Goddess in the Machine

by Lora Beth Johnson

She didn’t.

  Zhade cleared his throat.

  This situation was too ridiculous. She was stripped of everything she knew and thrown into this new world—literally—and expected to know how to interact with kings.

  “You’ve returned,” the Guv finally said, his voice low, and his eyes flicked to Zhade. “And, apparentish, brought home my brother.”

  Brother? Andra shot him a look. Would that make Zhade some sort of prince? Was Tsurina his mom? Andra definitely wasn’t detecting any motherly affection there. Zhade kept his eyes resolutely from Andra’s as he and the Guv stared each other down.

  Zhade broke first, his grin brittle. “Miss me?”

  Something more dangerous than anger flashed across the Guv’s face. His pale skin flushed, and he took a breath, like he was about to breathe fire.

  Tsurina coughed behind them, and his expression faltered.

  The Guv stood. He was taller than he’d seemed on the throne, and thin. His robe was fitted, some kind of leather that crinkled when he walked. His eyes were molten lava, his sneer ice. He bowed and took Andra’s hand, briefly touching her knuckles to his forehead in greeting, and when he rose, he didn’t release her hand. His skin was cold.

  “I’m Guv Maret kin Vatgha, Steward of Eerensed, Warden of the Easthand Gate, High Sorcer, and Protector of the Hell-mouth.”

  Andra looked at Zhade. He raised his eyebrows and gestured for her to respond.

  “I’m, um, Andromeda Yue Watts . . .” Silence. She swallowed. “Daughter of Auric Lim and Isla Watts . . .” More silence. An awkward cough. “Reader of books, keeper of . . . secrets, and goddess of . . . you know, just general goddess . . . things.”

  The Guv’s expression softened for a fraction of a second. So quick Andra thought she must have been mistaken. Then his eyes flashed, and warning bells were going off in her head. He held her hand too tightly. His posture was too stiff, his muscles too tense. There was anger in his eyes when he looked at Zhade. There was hunger in them when his gaze turned to Andra.

  “Where have you been?” Maret snapped, and for a second, she thought he was talking to Zhade. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his tone was softer, but it was too late. He’d already revealed the nature underneath. “You’ve been missing for nearish ten years.”

  Zhade cut in, pulling Andra’s hand free from the Guv’s. She was too blindsided to be grateful.

  “I found her for you, Guv. I believe that means you owe me.”

  Zhade poked Maret in the shoulder. The guards’ grips on their weapons tightened.

  “You look different,” Maret said quietly. His teeth were bared, and though his voice was soft, it quaked with something fierce. Something uncontrolled. “The desert has changed you.”

  Zhade looked down at himself. “Thanks.” He flexed his muscles.

  Maret drew close to Zhade and rested his hand on his shoulder. At a casual glance, the gesture looked harmless, but Maret’s grip tightened, and Andra remembered the blisters beneath Zhade’s shirt.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the Guv hissed. “Did you assume the Goddess would win your throne back?”

  Zhade’s grin spread wider, even though his eyes were glassy with pain. He tucked his hands in his pockets and shrugged. Blood blossomed under Maret’s grip.

  “Neg, actualish. I don’t want the throne. It was never mine for starts, and sides, it looks good on you . . . uh, under you.” More blood soaked his shirt. “I’ve learned my lesson, Guv Maret. The desert has changed me. I’m here to serve you soon and now.”

  “For certz?” Tsurina said coldly. Maret shot her a look that was part annoyed, part pleading, but she ignored it. “My dead husband’s bastard son returns after four years, and we’re spozed to believe what? That you want to behave? After what you did? After what your mother did?”

  Zhade’s eyes tensed, though his smile remained plastered on. “I have the Third, don’t I? I could have used her powers to take the city myself, but I didn’t. I brought her to you as . . .” His eyes glinted. “ . . . an offering of peace.” The words echoed hollowly in the giant space.

  Andra’s mind was spinning to keep up. She didn’t like being referred to as an offering, but she’d known Zhade was using her. She was using him too. And she wasn’t leaving until she saw the other so-called goddesses.

  Zhade cocked his thumb, pointing to the massive door behind them, where more ’bots were stationed. “I can take her back adesert, if you want. No meteor to me.”

  For a moment, Maret didn’t say anything. Time dragged forward, carrying the silence with it. Andra held her breath.

  Zhade’s expression was unreadable, but Andra saw his throat bob. “Evens, Mare. It’s me. Do you have memory of the day we found the crow’s nest? Or the boys in Eastwarden? Or the time”—Zhade chuckled—“the time in the lower city with the cabbage cart?”

  A beat. Then Maret relaxed his grip and smiled. A predator ready to strike. He let out a laugh like breaking glass.

  “It’s good to see you, brother.” His voice was tight.

  Zhade relaxed as his brother finally released his shoulder.

  The Guv’s eyes flicked to his mother, then to Zhade. “I’ve regretted sending you away. For certz we won’t have another incident.” He tilted his head in question.

  Zhade stared his brother down, the corner of his mouth raised in a smirk. He shook his head. “Certz not. We will be incident-free.”

  Maret’s smile was nothing more than a sheer mask over his features. He took a step back, but the tension in the room remained.

  “Welcome, Goddess,” Maret said, turning to Andra. “Sorries and worries for the fam drama. By the look on your face, I reck you had no idea who you were allied with.”

  Andra trained her features. “He was a means to an end.”

  Zhade dramatically put his hand over his heart, feigning offense.

  “Look,” Andra said, deciding it was time to be direct. She’d always dealt better with bluntness. “I just want a chance to speak with the other goddesses so I can figure out what happened and maybe . . . go home?” She wasn’t sure where or what home was anymore; she just knew it wasn’t here. “I think we both know I’m not really a goddess, and I—”

  Something about the way the room tensed, the energy that crackled around her, made Andra stop.

  Zhade let out a forced laugh. “Goddess, you reck you shouldn’t joke bout that, marah?”

  “I—”

  “Her humor is mereish like the First’s,” Zhade said to Maret. “I’ve tried to explain that’s not what’s best for our people, but, seeya, she just woke.”

  Maret’s eyes narrowed. “You do realize,” he said, smoothing back his hair, “that the punishment for impersonating a Goddess is death, marah?”

  No. No, she did not.

  Her heart rate picked up and she had the urge to round on Zhade, but she forced herself to meet the Guv’s gaze.

  “Yes,” she managed to croak out. “Yes, I did. I did know that.” The last words were no more than a whisper.

  “Good,” Maret said. “Because if you were allowed into this city under false pretenses, claiming to be our long-lost goddess, then I would have to execute not sole you, but also my brother, and anyone else who helped you.”

  Did they know about Lew? Or the guard that let them into the city?

  “Well, I am most definitely . . .” Andra let out a shaky breath. “. . . a goddess.”

  The last word echoed weakly in the cavernous room.

  “I believe you completish,” Maret said, though his tone said otherwise. “But, we will require proof, you comp.”

  “Proof?”

  “That you are the Third.”

  “Um.” Andra’s heartbeat was pounding in her chest, pulsing through her extremities. The burn on her palm throbbed uncontrollably. Did they expect her to perf
orm a miracle? How the hell was she supposed to prove her deity?

  When she didn’t respond, the Guv nodded to her. “Your wishmark will suffice.”

  “W-wishmark?” Andra hated the way she stuttered. The decidedly ungodly fear in her voice.

  “He means the mark on your collar,” Zhade muttered.

  Her birthmark. Of course.

  Andra had tried to ignore the fact that for hundreds of years, she’d lain in her cryo’tank, fully naked. That they’d kept her on display. People knew her, prayed to her, studied her. They’d surely memorized the mark she hated yet was undeniably part of her.

  Maret approached slowly, his robe swishing against the marble, footsteps echoing through the chamber. Andra willed herself not to tremble as she pulled aside the collar of her bloodstained shirt to reveal the starburst underneath. He drew nearer until he was so close that if she breathed, he would feel it on his skin. His eyes narrowed on her birthmark.

  After what seemed to be eternity he stepped back, and Andra let out her breath. Maret sighed, almost as though he were disappointed. Or bored.

  “Now,” he said, ambling back to the throne, stepping through the beam of light. “You will remain apalace as our guest.” He looked to Tsurina’s guard. “Set the Goddess up in her awaiting suite. Tomorrow night we will observe her Awakening.”

  Andra cleared her throat. “Um, first, I’d like to see the other goddesses. Please.”

  The throne room fell silent. Not an empty silence, but one filled with tension and dread and something waiting to crack.

  “The other goddesses?” Maret asked.

  Andra’s shoe squeaked across the floor. “Yes, the other two. I’d like to talk with them, let them know I’m awake, and I . . . we . . . you know, need to chat about . . .” She cast her eyes to the ceiling. “Goddess stuff,” she said through a breath.

  “Zhade didn’t tell you?” Maret’s eyes sparked dangerously.

  Apparently, there were a lot of things Zhade hadn’t told her. “Tell me what?”

  “The other goddesses . . .” Maret said, an energetic tinge to his voice. “They’re dead.”

  PART TWO

  DIVINE INTERVENTION

  Even as we look to the future, we will never forget the sacrifices and achievements that allow us to move past what we are and become something more.

  —Inscription on the Griffin Monument, 2159

  NINE

  assumption, n.

  Etymology: Latin assūmere, noun of action:, to take, usurp.

  Definition:

  the taking up of a person into heaven.

  the act of supposing without proof.

  law: a promise or undertaking.

  arrogance.

  Andra scurried through the palace, her shoes clicking against the marble as she tried to keep up with the long strides of the guard Zhade had called Kiv. The way he’d said it, Andra wasn’t sure if it was a name or an insult. They’d separated her from him, and now she was alone with a man who could snap her in half with a flick of his wrist. She eyed the spear he used like a walking stick. The point glinted gold in the low palace light. She wished Zhade were with her.

  Not that Zhade turned out to be much of an ally.

  He’d lied to her about everything. The other goddesses were dead, and the last bit of hope Andra clung to was gone. There was no one else like her. And she had to pretend to be a goddess or she would be killed.

  Learn, adapt, her mother’s voice echoed in her head, and Andra could picture the disappointed expression that always accompanied those words.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  The guard’s clanking armor was the only response she got.

  “Can I have water? Is there food? A bath maybe?”

  Nothing.

  Her voice didn’t echo here like it had in the throne room. The stone halls were too small and twisty. Labyrinthine, she thought. Such a great word. It left so much to interpretation, couldn’t be quantified. Andra tried to quantify the twists and turns anyway, filing away their path through the palace in case she needed it later. She didn’t know where she was going or how she would get there, but once she had a plan, she would need a way out.

  They passed stone walls, filled with carvings of stars and coils and, oddly, snowflakes. Up stairs and down. Passing by people, some dressed like guards, others like servants, and still others like royalty. All of them staring.

  The guard stalked forward, occasionally checking to see if Andra was keeping up, though her labored breathing should have told him so. They took hallway after hallway, weaving through passages, climbing up flights of creaking metal staircases, only to find another web of corridors. By the time they reached their destination, Andra was sure they were at the topmost point of the palace. She thought about the chunks of building, teetering precariously on the side of the rock spire, the single tower at its peak. The floor beneath her seemed to tilt.

  The guard opened the only door in the hallway—ornate and wooden, surrounded by a rose-gold frame decorated with stars—and Andra stepped into an opulent suite entirely carved from marble. The floor, the walls, the ceiling. Marble columns, marble trim. A marble archway leading to a marble balcony surrounded by a marble banister. The balcony doors were thrown wide, and even from across the room, she could see out over the tangle of streets and stone and sand.

  “This is my room?” she whispered. No. Not her room. A room she was supposed to stay in. A room borrowed from a goddess, a myth.

  The guard grunted, and without a word, was gone. Andra stood frozen. She had to regroup, come up with a plan. But no sooner had the door clicked shut than there was a brisk knock, and three women entered with a Class B serve’bot—an opaque, bulky model that was nothing more than a glorified fridge.

  “Um, hello?” Andra said.

  The women averted their eyes. One was holding a new set of clothes, another carried what looked like a brush.

  Lady’s maids. How very . . . Victorian.

  The third woman held a jug of water, and Andra snatched it from her without thinking. She chugged the whole thing. Then the youngest maid refilled it from the accompanying serve’bot, and she drank that as well. She didn’t stop until the maid had refilled it three times.

  Andra immediately regretted it.

  She’d drunk too much, too quickly. She lurched forward, holding her churning stomach, and groaned. The first maid shot forward—a white woman probably Andra’s mother’s age, but with much grayer hair. No, not her mother’s age. Her mother was dead.

  Andra swatted the maid away. “I’m fine,” she groaned.

  The maid stepped forward again and started tugging at Andra’s blood-soaked clothes.

  “Jesus!” she spat. “I can dress myself!”

  The woman paled and stepped back.

  “Just—” Andra groaned. The room tilted. She was so tired. Her stomach hurt. “Just leave me alone, okay?”

  Guilt washed over her, but she was covered in Lew-Eadin’s blood and he might be dying and it was her fault and her stomach was killing her and she was exhausted and her family was dead and she just needed them to leave her alone.

  “GO!” she growled.

  Tears formed in the youngest girl’s eyes, but Andra couldn’t think through an apology. She would make it up to her later. As soon as the door closed behind them, Andra fell to the floor, her mind whirling. The ’bot in the desert hadn’t been wrong. Her family had been dead for centuries, and even if her mother had been one of the other goddesses, she was dead now too. Andra was alone with no one to tell her what to do, and the only thing she wanted was home. Except home didn’t exist anymore. She could figure out a way back to Earth, but what was even the point? No, she told herself. Don’t give up. Learn. Adapt.

  The room grew dark, and she reached for her ’im
plant, trying to turn on a light, before remembering it was no use. She tried to think of what came next, but couldn’t move past the grief, and she lay crying on the cold floor of a goddess’s room. Despite her best efforts, her eyes shut, and she fell asleep.

  TEN

  THE PRODIGAL

  Zhade was being followed.

  He recked he would be. There was no way to avoid it, but there was a way he could lose Kiv, if he was at care. It was still prenight, and the palace halls were abuzz with servants and diplomats and angels. People always tried to use the darkness of night to do their sneaking, but to be true, crowds were the easiest way to disappear.

  As soon as he’d left Maret’s throne room—and how it galled him to see Maret sitting on his father’s throne—he’d been separated from the Goddess. It had been apurpose. Divide and conquer and all that. He’d built an alliance with her, and despite her protests of him being a “means to an end,” even Maret could see the Goddess relied on him. But his brother also saw that Zhade relied on the Goddess. Thank sands he didn’t reck for what.

  But he will, Zhade thought with a grim smile.

  Even so, he didn’t like to be parted from her. She was too valuistic to be left alone, and he didn’t trust her not to get in trouble. He would just have to trust her to also get out of it.

  He slid behind a marble pillar, and then a tapestry. He had to be quick. It wouldn’t take Kiv time and a half to reck where Zhade had gone. Though once he did, there was nothing he could do. This was blood magic, and Zhade was the sole living person whose blood could activate the spell.

  A panel bout the size of a crumb biscuit hid behind the tapestry. Zhade placed his thumb against it and tensed, waiting for the prick. The waiting was always the worst part. A quick stab, and a door appeared in the marble where there was none before. It slid back, then to the side, just full wide for Zhade to enter. He darted in, and let the door shut behind him with a groan.

  It took a moment for the lights to click on, but when they did, everything was exactish as he had memory. He found himself on a translucent platform, hovering over a hole so deep he couldn’t see the bottom. It would have frightened him except he was exceptionalish brave.