The Kingdom of Gods (31 page)

“She has a job for you,” Ahad said. He swiveled in his chair to face me and leaned back, propping one foot on the desk. “A test, of sorts. To see if your unique talents can be put to some use.”

“What the hells kind of test?” I was affronted by the very idea.

The woman — Glee? oddly cheerful for a Maroneh woman’s name — lifted one perfectly arched eyebrow in a way that felt inexplicably familiar. “I would like to send you to meet Usein Darr, scion of the current baron. Are you, perhaps, familiar with recent political events in the North?”

I tried to remember the things I’d overheard or been told while in Sky. But then, the image of Nevra and Criscina Arameri’s bodies came to mind.

“You want me to find out what this new magic is all about,” I said. “These masks.”

“No. We know what they are.”

“You do?”

Glee folded her hands, and the sense of familiarity grew. I had never met her before; I was certain of it. Very strange.

“The masks are art,” she said. “Specifically derived from a Mencheyev-Darren method of prayer that long predates the Bright, which they kept up in secret to avoid persecution. Once, they danced their exhortations to and praises of the gods, with each dancer donning a mask in order to act out specific,
contextualized roles. Each dance required certain interactions of these roles and a common understanding of the archetypes represented. The Mother, for example, symbolized love, but also justice; it was actually a representation of death. The Sorrowful was worn by an angry, prideful person, who would eventually commit great wrongs and come to regret what they had done. Do you understand?”

I fought to stifle a yawn. “Yeah, I get the idea. Someone takes an archetype, mixes it with common symbology, carves it out of wood from the World Tree using the blood of a slaughtered infant or something —”

“The blood of a godling, actually.”

I fell silent in surprise. Glee smiled.

“We don’t know whose. Perhaps just godsblood bought off the street; the specific originator of the blood may not matter, just its inherent power. We’re looking into that as well. And I don’t know about wood from the Tree, but I wouldn’t be surprised.” She sobered. “Finding out how the masks work isn’t what I want you to do in Darr. We’re less concerned with the tool, more concerned with the wielder. I would like you to approach Usein Darr with an offer from our group.”

I could not help perking up. There was great potential for mischief in any negotiation. “You want their magic?”

“No. We want peace.”

I started.
“Peace?”

“Peace serves the interests of both mortals and gods,” Ahad said when I looked at him to see if this Glee was a madwoman.

“I have to agree.” I frowned at him. “But I didn’t think
you
did.”

“I have always done whatever makes my life easier, Sieh.” He folded his hands calmly. “I am not Nahadoth, as you’re so fond of pointing out. I’m rather fond of predictability and routine.”

“Yes. Well.” I shook my head and sighed. “But
mortals
are part Nahadoth, and it sounds like the ones up north would rather live in chaos than endure the Arameri’s world order any longer. It’s not our place to tell this woman she’s wrong, if she’s the head of it.”

“Usein Darr is not the sole force behind the northern rebellion,” Glee said. “And it must be called a rebellion at this point. Darr is now one of five northern nations that have ceased to tithe to the White Halls within its borders, though they instead offer schooling, care for the elderly, and so forth to their citizens directly. That keeps the Nobles’ Consortium from censuring them for failure to govern — though since no High Northern noble has attended a Consortium session in over a year, it hardly matters. The whole of High North has, effectively, refused to recognize the Consortium’s authority.” She sighed. “The only thing they haven’t done is raise an army, probably because that would bring the Arameri’s wrath down on them. Everything but open defiance — but still, defiance. And Darr is, if not its head, most certainly its heart.”

“So what am I to offer
this
Darre, then, if her heart’s set on freeing the world from Arameri tyranny? A goal I don’t at all disagree with, mind you.” I considered. “I suppose I could kill her.”

“No, you could not.” Glee did not raise her voice, but then she didn’t have to. Those paper-cutting words suddenly became knives, sharp enough to flense. “As I said, Usein Darr is not the
sole motivator of these rebels. Killing her would only martyr her and encourage the rest.”

“Besides that,” said Ahad, “those godlings who dwell in the mortal realm do so on the sufferance of Lady Yeine. She has made it clear that she values mortal independence and is watching closely to see whether our presence proves detrimental. And please remember that
she
was once Darre. For all we know, Usein is some relative of hers.”

I shook my head. “She’s not mortal anymore. Such considerations are meaningless to her now.”

“Are you sure?”

I paused, suddenly uncertain.

“Well, then.” Ahad steepled his fingers. “Let’s kill Usein and see. Should be a delight, pissing off someone who had an infamous temper
before
she became the goddess of death.”

I rolled my eyes at him but did not protest. “Fine, then,” I said. “What
is
my goal in Darr?”

Glee shrugged, which obliquely surprised me because she hadn’t seemed like the kind to be that casual. “Find out what Usein wants. If it’s within our power, offer it.”

“How the hells do I know what’s within you people’s power?”

Ahad made a sound of exasperation. “Just assume anything and promise nothing. And lie, if you must. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

Mortalfucking son of a demon.
“Fine,” I said, slipping my hands into my pockets. “When do I go?”

I should have known better than to say that, because Ahad sat a little straighter, and his eyes turned completely black.
Then he smiled with more than a bit of his old cruelty and said, “You realize I’ve never done this before.”

I tried not to show my alarm. “It’s not much different from any other magic. A matter of will.” But if his will faltered …

“Ah, but, Sieh, I would so happily will you out of existence.”

Better to let him see my fear. He had always cultivated that in the old days; he liked to feel powerful. So I licked my lips and met his eyes. “I thought you didn’t care about me. Didn’t hate me, didn’t love me.”

“Which compounds the problem. Perhaps I don’t care enough to make sure I do this right.”

I took a deep breath, glancing at Glee.
See what you’re dealing with?
But she showed no reaction, her beautiful face as serene as before. She would have made a good Arameri.

“Perhaps not,” I said, “but if you do care at all about … craftsmanship, or whatever, then could you please be sure to just wipe me out of existence? And not, instead, spread my innards thinly across the face of reality? I’ve seen that happen before; it looks painful.”

Ahad laughed, but a feeling that had been in the air — an extra measure of heaviness and danger that had been thickening around us — eased. “I’ll take care, then. I do like being neat.”

There was a flicker. I felt myself disassembled and pushed out of the world. Despite Ahad’s threats, he was actually quite gentle about it. Then a new setting melted together around me.

Arrebaia, the largest city amid the collection of squabbling tribes that had grown together and decided to fight others
instead of each other. I could remember when they had not been Darre, just Somem and Lapri and Ztoric, and even further back when they had been families, and before that when they had been wandering bands lacking names of any kind. No more, however. I stood atop a wall near the city’s heart and privately marveled at how much they’d grown. The immense, tangled jungle that dominated this part of High North shone on the distant horizon, as green as the dragons that flew through other realms and the color of my mother’s eyes when she was angry. I could smell its humidity and violent, fragile life on the wind. Around me spread a maze of streets and temples and statues and gardens, all rising in stony tiers toward the city’s center, all carpeted in the paler green of the ornamental grass that the Darre cultivated. It made their city glow like an emerald in the slanting afternoon light.

Before me, in the near distance, loomed the hulking, squared-off pyramid of Sar-enna-nem. My destination, I guessed, since Ahad did not strike me as the subtle type.

My arrival had not gone unnoticed, however. I glanced down from the wall on which I stood to find an old woman and a boy-child of four or five years staring up at me. Amid the crowded street, they alone had stopped; between them was a rickety-looking cart bearing a few tired-looking vegetables and fruits. Ah, yes, the end of the market day. I sat down on the wall, dangling my feet over it and wondering how the hell I was supposed to get down, since it was a good ten feet high and I now had to worry about breaking bones. Damn Ahad.

“Hey, there,” I said in Senmite. “You know whether this wall runs all the way to Sar-enna-nem?”

The boy frowned, but the old woman merely looked thoughtful. “All things in Arrebaia lead to Sar-enna-nem,” she said. “But you may have trouble getting in. Foreigners are more welcome in the city than they used to be, but they are barred from the temple by declaration of our
ennu
.”

“Temple?”

“Sar-enna-nem,” said the boy, his expression suddenly scornful. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

He spoke with the thickest accent I’d heard in centuries, his Senmite inflected by the gulping river flow of the Darren tongue. The woman’s Senmite bore only a trace of this. She had learned Senmite early, probably before she’d learned Darre. The boy had done it the other way around. I glanced up as a pack of children near the boy’s age ran past, shrieking as children always seem to. They were shrieking in Darre.

“I know a lot of things,” I said to the boy, “but not everything. I know Sar-enna-nem
used to be
a temple, long ago, back before the Arameri made the world over. So it’s a temple again?” I grinned, delighted. “Whose?”

“All the gods’, of course!” The boy put his hands on his hips, having clearly decided I was an idiot. “If you don’t like that, you can leave!”

The old woman sighed. “Hush, boy. I didn’t raise you to be rude to guests.”

“He’s a Teman, Beba! Wigyi from school says you can’t trust those eyes of theirs.”

Before I could retort, the old woman’s hand shot out and cuffed the boy. I winced in sympathy at his yelp, but really, a smart child would’ve known better.

“We will discuss proper comportment for a young man when we get home,” she added, and the boy looked chastened at last. Then she focused on me again. “If you didn’t know the temple is a temple again, then I doubt you’ve come looking to pray. What is it that you really want here, stranger?”

“Well, I was looking for your
ennu —
or his daughter Usein, rather.” I had vague memories of someone mentioning a Baron Darr. “Where might she be found?”

The old woman narrowed her eyes at me for a long moment before answering. There was an attentiveness in her posture, and I noted the way she shifted her stance back, just a little. She moved her right hand to her hip, too, for easy access to the knife that was almost surely sheathed at the small of her back. Not all of Darr’s women were warriors, but this one had been, no doubt about it.

I flashed her my broadest, most innocent smile, hoping she would dismiss me as harmless. She didn’t relax — my smile didn’t work as well as it had when I’d been a boy — but her lips did twitch in an almost-smile.

“You want the Raringa,” she said, nodding westward. The word meant something like “seat of warriors” in one of the older High Northern trade tongues. Where the warriors’ council met, no doubt, to advise the young ennu-to-be on her dangerous course of action. I looked around and spotted a low, dome-shaped building not far from Sar-enna-nem. Not nearly so majestic, but then the Darre were not much like the Amn. They judged their leaders by standards other than appearance.

“Anything else?” the old woman asked. “The size and armament of her guard contingent, maybe?”

I rolled my eyes at this, but then paused as a new thought occurred to me. “Yes,” I said. “Say something in Darre for me.”

Her eyebrows shot toward her hairline, but she said in that tongue, “It’s a shame you’re mad, pretty foreign boy, because otherwise you might sire interesting daughters. Though perhaps you’re just a very stupid assassin, in which case it’s better if someone kills you before you breed.”

I grinned, climbing to my feet and dusting grass off my pants. “Thanks much, Auntie,” I said in Darre, which made both her and the boy gape. The language had changed some since I’d last spoken it; it sounded more like Mencheyev now, and they’d lengthened their vowels and fricatives. I probably still sounded a little strange to them, and I would definitely have to watch my slang, but already I could do a passable imitation of a native speaker. I gave them both a flourishing bow that was probably long out of fashion, then winked and sauntered off toward the Raringa.

I was not the only foreigner about, I saw as I came onto the wide paved plaza that led into the building. Knots of people milled about the area: some locals, others wearing fancy attire from their own lands. Diplomats, perhaps — ah, yes, come a-courting the new power in the region, feeling out the woman who would soon hold its reins. Maybe they were even coming to probe the possibility of an alliance — discreetly, of course. Darr was still very small, and the Arameri were still the Arameri. But it had escaped no one’s notice that the world was changing, and this was one of the epicenters of transformation.