Nahadoth—ah. The shock in his expression is giving way to anguish as he stares at me. The me on the floor bleeding out, not the me who watches him. How can I be both? I wonder fleetingly, before dismissing the question. It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that there is real pain in Nahadoth’s eyes, and it is more than the horror of a lost chance at freedom. It is not a pure pain, though; he, too, sees other dead women. Would he mourn me at all if I did not carry his sister’s soul?
That is an unfair question and small-hearted of me.
Viraine crouches and yanks the knife out of my corpse. More blood spills at this, but not much. My heart has already stopped. I have fallen onto my side, half-curled as if in sleep, but I am not a god. I will not wake up.
“Viraine.” Someone. Dekarta. “Explain yourself.”
Viraine gets to his feet, glancing at the sky. The sun is three-quarters above the horizon. A strange look crosses his face, a hint of fear. Then it is gone, and he looks down at the bloody knife in his hand and then lets it drop to the floor. The clattering sound is distant, but my vision focuses in close on his hand. My blood has splattered his fingers. They tremble just slightly.
“It was necessary,” he says, half to himself. Then he pulls himself together and says, “She was a weapon, my lord. Lady Kinneth’s last strike at you, with the collusion of the Enefadeh. There’s no time to explain now, but suffice it to say that if she had touched the Stone, made her wish, all the world would have suffered for it.”
Sieh has managed to straighten, perhaps because he has stopped trying to kill Viraine. His voice is lower in his cat form, a half snarl. “How did you know?”
“I told him.”
Kurue.
The others stare at her, disbelieving. But she is a goddess. Even as a traitor she will not yield her dignity.
“You have forgotten yourselves,” she says, looking at each of her fellow Enefadeh in turn. “We have been too long at the mercy of these creatures. Once we would never have stooped so low as to rely on a mortal—especially not a descendant of the very mortal who betrayed us.” She looks at my corpse and sees Shahar Arameri. I carry the burdens of so many dead women. “I would rather die than beg her for my freedom. I would rather kill her and use her death to buy Itempas’s mercy.”
There is a held breath of silence, at her words. It is not shock; it is rage.
Sieh breaks it first, growling out soft, bitter laughter. “I see. You killed Kinneth.”
All the humans in the room start, except Viraine. Dekarta drops his cane, because his gnarled hands have clenched into half fists. He says something. I do not hear it.
Kurue does not seem to hear him, either, though she inclines her head to Sieh. “It was the only sensible course of action. The girl had to die here, at dawn.” She points at the Stone. “The soul will linger near its fleshly remnant. And in a moment Itempas will arrive to collect and destroy it at last.”
“And our hopes with it,” says Zhakkarn, her jaw tight.
Kurue sighs. “Our mother is dead, Sister. Itempas won. I hate it, too—but it’s time we accepted this. What did you think would happen if we did manage to free ourselves? Just the four of us, against the Bright Lord and dozens of our brothers and sisters? And the Stone, you realize. We have no one to wield it for us, but Itempas has his Arameri pets. We would end up enslaved again, or worse. No.”
Then she turns to glare at Nahadoth. How could I have failed to recognize the look in her eyes? It has always been there. She looks at Nahadoth the way my mother probably looked at Dekarta, with sorrow inseparable from contempt. That should have been enough to warn me.
“Hate me for it if you like, Naha. But remember that if you had only swallowed your foolish pride and given Itempas what he wanted, none of us would be here. Now I will give him what he wants, and he’s promised to set me free for it.”
Nahadoth speaks very softly. “You’re the fool, Kurue, if you think Itempas will accept anything short of my capitulation.”
He looks up then. I have no flesh in this vision, this dream, but I want to shiver. His eyes are black through black. The skin around them is crazed with lines and cracks, like a porcelain mask on the verge of shattering. What gleams through these cracks is neither blood nor flesh; it is an impossibly black glow that pulses like a heartbeat. When he smiles, I cannot see his teeth.
“Isn’t that true… Brother?” His voice holds echoes of emptiness. He is looking at Viraine.
Viraine, half-silhouetted by the dawning sun, turns to Nahadoth—but it is my eyes he seems to meet. The watching, floating me. He smiles. The sorrow and fear in that smile is something that only I, out of this whole room, can possibly understand. I know this instinctively, though I do not know why.
Then, just before the sun’s bottommost curve lifts free of the horizon, I recognize what I have seen in him. Two souls. Itempas, like both his siblings, also has a second self.
Viraine flings back his head and screams, and from his throat vomits hot, searing white light. It floods the room in an instant, blinding me. I imagine the people in the city below, and in the surrounding countryside, will see this light from miles away. They will think it is a sun come to earth, and they will be right.
In the brightness I hear the Arameri crying out, except Dekarta. He alone has witnessed this before. When the light fades, I look upon Itempas, Bright Lord of the Sky.
The library etching was surprisingly accurate, though the differences are profound. His face is even more perfect, with lines and symmetry that put mere etching to shame. His eyes are the gold of a blazing noonday sun. Though white like Viraine’s, his hair is shorter and tighter-curled than even my own. His skin is darker, too, matte-smooth and flawless. (This surprises me, though it shouldn’t. How it must gall the Amn.) I can see, in this first glance, why Naha loves him.
And there is love in Itempas’s eyes, too, as he steps around my body and its nimbus of coagulating blood. “Nahadoth,” he says, smiling and extending his hands. Even in my fleshless state, I shiver. The things his tongue does to those syllables! He has come to seduce the god of seduction, and oh, has he come prepared.
Nahadoth is abruptly free to rise to his feet, which he does. But he does not take the proferred hands. He walks past Itempas to where my body lies. My corpse is fouled with blood all along one side, but he kneels and lifts me anyhow. He holds me against himself, cradling my head so it does not flop back on my limp neck. There is no expression on his face. He simply looks at me.
If this gesture is calculated to offend, it works. Itempas lowers his hands slowly, and his smile fades.