“No prayers, now,” I said, cupping his cheek with one hand. Mine. “I’m not a god today, just a man who needs your help. Will you give it?”
He inclined his head just a hair more formally than he needed to. Ah, he was marvelous. “Your hand,” I said, and he offered it to me at once.
I still had a few ways of using magic, though they were crude and weak and a betrayal of my pride to employ. The universe did not listen to me the way it once had, but as long as I kept the requests simple, it would grudgingly obey. “Look,” I said in our tongue, and the air shivered around us as I traced the shape of an eye into the boy’s palm with my fingertip. “Hear. Share.”
The outline flickered briefly, a silver flash like drifting confetti, and then the boy’s flesh was just flesh again. He peered at it, fascinated.
“Find your friends,” I said. “Touch as many of them as you can with this hand, and send them out among the crowd. The magic will end when the Arameri family head returns to Sky.” Then I closed my free hand and opened it again. This time a single coin sat in my palm: a hundred-meri piece, more than the boy could have stolen in a week, unless he’d gotten very bold or very lucky.
The boy’s eyes fixed on it, but he did not reach for it, swallowing. “I can’t take money from you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said, and tucked the coin into his pocket before I let him go. “No follower of mine should ever do something for nothing. If you need to change it safely, go to the Arms of Night in South Root and tell Ahad I sent you. He’ll be an ass about it, but he won’t cheat you. Now go.” And because he was staring at me, awe stunting his wits, I winked at him and then stepped back, letting myself vanish amid the crowd. There was no magic to this. It just took an understanding of how mortals moved when they gathered together in great herds like this. The boy did the same thing as part of his pickpocketing, but I had several thousand years’ experience on him. From his perspective, I seemed to disappear. I caught a final glimpse of his mouth falling open, and then I let the traffic carry me elsewhere.
“Smoothly done,” said Glee when I found her again. She had been waiting in front of a small café, standing as still and striking as a pillar amid the flow of babbling mostly Amn.
“You were watching?” The café had a bench, which was packed; I didn’t even try to sit. Instead I leaned against a wall, half in Glee’s shadow. Though neither of us were Amn, I was betting no one would notice me with her there. After five minutes I knew I was right; half the people who had passed us glanced at her, and the other half ignored us altogether.
“Some,” she replied. “I’m not a god. I can’t see without my eyes like you do. But I can see magic, even in a crowd.”
“Oh.” Demon magic was always strange. I slipped my hands into my pockets and yawned loudly, not bothering to cover my mouth despite the disgusted glances of a passing couple. “So, Itempas around here somewhere, too?”
“No.”
I snorted. “What exactly is it that you’re protecting him from? Nothing short of demons’ blood can kill him, and who would do that, given the consequences?”
She said nothing for a long moment, and I thought she would ignore me. Then she said, “How much do you know about godsblood?”
“I know the mortals drink it, when they can, for a taste of magic.” My lip curled. During my first few decades in Sky, some of the Arameri had taken blood from me. It had done nothing for them, since my flesh then was more or less mortal, but that hadn’t stopped them from trying. “I know some of my siblings sell it to them, gods know why.”
Glee shrugged. “Our organization, via Kitr’s group, keeps an eye on such sales. A few months ago, Kitr received a request for some very unusual godsblood. More unusual, anyway, than the standard requests for menstrual flow or heart blood.”
Now it was my turn to be surprised, mostly because I hadn’t realized any of my sisters bothered menstruating. Why in darkness—Well, it didn’t matter. “Itempas is mortal now. His flesh is, anyway. His blood would only sour some poor mortal’s stomach.”
“He’s still one of the Three, Sieh. Even without magic, his blood has value. And who’s to say that these mask users can’t find a way to eke magic out of Father’s blood even in his current state? Remember that there is godsblood in the northerners’ masks… and remember that Kahl’s mask is yet incomplete.”
I cursed as I understood. I did this strictly in Senmite—too dangerous to speak our tongue under these conditions. No way to know who was listening or what strange magics slept nearby. “This is what comes of gods selling pieces of themselves to mortals.” My stupid, stupid younger siblings! Hadn’t they seen, again and again, that mortals would always find a way to use gods, hurt us, control us, if they could? I slammed a fist against the unyielding stone of the wall behind me and gasped as, instead of cracking the wall, my hand reminded me of its fragility with a white, breathtaking flash of pain.
Glee sighed. “Stop that.” Coming over, she took my hand and lifted it, turning it this way and that to see whether I’d broken the bone. I hissed and tried to pull away, but she threw me such a quelling glare at me that I stopped squirming and meekly held still. She would be a terrifying mother someday, if she ever had children.
“For what it’s worth, I agree with you,” she said quietly. “Though I don’t limit my condemnation to mortals. Remember what gods have done with the blood of demons, after all.”
I flinched at this, my anger evaporating into shame.
“Not broken,” she pronounced, and let me go. I cradled my hand to my chest since it still hurt, and sulking made me feel better.
“Gods are not truly creatures of flesh,” Glee continued, nodding toward my injured hand. “I understand this. But the vessels that you wear in this realm contain something of the real you—enough to access the greater whole.” She let out a long, heavy breath. “The Arameri had Nahadoth in their possession for centuries. You know, better than I, how much of his body they might have taken in that time. And while I doubt they have anything of Yeine, they did have a piece of Enefa in their keeping.”
I inhaled. The Stone of Earth. The last remnant of my mother’s flesh, taken from the corporeal form that had died when Itempas poisoned her with demons’ blood. It was gone now, because Yeine had incorporated it into herself. But for two thousand years it had been a physical object, kept in the exclusive possession of mortals who had already developed a taste for the power of gods.
“A pound of the Nightlord’s flesh,” Glee said, “and perhaps nothing more than a speck of the Gray Lady’s. Add to that some portion of the Dayfather, and use mortal magic to stir the mix…” She shrugged. “I cannot imagine what would result from such a recipe. Can you?”
Nothing good. Nothing sane. To mingle the essences of the Three was to invoke a level of power that no mortal, and few godlings, could handle safely. The crater that would be left by such an attempt would be immense—and it would be a crater not on the face of the world but on reality itself.
“No god would do this,” I murmured, shaken. “This Kahl… he has to know how dangerous this is. He can’t be planning what we think he’s planning.” Vengeance was his nature, but this went beyond vengeance. This was madness.
“Nevertheless,” Glee said. “The worst case is what we must prepare for. And this is why I don’t intend to let anyone have my father.” The familiar look was there again, in the cold implacability of her voice and the stubborn set of her shoulders. For a moment I imagined a circle of light revolving about her, a white sword in her hands… but no.