He stepped forward again. I felt it: an impossible, invisible vastness moved with him. I heard the walls of Sar-enna-nem groan, too flimsy to contain such power. The whole world could not contain this. I heard the sky above Darr rumble with thunder; the ground beneath my feet trembled. White teeth gleamed amid the darkness, sharp like wolves’. That was when I knew I had to act, or the Nightlord would kill my grandmother right before my eyes.
Right before my—
Right before my eyes she lies, sprawled and naked and bloody
this is not flesh this is all you can comprehend
but it means the same thing as flesh, she is dead and violated, her perfect form torn in ways that should not be possible, should not be and who has done this? Who could have
what did it mean that he made love to me before driving the knife home?
and then it hits: betrayal. I had known of his anger, but never once did I imagine… never once had I dreamt… I had dismissed her fears. I thought I knew him. I gather her body to mine and will all of creation to make her live again. We are not built for death. But nothing changes, nothing changes, there was a hell that I built long ago and it was a place where everything remained the same forever because I could imagine nothing more horrific, and now I am there.
Then others come, our children, and all react with equal horror
in a child’s eyes, a mother is god
but I can see nothing of their grief through the black mist of my own. I lay her body down but my hands are covered in her blood, our blood, sister lover pupil teacher friend otherself, and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears.
I blinked.
Sar-enna-nem was as it had been, shadowed and quiet, its splendor hidden again beneath bricks and dusty wood and old rugs. I stood in front of my grandmother, though I did not remember getting up or moving. Nahadoth’s human mask was back in place, his aura diminished to its usual quiet drift, and once again he was staring at me.
I covered my eyes with one hand. “I can’t take much more of this.”
“Y-Yeine?” My grandmother. She put a hand on my shoulder. I barely noticed.
“It’s happening, isn’t it?” I looked up at Nahadoth. “What you expected. Her soul is devouring my own.”
“No,” said Nahadoth very softly. “I don’t know what this is.”
I stared at him and could not help myself. All the shock and fear and anger of the past few days bubbled up, and I burst out laughing. I laughed so loudly that it echoed from Sar-enna-nem’s distant ceiling; so long that my grandmother peered at me in concern, no doubt wondering if I had gone mad. I probably had, because suddenly my laughter turned to screaming and my mirth ignited as white-hot rage.
“How can you not know?” I shrieked at Nahadoth. I had lapsed into Senmite again. “You’re a god! How can you not know?”
His calm stoked my fury higher. “I built uncertainty into this universe, and Enefa wove that into every living being. There will always be mysteries beyond even we gods’ understanding—”
I launched myself at him. In the interminable second that my mad rage lasted, I saw that his eyes flicked to my approaching fist and widened in something very like amazement. He had plenty of time to block or evade the blow. That he did not was a complete surprise.
The smack of it echoed as loud as my grandmother’s gasp.
In the ensuing silence, I felt empty. The rage was gone. Horror had not yet arrived. I lowered my hand to my side. My knuckles stung.
Nahadoth’s head had turned with the blow. He lifted a hand to his lip, which was bleeding, and sighed.
“I must work harder to keep my temper around you,” he said. “You have a memorable way of chastising me.”
He lifted his eyes, and suddenly I knew he was remembering the time I had stabbed him. I have waited so long for you, he had said then. This time, instead of kissing me, he reached out and touched my lips with his fingers. I felt warm wetness and reflexively licked, tasting cool skin and the metallic salt of his blood.
He smiled, his expression almost fond. “Do you like the taste?”
Not of your blood, no.
But your finger was another matter.
“Yeine,” said my grandmother again, breaking the tableau. I took a deep breath, marshaled my wits, and turned back to her.
“Are the neighboring kingdoms allying?” I asked. “Are they arming for war?”
She swallowed before nodding. “We received formal notice this week, but there had been earlier signs. Our merchants and diplomats were expelled from Menchey almost two months ago. They say old Gemd has passed a conscription law to boost the ranks of his army, and he’s accelerated training for the rest. The council believes he’ll march in a week, maybe less.”
Two months ago. I had been summoned to Sky only a short while before that. Scimina had guessed my purpose the instant Dekarta summoned me.
And it made sense she had chosen to act through Menchey. Menchey was Darr’s largest and most powerful neighbor, once our greatest enemy. We had been at peace with the Mencheyev since the Gods’ War, but only because the Arameri had been unwilling to grant either land permission to annihilate the other. But as Ras Onchi had warned me, things had changed.
Of course they had submitted a formal war petition. They would want the right to shed our blood.
“I would hope we had begun to muster forces as well, in the time since,” I said. It was no longer my place to give orders; I could only suggest.
My grandmother sighed. “As best we could. Our treasury is so depleted we can barely afford to feed them, much less train and equip. No one will lend us funds. We’ve resorted to asking for volunteers—any woman with a horse and her own weapons. Men as well, if they’re not yet fathers.”
It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defense, their physical strength bent toward the single and most important task of protecting our homes and children. This meant the council had decided that our only defense was to defeat the enemy, period. Anything else meant the end of the Darre.
“I’ll give you what I can,” I said. “Dekarta watches everything I do, but I have wealth now, and—”
“No.” Beba touched my shoulder again. I could not remember the last time she had touched me without reason. But then, I had never seen her leap to protect me from danger, either. It pained me that I would die young and never truly know her.
“Look to yourself,” she said. “Darr is not your concern, not any longer.”