The Kingdom of Gods

I remembered the mask-decayed bodies I had seen two years before, during my disastrous few days in Sky. I tried to imagine Shahar’s and Dekarta’s corpses laid out in the same way, their faces obscured by burned masks and their flesh too destroyed even to rot.

“Take me there,” I said softly. “Wherever you’re going. I want to help.”

She inclined her head and extended a hand to me. I took it before it occurred to me to wonder what she could do. She wasn’t a godling, just a demon. A mortal.

Then her power clamped down on the world around us, taking us in and out of reality with a god’s deft strength. I could not help admiration; she had o si She wasnur father’s touch.

Glee had rented an inn room in the northern Easha section of Shadow, a thriving business district near the city’s center. I realized at once that it was one of the nicer inns — the kind of place I couldn’t afford even on the salary Ahad gave me, and especially not before a major event in the city. It sounded as though there was a large and raucous crowd in the common room downstairs. Every inn in the city was probably filling up as people from the surrounding lands poured in to see the spectacle. Even Hymn’s place would be getting some business amid this; I was glad, if so. Though hopefully they wouldn’t be so crass as to rent out my room.

Glee went to the window and opened the shutters, revealing the reason she’d brought us here. I went to stand beside her and saw that the window overlooked the Avenue of Nobles, at the distant end of which stood the imposing white bulk of the Salon. We had a good view: I could see the tiny figures of people milling about the avenue near the Salon’s wide steps and Order-Keepers in their conspicuously white uniforms setting up barriers to keep the onlookers back. Arameri did not appear in public often, though their faces were known thanks to the Order’s news scrolls and the currency. Everyone in a hundred-mile radius had probably traveled to the city, or was on their way, to catch a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse.

Glee pointed along the avenue in the opposite direction, since it ran past the building we were in. “Dekarta’s procession will enter the city from there. The route hasn’t been published, but it will be in the news scrolls tomorrow morning. That makes it difficult for assassins to plan. But the procession will have to travel along the avenue this far; there’s no other way for a large party to reach the Salon.”

“Which means they might strike anywhere along this street?” I shook my head, incredulous. Even if I’d still had magic, it was an impossible scenario to try and plan for. In the morning, the dozens of mortals around the Salon would have grown to hundreds; by afternoon, when the event was to take place, there would be thousands. How to find just one amid the morass? “Do you know how the assassins get their victims to don the masks?”

“No.” She sighed, and for an instant her stoic face slipped. I realized she was very tired, and troubled. Was Itempas doing nothing, fobbing all the work of protecting the world off on her? Bastard.

Turning from the window, Glee went to the room’s handsome leather chair and sat down. I turned to sit on the windowsill, because I have always been more comfortable on such perches than in any conventional seat.

“So, we stay here until tomorrow, and then … what?” I asked.

“Nemmer has a plan in place,” she said. “Her people have done such things before. She knows how best to utilize the strengths of both godlings and mortals. But since you and I are neither, she’s suggested that perhaps we could contribute most usefully by circulating through the crowd and keeping watch for anything unusual.”

I shifted to prop one leg against the window frame, sighing at her characterization of me. “I still think like a godling, you know. I’ve ozeill hatried to adjust, be more mortal, but —” I spread my hands. “I have been the Trickster for more years than most mortals know how to count. I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to become anything else, in my head.”

She rested her head on the chair back and closed her eyes, evidently planning to sleep there. “Even gods have limits; yours are just different. Do what you can within them.”

Silence fell between us, but for the soft stir of a night breeze through the open window and the mortals in the common room below, who were singing some sort of song in lusty and off-beat cadence. I listened to them for a while, smiling as I recognized the song as a variation on one I’d taught their ancestors. I hummed the tune along with them until I grew bored, and then I glanced at Glee to see if she was asleep — to find her eyes open, watching me.