The Kingdom of Gods

He had always had that effect, in the old days.

I looked up. The glow of the daystone made for a nice reflection in the glass, so it was easy to see the two figures behind me: Glee and someone the same height. Broader. Male. Glee nodded to me in the reflection, then vanished, leaving the two of us alone.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello, Sieh,” said Itempas.

I waited, then smiled. “No ‘It’s been a while,’ or ‘You’re looking well’?”

“You aren’t looking well.” He paused. “Does it seem a long time to you?”

“Yes.” It wouldn’t have, before I’d turned mortal. He had been mortal for a century himself, though; he understood.

Footsteps, heavy and precise, approached me from behind. Something moved on the periphery of my vision. For an instant I thought he would sit beside me, but that would have been too strange for both of us. He walked past me and stopped at the edge of the Altar, gazing through the glass at the night-dark, branch-shrouded horizon beyond.

I gazed at his back. He wore a long leather coat that had been bleached almost white. His white hair was long, too, twisted into a heavy mane of thick cords, like Teman cable-locks but bare of ornamentation other than a clasp that kept them neat and controlled. White trousers and shirt. Brown boots. I found myself perversely pleased that he’d been unable to find boots in white.

“I will, of course, accept Nahadoth’s offer,” he said. “If it is within my power to heal you, or at least stop your aging, I will do all I can.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

He returned the nod. Though he faced the horizon, his eyes were on me in the glass reflection. “You intend to stay with these mortals?”

“I suppose. Ahad wants me to keep him informed of what the Arameri are doing.” Then I remembered. “Of course, you’re Ahad’s boss, so …”

“You may stay.” His gaze was intent, lacking none of its old power despite his mortal condition. “And you should stay, to be near the mortals you love.”

I frowned at him. His eyes flicked away from mine. “Their lives are too brief,” he added. “One should not take that time for granted.”

He meant Glee’s mother. And perhaps the first Shahar Arameri, too. He had loved her despite her obsessive, destructive madness.

“How do you feel about the Arameri dumping you?” I asked, a bit nastily. I didn’t have the energy for real nastiness. I was just trying to change the subject.

I heard the creak youof leather and the rasp of hair as he shrugged. “They are mortal.”

“No tears shed, hmm?” I sighed, lying back on the stone and stretching my arms above my head. “The whole world will follow them, you know, and turn away from you. It’s already happening. Maybe they’ll keep calling it the Bright, but it’ll really be the Twilight.”

“Or the Dawn.”

I blinked. Something I hadn’t considered. That made me sit up on one elbow and narrow my eyes at him. He stood the way he always had: legs apart, arms folded, motionless. Same old Dayfather, even in mortal flesh. He did not change.

Except.

“Why did you allow Glee Shoth to live?” I asked.

“For the same reason I allowed her mother to live.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Oree Shoth? Why would you have killed her?” I scowled. “She wouldn’t put up with your shit, is that it?”

If I hadn’t been watching him in the glass, I would never have believed what I saw. He smiled. “She wouldn’t, no. But that wasn’t what I meant. She was also a demon.”

This rendered me speechless. In the silence that fell, Itempas finally turned to me. I flinched in shock, even though he looked the same as the last time I’d seen him, apart from the hair and the clothes. And yet something about him — something I could not define — was different.

“Do you plan to kill Remath Arameri and her children?” he asked.

I stiffened. He knew. I said nothing, and he nodded, point made.

Suddenly I was full of nervous tension. I got to my feet, shoving En into a pocket. The Altar was too small for real pacing, but I tried anyway, walking over to him — and then I stopped, seeing my own reflection beside his in the glass. He turned, too, following my gaze, and we looked at ourselves. Me, short and wiry and defensive and confused. I had developed a slouch in my manifest maturity, mostly because I did not like being so tall. Him: big and powerful and elegant, as he had always been. Yet his eyes were so full of knowing and yearning that almost, almost, I wanted him to be my father again.