The Broken Kingdoms

And dear gods, his voice was beautiful. Tenor. I’d expected him to be baritone. And it was rich, every precisely enunciated word reverberating through my ears all the way down to my toes. I could listen to a voice like that all day.

Or all night… Sternly, I turned my thoughts away from that path. I had enough gods in my love life.

Then I realized I’d been staring blankly at him. “Oh, ah, I don’t mind that so much,” I said at last. “Though I wish you’d asked first.”

“She insisted.”

That threw me. “Why?”

“I have a warning to pass on,” Lil interjected, coming over to the table. She put a plate in front of me, then another in front of Shiny. My kitchen had only two chairs, so she hoisted herself up on a counter, then picked up a plate she’d apparently set aside for herself. Her eyes gleamed as she gazed at her food, and I looked away, afraid she would open her mouth wide again.

“A warning?” In spite of everything, the food smelled good. I poked it a bit and realized she’d incorporated the velly into the eggs, along with peppers and herbs I’d forgotten I had. I tried it—delicious.

“Someone is looking for you,” Lil said.

It took a moment to figure out she meant me, not Shiny. Then I sobered, realizing who might be looking for me. “Everyone saw Previt Rimarn talking to me yesterday. Now that he’s, um, gone, I imagine his fellow previts will come around.”

“Oh, he’s not dead,” said Lil, surprised. “The three I ate last night were just Order-Keepers. Young, healthy, quite juicy beneath the crust.” She uttered a lascivious sigh. I put down my fork, appetite gone. “There was no magic on them to spoil the taste, except that used to kill them. I imagine they were just there to do the beating.”

In spite of myself, I groaned inwardly. That had been the one benefit I could see in the priests’ deaths; Rimarn was the only one who knew of my magic and suspected me of being Role’s killer. Now, with his men dead, he would definitely be looking for me.

Madding’s words came back to me: leave town. Yet the problem of money haunted me. And I did not want to leave. Shadow was my home.

“He’s not the one I meant, in any case,” Lil said, interrupting my thoughts. Surprised, I focused on her. Her plate, faintly visible to me in the reflected glow of her body, was empty—clean, as if she’d polished it. She was licking her fork now, with long, slow strokes of her tongue that seemed obscene.

“What?”

She turned and looked at me, and abruptly I was pinned by her mottled gaze. The dark spots in her eyes moved, spinning about her pupils in a slow, restless dance. I found myself wondering if the spots in her hair moved, too.

“So much hunger,” she said in a soft, raspy purr. “It wraps about you like a layered cloak. A previt’s anger. Madding’s desire.” My cheeks grew warm. “And one other, more hungry than the others. Powerful. Dangerous.” She shivered, and I shivered with her. “He could reshape the world with such hunger, especially if he gets what he wants. And what he wants is you.”

I stared at her, confused and alarmed. “Who is this person? What does he want me for?”

“I don’t know.” She licked her lips, then regarded me thoughtfully. “Perhaps if I stay near you, I can meet him.”

I frowned, too unnerved to comment on this. Why would anyone powerful want me? I was nothing, nobody. Even Rimarn would be disappointed if he knew the truth of the magic he’d sensed in me. All I could do was see.

And… I frowned. There were also my paintings. I kept those out of sight; only Madding and Shiny knew about them. There was something magical to those. I didn’t know what, but my father had taught me long ago that it was important to keep such things hidden, and so I did.

Was it those, then, that this mysterious person wanted?

No, no, I was jumping to conclusions. I didn’t even know if this person existed. All I had to go on was the word of a goddess who saw nothing wrong with eating human beings. She might see nothing wrong with lying to them, too.

Shiny was still there, though I had not heard him eat. I licked my lips, wondering if he would answer. “Do you know what she’s talking about?” I asked him.

“No.”

So far, so good. “Your injuries,” I began.

“He’s fine,” Lil said. She was eyeing my unfinished plate. “I killed him, and he came back whole.”

I blinked in surprise. “You healed him… by killing him?”

She shrugged. “Should I have left him as he was, taking weeks to heal on his own? He isn’t like the rest of us. He is mortal.”