No one knew what to make of that. So there were other quiet rebellions, these more challenging to the Bright. Everywhere, heretics started worshipping their gods openly. Some nation up in High North—I can’t recall which one—declared that it would teach children its own language first, then Senmite, instead of the other way around. There were even people who chose to worship no god at all, despite new ones appearing in Shadow every day.
And the Arameri have done nothing.
For centuries, millennia, the world has danced to a single flute. In some ways, this has been our most sacred and inviolable law: thou shalt do whatever the hells the Arameri say. For this to change… well, that’s more frightening to most of us than any shenanigans the gods might pull. It means the end of the Bright. And none of us knows what will come after.
So perhaps my confusion on a few points of metaphysical cosmology is understandable.
I figured things out pretty quickly after that, thank goodness. When I turned back to the alley—
—the blonde godling was licking something on the ground.
I thought at first it was Shiny. As I came closer, though, I realized the positioning was wrong. Shiny was on that side of the alley. The only things on the side where she crouched were—
My gorge rose. The dead Order-Keepers.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were the same as her hair: gold mottled with irregular spots of darker color. I stared at her and suffered a pang of epiphany. When people looked at my eyes, was this what they saw? Ugliness that should have been beauty?
“Flesh freely given,” the godling said, and flashed me a hungry smile.
I skirted wide around her and moved back to Shiny’s side.
“You try me, Oree,” Madding said, shaking his head as I passed him. “You really do.”
“All I did was ask a question,” I snapped, and crouched to examine Shiny. Gods knew what the Order-Keepers had done to him, even before Sieh’s attack. I didn’t let myself think about the bodies behind me, and who had done that.
“He was trying to keep you alive,” replied Madding’s lieutenant, the female one.
I ignored her, though she was probably right. I just didn’t feel like admitting it. When I explored Shiny’s face with my fingers, I discovered his mouth was cut, and someone had blacked his eye; it was swollen almost shut. Those wounds did not concern me. I felt my way to his ribs, trying to find the break—
Something planted itself on my chest and shoved. Hard. Startled, I cried out, flying backward with such force that my back struck the far alley wall, knocking the sense out of me.
“Oree! Oree!”
Hands pulled at me. I blinked away stars and saw Madding crouched before me. I didn’t realize at first what had happened. Then I saw Madding swing around, his face contorting with fury—at Shiny.
“I’m all right,” I said vaguely, though I was not at all sure of this. Shiny had not been gentle. My head rang dully where the back of my skull had impacted stone. I let Madding help me to my feet, grateful for his support when the shining forms of him and the blonde woman blurred unpleasantly. “I’m all right!”
Madding snarled something in the gods’ singsong, guttural language. I saw the words spill from his mouth as glittering arrows that darted away to strike Shiny. Most of the words were harmless, I gathered by the way they shattered into nothing, but a few of them seemed to land and sink in.
The blonde godling’s rusty laugh interrupted this tirade. “Such disrespect, little brother,” she said, licking charcoal and grease from her lips. No blood; she hadn’t nibbled. Yet.
“Respect is earned, Lil.” Madding spat off to the side. “Did he ever try to earn ours, instead of demanding it?”
Lil shrugged, bowing her head until ragged hair obscured her face. “What does it matter? We did what we had to do. The world changes. As long as there is life to be lived and food to be savored, I am content.”
With that, she abandoned her human guise. Her mouth opened wide, wider, stretching impossibly as she bent over the Order-Keepers’ huddled forms.
I covered my mouth, and Madding looked disgusted. “Flesh freely given, Lil. I thought that was your creed?”
She paused. “This was given.” Her mouth did not move as she spoke. It could not possibly have formed words in the human fashion, as it was.
“By whom? I doubt those men volunteered to be roasted for your pleasure.”
She lifted an arm, pointing one skeletal finger at the place where Shiny huddled. “His kill. His flesh to give.”
I shuddered as she confirmed my fears. Madding noticed this and leaned close to examine me, touching my shoulders and head gingerly. The soreness where he touched warned me there would be bruises come morning.