Appropriately, I ran out of breath at that point and had to stop, panting for air. Lungs were useful for putting mortals at ease but still inconvenient. Just as well, though. Both children had fallen silent, staring at me in a kind of horrified awe, and belatedly I realized I had been ranting. Sulking, I sat down on a step and turned my back on them, hoping that my anger would pass soon. I liked them — even Shahar, irritating as she was. I didn’t want to kill them yet.
“You … you think we’re bad,” she said after a long moment. There were tears in her voice. “You think I’m bad.”
I sighed. “I think your family’s bad, and I think they’re going to raise you to be just like them.” Or else they would kill her or drive her out of the family. I’d seen it happen too many times before.
“I’m not going to be bad.” She sniffed behind me. Deka, who was still within the range of my eyesight, looked up and inhaled, so I guessed that she was full-out crying now.
“You won’t be able to help it,” I said, resting my chin on my drawn-up knees. “It’s your nature.”
“It isn’t!” She stamped a foot on the floor. “My tutors say mortals aren’t like gods! We don’t have natures. We can all be what we want to be.”
“Right, right.” And I could be one of the Three.
Sudden agony shot through me, firing upward from the small of my back, and I yelped and jumped and rolled halfway down the steps before I regained control of myself. Sitting up, I clutched my back, willing the pain to stop and marveling that it did so only reluctantly.
“You kicked me,” I said in wonder, looking up the steps at her.
Deka had covered his mouth with both hands, his eyes wide; of the two of them, only he seemed to have realized that they were about to die. Shahar, fists clenched and legs braced and hair wild and eyes blazing, did not care. She looked ready to march down the steps and kick me again.
“I will be what I want to be,” she declared. “I’m going to be head of the family one day! What I say I’ll do, I’ll do. I am going to be good!”
I got to my feet. I wasn’t angry, in truth. It is the nature of children to squabble. Indeed, I was glad to see that Shahar was still herself under all the airs and silks; she was beautiful that way, furious and half mad, and for a fleeting instant I understood what Itempas had seen in her foremother.
But I did not believe her words. And that put me in an altogether darker mood as I went back up the steps, my jaw setred my jaw s and tight.
“Let’s play a game, then,” I said, and smiled.
Deka got to his feet, looking torn between fear and a desire to defend his sister; he hovered where he was, uncertain. There was no fear in Shahar’s eyes, though some of her anger faded into wariness. She wasn’t stupid. Mortals always knew to be careful when I smiled a certain way.
I stopped in front of her and held out a hand. In it, a knife appeared. Because I was Yeine’s son, I made it a Darre knife, the kind they gave to their daughters when they first learned to take lives in the hunt. Six inches straight and silvery, with a handle of filigreed bone.
“What is this?” she asked, frowning at it.
“What’s it look like? Take it.”
After a moment she did, holding it awkwardly and with visible distaste. Too barbaric for her Amn sensibilities. I nodded my approval, then beckoned to Dekarta, who was studying me with those lovely dark eyes of his. Remembering one of my other names, no doubt: Trickster. He did not come at my gesture.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said to him, making my smile more innocent, less frightening. “It’s your sister who kicked me, not you, right?”
Reason worked where charm had not. He came to me, and I took him by the shoulders. He was not as tall as I, so I hunkered down to peer into his face. “You’re really very pretty,” I said, and he blinked in surprise, the tension going out of him. Utterly disarmed by a compliment. He probably didn’t get them often, poor thing. “In the north, you know, you’d be ideal. Darre mothers would already be haggling for the chance to marry you to their daughters. It’s only here among the Amn that your looks are something to be ashamed of. I wish they could see you grown up; you would have broken hearts.”
“What do you mean, ‘would have’?” asked Shahar, but I ignored her.
Deka was staring at me, entranced in the way of any hunter’s prey. I could have eaten him up.
I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him. He shivered, though it had been only a fleeting press of lips. I’d held back the force of myself because he was only a child, after all. Still, when I pulled back, I saw his eyes had glazed over; blotches of color warmed his cheeks. He didn’t move even when I slid my hands down and wrapped them around his throat.