The Broken Kingdoms

For us, the divine inheritance was a blessing. For the gods, one drop of mortal blood doomed their offspring to death.

Apparently, no one realized what this meant for a very long time.

I scrambled downstairs much faster than I should have, given that I’d never gotten around to memorizing Madding’s stairs. Behind me trailed Paitya; the middle-aged godling; Kitr, who had come out of nowhere at my shout and was visible for once; and Madding. As we reached the room of pools, two more people joined us: a tall mortal woman who shone with nearly as many godwords as Previt Rimarn, and a sleek racing dog who glowed white in my sight. As I reached the house’s front door, I heard other calls upstairs; I’d woken the whole house.

I might have felt bad if my thoughts had not been filled with that awful silence.

“Oree!” Hands caught me before I got three steps out the door; I fought them. A blur of blue resolved into Madding. “You shouldn’t leave the house, damn it.”

“I have to—” I twisted to get around Madding. “He—”

“He who? Oree—” Madding abruptly went still. “Why is there blood on your face?”

That stopped my panic, though the hand that I lifted to my face shook badly. Wetness had splattered my face up on the roof; I’d forgotten.

“Boss?” Paitya had crouched to peer at something on the ground. I could not see what, but the grim expression on his face was unmistakable. “There’s a lot more blood here.”

Madding turned to look, and his eyes widened. He turned back to me, frowning. “What happened? Where were you, up on the roof?” Suddenly his frown deepened. “Did Father do something to you? So help me—”

Kitr, who had been scanning the street for danger, looked at us both sharply. “You told her?”

Madding ignored her, though I caught his wince of consternation. He turned me from one side to the other, checking for injuries. “I’m fine,” I said, holding my stick to my chest as I grew calmer. “I’m fine. But, yes, I was on the roof, with… with Shiny. There was someone… a man. I couldn’t see him; he must’ve been mortal. He knew my name, said he’d been looking for me—”

Paitya cursed and stood up, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the area. “Since when do Order-Keepers come by way of the damned roof? They usually have sense enough not to piss us off.”

Madding muttered something in gods’ language; it curled and spiked, a curse. “What happened?”

“Shiny,” I said. “He fought with the man. There was magic…” I clutched at Madding’s arms, my fingers tightening on the cloth of his shirt. “Mad, the man hit him with magic somehow, I think that’s what caused the blood, I think Shiny grabbed him and pulled him off the roof, but I didn’t hear them hit the ground…”

Madding had already begun gesturing at his companions, directing them to search around the house and nearby streets. Kitr stayed nearby, as did Paitya. Madding had no real need of bodyguards, but I did, and he had probably directed one of them to spirit me away if it came down to any sort of fight.

“I’m going to raze that White Hall to the ground,” he snarled, his human shape flickering blue as he pushed me back toward the front door. “If they’ve dared to attack my house, my people—”

“He wasn’t after Shiny,” I murmured, realizing it belatedly. I stopped, clutching Madding’s arm to get his attention. “Mad, that man wasn’t after Shiny at all! If he was an Order-Keeper, he would’ve wanted Shiny, wouldn’t he? They know he killed the ones in South Root.” The more I thought about it, the more certain I became. “I don’t think that man was an Order-Keeper at all.”

I didn’t mistake the swift, startled look that crossed Madding’s face. He exchanged a glance with Kitr, who looked equally alarmed. Kitr then turned to look at one of the mortals, the scrivener. She nodded and knelt, taking a pad of paper out of her jacket and uncapping a thin ink-brush.

“I’ll go see, too,” said the middle-aged godling, vanishing. Madding pulled me against him, holding me firm with one arm and keeping the other free, in case of trouble. I tried to feel safe there, in the arms of one god and protected by half a dozen others, but all my nerves were a-jangle, and the panic would not fade. I could not push aside the feeling that something was wrong, very wrong, that someone was watching, that something was going to happen. I felt it with every ounce of intuition that I possessed.

“There’s no body,” said Paitya, coming over to us. Beyond him, I could see other godlings winking in and out of sight about the street, on nearby windowsills, on the edge of a roof. “Enough blood that there should be, but nothing. Not even, er, parts.”