As A God

by T. G. Shepherd

  Since she had sat on the rooftop and watched her own flesh and blood slowly die, she had somehow known she was summoned here to meet this man. Of course he would be God-touched.

  She moved faster than he had transformed, light as the wind, and had her swords at his throat in the next beat.

  “That monster, back in the city—one of you, wasn’t he? Broken and incomplete somehow? Give me one good reason not to kill you.”

  Had he said anything to defend himself, any word of anger or aggression she would have slit his throat and washed her face in his blood.

  Instead, he turned his chin up, baring the pale flesh below, and smiled.

  Up close, she could make out the planes and angles of his face clearly.

  Long and thin, without softness.

  Her own face.

  In her world where expression, controlled and constrained, could be bought and paid for like jewels, Sequa had only ever seen two other people who looked at her with those open eyes, who smiled at her with such fierce pride, such tender affection.

  Jesan, who loved her with the purity that a fire loves dry wood and his father, who had adored her as his own daughter from the moment of her birth.

  Her hands dropped, and she staggered backward, crossing her arms around her stomach. Her swords slapped against her ribs, dull ringing in her chest. It felt as though some invisible bull had kicked her just under her breastplate. She could not breathe, could not speak.

  She knew this man; she had known him all her life. Memory sprang from Measures past, of lying in her own blood with a half-crushed skull, waiting to die. Of sudden warmth, and gentle hands, and a sweet, thick potion sliding across her tongue. Of waking whole and healed, alone again.

  Of a miracle in the forest…and the sound of his voice.

  “Father,” she named him now, named him truly, as truly as the monster had named her sister. Her voice, tiny and thin, came from a throat nearly choked with pain and confusion, a great rush of needing to know why? Why had he left her? Why had he abandoned her pregnant mother into slavery? How had he taken her from the edge of death during her Run and healed her?

  Was he angry with her, his daughter, who had robbed him of a son?

  The terror stole her long-buried rage at his abandonment, for in the end had she not been loved? Had she not been gifted with a family all the same? She had transgressed, foully.

  Sequa dropped to both knees on the soft turf and touched her head to the ground, scrabbling at the tethers of her swords until they came free and she could fling them away.

  “Father.” She wept now that she had dared to offer him the same violence she offered every other thing that crossed her path. “Father, forgive me. I killed—”

  “Daughter.”

  He said it with a thousand implications, his voice gentle music in the silver light.

  He said it simply, as though he had said it countless times before.

  He said it with the weight of a lifetime of separation and uncertainty behind it.

  He said it with love, pure and clear as a cup of fresh, spring water.

  She heard the echo then of the voice that had soothed her as she healed from her mortal wounds and found her fear had fled as well, leaving her with a deep, echoing, empty space in her heart. Silence filled her mouth like honey.

  She heard him crouch on the turf next to her, and his hand touched the crown of her head in something like benediction.

  “Thank you for doing the thing I was not brave enough to do. Thank you for putting your brother out of his misery. If you wish to spill my blood in retribution for what he did to you, for the innocent lives he, in his madness, stole, I call that justice, and I will not resist.”

  His voice grew warm and humorous for a moment, holding the edge of laughter and tears in the same tone. “But I would embrace you once before I die, and speak to you a few moments of the heritage we all hid from you, and so…do you have any spare breeches in your pack? It would be unseemly to hold you while bared to the buttocks.”

  She looked up at him, where he knelt with his knees pressed together, and laughed hysterically, devolving into hiccups until she held her breath. When she rose, he rose too, and she looked him up and down with a critical eye.

  “I can see where I got my hips,” she gasped out, the laughter nearly running mad in her. “Why did I get those pitiful things, and not the wings?

  “You never needed wings to fly. We have much to talk about,” he said dryly, frantic laughter cracking at the edge of his voice too.

  “I am on the first days of a long journey. I think we will have the time we need.” Sequa located her spare clothes and handed them over to him.

  “You are more than halfway through your true journey, my child. I know all about it,” he said in a distracted voice as he turned away to pull on the knee-length breeches. They fit him better than they should have but he could not have worn her shirt without tearing out every seam.

  Sequa stared at him sharply, remembering his words from a few moments before. “The heritage we all hid from you? What did you mean…who hid from me? Besides mother?”

  He looked at her again, seeming somehow taller now that he no longer hunched to cover himself. “It was never safe to tell you, before now, for many reasons. One of which you put down like the rabid dog he was back in Ressen. Sequa, my daughter, I could spare you so little pain, so little suffering. I failed that duty as your father. I watched, and I waited, and I took what burdens I could from your back. The Gods move us all, but they move my people…our people…almost directly. We were made to be their messengers, their toys, their servants. Enough of me in you that they moved you too.”

  She winced slightly, no more than a twitch of her smooth cheek. Bad enough the Gods moved her on Their board; she did not wish to hear of some foul destiny now.

  He looked up at the shining face of the Goddess. “I would hate them if I could, that they decreed such an ordeal on you, for the crime of being born my child. But I am not made capable of that.”

  “Oh, I can hate the Gods for both of us, father,” Sequa said lightly.

  He shook his head again then stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. His powerful embrace engulfed her, his body all whipcord and muscle. She laid her face upon his breast and breathed deep. His skin felt warm—hot—and dry as old leather; he smelled of mostly clean air and faintly of carrion. Freedom and blood; her gifts as well.

  “We will do more together than that. The path the Prince and the Rat interrupted is clear again. Come. I have a cache nearby. Let us eat and talk of the future.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  T.G. SHEPHERD

  T.G. Shepherd lives and works in British Columbia, Canada. Her day job is in law enforcement. At night she trains in stick fighting and MMA with Sifu Gary Herman. The rest of her time is spent writing, reading, enjoying craft beer and worshipping two small dogs.

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