She was silent for a moment. I had time enough to worry: who could I contact if she refused to help me? The other choices were worse. What if —
“All right,” she said at last, and the knot that had been tightening in my belly loosened. “I need time to set things up. Come here, a week from today. Noon.” The location made itself present in my consciousness, as if I had always known it. A house somewhere in the city below Sky.e a ti South Root. “Come alone.”
I folded my arms. “Will you be alone?”
“Oh, of course.”
I made the shape of a cat’s head with my hands: ears back, teeth bared. She laughed.
“I don’t care if you believe me. You asked for this meeting, not I. Be there in a week, or not at all.” With that, her shadow leaned down and blew hard. With a surprised flare, En went dark and dropped to the floor. Then Nemmer was gone.
In the dark, I retrieved En, who was quite put out. I murmured soothing words and tucked it back into my shirt, all the while thinking.
If Nemmer knew what had happened to me — and it was her nature to know such things; not even the Three could keep her out of their business, though she wasn’t foolish enough to flaunt that — then when I arrived in a week, I might find her and a group of my least-favorite siblings, some of whom had been waiting for a chance to repay me for the Gods’ War for two thousand years.
But Nemmer had never been one to play the games of our family. I didn’t know why she’d sat out the war. Had she been torn, like so many of our siblings, between our fathers? Had she been one of those working to save the mortal realm, which had nearly been destroyed by our battling? I sighed in frustration, realizing that this was the sort of thing I should have occupied myself with as eldest, not our parents’ sordid dramas. If I had bothered to reconcile with my siblings, perhaps tried to understand their reasons for betraying Nahadoth —
“If I had done that, I would not be who I am.” I sighed into the dark.
Which, ultimately, was why I would risk trusting Nemmer. She, too, was only what her nature made her. She kept her own counsel, gathering secrets and doling out knowledge where she deemed best and making alliances only as it suited her — briefly, if at all. If nothing else, that meant she was not my enemy. Whether she became my friend would be up to me.
On returning to Deka’s room, I was surprised to find that I had visitors again: Morad, the ample-haired palace steward, and another servant, who was busy making the bed and tidying up. Both bowed to me at once, as they would to any Arameri high-blood. Then the servant promptly resumed his cleaning duties while Morad looked me up and down with an expression of unconcealed distaste.
Frowning at her scrutiny, I looked at myself — and then, belatedly, realized why the servants had all stared at me on my way to the underpalace. I still wore the clothing I had conjured for myself two days before. It had been nondescript then, but it was filthy now, after all my scrabbling through dusty corridors and Tree-choked dead spaces. And … I sniffed one of my armpits and wrinkled my nose, appalled that I had not noticed. I had not bathed since my return to this world, and apparently my adolescent body had a greater capacity for generating reek than I had done as a child.
“Oh,” I said, smiling sheepishly at Morad. She sighed, though I thought I saw a hint rd,ced. I of amusement on her face.
“I’ll run you a bath,” she said, and paused, looking particularly at my head. “And summon a stylist. And the tailor. And a manicurist.”
I touched my stringy, gritty hair with a weak laugh. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“As you like, my lord.” Morad touched the servant, who had almost finished the bed, and murmured something. He nodded and exited the apartment at once. To my surprise, Morad then rolled up her sleeves and finished tucking the sheets. When that was done, she went into the bathroom; a moment later, I heard water run.
Curious, I followed her into the room and watched while she sat on the tub’s edge, testing the water with her fingers. It was even more noticeable with her back turned and all that hair of hers visible in full riot. It was clear that she was not fully Amn; her hair had the kind of tight, small coils that wealthy Amn spent hours and fortunes to achieve, and it was as black as my father’s soul. Her skin was pale enough, but the marks of other were in her features, plain to anyone who looked. It was also plain that she was not ashamed of her mixed blood; she sat as straight and graceful as a queen. She could not have been raised in Sky or any Amn territory; they would have beaten her spirit down with cruel words long before now.