By my training, I should never have smiled. I did it anyway, because I no longer cared about my training. And because, I was certain, it was what Deka would have done. Sieh, I suspected, would have gone a step further, because he always went a step further. Perhaps he would have offered to babysit her children. Perhaps she would even have let him.
“I’m tired,” I said. “The whole world isn’t something one woman should bear on her shoulders—not even if she wants to. Not even if she has help.” And I no longer did.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She fell silent, and I turned back to the railing as a light breeze, redolent of algae and rotting crops and human sorrow, wafted over the lake from the land beyond. The sky was heavily overcast as if threatening a thunderstorm, but it had been so for days without rain. The lords of the sky were in mourning for their lost child; we would not see the sun or the stars for some time.
Let Usein knife me in the back, if she wished. I truly did not care.
“I am sorry,” she said at length. “About your brother, and your mother, and…” She trailed off. We could both see the Tree’s corpse in the distance; it blocked the mountains that had once marked the horizon. From here, Sky was nothing more than tumbled white jewels around its broken crown.
“ ‘I was born to change this world,’ ” I whispered.
“Pardon?”
“Something the Matriarch—the first Shahar—reportedly said.” I smiled to myself. “It isn’t a well-known quote outside the family, because it was blasphemous. Bright Itempas abhors change, you see.”
“Hmm.” I suspected she thought I was mad. That was fine, too.
After a time, Usein left, probably returning to the Temple to battle for Darr’s fair share of the future. I should have gone, too. The Arameri were, if nothing else, the royal family of the numerous and fractious tribes of the Amn race. If I did not fight for my people, we might be shortchanged in the time to come.
So be it, I decided, and hitched up my gown to sit against the wall.
It was Lady Yeine who found me next.
She appeared quietly, seated on the railing I had just leaned against. Though she looked the same as always—relentlessly Darren—her clothing had changed. Instead of pale gray, the tunic and calf-pants she usually wore were darker in color. Still gray, but a color that matched the lowering stormclouds above. She did not smile, her eyes olive with sorrow.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
If one more person, mortal or god, asked me that question, I was going to scream.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in return. An impertinent question, I knew, for the god to whom my family now owed its allegiance. I would never have dared it with Lord Itempas. Yeine was less intimidating, however, so she would have to deal with the consequences of that.
“An experiment,” she said. (I was privately relieved that my rudeness did not seem to bother her.) “I am leaving Nahadoth and Itempas alone together for a while. If the universe comes apart again, I’ll know I made a mistake.”
If my brother had not been dead, I would have laughed. If her son had not been dead, I think she would have, too.
“Will you release him?” I asked. “Itempas?”
“It has already been done.” She sighed, drawing up one knee and resting her chin on it. “The Three are whole again, if not wholly united, and not exactly rejoicing at our reconciliation. Perhaps because there is no reconciliation; that will take an age of the world, I imagine. But who knows? It has already gone faster than I expected.” She shrugged. “Perhaps I’m wrong about the rest, too.”
I considered the histories I had read. “He was to be punished for as long as the Enefadeh. Two thousand years and some.”
“Or until he learned to love truly.” She said nothing more. I had seen Itempas weep beside the body of his son, silent tear tracks cleansing the blood and dirt from his face. This had been nothing meant for a mortal’s eyes, but he had permitted me to see it, and I was keenly conscious of the honor. At the time, I’d had no tears of my own.
And I had seen Lord Itempas put a hand on the shoulder of Lord Nahadoth, who knelt beside Sieh’s corpse without moving. Nahadoth had not shaken that hand off. By such small gestures are wars ended.
“We will withdraw,” Lady Yeine said, after a time of silence. “Naha and Tempa and I, completely this time. There is much work to be done, repairing the damage that the Maelstrom did. It takes all our strength to hold the realms together, even now. The scar of Its passage will never fade completely.” She sighed. “And it has finally become clear to me that our presence in the mortal realm does too much harm, even when we try not to interfere. So we will leave this world to our children—the godlings, if they wish to stay, and you mortals, too. And the demons, if there are any left or any more born.” She shrugged. “If the godlings get out of hand, ask the demons to keep them in line. Or do it yourselves. None of you are powerless anymore.”
I nodded slowly. She must have guessed my thoughts, or read them in my face. I was slipping.
“He loved you,” she said softly. “I could tell. You drove him half mad.”
At that, I did smile. “The feeling was mutual.”
We sat then, gazing at the clouds and the lake and the broken land, both of us thinking unimaginable thoughts. I was glad for her presence. Datennay tried, and I was growing to care for him, but it was hard to keep the pain at bay some days. The Mistress of Life and Death, I feel certain, understood that.
When she got to her feet, I did, too, and we faced each other. Her tiny size always surprised me. I thought she should have been like her brothers, tall and terrible, showing some hint of her magnificence in her shape. But that was what I got for thinking like an Amn.
“Why did it begin?” I asked. And because I was used to how gods thought and that question could have triggered a conversation about anything from the universe to the Gods’ War and everything in between, I added, “Sieh. How did we make him mortal? Why did we have such power over him, with him? Was it because…” It was difficult for me to admit, but I’d had the scriveners test me, and they had confirmed my suspicions. I was a demon, though the god-killing potency of my blood was negligible, and I had no magic, no specialness. Mother would have been so disappointed.
“It had nothing to do with you,” Yeine said softly. I blinked. She looked away, sliding her hands into her pockets—a gesture that tore at my heart, because Sieh had done it so often. He’d even looked like her, a little. By design? Knowing him, yes.
“But what—”
“I lied,” she said, “about us staying wholly out of the mortal realm. There will be times in the future when we’ll have no choice but to return. It will be our task to assist the godlings, you see, when the time of metamorphosis comes upon them. When they become gods in their own right.”
I jerked in surprise. “Become… what? Like Kahl?”
“No. Kahl sought to force nature. He wasn’t ready for it. Sieh was.” She let out a long sigh. “I didn’t begin to understand until Tempa said that whatever Sieh had become, he was meant to become. His bond with you, losing his magic—perhaps these are the signs we’ll know to watch for next time. Or perhaps those were unique to Sieh. He was the oldest of our children, after all, and the first to reach this stage.” She looked at me and shrugged. “I would have liked to see the god he became. Though I still would have lost him then, even if he’d lived.”
I digested this in wonder and felt a little fear at the implications. Godlings could grow into gods? Did that mean gods, then, could grow into things like the Maelstrom? If they could somehow live long enough, would mortals become godlings?