Interesting—or it would have been, if the happy couple hadn’t kidnapped, tortured, and imprisoned me and my friends. “That’s lovely,” I said as blandly as I could, “but I know something about scriveners, and I’ve never seen a scrivener do anything like that. Overpower one godling, much less several? I didn’t think that was even possible.”
“Gods aren’t invincible, Lady Oree. And your friends—well, nearly all of the ones who live here in the city—are the younger, weaker godlings.” He shrugged, oblivious to my surprise; he had just told me something I’d never realized. “The Nypri simply found a way to exploit these facts.”
I fell silent again, mulling over what he’d told me. Eventually we passed through a doorway into a smaller enclosed space, this one thickly carpeted. There were more food smells here, breakfast items—and a familiar hiras-scented perfume.
“Thank you for coming,” said Serymn, coming over to us. Hado let go of my hand, and Serymn took it in a sisterly fashion, stepping close to kiss me on the cheek. I managed not to pull back at that, though it was a near thing. Serymn noticed, of course.
“Forgive me, Lady. I suppose street folk don’t greet each other that way.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, unable to keep a scowl off my face. “I’m not ‘street folk,’ whatever those are.”
“And here I’ve offended you.” She sighed. “My apologies. I have little experience with commoners. Thank you, Brightbrother Hado.” Hado left, and Serymn guided me over to a large plush chair.
“Prepare a plate,” she ordered, and someone off to the side of the room began doing so. Sitting down across from me, Serymn examined me in silence for a moment. She was like Shiny in that; I could feel her gaze, like the brush of moth wings.
“Did you rest well last night?”
“Yes,” I said. “I appreciate your hospitality, up to a point.”
“That point being your fate and the fates of your godling friends, yes. Understandable.” Serymn paused as the servant came over, placing a plate in my hands. No formal service this time. I relaxed.
“And your own fate,” I said. “When Madding and the others get free, I doubt they’ll be very forgiving of their treatment. They’re immortal; you can’t hold them forever.” Though if she could somehow kill them, that rendered my argument moot….
“True,” she said. “And how convenient you mentioned this fact, as it’s the cause of the mess we find ourselves in now.”
I blinked, realizing she was no longer talking about Madding and the others, but another set of captive gods. “You mean the Arameri’s gods. The Nightlord.” Their ridiculous target.
“Not just the Nightlord, but also Sieh the Trickster.” It took all my self-control not to start at this. “Kurue the Wise, and Zhakkarn of the Blood. It was inevitable they would find their way to freedom eventually. Perhaps the millennia they spent imprisoned didn’t even seem like a long time to them. They are endlessly patient, our gods, but they never forget a wrong, and they never let that wrong go unpunished.”
“Do you blame them? If I had power and someone harmed me, I’d get back at them, too.”
“So would I. So have I, on more than one occasion.” I heard her cross her legs. “But any person on whom I sought vengeance would be equally within her rights to try and defend herself. That’s all we’re doing here, Lady Oree. Defending ourselves.”
“Against one of the Three.” I shook my head and decided to try honesty. “I’m sorry, but if you’re trying to convert me by appealing to… street logic, or whatever you think motivates us lowly, common folk, then there’s a flaw in your reasoning. Where I come from, if someone that powerful is angry with you, you don’t fight back. You make amends as best you can, or you go into hiding and never come out, and meanwhile you pray that no one you care about gets hurt.”
“Arameri do not hide, Lady Oree. We do not make amends, not when we believe our actions to have been correct. Those are the ways of Bright Itempas, after all.”
And look where that got him, I almost said, but I held my tongue. I had no idea whether Shiny was all right, or where he was. If he had managed to escape, I had little hope he would bother to help us, but on the off chance that he might, I didn’t intend to tell the New Lights about him.
“I think I should warn you,” I said, “that I don’t consider myself much of an Itempan.”
Serymn was silent for a moment. “I’d wondered about that. You left home at the age of sixteen—the year your father died, wasn’t it? Only a few weeks after the Gray Lady’s ascension.”
I stiffened. “How in the gods’ names did you know that?”
“We investigated you when you first came to our attention. It wasn’t difficult. There aren’t many towns on the Nimaro reservation, after all, and your blindness makes you memorable. Your White Hall priest reported that you enjoyed arguing with him during lessons, as a child.” She chuckled. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
My stomach twisted, threatening to return my meal. They had gone to my village? Spoken with my priest? Would they threaten my mother now?
“Please, Lady Oree. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you. We mean you no harm, nor anyone in your family.” There was the clink of a teapot and the sound of liquid pouring.
“You’ll understand if I find that hard to believe.” I found a table beside my chair and set my plate on it.
“Nevertheless, it’s true.” She leaned forward and put something in my hands—a small cup of tea. I held it tightly to conceal my shaking fingers. “Your priest thinks you left Nimaro because you lost your faith. Is that true?”
“That priest was my mother’s priest, Lady, far more than he ever was mine, and neither of them knew me very damned well.” My voice was just a hair too loud for polite conversation; anger had frayed my self-control. I took a deep breath and tried again to mimic her calm, cultured manner of speaking. “You can’t lose faith you never had to begin with.”
“Ah. So you never believed in the Bright at all?”
“Of course I believed. Even now I believe, in principle. But when I was sixteen, I saw the hypocrisy in all the things the priest had taught me. It’s all very well to say the world values reason and compassion and justice, but if nothing in reality reflects those words, they’re meaningless.”
“Since the Gods’ War, the world has enjoyed the longest period of peace and prosperity in its history.”
“My people were once as wealthy and powerful as the Amn, Lady Serymn. Now we’re refugees without even a homeland to call our own, forced to rely on Arameri charity.”
“There have been losses, true,” Serymn conceded. “I believe those are outweighed by the gains.”
I was suddenly angry, furious, with her. I had heard Serymn’s arguments from my mother, my priest, friends of the family—people I loved and respected. I had learned to endure my anger without protest, because my feelings were upsetting to them. But in my heart? Truly? I had never understood how they could be so… so…
Blind.
“How many nations and races have the Arameri wiped out of existence?” I demanded. “How many heretics have been executed, how many families slaughtered? How many poor people have been beaten to death by Order-Keepers for the crime of not knowing our place?” Hot droplets of tea sloshed onto my fingers. “The Bright is your peace. Your prosperity. Not anyone else’s.”
“Ah.” Serymn’s soft voice cut through my anger. “Not just lost faith, but broken faith. The Bright has failed you, and you reject it in turn.”