House of Rage and Sorrow

by Sangu Mandanna

  “There they are,” Amba says right behind me, startling me. “My family.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “We did not include Ness, it’s true,” she says drily, “but look at the window.”

  I do, and realize that what I first thought was just a window actually has two horned silhouettes inside the bright circle, as if the artist captured them flying outside in the distance.

  “Devaki and Sorsha?”

  “Yes.” She looks at the painting for another moment, somewhat sadly, and then turns down a hallway that leads away from the balcony. “This way.”

  We follow her, down quiet corridors and up many winding staircases. We don’t see anyone. We just keep going until we come out at last at the top of a tower. I taste the salt of the sea first, then see the cold white sunlight of the Empty Moon. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the brightness after being inside the palace, and when they do, I draw in a sharp breath.

  Max.

  He stands at the ramparts of the tower. There’s an enormous black wolf between us. A few steps away, slouched with his hands in his pockets, is a god. From the serious expression and dark blond hair, both so like they were in the painting downstairs, I can only assume he’s Amba’s brother, Tyre.

  Max turns around at the sound of the old tower door banging shut behind us. As soon as I look at his face, the dread I’ve tried to ignore grips hold of me with sharp claws. Max’s face is remote, almost stern, and his entire bearing is different. The Max I know always stands like a shadow, watchful, wary, content to go unnoticed. This Max is completely at ease, completely uninterested in who does or doesn’t notice him.

  And he doesn’t so much as glance at Sybilla, Radha, or me. He just smiles at Amba. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asks. “Should I be worried? First Tyre and now you?”

  I take a step forward, to test how close the wolf will let me get, but it simply continues to watch me. The picture is wrong. The wolf isn’t exactly standing guard over Max and bristling with tension. It’s lying at his feet. Like a pet.

  A dozen scattered pieces suddenly assemble into a whole. I was different then, he told me as we hovered above this very moon. The scratches on the symbol in the conservatory. The grieving wolves that stopped singing their lament. You are beloved by gods you do not trust. Plural. Gods. The way Max talked to me about the bridge of stars. As if he knew how it felt to die. The look of pity on Amba’s face when she appeared and saw why I had called her.

  Because here is Kirrin’s trick. Seen too late. It never made sense to me that Kirrin would have abandoned Max in such a treacherous place when he always seemed to care so much about him, but that was the trick. To make us think Max’s life was at stake when it never was. The Empty Moon has never been a threat to him.

  “Are you his jailer?” Sybilla demands of Tyre, her tone intensely suspicious.

  Tyre raises his eyebrows. “More like a guest.”

  This gets Max’s attention and he looks at us for the first time, but there’s only mild curiosity in his face. He walks past the wolf, who doesn’t try to stop him, and his brows knit. “You’re all mortal,” he says. “Curious.”

  Sybilla’s had it. “Max, what the hell?”

  “Who?”

  “Who?” Sybilla repeats incredulously. She turns on Amba and Tyre. “What have you done to him? Why doesn’t he know who we are?”

  “We didn’t do this,” says Amba. “Kirrin didn’t either. The Empty Moon did. There’s ancient magic here.”

  “And it, what? Made him just forget everything?”

  “Not quite.”

  “I’m going to need a far less mysterious answer than that!” Sybilla snaps, and I can almost see steam coming out of her ears. Radha tugs futilely on Sybilla’s arm to try and calm her down, but Sybilla is past calm. She turns back to Max. “You’re not acting like a prisoner.”

  “Why would I? This is my home.”

  “Your home?”

  “Are you going to keep repeating everything I say?” he asks. “Yes, my home. I’m Valin.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Max is a reincarnated god?” Sybilla paces the room like a panther on the prowl, ready to pounce at the slightest provocation. “Since when?”

  “Since he was born,” Tyre tells her, and seems unable to resist adding, “That’s what reincarnation means.”

  Sybilla glares at him, but only says, “So he’s your brother. The one who used to rule this place with Kirrin, the one in the portrait downstairs.”

  “Yes, but he’s not the Valin we knew.” Tyre looks like he can’t quite understand how he got saddled with the thankless task of explaining this to the three of us, but he gamely continues. “When he became mortal a hundred years ago, Kirrin gave him a blessed dagger to end his life and start again. When he was reborn as Max, he was just that. Max. He had no memory of his previous life. Very few of you mortals ever do. And that’s how he should have lived.”

  “But Kirrin,” I say under my breath. I feel like most of my problems can be summed up with but Kirrin.

  Tyre looks at me. “But Kirrin,” he nods. “He missed him, too much to let him go. So when Max was about ten years old, Kirrin woke his memories of his life as Valin. It was selfish of him. The point of this new mortal life was so that Valin wouldn’t have to remember he had been torn from the stars for good. When those memories came back, Max handled it badly. He was angry, quick to lash out, wanted only to retreat into a tower where no one could find him and be left alone.”

  “And he didn’t tell anyone?” Radha asked.

  “No. He struggled with it alone for months, until eventually he reconciled the boy he was with the god he had once been. The Max you have known since then is a bit of both.”

  We’re in a warm, spare parlor somewhere in this blue palace, with a real fire ablaze in the grate, bowls of hot, hearty beef stew on a table surrounded by richly upholstered cream chairs, and a second table strewn with assorted medical supplies by the window. I still haven’t seen any of the servants; the stew and supplies were in the room when Tyre led us in.

  Radha and Tyre sit at the table. Sybilla’s still pacing. I stand by the window and the medical kit, wriggling gingerly out of my jacket. At some point, I tore the stitches in my shoulder and blood has soaked the fabric wrapped around it.

  “None of this explains why Max doesn’t remember us,” Sybilla says, still too cross to sit down and eat.

  Tyre dips a chunk of warm, fresh bread into his stew. “It’s the Empty Moon,” he says. “The moment he set foot on it, he lost his memories of this lifetime. I’ve been here with him the whole time. He doesn’t remember he’s Max. He doesn’t even remember he fell. He thinks it’s still a hundred years ago.”

  I take a shaky breath, telling myself the pain is only because I’m peeling the soaked bandage away from my bloody wound, and say, “Are those memories gone for good?”

  “There’s no way to be sure,” says Tyre, “but I don’t think so.” With my back to them, they can’t see the way my breath rushes out, the way relief leaves my body almost boneless. “I suspect they’re still in there somewhere. Amba’s trying to explain all this to him right now. That might help him remember.”

  Sybilla finally drops into a chair with a clunk, shoulders sagging. “Why didn’t he just tell us?”

  I crumple the bloody cloth into a ball and look over my shoulder at her. “Maybe because it doesn’t matter. This is who he’s always been.”

  “Kirrin wouldn’t have been able to trick us if we’d known the truth,” Radha points out.

  “No, but Max isn’t the only one whose secrets have led us to trouble.”

  I turn back to the window, to the cold white sunlight, and start cleaning my wound with antiseptic wipes. I find it curious that gods keep such human supplies in this palace, but then I suppose their mortal visitors must often need patching up if they make it to the palace.

  The warmth of the fire makes us al
l sleepy, which is no surprise considering our journey. Radha’s eyes are practically closing at the table. Tyre offers to show us to a room where we can get some sleep and recover from the journey. I stay behind under the pretext of dealing with my shoulder. Sybilla squeezes my hand on her way out.

  Staying upright is impossibly difficult, but I do it. I need to stay busy. I need to not think about the treacherous sea, or the secrets in the ice forest, or the possibility that the Max we know may be lost. If I think about any of it too long, I’ll fall apart and there’s no time to fall apart. Beyond this eerie blue realm is a brother who has won this round, a ravenous beast set loose, and a reckoning that must be met.

  As I tweeze loose threads of grimy, salty, bloody fabric out of my wound, I realize I’m not alone anymore. I look back and see Max in the doorway.

  I study his face, and he studies mine. Then he gives me a faint, crooked smile that’s so Max my throat closes up.

  “Max,” he says, his voice moving over the single syllable like it’s unfamiliar. “Apparently that’s my name now.”

  I nod.

  “I know you?”

  “Yes.”

  He crosses the parlor to me, firelight flickering over the taut line of his jaw. He takes in my wounded shoulder, my torn tunic, the gash in my leggings. Then he rolls the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. “Here,” he says, holding a hand out for the tweezers, “I can help. You came here for me. It’s the least I can do.”

  I sit on the table, clenching my hands on the edge. It’s painful to be so close to him when I can’t talk to him, touch him, any of it, but it feels like it would be worse to let him out of my sight.

  I keep my eyes on the fire. As he tweezes threads and splinters out of my wound, faster and gentler than I was, he’s so close the stubble on his jaw brushes against my ear. I don’t move; I barely breathe. We don’t speak at all as he works. The only sound in the room is the crackle of the fire and the ragged sound of my breath. No, not just mine. His, too. I can see the giveaway flutter at the hollow of his throat.

  He clears his throat. “Your leg.”

  I look down, see the rip in my leggings and the dried blood underneath. I kick off my boots and carefully slide my leggings off. Max kneels on the floor. He hooks one hand around my leg to hold it steady, his grip tight. As I watch his dark head, my heart suddenly jolts with realization.

  “You told me you loved me,” I say quietly.

  He goes completely still.

  When he doesn’t reply, I go on. “Titania showed me. It was after Shloka, when I was in the pod. You stayed beside me the whole way home. And you told me you loved me.”

  “I don’t remember that,” he says, but his voice is unsteady. “I don’t remember being him.”

  “Valin,” I say, and then: “Max. Look at me.”

  His hand clenches involuntarily on my leg, but he raises his head. I search his dark, steady eyes, and smile.

  “I love you.”

  I see his throat work as he swallows hard. His mouth moves, so slightly I almost miss it, I almost miss the shape of the words I love you too.

  I slide off the table and kneel, too. “Can I hug you?” I ask, careful and deliberate. “I know you don’t remember being him and I’m no one to you, but can I?”

  “Yes,” he says at once.

  With that opening, I fling my arms tight around his neck. His heart pounds against me and he tries very hard not to hold me, but his arms end up around me anyway, one hand tangled in my hair and the other pressing hard into my back. I blink away tears and turn my face into his neck.

  And there, with my mouth only millimeters away from his ear, I say, so quietly no one else can possibly hear: “You know who you are. You remember.”

  He nods.

  “Did you ever forget?”

  A shake of the head. His lips press against my head, hidden by my hair.

  My heart races, matching his. “Why are you pretending?”

  There’s a long beat of silence, and then I feel the quirk of his mouth as he smiles. “The best way to trick the god of tricks,” he says, low and quiet, “is to make him think his trick worked.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Titania flies to the palace, finally permitted past the invisible barrier that kept her away. My earpiece crackles violently to life as soon as she lands on the snowy ground outside the palace doors.

  “You need to get in here and see this,” she says without preamble.

  I was already on my way out. The sight of her, sharp and beautiful, sparkling silver in the sunlight, makes me absurdly happy.

  “You’re injured,” she says as soon as I drop into her control room. “Your vitals are not ideal.”

  “I’m okay. Are you?”

  “I’m more than a little miffed that I had to stay behind,” she sniffs and pulls up a video on one of her screens. “It looks like I missed quite the adventure.”

  The video is news footage, most likely taken from a drone above Arcadia. My brother’s city looks as utopian as it always has, its streets filled with happy people, its roofs and towers shining in the sun. The only difference is that now there’s a fleet of spaceships and hundreds of Alex’s soldiers outside the city gates, all keeping a safe distance from a great beast.

  Sorsha.

  I catch my breath, not quite able to believe that this isn’t just a picture in a book or a crackly, blurry shape in an ancient video. This is a real, living great beast. Sorsha is curled up outside the city gates, head raised to suspiciously watch the world around her. She’s enormous, her beautiful serpentine body and tail sweeping across almost a hundred feet of grass. Her jeweled scales are a deep, glittering ruby, her powerful wings are folded at rest on either side of her hind legs, and crimson horns curl from the sides of her great head. At the base of the horns and across her forehead is her helmet, gleaming gold like a crown.

  “The helmet’s power still works,” I say. “She seems calm.”

  “It’s only been a few hours since she was released,” says Titania darkly. “Give it time.”

  “Titania, you don’t have to face her.”

  She lets out a crow of genuine laughter. “I told you,” she says, “She can’t hurt me.” She hesitates, the laughter fading, and says, “I don’t think I can hurt her either, Esmae. I don’t think either of us can defeat the other.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The sun god told me so.”

  “Suya?” I ask, startled. “You’ve met him? When? What’s he got to do with this?”

  Her tone is so droll, I expect she’d be rolling her eyes if she had any. “He came to see me. I think he knew it was only a matter of time before Sorsha was free. He thinks she’ll go after him the first chance she gets and, in a plot twist that will surprise nobody, saving his own skin is his priority.”

  I’m about to ask Titania why the sun god would bother coming to tell her all this, but there’s a sound above me. Max drops through the open hatch and closes it firmly behind him.

  “Max!” Titania squeals. “You’re okay!”

  He grins. “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “As perfect as ever,” she says chirpily.

  “You’re not being very discreet,” I remark, raising my eyebrows at Max.

  “I can actually be me in here,” he says, the tightly coiled tension in his shoulders vanishing. “They can’t hear me.”

  “They?”

  “The palace servants. Kirrin’s servants.”

  “Yours, too,” I point out. “These are the people who care so much about you that they’ve kept your library pristine for over a hundred years. Do you really think they’d tell Kirrin the truth?”

  “That’s the point,” he says. “I don’t want to put them in that position. I don’t want them to be forced to choose between us.” Shadows dance across his face. “This has never happened before. Kirrin and I aren’t supposed to be on opposite sides of a war. Even after Father’s coup, Kirrin and I didn’t let that
get between us. He still visited. I helped him keep the boys alive. He helped keep Father alive. I’ve never lied to him before.”

  “Then why are you lying now?”

  “He took the blueflower from you,” he tells me. “He went out of his way to make sure you’d die. It broke his heart because he knew it would break mine, but he did it anyway. And then this. This whole charade to get Sorsha.” He shrugs. “We’ll forgive each other eventually, but for now I think my brother is due to have one of his tricks backfire on him.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” A thought occurs to me. “Tyre told us he’s been with you since you got here. Did he know you were faking it?”

  “Not until I told him. I needed to test my performance on someone who knew Valin as well as Kirrin did.”

  “So you think you’ll be able to convince Kirrin that you can’t remember being Max at all.”

  “I think so. It’s too perfect an opportunity to waste. We just need to find a way to use it.”

  I lean against Titania’s console. An idea tickles the back of my brain.

  “I should have told you,” Max says. “I almost did a hundred times. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve kept my fair share of secrets. I get it.” I glance up. “Titania, why didn’t you tell me? You must have known.”

  “I promised Max I would let him tell you when he was ready,” she says, without so much as a hint of guilt.

  I huff. “You don’t think this would have been useful information to know when we came here to rescue him? If we had known he wasn’t actually in mortal peril, Sorsha wouldn’t be free right now—”

  “I didn’t expect you to actually call for Amba,” she protests. “You weren’t supposed to!”

  She has me there.

  I turn back to watch Sorsha on the screen. I wonder how Kirrin persuaded her to join them. It’s most likely it was a favor she granted because he freed her, but will she regret it when her helmet’s power starts to fade? I don’t know. Maybe, after centuries confined to one realm, she doesn’t care about what she devours anymore. Maybe, like me, she wants to see the world hurt.