The Kingdom of Gods

I went over to Remath. My eyes were defective; they had to be. I leaned closer to peer at her but detected no illusion. I hadn’t mistaken someone else for her.

I looked up at Yeine, who looked positively gleeful.

“No,” I said, stunned.

“Yes,” she replied. “A fine trick, wouldn’t you say?”

Then she turned to Shahar and Dekarta, who kept looking from her to their mother and back at Yeine. They didn’t understand. I didn’t want to.

“I will build your new palace,” she said to all of us. “In exchange, the Arameri will now worship me.”

17

IT WAS SIMPLE, REALLY.

The Arameri had served Itempas for two thousand years. But Itempas was now useless as a patron, and Yeine was family, of a sort. I suppose that was how Remath rationalized it to herself — if she’d needed to. Perhaps it had been nothing more than pragmatism for her. Devout Arameri had always been rare. In the end, all most of them truly believed in was power.

We would travel to the site of the new palace at dawn, Remath told us. There Yeine would build it according to Remath’s specifications, and the Arameri would enter a new era in their long and incredible history.

I exited the audience chamber with the rest of them, leaving Remath and Yeine alone to discuss whatever family heads discussed with their new patron goddesses. Wrath, Morad, and Ramina, who had waited in the corridor outside, were called in as Shahar, Deka, and I left, probably to make their obeisance to Yeine as well. No doubt they would have tasks to complete by morning, as they would be traveling to the new palace with us. We would also take a minimal complement of guards, courtiers, and servants, because — according to Remath — we would need no more than that "0eed.”al colete by to establish ourselves. Shahar and Deka, respectively, were to choose those members of the family and the various corps who would accompany us. Unspoken in all of this was the fact that anyone who traveled to the new palace, for reasons of secrecy, might never be permitted to return.

I informed Shahar that I had business in Shadow for a few hours and left. The Vertical Gate had been reconfigured in the days since the attack. Now it was set by default to transport in one direction only — away from the palace — and returning required a password sent via a special messaging sphere, which I was given as I prepared to leave. The scrivener on duty, who stood among the soldiers guarding the gate, solemnly reminded me not to lose the sphere, because I would be killed by magic the instant I stepped onto the Gate without it, or killed by the soldiers should I survive and somehow manage the transit, anyway. I made sure I didn’t lose the sphere.

That done, I traveled to South Root, where I notified first Hymn and then Ahad that I would be staying at Sky for the time being.

Hymn was more subdued about this than I’d expected, though her parents were plainly overjoyed to see the back of me. Hymn said little as she helped me pack my meager belongings; everything I owned fit into a single cloth satchel. But when I turned to go, she caught my hand and pressed two things into it. The first was a glass knife, the same faded-leaves color as my eyes. She had clearly worked on it for some time; the blade had been polished to mirror smoothness, and she’d even managed to fit it with a brass kitchen-knife handle. The other thing she gave me was a handful of tiny beads in different sizes and colors, each made from glass or polished stone, each etched with infinitesimal lines of clouds or continents. They had holes bored through them to go onto my necklace alongside En.

“How did you know?” I asked as she spilled them into my hand.

“Know what?” She looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “I just remembered that old rhyme about you. About how you stole the sun for a prank? I figured, suns need planets, don’t they?”

Pathetic, compared to my lost orrery. Magnificent, given the love that had gone into making them. She turned away when I clutched them to my chest, though I managed — just — not to cry in front of her.

Ahad was in an odder state when I found him at the Arms of Night. As it was afternoon at the time, and the house was about to open for its usual leisurely business, I had expected to find him in his offices. He was on the back porch, however, and instead of his usual cheroot, he held a plucked flower, turning it contemplatively in his fingers. By the troubled expression on his face, the contemplations were not going well.

“Good,” was all he said when I informed him that I was moving back to Sky, and that the Arameri had become Yeinans instead of Itempans, and that, by the way, there was going to be a new palace somewhere.

“Good? That’s all you have to say?”