A god steps forward. It is the first god I saw once I entered this realm, the one with long hair like silver water, like mercury.
The god of thieves grins. “I should have known it was you,” he says to the god. “Well, well. Thank you for being honest just this once, my dear god of lies.”
THE GOD
“KEEP YOUR PROMISE, THIEVERY,” I say to the god. “Give this meddling mortal Nirrim’s heart so that she may give it to me, and then wander with the human dead.” I see that Sid silently struggles, as if trying to free herself, though there is nothing but what she imagines. Since whatever traps her is a lie she believes, I can undo it easily. I touch her shoulder. She screams as if burned, but whatever she believed bound her falls away. She claps a hand to her shoulder and stares at me.
In Nirrim’s palace, where Sid’s body lies in the queen’s bed, freshly bathed and dressed in clothes fit for a king, her dagger belted at her hip, the cloth at her shoulder smokes and forms a hole, revealing a welt. Nirrim, her expression uncertain, touches the burn, but Sid’s body sleeps on, undisturbed. Her eyelashes do not even flicker.
In my realm, from which I may very well soon be banished, Sid cannot look away from me. “You are Nirrim’s parent?” she says.
“Yes.”
“But you can’t be.”
“Why?”
“You are a woman.”
Members of the pantheon laugh. Wearily, I say, “I am a god. What you understand of men or women and children or no children has nothing to do with me.”
Thievery pours the rosy smoke into Sid’s uplifted palm. “Well?” he asks Death. “Is my punishment ended? May I reclaim my home? Have I proven the truth?”
“Yes,” Death says, and then everyone’s gaze falls upon me.
In Herran, Death’s godchild, Arin the Plain King, looks up from his lawn in surprise. It has begun to snow, after a week of clear cold, but that is not what surprises him. It is a crimson bird, diving toward him with urgency. It lands before him on the sparse snow and sings.
“This is very sad,” the god of games says. “Very grim. Were I a human, I might cry. The last time we invested ourselves in the mortal world, there was blood and suffering and I, personally, could use a little more variety this time.”
Arin reaches for the roll of paper tied to the Elysium bird’s leg. As he unrolls it, snow flickers down upon his bowed head, disappearing into the silver of his hair. As he reads the badly phrased threat, he remembers what his daughter told him of the island, how she had marked its location on the map, how she had warned him to pay attention to the invasion in the Cayn Saratu.
“I propose some amusement,” the god of games says. “Sid of the Herrani was born in my year, and has been touched by the god of lies. Her family honors Death. She is no ordinary mortal. She has found her way to us with barely any assistance. She has risked everything for her lover. Is her story to end now? So unsatisfying. Let us see if she can find her way home. I wager that she can, and if I win, I shall decide the punishment for the god of lies.”
All attention falls on me and Death. “No,” I say. I know too well the god of games’s cruelty. Better that Death decide my fate.
“Yes,” Death says. “Should the mortal fail, and I claim her, and send her to the mortal shadow realm, then you, god of games, will cease to gamble and play for an entire human century.”
The pantheon murmurs its approval. Even I am not displeased with the stakes. The god of games has wrought untold havoc. She loves to disrupt the pantheon with her giddy wiles. I am not her only victim. The god of night still has not forgiven her for winning his favorite cat.
“You are a bore,” says the god of games, “but I agree.”
Arin crumples the letter in his fist.
Surrender his country? No one will threaten his child and live. He heads to the stables to saddle his horse, then rides to the harbor, where he tells his harbormaster to alert his vessels and make certain they are loaded with cannon, for he is going to war.
SID
THE GOD OF GAMES STEPS close to me, her long red hair slipping over her shoulder in waves, her narrow black eyes gleaming like the shell of a beetle. Her eyes resemble those of the people of the tundra to the north of Herran. At her throat glows an emerald on a chain, but aside from this jewel she is dressed simply, in trousers and boots.
I glance behind me, in the direction I came, but there is nothing but a void into which I could fall.
The god pats my cheek. I think from her smile that she means to be gentle—or gentle enough—but my skin stings as if slapped. “Make me proud,” she says. “Go home, little one.”
“I don’t know how,” I say helplessly.
“Forget how. Remember why.”
I am about to explode in frustration—what nonsense advice is this?—when I check myself by recalling that one does not yell at a god, let alone this god, who is my god, if any of them are. And as I pause for a moment, I think of how my mother sometimes, when I was little, waved her hand impatiently when I pestered her about why she had been able to beat me so easily at Bite and Sting. What was her strategy? How had she done it?
Tadpole, she said, sometimes the best way to win is not to think too hard about how you will do it, but why. What is the outcome you wish to see? Which tiles do you want to hold in your hand at the end of the game? Why do you want those tiles? If you know why, you will know how.
I hear again my grandfather, giving me much the same advice when I confronted him about Kestrel’s assassin, and he warned me not to think of who could do this, but why.
He said, The answer begins with you.
And in my mind, now, he says, The god gives you good advice.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
She grins broadly, black eyes sparkling. Her laughter is terrifying. “See how quickly you learn!” Then she closes my left palm around the rosy smoke that is Nirrim’s heart, claps her many-fingered hand on the shoulder the god of lies did not burn, spins me around one, twice, three times, and pushes me into the void.
NIRRIM
I CAN’T BE PARTED FROM Sid. I don’t want to leave her side. It doesn’t matter how much I beg her, or shake her, or even howl. She does not wake up. She has slept for nearly a month.
The eeriness unsettles everyone in the palace. My counselors, like Rinah, tell me that Sid is as good as dead, that I need to mourn and forget her. Sid breathes shallowly, but her limbs are as rigid as wood, and her mouth cannot be pried open to accept food or water. No one understands how her skin maintains the glow of life. Her eyelids do not flicker, like those who dream. She is lost to this world, lost to me, and it feels brutally unfair, because surely I should not feel the torment of her loss. The god of thieves took my heart, and yet I am still filled with longing, still aching with grief.
I have imprisoned Mere, Annin, and Morah. I wanted to murder them, to rend them to pieces, but Other Nirrim could not stop staring at Sid, and then finally I could not either, and somehow I lost my anger.
Sid would not want you to punish them, Other Nirrim murmured.
I touched Sid’s cheek, the freckle beneath her eye. The three women who had been my friends watched me do it.
“She left me again,” I said, my throat tight. For the first time since I had traded away my heart, tears slid hot down my face. “I thought she had come back forever, but then she saw me, and could not bear to stay.”
“She left for you,” Morah said. “Sid is like this because of you.”
I ordered the guards to take her and the two other women from my sight.
* * *
Maybe this was what the tree meant, when it told my fortune. If you wish to rule alone, you must destroy her. Maybe, unwittingly, I already caused Sid’s destruction, and now all that is left for me is loneliness.
I hear a far-off bursting rumble. The ground trembles. The windows of my bedchamber shatter. Through the shards of glass, I see fires burning in my city, and then I see a hurtling black ball plummet from t
he sky and slam into a building.
I have never seen a weapon like this.
I rush through the palace, shouting for my guards to follow, and step out into the street. Above the sound of chaos and destruction, I hear a musical warble.
It is my Elysium, diving toward me. A message is tied to its leg. Fingers trembling, I unroll it. I do not understand every word, but its meaning is absolutely clear.
THE GOD
I see the tiny note, written in sharp lines, the handwriting deliberate and firm.
Return my daughter to me whole and unharmed, or I will burn your city to the ground.
—Arin
Nirrim witnessed how Herran’s fleet, anchored in her bay, had sent thousands of soldiers into my city, armed with weapons that tear through Ethin’s defenses. Nirrim sends her god-blooded Half Kith to counter them, but once they unleash magic on the Herrani forces, Arin’s sharpshooters target them with rifles. Nirrim watches as guns fire and pierce Half-Kith bodies with bloody holes. She has never seen a weapon like this. Nirrim’s forces fall.
* * *
The pantheon watches Sid tumble into her own mind. She is gone from my sight, my daughter’s heart with her, and I am torn: Sid’s success means I will be the god of games’s plaything again, but if Sid fails, my mortal child will remain damaged and not understand her own damage, so that she damages herself further, and then does not understand why she suffers.
What mortals call pity or compassion they also call mercy.
You might well ask why I withdrew from the world after Irenah’s death—why, ruined with grief, I allowed my child to be abandoned in an orphanage by Irenah’s bitter sister. Why I let Nirrim grow without love, which to any mortal infant is the most brutal kind of deprivation. It is a wound that does not heal.
I could say: It was for her own good.
I could say: See how powerful she became in my absence.
I could say many things, but this time I obligate myself not to lie.
The truth is that I, like you, know what it is to lose someone to death. To search always for that person. To look up because I expected to see her there, and feel the loss again when I am reminded she is not. I had lost Irenah, and were I to claim our infant, to raise Nirrim and make her mine, for how long would I be allowed to have her? Not even a full cycle of the pantheon. No mortal lives long.
The truth is that I could not bear it. I gave Nirrim up before I could love her, and watch her grow, and dwindle, and die.
Even gods have their limits.
NIRRIM
SECURE THE CHILDREN, OTHER NIRRIM says, and for once I listen. I order that all of the city’s children, whether they possess magic or not, be protected within the stone walls of the orphanage. Later, when I withdraw into my palace, and wait for the Herrani army to come and kill me, I tell myself that my decision regarding the children was strategic, the goal of a ruler who has made mistakes but will not let the next generation of her people die.
But the true reason is simple. Frightened and alone, I must turn for advice to the only person left: my old, banished self.
I bar myself within in my bedchamber. I look at Sid lying on the bed: her long body, the arms that once held me, the legs that tangled between mine, her soft face and golden hair. It is cut so close to the head that when I touch it, my fingers skim through it in an instant, and I am left touching nothing. Whole and unharmed, the message said.
I could surrender Sid’s body to the Herrani and my city might be spared. Sid’s cheek is faintly red, as though it was slapped, a mysterious burn blisters her shoulder, and she is unconscious, yet giving her to Arin might be enough to satisfy him.
But I cannot give her up.
She will be mine, or no one’s.
The battle is not over. I hear it rage outside my palace. We might yet win. And if I give Sid to her father, who never deserved her, no matter what Sid claimed, how will any threat I make be believed by a future enemy? A ruler should keep her word, or promises and threats mean nothing, and can go ignored.
If you wish to rule alone, you must destroy her, the tree’s fortune said.
Did the tree predict this? Is this moment a test of my right to rule?
If I kill the person who means the most to me, will I win this war, and establish myself as the true queen not only of Ethin, but of the rest of this world?
I slide Sid’s dagger from its sheath.
SID
I AM IN MY MOTHER’S bedchamber. Her bed is neatly made, the counterpane a quilted blue, thick with down. The gray curtains glow in the dying light. The sunset cannot be seen from this suite, only the sunrise, but I know the sun is slipping down the other side of the world. A light dusting of snow swirls against the windows. My mother does not wear perfume, but I can smell the familiar scent of her skin: the soap she uses, the cream she rubs into her hands. The muffled sound of her piano floats up from downstairs. She is playing a nocturne, something watery and slow. It is beautiful and difficult, which is exactly how my mother likes it. The Senest Nocturne, I think. Sleepily, I think there must be some mistake—either I have dreamed of going to the realm of the gods, or I have lost my way, since if the gods were correct I was not meant to come home, but rather to Ethin, where my body is kept. Yet now that I am here, I do not want to leave. I want to lie down. I want to close my eyes, and listen to the pure notes of my mother’s music, and the wind trying to get inside.
“Sid,” my mother says, and I turn to see her lying in the bed I just saw empty and perfectly made. Her hair, unbound, is a river of silver. I have never seen her like this. She is frail. Old. My mother reminds me of dandelions when they have turned into a ghost of their golden selves, and are ready to be blown away at a puff of wind.
This may be my home, but it is not my time.
I stare, uncertain, grief tearing at my heart simply to see her like this. She cannot recover from what ails her now, for it is obvious that nothing more ails her than a long life coming to its end. The notes of the nocturne continue to float up from below. There are so many questions I could ask, but the first one that springs from my lips is: “Who is playing?”
“I am playing.”
“But you are here, not downstairs in the music room.”
“Yes. But when I am gone, you will remember the sound of me playing. You will remember this moment, and you will not wonder how it is possible to see me lying here, hands still, and hear the nocturne’s melody. Memories of the dead come on their own time, in their own patterns.”
“Amma.” Anything else I would say is caught in my throat. I kneel beside her bed as I once saw my father do, as I swore then I would not do. I feel her hand on my hair. This is the future, I realize.
“Yes,” my mother says. “Even if it will not happen exactly like this, it will happen. Do you remember when I was sick? When I had been poisoned, and you worked so hard to save me?” She speaks as though this were decades ago. I nod, unable to speak. “You were so angry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t just because of the misunderstandings between us, or because I had made the mistake of not saying the right things that would let you know that, more than anyone, you matter most to me. You were also angry because you were afraid I would die.”
Like a child, I press my face against the blanket, and nod.
“You were angry,” my mother says, “because I am your mother, and I am always supposed to be here for you, and one day I won’t be.”
She is right. I am angry even now, and guilty for blaming her for her own death. I cannot look at her.
“Don’t feel guilty,” my mother says. “I would be angry, too, that I have to leave you, if I were not grateful to have had a daughter like you. My tadpole, you have made me so happy.”
I remember the speckled yellow feather in my pocket. I take it out. It blurs before my eyes. My mother wipes my cheek. The piano music comes more slowly—a silver trickle of sound. Her face is changed, but her eyes are the same c
olor they have always been: a brown so light it looks like honey. The feather is bedraggled and no longer looks beautiful. But it is beautiful to me, its quill unbroken.
“You have kept it all this time,” she says.
I place it in her hand, and for a moment I think she will refuse it, but then she seems to understand that I need to give it to her, for precisely the same reason she gave it to me. “It is precious to me,” I say, “simply because it was yours.”
“I know,” she says, and smiles, fingers closing around the feather. Her eyes slide shut.
There are a few final notes, then silence fills the room.
* * *
I walk down the steps of my home, searching for the piano, thinking that maybe I will find my mother seated, shuffling through sheet music, looking for something new to play, but the bench is empty.
Still, I hear a voice singing softly—a child’s voice—and when I turn, I see a skinny, brown-haired boy. He has a serious face, his eyes an ordinary gray—yet pure, even beautiful amid his features, which seem too large for such a small child.
“Will you forgive me?” he says.
“I have done nothing to you. I don’t even know you.”
“Of course you do.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Oh,” my father agrees.
“I don’t understand any of this. I don’t like it.”
“Come home, Sid.”
“I’m trying. But you don’t know how this feels. To see Amma as she will be. You as you were.”
The Hollow Heart Page 24