He gave her a cryptic, sidelong glance. "That is sort of a personal question, Princess. Ask a historian."
I said, "We need to know the situation. You say you are powerful enough to overrule Mavors, but if he is the war-god, can't he win any battle with you? With anyone? Come to think of it, why didn't he take the throne by force when Terminus died? I'm asking the wrong question. Not how you got pushed off the throne, but how you ever got on it? How did you inherit Heaven?"
Archer smiled that type of smile I've seen on Boggin's face when he hears a clever question from Colin. Smiling at the unexpected. "I was deposed because of my power, not despite it."
"What does that mean?" Vanity asked, her hand on her hips, her green eyes glinting.
He paused to smile at her, perhaps gathering bitter memories in his head. "When Lord Terminus fell beneath Typhon, the secret of the lightning bolt was lost. Lady Tritogenia can wield the Bolt of Heaven, but even she knows not how to make it; they say the cyclopes of Mulciber can make it, but he cannot use it in battle; and the God of Battles, Mavors, who knows the outcome of war, knows that only the Lightning can drive Chaos away. You see? With our Great King dead, our only defense against Chaos is to hide behind you children. But there is a weapon greater than the greatest weapon of Heaven; even the gods bow to it."
He looked back and forth at Vanity and me, expectant, smug. I said, "The Great Weapon."
He nodded, and one hand touched the pink curves of his Turkish bow with unconscious pride.
"Indeed. The Great Weapon. How could Chaos resist, if I had all the queens of the underworld, of dreamland and outer void fall in love with the world? What can quiet the hatred of all enemies, but love, beautiful love?"
I shuddered at the thought of my mother, or the beautiful Lady Nepenthe, Colin's mother, whom I had once seen in a dream, in this man's arms.
He must have guessed my thought, for he looked at me and said sharply, "Not like that! I am a happily married man, little girl. I meant to have the enemies of this world fall in love with the world, with Gaea herself, her mountains and rushing streams, majestic forests of green, somber artic seas of blue, and deserts all encrimsoned with the many colors of a flame: and overhead the ordered spheres of heaven with their gemlike stars remote, the planets wheeling like falcons in their cycles and epicycles. Who, seeing the Cosmos, would not fall in love?"
"What went wrong?" I asked.
He spread his hands. "My mother told me that people do not always treat the ones they love so well. She thought it was madness."
Vanity said, "Your mother is Lady Cyprian? Aphrodite, Venus? Why does she get a vote? I thought you were the Emperor of Cosmos?"
"Ah, but even Monarchy is based on the willingness of the Led to be led. You see, three goddesses crowned me: Lady Tritogenia the Wise, also called Athena, who controls the Thunderbolt and the starry hosts of heaven; the Lady Cyprian, who bestows the love of the people; and the Great Queen Basilissa, called Hera, who grants the Mandate of Heaven, and decrees Sovereignty itself.
Only the head those three sovereign goddesses anoint, the martial maiden, the beloved, and the mother of gods and man, can sustain the oak-leaf crown.
"Do you know the meaning of the old history?" Archer continued. "King Terminus was a parricide; his hands were polluted with his father's blood. Only these three could wash the stains away: wisdom, and love, and the law. The Great Queen of Heaven is also the High Lady of Forgiveness, and Grandfather Terminus repaid her kindness by giving her ever more adulteries to forgive."
He seemed lost in thought for a moment, frowning.
"So these three goddesses picked you?" I said softly.
"I was the compromise candidate. The Great Queen was my grandmother, and Lady Cyprian was my mother, and Lady Tritogenia was as afraid of me as all intellectuals should be. (Merlin and Solomon can tell you how well the wise and learned can withstand the foolishness of love!) Mavors did not want to war on his own son, and Mulciber did not dare earn the hate of his wife, my mother. And everyone thought I was a foolish boy, young and weak and easily led.
"But my flaw was not that I was weak. As I said, I was too strong. Do you see? They were afraid to follow the love-god to war with Chaos. And when the Goddess of Love herself, the Lady Cyprian, said no... well, let us say that she is considerably older and greater than any of us know.
She was found floating on a seashell in the Western Sea, surrounded by singing Graces, and she may be older than Chaos or Old Night."
I said, "Is that why Mavors is not in charge of everything? He needs the three goddesses to coronate him?"
He nodded. "Partly why. Who wants War to rule the universe, rather than Love? My father Mavors is a strange man. I think he hates himself. He rejoices in the glory and virtue of war, but he hates the carnage, the madness, the tears, the bloody business of it, the lies. So many lies. He is basically an honest fellow, in his own way, and he doesn't like how enemies use spies and traitors; kings lie to men; men lie to their wives; and wives tell their children how brave their fathers are; cowards get medals and real heroes die unmarked; and bards lie about it all. He is not a happy man, my father, except when he's with Mother.
"And Father can never be with her, lawfully, unless he gains the throne and changes the laws. If he becomes the Lord of Sovereignty, no longer merely the Lord of War, he can bind his heavy red sword in olive branches and retire from his bloody work, spend his days at home with the prettiest wife in Heaven. What veteran wants more than that?"
Archer shrugged and seemed a little sad. "In any case, Mavors does not dare rule a Cosmos torn with bloody civil war, not with Chaos encamped in strength outside our crystal walls. It might be different if Father had the unambiguous support of Mother. But my mother, the Cyprian, merely looks at him through her long lashes and smiles and does not leave her crook-backed soot-streaked husband-but neither does she leave the rough and handsome war-god to his loneliness.
"So every eye is on Mavors now, now that he has imprudently risked the Children of Chaos to winkle out the traitors among us. If he finds the hidden foe whose hand guides Lamia to her sick crimes, the Great Queen, Mavors' mother, will support him, so she has said, and we all believe his lover, the Cyprian, will also, once a firm excuse allows her. Even his enemy, Tritogenia, the war-goddess, who hates him, cannot withhold her grace from a victor crowned by fate. If the Three Goddesses give him the auspices, Lord Pelagaeus the Earthshaker will withdraw his claim, and even Lord Dis may withdraw his threat to give the throne of brightest heaven to the sad girl-queen of darkest hell.