that I could see on either side of her hair were sharp-angled, like knife edges.
Then the woman turned, and I clapped both hands over my mouth to keep from crying out. Above the nose, her face was normal. Below, her mouth became a distorted, impossible monstrosity, her lower jaw hanging all the way to her knees, the too-long expanse of her gums lined with several rows of tiny, needlelike teeth. Moving teeth, each row marching along her jaw like a restless trail of ants. I could hear them whirring faintly. She drooled.
And when she saw my reaction, she smiled. That was the most hideous sight I had ever seen.
Then she shimmered and became an ordinary-looking woman, nondescriptly Amn, with a nondescriptly human mouth. She was still smiling, though, and there was still something disturbingly hungry in her expression.
“My gods,” Madding murmured. (Godlings said this sort of thing all the time.) “It is you.”
His words confused me because of their direction; he was not speaking to the blonde woman. Then I jumped at the response, because it came from another unexpected direction—above.
“Oh, yes,” said this new, soft voice. “It’s him.”
Madding suddenly went still in a way that I knew meant trouble. His two lieutenants suddenly flickered into view, equally tense. “I see,” Madding said, speaking low and carefully. “It’s been a while, Sieh. Have you come to gloat?”
“A little.” The voice was that of a young, prepubescent boy. I looked up, trying to gauge where he was—a rooftop, maybe, or a window on the second or third floor. I could not see him. A mortal? Or another godling who was feeling shy?
There was a sudden feel of movement before me, and abruptly the boy spoke from the ground only a few feet away. Godling, then.
“You look worn out, old man,” the boy said, and belatedly I realized he, too, was addressing someone other than me, Madding, or the blonde woman. Finally I noticed that off to the side of the alley, near the wall, there was someone low to the ground. Sitting or kneeling, maybe. Panting for some reason. Something about those weary breaths was familiar.
“Mortal flesh is bound by physical laws,” the boy continued, speaking to the panting person. “If you don’t use sigils to channel the power, you get more, it’s true—but then the magic drains your strength. Use enough and it can even kill you—for a while, anyhow. Just one of a thousand new things you’ll have to learn, I’m afraid. Sorry, old man.”
The blonde woman uttered a laugh like pebbles grinding underfoot. “You’re not sorry.”
She was right. The voice of the boy—Sieh, Madding had called him—was utterly devoid of compassion. He sounded pleased, in fact, in the way that most people would be pleased to see an enemy brought low. I cocked my head, listening close and trying to understand.
Sieh chuckled. “Of course I’m sorry, Lil. Do I look like the kind of person who would hold a grudge? That would be petty of me.”
“Petty,” agreed the blonde woman, “and childish and cruel. Does his suffering please you?”
“Oh, yes, Lil. It pleases me very much.”
Not even the pretense of friendliness this time. There was nothing in that boyish voice but sadistic relish. I shivered, even more afraid for Shiny. I had never seen a godling child before, but I had an inkling they were not all that different from human children. Human children could be merciless, especially when they had power.
I stepped away from Madding, intending to go to the panting man. Madding pulled me sharply back, his hand like a vise on my arm. I stumbled, protesting, “But—”
“Not now, Oree,” Madding said. He didn’t use that tone with me often, but I had learned long ago that it meant danger when he did.
If this had been any other situation, I would have happily stepped behind him and tried to make myself as unnoticeable as possible. I was in a dark alley in the back end of beyond, surrounded by dead men and gods whose tempers were up. For all I knew, there wasn’t another mortal anywhere in shouting distance. Even if there had been, what in the infinite hells could they have done to help?
“What’s happened to the Keepers?” I whispered to Madding. It was an unnecessary question; they had finally stopped sizzling. “How did Shiny kill them?”
“Shiny?”
To my great dismay, it was Sieh’s voice. I hadn’t wanted to draw his attention or that of the blonde woman. Yet Sieh seemed honestly delighted. “Shiny? Is that what you call him? Really?”
I swallowed, tried to speak, then tried again when the first try failed. “He won’t give me his name, so… I had to call him something.”
“Did you, now?” The boy, sounding amused, came closer. I was a good deal taller than him, I guessed by the direction of his voice, but that was not as comforting as it should have been. I could still see nothing of him, not even an outline or a shadow, which meant that he was better than most godlings at concealing himself. I couldn’t even smell him. I could feel him, though; his presence filled the whole alley in a way that none of the other godlings’ did.
“Shiny,” the boy said again, contemplative. “And he answers to that name?”
“Not exactly.” I licked my lips and decided to take a chance. “Is he all right?”
The boy abruptly turned away. “Oh, he’ll be fine. He has no choice but to be fine, doesn’t he?” He was angrier now, I realized, my heart sinking into my stomach. I had made things worse. “No matter what happens to his mortal body, no matter how many times he abuses it—and, yes, oh yes, I know about that, did you think I didn’t?” He was speaking to Shiny again, and his voice practically trembled with fury. “Did you think I wouldn’t laugh at you, so proud, so arrogant, dying over and over because you can’t be bothered to take the most basic care?”
There was a sudden jostling sound and a grunt from Shiny. And another sound, unmistakable: a blow. The boy had hit or kicked him. Madding’s hand tightened on my arm, inadvertently I think. A reaction to whatever he was seeing. Sieh was barely coherent, snarling out his words. “Did you think”—another kick, this one harder; godlings were far stronger than they seemed—“I wouldn’t”—Kick—“love to help you along?” Kick.
And an echo: the wet snap of bone. Shiny cried out, and at this I could not help myself; I opened my mouth to protest.
But before I could, another voice spoke, so softly that I almost missed it. “Sieh.”
Stillness.
All at once, Sieh became visible. He was a boy, small and spindly looking, almost Maroneh-colored, though with an unkempt flop of straight hair. Not at all threatening to look at. As he appeared, he stood frozen, his eyes wide with surprise, but all at once he turned.
In the space that he faced, another godling appeared. This one was also a tiny thing, a full head shorter than me and barely larger than Sieh, yet there was something about her that hinted at strength. Possibly her attire, which was strange: a long, gray sleeveless vest that bared her slim, tight brown arms, and leggings that stopped at midcalf. Below them she was barefoot. She looked, I thought at first, the way I’d heard High Northers described, but her hair was wrong—curled and wild instead of straight, and chopped boyishly short. And her eyes were wrong, too, though I could not quite fathom how. What color was that? Green? Gray? Something else entirely?