The Kingdom of Gods

So I sighed and decided to address the matter directly. “So, little sister.” She lifted an eyebrow at this, and I smiled. “How old are you?”

“Older than I look, like you.”

Nearly a century, she’d said. “You’re Oree Shoth’s daughter.” I vaguely remembered her. A beautiful mortal girl, blind and brave. She had loved one of my younger brothers, who’d died. And she’d loved Itempas, too, apparently. I couldn’t see him coupling with her otherwise. Ephemeral intimacy offended him.

“Yes.”

“She still call him ‘Shiny’?”

“Oree Shoth is dead.”

“Oh.” I frowned. Something about her phrasing was odd, but I couldn’t figure out what. “I’m sorry.”

Glee was silent for a moment, her gaze disconcertingly direct. Another thing she’d gotten from him. “Are you really?”

“What?”

She crossed her legs primly. “I was always told that you were one of mortalkind’s champions, in the old days. But now you don’t seem to like mortals much.” She shrugged as I scowled. “Understandably. But given that, I can’t see you getting especially upset about one more death.”

“Well, that would mean you don’t know me very well, wouldn’t it?”

To my surprise, she nodded. “That’s precisely what it means. Which is why I asked: are you sorry for my mother’s death? Honestly.”

Surprised, I closed my mouth and considered my answer. “I am,” I said at last. “I liked her. She had the kind of personality that I think I could’ve gotten along with, if she hadn’t been so devoted to Itempas.” I paused, considering. “Even so, I never would’ve expected him to respond to that devotion. Oree Shoth must’ve been pretty special to make him take a chance on a mortal woman again …”

“He left my mother before I was born.”

“He —” Now I stared at her, flummoxed, because that was not at all like him. His heart didht=> not change. But then I remembered another mortal lover and child he’d left behind, centuries ago. It was not his nature to leave, but he could be persuaded to do so, if it was in the best interests of those he cared for.

“Lord Nahadoth and Lady Enefa demanded it,” Glee said, reading my face. “He left only to save her — our — lives. So, later, when I was old enough, I went looking for him. Eventually I found him. I’ve traveled with him ever since.”

“I see.” A tale worthy of the gods, though she wasn’t one of us. And then, because it was in my mind and she knew it was there and there was no point in my trying to conceal the obvious, I asked the question that had hovered between us for the whole two years since we’d met. “What is he like now?”

She took her time answering, appearing to consider her words carefully. “I don’t know what he was like before the War,” she said, “or even during the years of your … incarceration. I don’t know if he’s the same as he was then, or different.”

“He doesn’t change.”

Another of those odd silences. “I think he may have.”

“He can’t change. It’s anathema to him.”

She shook her head, with familiar stubbornness. “He can. He did when he killed Enefa, and I believe he’s changed again since. He’s always been able to change, and he’s always done it, however slowly or reluctantly, because he’s a living being and change is part of life. Enefa didn’t make it that way; she just took the common qualities her brothers already possessed and put those into the godlings and mortals she created.”

I wondered if she’d had this conversation with Itempas. “Except she made mortalkind complete, unlike us.”

She shook her head again, the soft curls of her hair wafting gently as if in a breeze. “Gods are just as complete as mortals. Nahadoth isn’t wholly dark. Father isn’t wholly light.” She paused, her eyes narrowing at me. “You haven’t been a true child since the universe was young. And for that matter, the War in part began because Enefa — the preserver of balance — lost her balance. She loved one of her brothers more than the other, and that broke them all.”

I stiffened. “How dare you blame her! You don’t know anything about it —”

“I know what he told me. I know what I’ve learned, from books and legends and conversations with godlings who were there when the whole mess began, who watched from the sidelines and tried to think how to stop it, and wept as they realized they could not. You were too close, Sieh; you were hip-deep in the carnage. You decided Itempas was to blame without ever asking why.”