The Kingdom of Gods

“From the very beginning, yes.”

I sighed, slipping my hands into my pockets. “Must be a difficult decision, then, or you’d have done it already. Whatever I did to make you angry, either it can’t have been all that bad, or it’s unforgivable.”

“Oh?”

I shrugged. “If it was really bad, you wouldn’t be waffling about whether to kill me. If it was unforgivable, you’d be too angry for revenge to make any difference. There’d be no point in killing me. So which is it?”

“There’s a third option,” he said. “It was unforgivable, but there is a point in killing you.”

“Interesting.” In spite of my unease, I grinned at the conundrum. “And that point is?”

“I don’t simply want vengeance. I rng e youequire and embody and evolve through it.”

I blinked, sobering, because if vengeance was his nature, then that was another matter entirely. But I did not remember a sibling who was god of vengeance.

“What have I done to earn your wrath?” I asked, troubled now. “And why are you even asking the question? You have to serve your nature.”

“Are you offering to die for me?”

“No, demons take you. If you try to kill me, I’ll try to kill you back. Suicide isn’t my nature. But I want to understand this.”

He sighed and shifted, the movement drawing my eye toward the mirror below our feet. It didn’t help much. The angle of the reflection was such that I could see little beyond feet and legs and a hint of elbow. His hands were in his pockets, too.

“What you have done is unforgivable,” he said, “and yet I must forgive it, because you did not know.”

I frowned, confused. “What does my knowledge have to do with anything? Harm committed unknowingly is still harm.”

“True. But if you had known, Sieh, I’m not certain you would have done it.”

At his use of my name, I grew more confused, because his tone had changed. For an instant, the coldness had broken, and I heard stranger things underneath. Sorrow. Wistfulness? Perhaps a hint of affection. But I did not know this god; I was certain of it.

“Irrelevant,” I said finally, turning my head as much as I could. Beyond a certain point, my neck simply would not bend; it was like trying to turn with two pillows braced on either side of my head. Pillows formed of nothing but solid, unyielding will. I tried to relax. “You can’t base decisions on hypotheticals. It doesn’t matter what I would have done. You know only what I did.” I paused meaningfully. “Perhaps you could tell me.” For once I wasn’t in the mood for games.

Unfortunately, my companion was. “You chose to serve your nature,” he said, ignoring my hint. “Why?”

I wished I could look at him. Sometimes a look is more eloquent than any words. “Why? What the hells — are you kidding?”

“You are the oldest of us and must pretend to be the youngest.”

“I don’t pretend anything. I am what I must be, and I’m damn good at it, thanks.”

“So we are weaker than the mortals, then.” His voice grew soft, almost sad. “Slaves to fate, never to be freed.”

“Shut the hells up,” I snapped. “You don’t know slavery if you think this is the same thing.”

“Isn’t it? Having no choice —”

“You have a choice.” I lifted my gaze to the shifting firmament above. The gradient — night to day, day to night — did not change at a c“t="onstant rate. Only mortals thought of the sky as a reliable, predictable thing. We gods had to live with Nahadoth and Itempas; we knew better. “You can accept yourself, take control of your nature, make it what you want it to be. Just because you’re the god of vengeance doesn’t mean you have to be some brooding cliché, forever cackling to yourself and totting up what you owe to whom. Choose how your nature shapes you. Embrace it. Find the strength in it. Or fight yourself and remain forever incomplete.”

My companion fell silent, perhaps digesting my advice. That was good, because it was clear that I’d done him a disservice, besides whatever wrong he felt I’d committed. I did not remember him; that meant I hadn’t bothered to find him, guide him, after his birth. And he’d needed such guidance, because it was painfully clear that he did not like the hand fate, or the Maelstrom, had dealt him. I didn’t blame him for that; I wouldn’t have wanted to be god of vengeance, either. But he was, and he was going to have to find a way to live with that.