Relief restored color to the man’s face. “Sorry, miss,” he said, bobbing a greeting to me. “I just… well.” He smiled sheepishly. “You understand.”
I reassured him again, though I was not entirely sure that I did understand. The man wandered off after that, leaving T’vril and I to ourselves—inasmuch as we could be alone amid such a horde. I could see now that everyone present wore lowblood marks; they were all servants. There must have been nearly a thousand people in the centeryard’s sprawling space. T’vril was so good at keeping them unobtrusive that I’d had no idea there were this many servants in Sky, though I suppose I should have guessed they would outnumber the highbloods.
“Don’t blame Ter,” T’vril said. “Today’s one of the few days we can be free of rank considerations. He wasn’t expecting to see that.” He nodded toward my forehead.
“What is this, T’vril? Where did these people…?”
“A little favor from the Enefadeh.” He gestured toward the entrance we’d just walked through, and upward. There was a faint, glasslike sheen to the air all around the centeryard, which I had not noticed before. We stood within a huge, transparent bubble of—something. Magic, whatever it was.
“No one with a mark higher than quarterblood sees anything, even if they pass through the barrier,” T’vril said. “An exception was made for me, and, as you saw, we can bring others through if we choose. This means we can celebrate without highbloods coming here to ogle our ‘quaint common-folk customs’ like we’re animals in a zoo.”
I understood at last, and smiled as I did. It was probably only one of many small rebellions that the lowblood servants quietly fomented against their higher-born relations. If I stayed in Sky longer I would probably see others…
But, of course, I would not live long enough for that.
That thought sobered me at once, despite the music and gaiety around me. T’vril flashed me a grin and let go my hand. “Well, you’re here now. Enjoy yourself for a while, hmm?” And almost at the moment he let me go, a woman grabbed him and pulled him into the mass of people. I saw a flash of his red hair among other heads, and then he was gone.
I stood where he’d left me, feeling oddly bereft. The servants celebrated on around me, but I was not part of it. Nor could I relax amid so much noise and chaos, however joyous. None of these people were Darre. None of them were under threat of execution. None of them had gods’ souls stuffed into their bodies, tainting all that they thought and felt.
Yet T’vril had brought me here in an attempt to cheer me up, and it would’ve been churlish to leave right away. So I looked around for some quiet spot where I might sit out of the way. My eyes caught on a familiar face—or at least, it seemed familiar at first. A young man watched me from the steps of one of the cottages, smiling as if he knew me, at least. He was a little older than me, pretty-faced and slender, Tema-looking but with completely un-Tema eyes of faded green—
I caught my breath and went over to him. “Sieh?”
He grinned. “Glad to see you out.”
“You’re…” I gaped a moment longer, then closed my mouth. I had known all along that Nahadoth was not the only one among the Enefadeh who could change his form. “So this is your doing?” I gestured at the barrier, which now I could see above us as well, like a dome.
He shrugged. “T’vril’s people do favors for us all year; it’s fitting we should pay them back. We slaves must stick together.”
There was a bitterness in his tone that I had not heard before. It felt oddly comforting in comparison with my own mood, so I sat down on the steps beside him, near his legs. Together we watched the celebration in silence for a long while. After a time I felt his hand touch my hair, stroking it, and that comforted me further still. Whatever form he took, he was still the same Sieh.
“They grow and change so fast,” he said softly, his eyes on a group of dancers near the musicians. “Sometimes I hate them for that.”
I glanced up at him in surprise; this was a strange mood indeed for him. “You gods are the ones who made us this way, aren’t you?”
He glanced at me, and for a jarring, painful instant I saw confusion on his face. Enefa. He had spoken as if I was Enefa.
Then the confusion passed, and he shared with me a small, sad smile. “Sorry,” he said.
I could not feel bitter about it, given the sorrow in his face. “I do seem to look like her.”
“That’s not it.” He sighed. “It’s just that sometimes—well, it feels like she died only yesterday.”
The Gods’ War had occurred over two thousand years before, by most scholars’ reckonings. I turned away from Sieh and sighed, too, at the width of the gulf between us.
“You’re not like her,” he said. “Not really.”
I didn’t want to talk about Enefa, but I said nothing. I drew up my knees and rested my chin on them. Sieh resumed stroking my hair, petting me like a cat.
“She was reserved like you, but that’s the only similarity. She was… cooler than you. Slower to anger—although she had the same kind of temper as you, I think, magnificent when it finally blew. We tried hard not to anger her.”
“You sound like you were afraid of her.”
“Of course. How could we not be?”
I frowned in confusion. “She was your mother.”
Sieh hesitated, and in it I heard an echo of my earlier thoughts about the gulf between us. “It’s… difficult to explain.”
I hated that gulf. I wanted to breach it, though I had no idea if it was even possible. So I said, “Try.”
His hand paused on my hair, and then he chuckled, his voice warm. “I’m glad you’re not one of my worshippers. You’d drive me mad with your demands.”
“Would you even bother answering any prayers that I made?” I could not help smiling at the idea.
“Oh, of course. But I might sneak a salamander into your bed to get back at you.”
I laughed, which surprised me. It was the first time all day that I’d felt human. It didn’t last long as laughs went, but when it passed, I felt better. On impulse, I shifted to lean against his legs, putting my head on his knee. His hand never left my hair.
“I needed no mother’s milk when I was born.” Sieh spoke slowly, but I did not sense a lie this time. I think it was just difficult for him to find the right words. “There was no need to protect me from danger or sing me lullabies. I could hear the songs between the stars, and I was more dangerous to the worlds I visited than they could ever be to me. And yet, compared to the Three, I was weak. Like them in many ways, but obviously inferior. Naha was the one who convinced her to let me live and see what I might become.”
I frowned. “She was going to… kill you?”
“Yes.” He chuckled at my shock. “She killed things all the time, Yeine. She was death as well as life, the twilight along with the dawn. Everyone forgets that.”
I turned to stare at him, which made him draw his hand back from my hair. There was something in that gesture—something regretful and hesitant, not befitting a god at all—that suddenly angered me. It was there in his every word. However incomprehensible relationships between gods might be, he had been a child and Enefa his mother, and he had loved her with any child’s abandon. Yet she had almost killed him, as a breeder culls a defective foal.
Or as a mother smothers a dangerous infant…
No. That had been entirely different.
“I’m beginning to dislike this Enefa,” I said.
Sieh started in surprise, stared at me for a long second, then burst out laughing. It was infectious, though nonsensical; humor born of pain. I smiled as well.