He had made himself not quite as powerful as a god—his flesh was still mortal, and the marks had only limited meaning—but surely more powerful than any scrivener who had ever lived. I had an inkling that his markings would be more effective than even the northerners’ masks; those were only wood and godsblood, after all. Deka was more than that.
My mouth fell open, and Deka smiled. Then he closed his undershirt.
“H-how…?” I asked. But I could guess. Demon and scrivener. A combination we had already learned to fear, channeled here toward a new purpose. “Why?”
“You,” he said, very softly. “I was planning to go find you.”
There was, fortunately, a small couch nearby. I sat down on it, dazed.
We exchanged stories. This was what Deka told me.
Shahar had been the one to suggest his exile. In the tense days after our oath and the children’s injury, the clamors for Deka’s execution had run loud in the halls of Sky. There were still a dozen or so fullbloods and twenty or thirty highbloods altogether. In the old days, they had not mattered because the family head’s rule had been absolute. These days, however, the highbloods had power of their own. Some of them had their own pet scriveners, their own pet assassins. A few had their own pet armies. If enough of them banded together and acted against Remath, she could be overthrown. This had never happened in all the two-millennia history of the Arameri, but it could happen now.
But when they had demanded Deka’s death, Shahar had spoken for him, as soon as she was well enough to talk. She had gone toe-to-toe with Remath—an epic debate, Deka called it, all the more impressive because one of its combatants was eight years old—and gotten her to acknowledge that exile was a more suitable punishment than death. Deka could never win enough support to become heir now, even if his looks could somehow be overcome. He would be forever branded by the stigma of failure. And Shahar needed him alive, she had argued, so as to have one advisor whose prospects were so truncated, so hopeless, that he would have no choice but to serve her faithfully in order to survive. Remath had agreed.
“I imagine dear Sister will fill this in when I go back,” Deka said then, touching his semisigil with a soft sigh. I nodded slowly. He was probably right.
So Deka had left Sky for the Litaria. The first few months of his exile had been misery, for with a child’s eyes, he had seen only his mother’s rejection and his sister’s betrayal. He had not reckoned, however, on one crucial thing.
“I am happy here,” he said simply. “It isn’t perfect; there are cliques and bullies, politics, unfairness, like anywhere. But compared to Sky, this is the gentlest of heavens.”
I nodded again. Happiness has healing power. Between that and the wisdom brought by maturity, Deka had come to realize what Shahar had done for him, and why. By then, however, several years had passed during which he’d returned all her letters, until she’d finally stopped sending them. It would have been dangerous in the extreme to resume communication at that point, because any of Shahar’s rivals—who were surely watching her mailings—would know that Deka was once again her weakness. There was strength in the fact that she could pretend not to love him and point to her hand in his exile as proof. And as long as Deka pretended not to love her back, they were both safe.
I shook my head slowly, though, troubled by his plan. Love could not be conditional. I had seen the danger of that too often. Conditions created a chink in otherwise unbreakable armor, left a fatal flaw in the perfect weapon. Then the armor broke, at precisely the wrong time. The weapon turned against its wielder. Deka and Shahar’s game could so easily turn real.
But it was not my place to say that, because they were still children enough to learn best through experience. I could only pray to Nahadoth and Yeine that they would not learn this lesson in the most painful way.
After our talk, Deka rose. An hour or so had passed. Beyond the laboratory windows, the sun had moved through noon into afternoon. I was hungry again, damn it, but no one had brought food. Perhaps there were no servants in this place where learning created its own hierarchy.
As if guessing my thought (though my stomach had also rumbled loudly), Deka went to a cabinet and opened a drawer, taking out several flat loaves of bread and a chub of dry sausage. He began slicing this on a board. “So why have you come? It can’t just have been to see an old friend.”
He still thought of me as a friend. I tried not to let him see how this affected me. “I did just want to see you, believe it or not. I wondered how you’d turned out.”
“You can’t have wondered all that hard, since it took you two years to come.”
I winced. “After Shahar, what happened with her, I mean… I didn’t want to see you, because I was afraid that you would be… like her.” Deka said nothing, still working on the food. “I thought you would be back in Sky by now, though.”
“Why?”
“Shahar. She made a deal with your mother to bring you home.”
“And you thought I would go as soon as my sister snapped her fingers?”
I faltered silent, confused. As I sat there, Deka turned back to me and brought the sausage and bread over, setting it before me as if he were a servant and not an Arameri. No poor man’s gristle-and-scraps here, I found when I took a slice. The sausage was sweet and redolent of cinnamon, bright yellow in color per the local style. The Litaria might make Remath Arameri’s son serve his own food, but the food was at least suited to his station. He’d brought a flask of wine, too, light and strong, of equal quality.
“Mother sent a letter shortly after you left Sky, inquiring as to when I might return,” Deka said, sitting in the chair across from me and taking a slice of meat for himself. He swallowed and uttered a short, sour laugh. “I responded with a letter of my own, explaining that I intended to remain until I’d completed my research.”
I burst out laughing at his audacity. “You told her you’d come back when you were good and ready, is that it? And she didn’t force you home?”
“No.” Deka’s expression darkened further. “But she had Shahar write to me, asking the same question.”
“And you said?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
He sat back in his chair, crossing his legs and toying with the glass of wine in his fingers. I didn’t like that pose for him; it reminded me too much of Ahad. “There was no need. It was a warning. Shahar’s letter said, ‘I am told the standard course of study at the Litaria is ten years. Surely you can finish your research within that time?’ ”
“A deadline.”
He nodded. “Two years to wrap up my affairs here and go back to Sky—or, no doubt, Mother’s willingness to let me return would expire.” He spread his hands. “This is my tenth year.”
I thought of what he’d told me and shown me. The strange new magic he’d developed, his vow to become Shahar’s weapon. “You’re going back, then.”
“I leave in a month.” He shrugged. “I should arrive by midsummer.”
“Two months’ traveling time?” I frowned. The Litaria was a sovereign territory within the sleepy agrarian land of Wiru, in southern Senm. (That way only a few farmers would die if the place ever blew to the heavens.) Sky was not that far. “You’re a scrivener. Draw a gate sigil.”
“I don’t actually need to; the Litaria has a permanent gate that can be configured to Sky’s. But to travel that way would make it seem as though I was afraid of assault. There is the family pride to consider. And more importantly, I will not slink to Sky quietly, like a bad dog finally allowed back into the house.” He sipped from his glass of wine. Over the rim, his eyes were dark and colder than I’d ever expected to see. “Let Mother and the rest of them see what they have chosen to create by sending me here. If they will not love me, fear is an acceptable substitute.”
For a moment I was stunned. This was not at all the Deka I remembered, but then, he was no longer a child, and he had never been a fool. He knew as well as I did what he was going b
ack to in Sky. I could not blame him for hardening himself to prepare for it. But I did mourn, just a little, for the sweet boy I’d first known.
At least he had not become what I’d feared, though: a monster, worthy only of death.
Yet.
At my silence, Deka glanced up, gazing at me just a moment too long. Did he sense my unease? Did he want me to feel uneasy?
“So… what will you do?” I asked. I fought the urge to stammer.
He shrugged. “I informed Mother that I would be traveling overland and made note of the route. Then I sent it by standard courier, with only the usual privacy sigils in the seal.”
I whistled with a lightheartedness that I didn’t feel. “Every highblood in Sky will have seen it, then.” I frowned. “These mask-wielding assassins, though… And gods, Deka, if any of your relatives want you dead, you’ve given them a map for the best places to ambush you!”
“And if Mother stints me on an appropriate guard complement, that’s precisely what will happen.” He shrugged. “As head, she must be seen to at least try to protect the Central Family, the Matriarch’s bloodline. To do any less would make her unfit to lead. So she’ll likely send a whole legion to escort me—thus the two months of travel.”
“Caught in your own trap. Poor Deka.” He smiled, and I grinned back. Yet I found myself sobering. “What if there is an attack, though? Assassins, regardless who sends them? A legion of enemy soldiers?”
“I’ll be fine.”
There was arrogance, and there was stupidity. “You should be afraid, Deka, no matter how powerful you’ve become. I’ve seen this mask magic. It’s like nothing the Litaria has prepared you for.”
“I’ve seen Shevir’s notes, and the Litaria has been closely involved in the investigation into this new magical form. The masks are like scrivening, like the gods’ language: merely a symbolic representation of a concept. Once one understands this, it is possible to develop a countermeasure.” He shrugged. “And these mask makers don’t know anything about my new magical form. No one does but me. And now you.”
“Um. Oh.” I fell silent again, awkwardly.
Abruptly, Deka smiled. “I like this,” he said, nodding toward me. “You’re different now, not just physically. Not so much the brat. Now you’re more…” He thought a moment.
“Heartless bastard?” I smiled. “Obnoxious ass?”
“Tired,” he said, and I sobered. “Unsure of yourself. The old you is still there, but it’s almost buried under other things. Fear, most noticeably.”
Inexplicably, the words stung. I stared back at him, wondering why.
His expression softened, a tacit apology. “It must be hard for you. Facing death, when you’re a creature of so much life.”
I looked away. “If mortals can do it, I can.”
“Not all mortals do, Sieh. You haven’t drunk yourself to death yet, or flung yourself into dangerous situations, or killed yourself in any of a hundred other ways. Considering that death is a new reality for you, you’re handling it remarkably well.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes boring into my own. “But the biggest change is that you’re not happy anymore. You were always lonely; I saw that even as a child. But the loneliness wasn’t destroying you back then. It is now.”
I flinched back from him, my thoughts moving from stunned toward affronted, but they lacked the strength to go all the way there, instead flopping somewhere in between. A lie came to my lips, and died. All that remained was silence.
A hint of the old self-deprecation crossed Deka’s face; he smiled ruefully. “I still want to help you, but I’m not sure if I can. You aren’t sure you like me anymore, for one thing.”
“I—” I blurted. Then I got up and walked away from him, over to one of the windows. I had to. I didn’t know what to say or how to act, and I didn’t want him to say anything else. If I’d still had my power, I would have simply left the Litaria. Maybe the mortal realm entirely. As it was, the best I could do was flee across the room.
His sigh followed me, but he said nothing for a long while. In that silence, I began to calm down. Why was I so agitated? I felt like a child again, one with jittery buttons dancing on his skin, like in an old Teman tale I’d heard. By the time Deka spoke, I was almost myself again. Well, not myself. But human, at least.
“You came to us all those years ago because you needed something, Sieh.”
“Not two little mortal brats,” I snapped.
“Maybe not. But we gave you something that you needed, and you came back for it twice more. And in the end, I was right. You did want our friendship. I’ve never forgotten what you said that day: ‘Friendships can transcend childhood, if the friends continue to trust each other as they grow older and change.’ ” I heard him shift in his chair, facing my back. “It was a warning.”
I sighed, rubbing my eyes. The meat and bread sat uneasily in my belly. “It was sentimental rambling.”
“Sieh.” How could he know so much, so young? “You were planning to kill us. If we became the kind of Arameri who once made your life hell—if we betrayed your trust—you knew you would have to kill us. The oath, and your nature, would have required it. You told us that because you didn’t want to. You wanted real friends. Friends who would last.”
Had that been it? I laughed hopelessly. “And now I’m the one who won’t last much longer.”
“Sieh—”
“If it was like you say, I would have killed Shahar, Deka. Because she betrayed me. She knew I loved her, and she used me. She…” I paused, then looked up at the reflection in the window. My own face in the foreground, pinched and tired, too big as always, shaped wrong, old. I had never understood why so many mortals found me attractive in this shape. In the background, watching me from the couch on which he sat, Deka. His eyes met mine in the glass.
“I slept with her,” I said, to hurt him. To shut him up. “I was her first, in fact. Little Lady Shar, so perfect, so cute. You should have heard her moan, Deka; it was like hearing the Maelstrom itself sing.”
Deka only smiled, though it seemed forced. “I heard about Mother’s plan.” He paused. “Is that why you didn’t kill Shahar? Because it was Mother’s plan and not hers?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why I didn’t kill her. There was no why. I do what feels good.” I rubbed my temples, where a headache had begun.
“And you didn’t feel like murdering the girl you loved.”
“Gods, Deka!” I rounded on him, clenching my fists. “Why are we talking about this?”
“So it was just lust? The god of childhood leaps on the first half-grown woman he meets who’s willing?”
“No, of course not!”
He sighed and got to his feet. “She was just another Arameri, then, forcing you into her bed?” The look on his face showed that he didn’t remotely believe that. “You wanted her. You loved her. She broke your heart. And you didn’t kill her because you love her still. Why does that trouble you so?”
“It doesn’t,” I said. But it did. It shouldn’t have. Why did it matter to me that some mortal had done precisely what I’d expected her to do? A god should not care about such things. A god…
… should not need a mortal to be happy.
Gods. Gods. What was wrong with me? Gods.
Deka sighed and came over to me. There were many things in his eyes: compassion. Sorrow. Anger, though not at me. Exasperation. And something more. He stopped in front of me, and I was not as surprised as I should have been that he lifted a hand to cup my cheek. I did not pull away, either. As I should have.
“I will not betray you,” he murmured, much too softly. This was not the way a friend spoke to a friend. His fingertips rasped along the edge of my jaw. This was not the touch of a friend. But—I did not think—Oh, gods, was he…
“I’m not going anywhere, either. I have waited so long for you, Sieh.”
I started, confused, remembering. “Wait, where did you hear—”
; Then he kissed me, and I fell.
Into him. Or he enveloped me. There are no words for such things, not in any mortal language, but I will try, I will try to encapsulate it, confine it, define it, because my mind does not work the way it once did and I want to understand, too. I want to remember. I want to taste again his mouth, spicy and meaty and a little sweet. He had always been sweet, especially that first day, when he’d looked into my eyes and begged me to help them. I craved his sweetness. His mouth opened and I delved into it, meeting him halfway. I had blessed him that day, hadn’t I? Perhaps that was why, now, the purest of magic surged through him and down my throat, flooding my belly, overflowing my nerves until I gasped and tried to cry out, but he would not let my mouth go. I tried to back away but the window was there. We could not travel to other realms safely. My only choice was to release the magic or be destroyed. So I opened my eyes.
Every lantern in the room flared like a bonfire, then burst in a cloud of sparks. The walls shook, the floor heaved. One of the shelves on a nearby bookcase collapsed, spilling thick tomes to the floor. I heard the window frame rattle ominously at my back, and someone on the floor above cried out in alarm. Then Deka ended the kiss, and the world was still again.
Darkness and damnation and eighth-blooded unknowing Arameri demons.
Deka blinked twice, licked his lips, then flashed me the sort of elated, look-what-I-did grin I’d once been famous for. “That went better than expected.”
I nodded beyond him. “You were expecting this?”
He turned, and his eyes widened at the fallen shelf, the now-smoldering lanterns. One lay on the floor, its glass shattered. As he stared, a scroll that had not dropped with the others fluttered to the shelf below, forlorn.
The Inheritance Trilogy Page 93