by Rin Chupeco
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d changed your mind,” she said in a voice as soft as sympathy, her color-shifting hair floating around her despite the absence of wind. I watched as the strands changed from a soft purple to honey orange to star-yellow.
“Changed it right back.” This wasn’t a demotion, she had said. Protecting her daughter was just as important as patrolling Aranth’s borders, if not even more so. I needed rest, was all. And Asteria was right—I’d been away from the city for far too long. “My apologies. It won’t happen again.”
The goddess studied me carefully, and I forced back a twinge of anger. I hadn’t traveled all the way here, relinquishing both my position and what bits of my pride had survived with me, for misplaced commiseration. I hadn’t ended the day dumped by a pretty girl and nearly shanked by a drunken prick, only to endure her pity.
“Attend to Odessa first,” she finally said. “For now, you are to officially take up lodgings at the Spire. We can talk more later.”
“As you wish, Your Holiness.” Odessa, the mysterious child of the Spire. I knew Asteria’s daughter had a strange disease, one that none of the other Catseyes could heal. I was told she’d never left the tower her whole life, that the only time the other Devoted saw her was during the Banishing. Even then, I heard, she kept her distance, like her illness was contagious.
“Odessa is a sweet, compassionate girl. She’s enthusiastic about books, and she’ll likely talk your ear off over those. I hope you’re well-read.”
“I’ve opened books a time or two in my life.”
It sounded just this shade of impertinent, but Asteria laughed. “I think you’ll get along.” She moved down the hallway, stopping before the closest of two doors. “Odessa,” she called, knocking lightly on the wood. “Tianlan, your new Catseye, is here.”
The hinges creaked, and a girl stormed out. “I don’t need another guardian, Mother. Catseye Lenida was dull as dirt, and nothing she did ever cured my—” She stopped abruptly and gaped at me.
I gaped back.
Her name was Ame. She had gorgeous gray eyes and a gently rounded face, but it was her hair, coal black and wind-wild, that had drawn me in that first time. It hung down her waist, curled and loose against some unseen breeze. From behind a pile of books she had glanced up at me, her smile curious and sweet, and I was lost.
Later, I’d gone to sleep without nightmares for the first time since returning to the city.
The tiny bookshop was right beside the orphanage, and she was often there, browsing, when I visited the latter. I had come to look forward to those weekly trips, to watch her eyes light up as she chattered on about history, or romance novels, or any other book that struck her fancy. It took weeks to work up the courage to ask her out; weeks to believe, day by passing day, that a sabbatical from ranging wasn’t so bad after all.
She tasted sweet; a soft, eager mouth beneath mine, her arms laced around my neck as I tipped her nearly into the bookcase, as greedy as I always was.
But she’d never shown up for dinner earlier tonight.
And why should she? Her name wasn’t Ame; her name was Odessa, and her hair was an infuriating mess of colors like her mother’s instead of the lovely midnight black I knew, and apparently she’d never even been out of the damned tower, so the girl at the bookstore must have been my goddess-damned imagination this whole time.
I’d propositioned the goddess’s daughter.
I’d propositioned the goddess’s daughter.
Ame—no, Odessa—was turning pale.
“I have some matters to finish,” Asteria continued serenely, unaware of the tension. “Tianlan, see me in my study later. Odessa, please don’t give your new Catseye any more headaches like you gave the last one.”
Her daughter nodded wordlessly. Asteria left, and I followed Ame—no, Odessa—to her room, where she sat down hard on the bed and stared at her feet.
“So,” I said after a while, really, really wanting to break the silence with something spiteful, but also all too aware that she was my liege. I didn’t want to be fired on my first day. “This was why you stood me up.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered; still not looking up, face a fiery red. “You said your name was Lan.”
“It’s short for Tianlan. Never liked how formal it sounded.” And because I couldn’t completely bottle up my anger, I added, “Unlike you, I was being completely truthful.”
“I”—she twiddled her thumbs—“I’m not”—she looked out the window—“I really wasn’t planning on”—her gaze drifted everywhere but at me. “I’m sorry. I thought I could sneak out, but—”
“You thought you could sneak out?” It was difficult to keep the disbelief out of my voice, and the sense of betrayal. “The point is you weren’t who I thought you were.” Everything she had told me was a lie. She wasn’t the shy daughter of a strict fruit seller, she was Asteria’s daughter and a goddess in her own right. “Was that the only reason you never showed up, Ame?”
She looked away, and my throat closed up.
“I guess that’s my answer, then.”
A low, hurt sound escaped her, and it killed me that even after all her falsehoods, she could still get to me. It no longer mattered what her reasons were. The dynamics of our situation had altered the instant she became my charge.
“It’s fine,” I said roughly, though it felt anything but. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m just the new Catseye, here to see to your health. I don’t know how you used to sneak out of the Spire, but that ends on my watch. Understand?”
She nodded meekly. “But I want to explain why I—” She broke off abruptly, caught up in a fit of coughing.
I was by her side immediately. Whatever we were before, whether or not she’d lied to me, I should have taken her condition into account.
“Lie on the bed.”
Aether-gate healing is a magic made of sensations rather than sight. I could pinpoint wounds and illnesses based on an innate sixth sense that not even I could fully explain. Just as with the drunkard, the patterns of Aether gathered in areas where she required healing, guiding my actions accordingly.
There was nothing visibly wrong with her. She was at the peak of health, more so than the other denizens of Aranth below us. And yet the shadows gathered at a spot above her heart, pulsing with some unknown ichor. There was no reason for her to be coughing, no reason for her to be tired or even exhausted. Nothing within her explained these symptoms.
Asteria had said that her illness drained Ame’s—Odessa’s—strength daily, no matter how long she rested. And despite my attempts, I couldn’t purge it completely from her body. If it was left untreated, I knew it would eventually consume her whole.
It frustrated me that I was helpless here. I was supposed to be the best; the one the patterns favored the most, the one with the brightest, most powerful aether-gate. In my arrogance, I assumed I’d be different from the rest of her healers.
I shrank the shadow until it was no more than the size of a pea, but I couldn’t eradicate that final spot. And I knew that the next night would find it grown again, nearly as large.
“How long have you had this?”
“All my life. Mother and the Devoted try to keep it a secret. Wouldn’t be good for morale.”
“I’ll heal you,” I said, before I could stop myself. It didn’t condone her lies, but I understood now why she might have wanted to pretend. “I swear it. I’ll find a way.”
Her face brightened as she looked up at me, her beautiful hair swirling into hues of pink and lavender, and I was momentarily struck dumb all over again. But then her smile faded. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “Are you—are you going to tell Mother?”
I sighed. “No. Not if you don’t want me to.”
“I—” Her hands pressed down against her sternum, and she took a long, shuddering breath. “Okay.”
“Get some rest. I’ll be right next door. If there’s anything you require, don’t hesi
tate to call for me, even if it’s in the middle of the night.”
“Okay.” She rolled to her side, facing away.
I hated sounding so formal, so aloof. I used to talk about everything with Ame. In the several weeks I’d known her, I’d told her bits about my work as a ranger, even touching lightly on the reasons for my enforced leave. The smatterings of education Asteria had forced on me actually stuck, and I remembered enough to discuss classics like de la Croix’s Histories of the Known World or Merchaud’s Letters of a Devoted with her—there was no awkwardness between us then.
“I got something for you.”
She looked back at me, and her eyes lit up when she saw the books I held out to her. Her fingers ran through the first two covers, then halted at the third. “It’s a first-edition print of the Creation Divine,” she breathed, looking like I’d just spun straw into gold.
“You mentioned you’d never read it. Old Wallof found a copy. I badgered him not to tell you until I could buy it from him.” Ancient legends of past goddesses—the irony was not knowing she was one when I’d bought it. “Nothing about your mother, but it’s got a few illustrations. Some look a bit like you—”
That wasn’t entirely accurate. The book had poorly drawn pictures of drab women staring mournfully out at me with bulging eyes, bull noses, and perplexed expressions. There wasn’t much information either, save the usual vague yarn about generations of twin goddesses protecting the world since time immemorial. Everyone knew that.
But that was before the Breaking. Before Asteria’s twin tried to kill her, and her daughter. Before Asteria’s twin had killed Odessa’s own twin.
The only features the women in these illustrations had in common with Ame—Odessa—was their long multitoned hair, which ended in a flame-like trail behind them. They couldn’t capture vividness and beauty like that in books. We didn’t have color in Aranth the way Odessa wore colors in her hair.
She’d spotted the tear in the leather, her eyes widening. “What happened?”
“Just a small mishap, Your Holiness.”
She flinched from that. “I—don’t call me ‘Your Holiness.’”
“It wouldn’t be proper, Your Holiness.” I knew I was a hypocrite, but a line had to be drawn before I could be tempted to step over it. “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”
When I left the room, she was still staring after me, her arms wrapped tightly around the book and a look of pure misery on her face. The desire to step back in and comfort her was overwhelming.
I pushed the ache aside. She was unreachable now. It didn’t matter how I felt about it.
Asteria looked up as I entered her study, pausing in the act of brushing her own long, impossibly colored hair. I placed my sword on her table, still in its sheath. “Is Odessa asleep?” she asked. “I noticed you brought a history book for her.”
“The Creation Divine—a first edition.”
“I remember reading that. I was quite young then,” she sighed, though did not explain further. The past was a painful subject, I knew, a place she was reluctant to visit. She set the brush down. “How did you know what books she’d like?”
“Research,” I said shortly, not eager to elaborate and betray myself.
“Not stolen, I would hope?”
“Of course not.” I’m not a woman of many principles, but I learned early on in life that you don’t need logical reasons for wanting to do things. And I wasn’t going to insult Ame—Odessa, my mind snarled—by giving her stolen presents.
“Lan, you tried to pick my pocket at our first meeting. You had no idea I was the goddess of the very city you lived in. You’ve gotten better at following the law over the years, but old habits die hard.”
“I’ve been behaving.”
“You palmed one of the Windshifters’ brooches last week.”
Nothing gets past Asteria. “Filia can afford the loss.”
“What did you do with the money?”
I shifted uneasily. “I don’t see why that’s important.”
“You lived in Mistress Daliah’s orphanage for a time, did you not? I pay you enough coin to live comfortably on, and any vices of yours—those I know of, at least—require little extravagance. You come here with a book and a feather behind your ear. Mistress Daliah was ever fond of giving away those feather pins.”
I gave in. “I bought the book with my own money. As for the rest . . . Filia’s a vain little hen. Losing brooches will only improve her character. She is constantly misplacing her trinkets and blaming the servants for it. So I said I’d start taking her jewelry so she wouldn’t have anything to accuse them of stealing.” She dared me to. I could never resist a challenge. “Besides, the orphans could stand to have a few more supplies this month.”
She actually laughed. “I can’t say I disapprove.”
“You’ve been giving the Devoted freer rein than usual. I had to try and balance it out in other ways, Your Holiness.”
“I want to know how far they’ll push when they think I’m not watching. Perhaps I should favor the Catseyes tomorrow instead of the Starmaker.”
“Rather you didn’t.” I’d never really liked being part of the Devoted and rarely interacted with the others. I was always more at ease with my fellow rangers—
No. Don’t think about that now.
“I know you hate politics, but that’s how the game is played. Pitting them against each other means they’ll be too busy to plot against me.”
“They wouldn’t dare.” How could anyone think to go against the goddess who was literally keeping their city afloat?
“You’d be surprised.” She unsheathed the sword and touched the blade, running a finger lightly along the edge. The metal glowed; something about a goddess’s touch helped fight off most of the creatures that plagued the area; all weapons in the Devoted’s arsenal had been blessed in this manner. Asteria’s voice grew softer, sadder. “What is your diagnosis?”
I kept my voice level. “I’ll need more time. . . .”
“I cannot lose her, Lan.” A new note entered her voice; anger, determination, more than a trace of arrogance. Some people still spoke in hushed whispers about how she had broken the world to save it from her mad twin. So many had died that few were old enough to remember the Breaking, and they spoke of Asteria’s terrible majesty. The Asteria I served now was gentler, soft-spoken and quiet, but behind that kind exterior lay a mind of steel.
I knew about her previous Devoted. I knew none of them save Gracea had survived the Breaking. I knew she’d fled here to protect what was left of her people and had founded Aranth. Her desire to see everyone safe was something I’d always admired in Asteria. I respected and trusted her—but sometimes, even I wondered if those old stories about her were true.
“We’re the only ones of our kind left. In time, she will marry and have children of her own. It would break my heart to see them afflicted with her sickness.”
The thought broke my heart too, but in a different way. Of course she’d marry someone. Aranth would need more goddesses. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I’ll save her even if I have to break the seas open again—” She broke off with a loud gasp, rising to her feet.
“Your Holiness?” I grabbed her arm—
The pain hit me on all sides. The tower, the room, Asteria—they all disappeared, and in their place I found myself staring up at a great emptiness, rising from the bowels of an endless abyss. It was nothing I could describe, because that’s what it was—a great and abhorrent nothing; a loathsome void.
I saw Aranth ravaged by floods and ice, the storms sweeping mercilessly through until the screaming had tapered off and there was only silence. A large wave loomed, and the city disappeared underneath its swell.
The shapeless thing lifted its maw toward the heavens and screeched. And then it turned its eyeless gaze on something beyond mine.
My child, it whispered.
The vision faded. The goddess had sunk back down into
her seat, and I was sprawled on the floor.
“What was that?” I croaked. I knew that Asteria had visions sometimes—of the future or of an immediate present, I was never sure—but I’d never had the opportunity to use my Catseye abilities to gain access to what she saw. It wasn’t something I was willing to ever do again.
“I saw a creature,” she whispered, no longer calm, but harsh as the storms waging war outside, “made from hollowed stars, rising from the breach. It is coming this way. It is searching for me, and it is searching for Odessa.”
Chapter Two
Arjun, Son of Clan Oryx
THE ROYAL SUN GODDESS, Heiress to the Realms of Light, Blessed of the Sun, Second of the Blood, and enemy of my people, was a blithering idiot.
She sat atop the beast’s cadaver and wept, paying no attention to my approach. The Salt Sea had receded again, the third time in the last month alone, leaving nothing but acrid black sand, several more miles of useless territory on the Skeleton Coast—ironic, because this hadn’t been a coast in decades—and this gruesome offering in its wake. The corpse was easily two hundred tons and a hundred feet long and had perished long before the waters gave it up to dry land.
Her hands pressed down against the heavy spines along the creature’s back, and I saw patterns of Light gathering around the goddess, sparking and hissing like she was a flint from which life could spring forth. She pushed, and the ridges underneath her rippled in response to her frantic movements. But for all her efforts, the beast remained inert, and silent, and dead.
She was alone. You’d expect an armed escort with someone of her importance, so my assumption of idiocy obviously held. I wore armor forged by Stonebreaker craftsmen, a necessity to survive the heat out in the desert and the near-lethal rays of the sun, but she wore none that I could see.
An idiot, even for a goddess. When the fires flickered low and the silence in the caves went on for too long, the elders would tell us how the Sun Goddess Latona had ripped the sky in two and feasted on her twin sister’s heart, dooming us to a lifetime of wasteland because she could not stop craving the light. That this goddess, Latona’s daughter, was just as cruel. We were born hating them. We had every reason to.