Dust and mite food now. I slid my hands into my pockets, sat down against a wall, and sighed.
I was dozing when they arrived, through the floor. Shahar, to my surprise, was the first one through. I smiled to see that she held a small ceramic tablet, on which had been drawn a single, simple command in our language. Atadie. Open. I had shown her the door, and she’d had someone make her a key.
“Have you been wandering the dead spaces by yourself these past few years?” I asked as she climbed out of the hole and dusted herself off. She or Dekarta had made steps out of the reshaped daystone. He came up behind her, looking around in fascination.
She looked at me warily, no doubt remembering that the last time I’d seen her, really spoken to her, had been two years before, the morning after we’d made love.
“Some,” she said, after a moment. “It’s useful to be able to go where I want with none the wiser.”
“Indeed it is,” I said, smiling thinly. “But you should be careful, you know. The dead spaces were mine once—and any place that was mine for so long is likely to have taken on some of my nature. Step into the wrong corridor, open the wrong door, and you never know what might jump out and bite you.”
She flinched, as I’d meant her to, and not just at my words. Betrayer, I let my eyes say, and after a moment she looked away.
Deka looked warily at us both, perhaps only now realizing how bad things were between us. Wisely, he chose not to mention it.
“There’s panic in Shadow,” he said, “and we’re getting reports of unrest from elsewhere in the world. There have been riots, and the Order has instituted extra services at all White Halls to accommodate the Itempans who suddenly feel compelled to pray. Mother’s called an emergency session of the Consortium in three days’ time, and she’s authorized the Litaria to facilitate travel by gate for all the representatives. Rumor has the Arameri all dead and a new Gods’ War impending.”
I laughed, though I shouldn’t have. Fear was like poison to mortals; it killed their rationality. Somewhere, there would be deaths tonight.
“That’s Remath’s problem, not mine,” I said, sitting forward, “or yours. We have a more significant concern.”
They looked at each other, then at me, and waited. Belatedly I realized they thought I was about to explain something.
“I haven’t got a clue what happened,” I said, raising my hands quickly. “Never seen anything like that in my life! But I have no idea why anything happens the way it does around you two.”
“It didn’t come from us.” Shahar spoke softly, with the barest hint of hesitation. I scowled at her and she blanched, but then tightened her jaw and lifted her chin. “We felt it, Deka and I, and this time you did, too. We have felt that power before, Sieh. It was the same as the day the three of us took our oath.”
Silence fell, and in it I nodded slowly. Trying not to be afraid. I had already guessed that the power was the same. What frightened me was my growing suspicion as to why.
Deka licked his lips. “Sieh. If the three of us touch, and it somehow causes this… this thing to occur, and if that power can be directed… Sieh, Shahar and I—” He took a deep breath. “We want to try it again. See if we can turn you back into a godling.”
I caught my breath, wondering if they had any idea of how much danger we were all in.
“No,” I said. I stood and stepped away from the wall, too tense to maintain my pose of indifference.
“Sieh—” Deka began.
“No.” Gods. They really had no idea. I turned and began to pace, nibbling a thumbnail. All that happened in darkness. Sky’s glowing halls had been designed specifically to thwart Nahadoth’s nature, and Itempas was diminished to mortality. Yeine, though… every creature that had ever lived could be her eyes and ears, if she so chose. Was she observing us now? Would she…?
“Sieh.” Shahar. She stepped in front of me and I stopped, because it was either that or run into her. I hissed, and she glared back. “You’re making no sense. If we can restore your magic—”
“They’ll kill you,” I said, and she flinched. “Naha, Yeine. If the three of us have that kind of power, they’ll kill us all.”
They both looked blank. I groaned and rubbed my head. I had to make them understand.
“The demons,” I said. More confusion. They did not know they were Ahad’s descendants. I cursed in three languages, though I made sure none of them were my own. “The demons, damn it! Why did the gods kill them?”
“Because they were a threat,” said Deka.
“No. No. Gods, do both of you only ever listen to teaching poems and priests’ tales? You’re Arameri; you know that stuff is all lies!” I glared at them.
“But that was why.” Deka was looking stubborn again, as he’d done as a child, as he’d probably done in every Litaria lesson since. “Their blood was poison to gods—”
“And they could pass for mortals, better than any god or godling. They could, and did, blend in.” I stepped closer and looked into his eyes. If I wasn’t careful, if I did not work hard to keep the years hidden, mortals were not fooled by my outward appearance. Now, however, I let him see all I had experienced. All the aeons of mortal life, all the aeons before that. I had been there nearly from the beginning. I understood things Deka would never comprehend, no matter how brilliant he was and no matter how diminished I became as a mortal. I remembered. So I wanted him to believe my words now, without question, the way ordinary mortals believed the words of their gods. Even if that meant making him fear me.
Deka frowned, and I saw the awareness come over him. And though he loved me and had wanted me since he was too young to know what desire meant, he stepped back. I felt a moment’s sorrow. But it was probably for the best.
Shahar, sweet, beautiful betrayer that she was, leapt to my point before her brother did.
“They made mortalkind a threat,” she said very softly. “They fit in among us, yes. Interbred with us. Passed on their magic, and sometimes their poison, to all their mortal descendants.”
“Yes,” I said. “And though it was the poison that was of immediate concern—one of my brothers died of demon poison, which set the whole thing off—there was also the fear of what would happen to our magic, filtered and distorted through a mortal lens. We saw that some of the demons were just as powerful as pure godlings.” I looked at Deka as I said it. I couldn’t help myself. He stared back at me, still shaken to discover that his childhood crush was something frightening and strange, oblivious to my real implication. “It wasn’t hard to guess that someday, somehow, a mortal might be born with as much power as one of the Three. The power to change reality itself on a fundamental level.” I shook my head and gestured around us, at the room, Sky, the world, the universe. “You don’t understand how fragile all this is. Losing one of the Three would destroy it. Gaining a Fourth, or even something close to a Fourth, would do the same.”