“Hello,” said Deka. He was staring at Ahad, and belatedly I remembered that I’d never gotten around to telling him about his origins. My long-lost son’s attempt to destroy the universe had been a bit distracting.
Ahad sat up, eyeing the boy. After a moment, a slow smile spread across his face. “Well, well, well. You would be Dekarta Arameri.”
“I am.” Deka said this stiffly, trying and failing to conceal his fascination. They did not look wholly alike, but the resemblance was close enough to defy coincidence. “And you are?”
Ahad spread his arms. “Call me ‘Grandpa.’ ”
Deka stiffened. Glee threw an exasperated look at the back of Ahad’s head. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Deka… I’ll explain later.”
“Yes,” he said. “You will.” But he folded his arms and looked away from Ahad, and Ahad uttered a sigh of disappointment. I wasn’t sure whether he really minded Deka’s disinterest or was just using another opportunity to needle the boy.
We fell silent then, as was proper at graveside.
I gazed at the great piles of tumbled daystone and slipped my hands into my pockets, wondering at the feelings within me. I had loathed Sky for all the years of my incarceration. Within its white walls I had been starved, raped, flayed, and worse. I had been a god reduced to a possession, and the humiliation of those days had not left me despite a hundred years of freedom.
And yet… I remembered my orrery, and En pulsed in gentle sympathy against my chest. I remembered running through Sky’s wild, curving dead spaces, making them my own. I had found Yeine here; without thinking, I began to hum the lullaby I had once sung her. It had not been all suffering and horror. Life is never only one thing.
Ahad sighed above me. Sky had been his home once. Deka touched my hand; same for him. None of us mourned alone, for however long that mourning might last.
Above us, halfway between the sun and the faint, early risen moon, we could all see the peculiar smudge that had grown steadily larger since the day of Kahl’s victory. It was not a thing that could be described easily, in either Senmite or the gods’ language. A streaking transparency. A space of wavering nothingness, leaving nothingness in its wake. We could feel it, too, like an itch on the skin. Hear it, like words sung just out of hearing—but it would not be long now before we all heard it, more clearly than any sane being would want. Its roar would eclipse the world.
The Maelstrom. Kahl had summoned It, and It was coming.
After a time, during which the sun set and the early stars began to show, Ahad sighed and got to his feet, turning to help Glee to hers. They flickered to the ground, which made Deka start, then inhale as his suspicions were confirmed. Ahad winked at him, then sobered as he turned to me.
“The others think they can ride out whatever happens in the gods’ realm,” he said softly. “I have my doubts, but I can’t blame them for trying.” He hesitated, then glanced at Glee. “I’m staying here.”
It was an admission I would never have expected from him. Glee was mortal; she could not survive in our realm. When I glanced at Glee, to see if she understood how profound a change she had worked on him, she nodded minutely, lifting her chin in a blatantly protective challenge. Ahad was not the only one of us who could cause pain with a comment.
I had no interest in hurting Ahad, however. I’d done enough to him.
“Perhaps a more productive line of conversation is saving this realm, rather than fleeing it,” said Deka, and by the edge in his voice, I knew I would get an earful when we were alone. But Ahad shook his head, growing uncharacteristically serious.
“There’s no saving it,” he said. “Not even the Three can command the Maelstrom. At best, they can stand aside while It punches through the realms, and rebuild from whatever’s left. Not that that does us much good.” He shrugged and sighed, looking up at the sky. The smudge was just as visible at night, a waver against the carpet of stars. Beyond It, however, the stars were gone. There was nothing but black void.
“My father believes it is worthwhile to try and save this realm,” said Glee. Deka stared at her, probably guessing more secrets. I really should have told him everything beforehand. More stupidity on my part.
“Yeine and Nahadoth, too, if I know them at all.” I sighed. “But if they could have stopped it, they would have done so by now.”
I did not add that I had prayed to both, more than once, in the preceding nights. They had responded with silence. I tried not to worry about what that meant.
“Well, we’d better get going. Just came to wish the old hell good-bye.” Ahad’s cheroot had finally burned down. He dropped the butt to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe, throwing one final glance at Sky’s tumbled bulk behind us. The daystone still glowed at night, ghostly soft radiance to contrast the torn emptiness in the sky above. A fitting marker for mortalkind’s grave, I decided. Hopefully Yeine and Naha would find some way to preserve it when the world was gone.
And Itempas, my mind added to Yeine’s and Naha’s names, though of course that was less certain. Perhaps they would let him die with the rest of us. If they were going to, this would be the time.
“We will see you again,” Glee said. I nodded, noticing at last that they were holding hands.
Then they vanished, leaving me alone with Deka. “Explain,” he snapped.
I sighed and looked around. It was well and truly night. I hadn’t figured on the journey taking as long as it had. We had no supplies with which to make camp. It would be horse blankets on the ground instead. My old bones were going to love that.
“Let’s get comfortable first,” I said. His jaw flexed as though he would have preferred to argue, but instead he turned to the horses, bringing them closer to the daystone pile so that they could have some shelter from the wind.
We set up on what had been the foundation of a house, blown clean away by the force of the Tree’s fall. A few small pieces of daystone had landed here, so we gathered them into a pile for light, and Deka murmured a command that made them generate heat as well. I laid out our blankets separately, whereupon Deka promptly moved his over next to mine and pulled me into his arms.
“Deka,” I began. We had shared his bed since my last mortaling, but both of us had been too tired for anything but sleep. Convenient for putting off necessary conversations, but they could not be put off forever. So I took a deep breath and prayed briefly to one of my brothers for strength. “You don’t have to pretend. I know how it is for young men, and—”
“I think,” he said, “you’ve been stupid enough lately, Sieh. Don’t make things worse.”
At this I tried to sit up. I couldn’t because he wouldn’t let me and because my back complained fiercely when I tried. Too much time on horseback. “What?”
“You are still the child,” he said quietly, and I stopped struggling. “And the cat, and the man, and the monster who smothers children in the dark. So you’re an old man, too; fine. I told you, Sieh, I’m not going anywhere. Now lie down. I want to try something.”
More out of shock than any real obedience, I did as he bade me.
He slid a hand under my shirt, which made me blush and splutter. “Deka, gods—”
“Be still.” His hand stopped, resting on my chest. It was not a caress, though my stupid old body decided that it was and further decided that perhaps it was not so old after all. I was grateful; at my age there were no guarantees that certain bodily processes still worked.
Deka’s expression was still, intent. I had seen the same concentration from him when he spoke magic or drew sigils. This time, however, he began to whisper, and his hand moved in time with his words. Puzzled, I listened to what he was saying, but they were not words. It was not our language, or any language. I had no idea what he was doing.