I crouched at the edge of one of the balconies, bracing one hand on the thin railing, and touched the rough daystone of the floor. Echoes still reverberated in the stone—not echoes of sound, since those had long since moved on, but echoes of event. I closed my eyes and saw again what the stone had witnessed.
The Nowhere Stair. At the bottom of it, three children holding hands. (I marveled at how small Shahar had been then; already I had grown used to her older shape.) I watched the mortals’ faces change from smiles to alarm, felt the rising rush of wind, saw their hair and clothing begin to whip about as if they’d been caught in a tornado. They screamed as their feet rose from the floor; then they flipped entirely, twisting upside down. Only I did not budge, my feet seemingly rooted to the ground. Only their grip on each other and me held them down.
And the look on my face! In the memory, I stood with mouth slack, eyes distant and confused, brow ever-so-slightly furrowed and head cocked, as if I heard something no one else could, and whatever I heard had obliterated my wits.
Then my body blurred, flesh interspersing with white lines. My mouth opened and the stone beneath my fingertips gave one last microscopic shiver as a concussion of force tore loose from my throat. The Nowhere Stair shattered like glass, as did all the daystone around it and beneath it and above it. What saved the children was that the energy blasted outward in a spherical wave; they fell amid the rubble, bleeding and still, but not much of the rubble landed on them.
And when the dust cleared, I had vanished.
Taking my fingers off the stone, I frowned to myself. Then I said to the mortal who had hovered somewhere behind me, watching for the past ten minutes, “What do you want?”
He came forward, preceded by the familiar mingled scent of books and chemical phials and incense; by that I knew what he was before he ever spoke. “My apologies, Lord Sieh. I did not mean to disturb you.”
I rose, dusting off my hands, and turned to take his measure. An island man of late middle years, with salt-sprinkled red hair and a lined saturnine face that showed a hint of beard stubble. There was a fullblood mark on his brow, but he didn’t look Arameri or even Amn. And fullbloods rarely smelled of hard work. An adoptee, then.
“You the First Scrivener?” I asked.
He nodded, obviously torn between fascination and unease. Finally he offered me an awkward bow—not deep enough to be properly respectful but too deep for the kind of disdain a devout Itempan should have shown. I laughed, remembering Viraine’s cool, nuanced poise, and then sobered as I remembered why Viraine had been so good at things like that.
“Forgive me,” the man said again. “But the servants passed word that you were abroad in the palace, and… I thought… well, it seems natural that you would come to the scene of the crime, so to speak.”
“Mmm.” I slipped my hands into my pockets, trying very hard not to feel uneasy in his presence. These were not the old days. He had no power over me. “It’s late, First Scrivener, or early. Don’t you Itempans believe in a full night’s rest before your dawn prayers?”
He blinked; then his surprise faded into amusement. “They do, but I’m not Itempan, Lord Sieh. And I wanted to meet you, which necessitated staying up late, or so my research suggested. You were known to be decidedly nocturnal during your”—his confidence faltered again—“time here.”
I stared at him. “How can you not be Itempan?” All scriveners were Itempan priests. The Order gave anyone with a knack for magic a single choice: join or die.
“About—hmm—fifty years ago? The Litaria petitioned the Nobles’ Consortium for independence from the Order of Itempas. The Litaria is a secular body now. Scriveners may devote themselves to whichever god, or gods, they wish.” He paused, then smiled again. “As long as we serve the Arameri, regardless.”
I looked him up and down, opened my mouth a little to get a better taste of his scent, and was stymied. “So which god do you honor?” He certainly wasn’t one of mine.
“I honor all the gods. But in terms of spirituality, I prefer to worship at the altars of knowledge and artistry.” He made an apologetic little gesture with his hand, as if he worried about hurting my feelings, but I had begun to grin.
“An atheist!” I put my hands on my hips, delighted. “I haven’t seen one of you since before the War. I thought the Arameri wiped all of you out.”
“As well as they did all the other gods’ worshippers, Lord Sieh, yes.” I laughed at this, which seemed to hearten him. “Heresy is actually rather fashionable among the commonfolk, though here in Sky I am more circumspect about it, of course. And the, ah, polite term for people like me is primortalist.”
“Ugh, what a mouthful.”
“Unfortunately, yes. It means ‘mortals first’—neither an accurate nor complete representation of our philosophy, but as I said, there are worse terms. We believe in the gods, naturally.” He nodded to me. “But as the Interdiction has shown us, the gods function perfectly well whether we believe in them or not, so why devote all that energy to a pointless purpose? Why not believe most fervently in mortalkind and its potential? We, certainly, could benefit from a little dedication and discipline.”
“I agree wholeheartedly!” And if I didn’t miss my guess, there were probably a few of my siblings involved in his mortal-worshipping movement. But I refrained from pointing this out, lest it disturb him. “What’s your name?”
He bowed again, more easily this time. “Shevir, Lord Sieh.”
I waved a hand. “I make the Arameri call me ‘lord.’ It’s just Sieh.”
He looked uneasy. “Er, well—”
“Arameri is a state of mind. I’ve known some adoptees who fit right into this family. You, sir, are a die among the jacks.” I smiled to let him know that had been meant as a compliment, and he relaxed. “Remath told you all about me, then?”
“The Lady Arameri informed me of your… condition, yes. I and my staff, including those in the city below, are already hard at work trying to determine what might have caused the change. We’ll inform Lady Remath at once if we find anything.”
“Thank you.” I refrained from pointing out that telling Remath wouldn’t do me any good unless Remath chose to pass the information along. He probably knew that and was just letting me know where his loyalties lay. Mortals first. “Were you here in Sky, eight years ago?”
“Yes.” He came to stand beside me, staring avidly at my profile, my posture, everything. Studying me. Knowing his beliefs, I did not mind for once. “I was head of the healing squadron then; it was I and my colleagues who treated Lord Dekarta and Lady Shahar after their injury. I was promoted to First Scrivener for saving their lives.” He hesitated. “The previous First Scrivener was removed from office for failing to realize that a god had visited Sky.”
I rolled my eyes. “There is no scrivening magic that can detect a god’s presence if we don’t want to be detected.” I had never wanted to be detected.
“The lady was informed of this.” He was smiling thinly, not bitter at least. I supposed there was no point in laying blame.