I closed my eyes, my throat tightening for no reason I could fathom. “I lied.”
Her voice was too gentle. “I know.”
She finished my hair and gathered the shed length of it in one hand. I felt the flick of her will, and then she put her hand in front of my face to show me what she’d done. My hair had become a thin woven cord short enough to loop about my neck, and threaded onto this cord was a small, yellow-white marble. A different size and substance, but I would re>
I sat up, surprised and pleased, lifting the necklace to grin at my old friend. (It did not like being smaller. It missed being a kickball, bouncy and fat. Did it have to be this puny, rigid shape just because I wasn’t a child anymore? Surely adult mortals liked to kick balls sometimes. I stroked it to still its whining.) Then I touched my shorter hair and found that she’d reshaped that, too, giving me a style that suited the older lines of my face.
I looked up at her. “You’ve made me very pretty — thank you. Did you play with dolls as a mortal girl?”
“I was Darre. Dolls were for boys.” She got to her feet, unnecessarily dusting off her clothes, and looked around the now-empty chamber. “I don’t like you being here, Sieh. In Sky.”
I shrugged. “This place is as good as any other.” Nahadoth had been right about that. I couldn’t leave the mortal realm in my condition; too much of the gods’ realm was inimical to flesh. Naha could have kept me safe by taking me into himself, but I would not tolerate that again.
“This place has Arameri.”
Resisting the urge to bat at the marble on its cord, I slipped it over my head and let it settle under my shirt instead. (En liked that, being near my heart.) “I’m not a slave anymore, Yeine. They’re no threat to me now.” She shot me a look of such disgust that I recoiled. “What?”
“Arameri are always a threat.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really, daughter of Kinneth?”
At this she looked truly annoyed, her eyes turning a yellowy, acid peridot. “They cling to power by a thread, Sieh. Only their scriveners and armies allow them to keep control — mortal magic, mortal strength, both of which can be subverted. What do you think they’ll do, now that they have a god in their power again?”
“I can’t see how a weak, dying god will do them much good. I can’t even take another form safely. I’m pathetic.” She opened her mouth to protest again, and I sighed to interrupt her. “I will be careful. I promise. But truly, Yeine, I have more important concerns right now.”
She sobered. “Yes.” After another moment’s silence, she uttered a heavy sigh and turned away. “See that you are careful, Sieh. A mortal lifetime may seem like nothing to you. …” She paused, blinked, and smiled to herself. “To me, too, I suppose. But don’t squander it. I mean to use every moment of yours to try and find a cure.”
I nodded. So lucky I was to have such devoted, determined parents. Two out of three of them, anyhow.
“I will see you again when I know more,” she said. She leaned forward to pull me into an embrace. I was still sitting on my knees; I did not rise as she did this. If I had, I would have been taller than her, and that did not feel at all right.
Then she vanished, and I sat alone in the empty orrery for a long time.
Judging by the angle of the sun, it was well into the afternoon when I returned to Dekarta’s room. I didn’t care about that for long, however, because as I stepped through the hole in the wall, I found that I had visitors. They rose to greet me as I stopped in surprise.
Shahar, more demure than I had ever seen her, stood near the door to her own room. She was dressed in what passed for daily wear among fullbloods: a long gown of honey-lattice, bright blue satin slippers, and a cloak, with her hair tucked and looped into an elaborate chignon. Beside Shahar stood a woman whose demeanor immediately cried steward to me. She stood the tallest of the three women in the room, broad-shouldered and handsome and marvelously direct in her gaze, with a churning avalanche of thick, coily black hair falling about her shoulders and back. Yet despite her commanding presence, she was not as well dressed as the other two, and her mark was only that of a quarterblood. She kept silent and looked through me with her hands behind her back, in the posture of detached attention that all her successful predecessors had mastered.
Between these two stood a third woman: the most high Lady Arameri herself, head of the family and ruler of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, resplendent in a deep red shawl-collared gown. Then to my further shock, all three women dropped to one knee — the steward smoothly, the lady and her heir somewhat less so. At the sight of their bowed heads, I couldn’t help laughing.