And between them, beneath their hands, I open my eyes. My mouth opens. Am I shouting? I cannot hear the words. I reach up, my hands covering Shahar’s and Dekarta’s, and there is a flicker of something, like lightning, along their skins. Shahar gasps, her eyes going wide. Dekarta stares at her, opening his mouth to cry out.
There is a blurring. White lines, like the streaking of comets, run through the shapes of our flesh. It is like before, the watching-me realizes—like the time of our oath, when we touched and they made me mortal. But this is different. This time, when the power comes, it is not a wild concussion. There is a will at work: two wills, with one purpose. Something bursts within me and is funneled to a fine point.
Then
it
becomes
I flopped about in Deka’s arms, pissed. “Put me down, Maelstrom, damn you. I’m a god, not a sack of potatoes—”
He stumbled to a halt just beyond the Vertical Gate. A few paces ahead, Shahar had done the same. Eight of Captain Wrath’s men surrounded her, trying to hurry her into the palace as they had already done Remath, but she shook them off. “I will not retreat in my own—”
She paused. Deka did, too. He set me on my feet. I swept marble dust off my clothes and hair and straightened my clothing, and then froze.
Oh.
Oh.
I understood, and did not. Many combinations in existence had meaning, and meaning has always imbued power—whether purely of an existential nature, or materially, or magically. There were the Three, of course, omnipotent on the infinitely rare occasions that they worked together. Twins. Male and female. God and mortal and the demons between.
But there was no reason for this. No precedent. They’d changed the universe. A pair of mortals.
They’d changed the universe to heal me.
They had changed the universe.
I stared at them. They stared back. Around us the chaos continued. All the other mortals seemed oblivious to what had happened, which was unsurprising. To them, it hadn’t happened. There was no blood on the ground where I’d lain. My clothes weren’t torn, because there had never been a wound. If I tried to remember, my mind conjured a glimpse of the crimson masker, hand poised before the blow, flying backward as Deka’s blast of raw magic struck. But I could also remember the blow happening first.
A moment later Nemmer appeared, dropping something heavy to the ground. A body. I blinked. No, a masker; one of the white ones. Trussed up in what looked like huge writhing snakes formed of translucent shadow. This was Nemmer’s magic. The instant she appeared, half of Wrath’s soldiers moved to attack, and the other half realized the mistake and tried to stop them. There was a flurry of shouts and aborted lunges and then a great deal of confused milling. I suspected that if Wrath got through this day with his position intact, he would soon put his soldiers through a heavy training course on Gods, the Quick Recognition and Not Attacking Of.
“Got them,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. She glanced at me and grinned. “Tell your mortals to stand down, Sieh. The danger has passed.”
I stared at her, mute with shock. Her grin faltered. She glared at me, then snapped her fingers at my face. I jumped.
“What the hells is wrong with you?” Her smile turned vicious. “Were you so frightened by your first taste of mortal danger, big brother?”
I felt no real anger at her taunt because I had been in mortal danger a thousand times more than she had ever been. And I had far stranger things to occupy my thoughts.
But I was not the Trickster for nothing, and my mouth moved automatically while my brain continued to churn. “I was frightened by the incompetence I saw down there,” I snapped. “Did you plan to let them nearly achieve their goal, or were your much-vaunted professionals caught napping?”
Nemmer did not lose her temper, but it was a near thing. At least she stopped smiling. “There were ten of them,” she said, which broke some of my shock and brought me back to the present. “Counting the one your pet scrivener killed. All coming from different directions, all unstoppable—unless their bodies are completely destroyed or the masks are broken. You’re lucky only one got through. We weren’t prepared for a strike of this magnitude.”
Ten of them. Ten mortals, tricked into donning the masks and turning themselves into living weapons. I shook my head, sickened.
“All the mortals up here are fine?” She spoke in a neutral tone. We were back to the unspoken truce, then.
I looked around, noting Shahar and Dekarta standing together nearby, listening to our conversation. Not far beyond them was Canru, looking uncomfortable and alone. Across the courtyard, Remath had stopped on the steps and seemed to be arguing with Ramina. Wrath faced us, his hand on his sword hilt, his gaze riveted on the masked creature at Nemmer’s feet.
“The mortals who matter are fine,” I said, feeling weary and full of grief. Ten who did not matter had died. And how many soldiers and innocents among the crowd? “We are all fine.”
She looked uneasy at my wording but nodded, gesturing at the trussed-up man in the white mask. He was not dead; I saw him fighting the bonds, panting with the effort. “This one’s for you, then. I figure the scrivener boy might be able to figure out something about this magic. Mortals understand how mortals think better than I ever will.” She paused, then lifted her hand; something else appeared in it. “I’ll give you this, too. Be careful of the intact masks, but once they’re broken, the magic dies.”
She held it out: the broken halves of the crimson mask.
I felt hard fingers punch through my flesh.
I took the mask pieces from her.
“Got to go,” she said. She sounded just like a common mortal, right down to the Wesha accent. “Things to do, secrets to gather. We’ll talk soon.” With that, she vanished.
Remath was walking back, unhurried, as if she strolled through the aftermath of an attack on her family every day. While I could speak without her hearing, I went to Shahar and Dekarta, handing the pieces of the mask to Deka. He did not take them with his bare hands, quickly pulling his sleeves down to take the halves, gingerly, by the edges.
“Say nothing of what happened,” I said, speaking low and quickly.
“But—” Shahar began, predictably.
“No one remembers but us,” I said, and she shut up. Not even Nemmer, whose nature it was to sense the presence of secrets, had noticed anything. Dekarta caught his breath; he understood what this meant as well as I had. Shahar flicked a glance at him and at me, and then—as if she had not spent ten years apart from him, and as if she had not once broken my heart—she covered for us both, immediately turning to face her oncoming mother.
“The situation has been controlled,” she said as Remath drew to a halt before us. Wrath positioned himself directly between me and Remath, his hard brown gaze fixed on me. (I winked at him. He did not react.) Ramina remained behind her, his arms folded, showing no hint of relief that his son and daughter were alive and well.
“Lady Nemmer reported there were ten assailants in all,” Shahar continued. “Her organization captured the rest and will be conducting its own investigation. She would like mortal input, however.” With a look of distaste, Shahar glanced at the immobilized masker.
“How considerate of her,” said Remath, with only the faintest hint of sarcasm. “Wrath.” He flinched and left off glaring at me. “Return to the city and oversee the investigation there. Be certain to find out why so many of these creatures were able to make it through our lines.”