As A God Read online

  Her armor. She would have to drape it even more. She had not thought it as recognizable with the swords and mask safely stowed.

  Her voice. Now the sticking point. She needed to ask questions and her already distinctive broken rasp would only get worse the longer she talked.

  After a brief return to her rooms, and another layer of veils and drapes using up the last of her clothing, Sequa ventured out again. In a different area of Under Roof, it seemed her thin disguise had negated some of the signs that marked her. She lingered in a few taverns frequented by the transient servants of the caravans, ordering by pointing, as though she had not the language.

  She learned nothing, but neither did anyone point her out, comment, murmur her name. Probably good enough for the moment. Returning to her rooms with a stale-end loaf of bread and some cheese for a light meal, Sequa lay on the narrow pallet and relaxed every muscle in her body until she floated in a pool of calm.

  Memory was just another weapon in a Child’s arsenal.

  Sequa called up the image of that beautiful, clever model city in Anem’s office. The whorehouse where Cur had watched the boy fall to his death…there. Most buildings in the neighborhood had three or four stories, a few higher against the inner wall. Immediately south the most modern parts of Under Roof started, and the buildings were nearly all two or three stories, the street solidly roofed with plank and light clay. Under Roof rose and fell as it progressed south and east. Older neighborhoods covered over as they fell into harder times. Nearly half the city lurked under perpetual twilight. The model showed those streets uncovered though, for what use otherwise?

  Flying over the model like a bird, Sequa marked the points farthest from the gates, from the major streets, from the small, outlying guard stations. Those would be the places where the twilight would be darkest and the people willing to speak freely. At some point, her mental review of the city melted into sleep.

  She dreamed of falling and the moment before the body meets the pavement.

  Awakening early, before the God woke, she made her way to the brothel, in her usual armor, with only her face veils. The madam came out to greet her in person, bowing and scraping. The undercurrent of sweet-faced hatred felt homey and familiar by now. Sequa didn’t even try to ingratiate herself, simply demanding access to the roof and ordering the woman away. She could easily have gotten onto the roof without permission, but she wanted to see the interior of the building, feel the floor under her feet. She needed to see the path Cur had traced.

  Not a large brothel but a good one, from the quality of the flesh for sale. The girls and boys lounging in the common area were not too young—some would have been older than her and she was five to six Measures older than most people thought—and dressed in clean if skimpy clothes. Neat, orderly rooms, smelling of herbs and flowers, not musk and spilt beer. Enforcers lurked at the corners, but they seemed less concerned about keeping the prostitutes in line and more concerned about the customers’ behavior. A few patrons gathered even this early, at end of the night rather than the beginning of the day. It comforted her oddly that Cur still had enough of the gold she had left for him to afford a good establishment.

  Halfway up the first set of stairs, Sequa grew aware that it had been a very long time since she had lain with a man. Through a doorway, the sight of one golden-blonde girl giggling as a shirtless man kissed her neck and very obviously explored her sex with his fingers made Sequa’s own sex ache. She’d always loved it when Jesan did that—almost more than anything else. Never the same on her own, feeling furtive and rushed.

  So she chivvied the madam along to the fourth story and the exterior stair to the roof and told her to go away. Rushing as much as she could, she had still seen and heard and smelled enough that her thighs wanted to clench and her neck dripped sweat.

  Outside the God was rising, denying her the cool air she needed to get her breathing under control. She paced from side to side reaching for calm. But the whole body ache that started between her thighs lingered, adding frustration to anxiety and the twitching hostility that had been building since she came back to this wretched place.

  Distracted, angry, and sick at heart, the reality of the layout of the roof dawned slowly. The benches and small pots of flowers sat well away from the exterior stairs, across the whole expanse of the roof. The interior wall loomed high above with only a narrow alley between it and the building. No other way up to the roof for anyone but a Child or one who ran the roofs—the neighboring buildings both fell two stories shorter. Nowhere for anyone to hide. The Goddess had been high that night and bright. The roof was flat, pale clay and wood.

  Cur was not a fool, and his life had depended for too long on seeing everything quickly; she did not believe he would have missed another person on that rooftop even if they had been lying down.

  If his timing remained accurate, it had been moments from his arrival before the boy had…fallen? Been thrown?

  Thrown… Could it have been the customer? Cur had been so horrified even recounting it—would he remember where that man had been when he saw him again afterward? Sequa shook her head sharply. No. She would ask, but…no. If that customer had been close enough to throw even an infant so hard that the body struck Cur on the shoulder—and Cur tall enough she could walk under his outstretched arm without touching it—he would have been so close Cur would have heard or seen him.

  She and the boy were about the same size, from what had been described to her. Cur himself would not have been able to dead lift her body weight and hurl her over the roof edge easily…and absolutely not from that distance.

  But the whore’s body had travelled from basically one side of the roof to the other in the heartbeat of Cur’s turning. If the customer had wished to kill the boy, pitching him into the narrow alley nearby would have been neater and faster.

  And wind. Rushing air. Feathers.

  Sequa found herself staring over the edge of the roof, the paving stones below looking as comforting as a silk pillow. She jerked back, stumbled, nearly fell. From this angle, a dark, unseemly stain still marred the stones.

  For the second time in three days she had nearly thrown herself from a building.

  With each had come the thought of wings.

  What exactly did the Great Hawk have against her?

  Contemplating the stones, Sequa felt the heat of the God on her neck and sweat pooled and soaked into her veils. Autumn Balance-day today, one of the four points that turned the calendar of each Measure. The Spring and Autumn Balances, when neither the Goddess or the God held precedence. Goddess-High in the height of summer, when the long days of the God gave way to the Goddess’ increasing darkness. God-Rising, when He took back the length of the day. The Shadow of the Goddess would already be meditating in some cool, windowless chamber of the Temple. The Voice of the God would be leading the hymns of praise. Harvest had come, and both the avatars would be wrapped up in the rites of fertility and thanks. The twin Balances were wholly joyful celebrations without the fraught mystical weight of Goddess High or God Rising, where a misstep in the Summer Dance or bad note in the Winter Song could spell disaster for the Measure.

  She had a few turns of the glass before she needed to think about returning to the Temple and retrieving her formal gear. The Shadow had asked her to attend the evening service, and she might as well go as herself.

  That should be about enough time to calm her blood. It would be disrespectful to leap upon the Voice of the God in the heart of the Temple and attempt to mount him.

  Under Roof was packed with people in a happier mood today. Sequa slouched and leaned and crouched her way around the first of the areas she had identified before her restless sleep the night before. Most of them talked of the Balance, and the harvest and the caravans expected. But under that happiness, the angry, muttering tone remained, simmering dangerously. Guards did not walk the street alone or for long. Anem’s name was hissed out more than once, including obscene speculation about why she had let the
freak take the monster off the gallows.

  Not the slightest mention that the living avatar of the Mother of All Things had been present and apparently on her side. A large number of taverns now served “squirrel stew.” Three Measures ago, these people had loved her. Now they used her old nickname to mock and insult.

  Sequa tucked her feet under her in the darkest corner of the alehouse and gave herself a few, long breaths to smile.

  She nearly missed it, the single, high note in the wall of muddy noise. A word, slurred in drunken vitriol as she passed by a tavern on her way back to her room, time nipping at her heels like a stray dog. Her head, filled with rituals and dance steps and what she should wear for the ceremony, did not listen to what her ears heard. She made it half a block past the tavern doorway when the man’s tone filtered into the fore of her mind.

  Plummeted.

  He had been angrily muttering about something? Someone? Falling?

  She circled back and crept into the lee of the building, watching. Harder to hear the conversation from here but that was the least important detail.

  It took few breaths to mark the man she had heard. About twice her age and running to fat, a thick-limbed born-peasant with pale skin and shapeless, colorless clothing. Drinking—and slopping—cheap beer on his front, he was apparently expounding on some topic that everyone else had long tired of hearing. Snatches of sentences drifted over to her.

  “… cared about my boy as… not some whore… justice… “

  Sequa did not have to lurk long, as the lack of interest and then open hostility from the others in earshot drove the man from his drink and onto unsteady feet. Though from his gait and demeanor so oblivious and intoxicated she could have walked in his heels unnoticed, she did not let it make her sloppy.

  The former Child followed the drunk man like a wisp of shadow. It felt good to fall back to the oldest of her skills other than the killing. She had been known for this in the capitol. She had followed two marks down an empty alley, for six streets, without being seen once. She could have followed this fool to the underworld and back.

  Her only shock came when he left Under Roof. He gave every indicator of a low-born laborer; he should not have been living under an open street.

  When they reached his home, though, she understood. He entered one of four doorways in a low square building that bordered the current limits of Under Roof. His door was marked with fresh stains that looked like wine and the thatch at the edge of the roof crumbled to filth. The paces that marked off what would have been his portion of the building looked markedly unkempt. Something had happened to change his fortunes; this man must have once been prosperous, now an angry, raving drunk.

  Sequa checked at the end of the block, torn. She wanted to charge straight into his lodging, confront him about what he’d said, about what she suspected. The angle of the God drew her attention.

  No time…and perhaps not the best play. Drunk and angry made the situation unpredictable. He would probably fight, and she might have to kill him. This called for a withdrawal. Planning. Not naked blood lust.

  She sighed and broke into a loping jog back toward her lodgings.

  Halfway through the city, two large, hired guards stepped into the street in front of her and two more behind; the rest of the people nearby found somewhere else to be with alacrity. A few Measures ago, before she had been a Runner, she would have just killed them all and moved on. She wanted rather badly to do just that.

  But these fighters wore the sigil of the House Michelian. Her old owner.

  She owed the lord of the house. She acknowledged her debts.

  A woman’s voice called from behind her.

  “Champion? Have you a moment?” Bland with the neutral accent of someone shedding their heritage and class.

  Without turning around Sequa opened her hands to the sides. “I have a moment to speak to you in peace, but I would go to the ceremony tonight. Can it wait?”

  The two men in front of her faded back out of her way.

  “Indeed. Please take this pass. Our master’s steward will see you at any time of your choosing. Though, Champion, let it be soon.” A roll of fine paper was placed in her left hand by the woman behind her, as delicate a message as any she’d ever been sent. We know you can read. And which is your sword hand.

  Sequa tucked it away under her vest and sped off down the street, awash with wondering at the day’s new knowledge.

  ~ * ~

  The ceremonies for the Harvest Balance were less elaborate than those of the Waking Balance. The winter and summer ceremonies brought fertility to the land. Fall and spring brought ceremonies of thanks and praise; important yes, and done with reverence but lesser than of the tipping points of the Measure.

  Heretical thought held that all the tipping points remained equal, equidistance from the center of divinity.

  Sequa arrived just before the edge of the God touched the horizon, so almost but not quite late. She had run from the gate in the curtain wall to where the crowd of devotees and small herd of clerics gathered outside the Temple. Like most of such ceremonies, it would begin outside and then move inside to the altar later in the night, for the semi-private reverences of the Shadow and the special disciples.

  Instead of retrieving her mask and blades she’d gone the other route. She wore her most nondescript veils, grimy and tattered, her whole face covered. Settled comfortably into the crowd, shifting a little so that she could see where the fire would be lit, hazy and vague through the sheer fabric across her face, Sequa felt pleasantly anonymous.

  The full-face covering of the woman’s style made her itch and sweat; it was odd that even the thin mesh trapped heat as much as her metal helmet. Her back and thighs grew clammy and slick with moisture under her tunic and thin breeches. The fetid air stuck to her skin thick with the smell of sweat and dirt kicked up by thousands of feet clustered around a pile of dried wood on marble steps.

  As the God bowed His Head, His Voice stepped up to the edge of the pile and raised his hands. Even in the few moments since she had arrived, the crowd had nearly doubled in size. People mingled around the feet of several of the statues dotting the open space. Mothers and fathers carried children on their shoulders; young men hopped onto the bases of the statues themselves, perching and sliding on the toes of the gods.

  The Voice called out, one long, wordless exhalation of joy. His face transfigured, his eyes wide and full upon the burning light of his patron. On the intake of his breath, the crowd, the city, fell silent. Every eye turned to the west and watched, as best they could, the God slide down below the edge of the ground.

  And the Voice of the God reached out one hand to lightly caress the top of the bonfire.

  It burst into flames.

  The Shadow moved to the side of her fellow avatar, and they conferred a moment, lips barely moving. It would be now that the Gods would be speaking to them, showing one of them the form of the Dancer this day. It would be one of the clerics ranged about, spotted around the crowd to be drawn into the center, to honor the Balance with their polite and measured choreography.

  She might leave then. The way the trained dancers moved had always vaguely offended her. The Voice paced with slow, measured steps into the crowd, searching for a face he could see despite the veils covering so many of them. The Dancer at Balance might be a man or a woman, though many considered it a bad omen for the Measure if a man danced. War always followed.

  Sequa kept her eyes on the deep yellow and orange of the horizon, contemplating what she had seen today, how best to extract information from an angry, drunk man in a city that hated her, why her former owner’s lackey would need to speak to her. The swirl of noise following the Voice on his path through the crowd grew a little louder; he must have been angling for the tall, thin cleric Sequa had seen holding place near the feet of the large, dancing Goddess just behind her.

  When he came to her, she did not expect it. Did not believe he would walk into the crowd and find her
, small and secret in her peasant clothes. Did not believe he would dare. He was simply there from one breath to the next.

  “Dancer,” the Voice of the God called her from the crowd, from her reverie, his hand held out in supplication. Called her and none of the others who had stood ready. No cleric, no honest goodwife of the city. Called her.

  Called her dancer. Not Squirrel, not Champion, not Princess, not Runner. Not slave.

  Not killer.

  Dancer, he called her, in that voice. Dancer, said the tall, golden-haired man, and so the dancer in her reached out to take his hand and none of the others who lived and breathed behind metal and bone-deep scars. Still veiled, still secret, Sequa allowed the avatar of the Father to draw her out to the open.

  The crowd parted around them, little, shocked hiccups bursting and failing as the avatar’s gaze slide across them. From the mutters, no one recognized her. Yet.

  The Shadow nodded when Sequa made her first, faltering steps into the ritual space, the Voice releasing her like a man shaking a falcon from his wrist. It had been so long since she had danced anything but death… She shook the thoughts from her head. A harvest ritual this day, to celebrate life before the season of death.

  As with all the formal dances, certain patterns and steps were considered best for these things; old gestures and twirls said to mean thanksgiving. As with all her dances, Sequa would come upon those by accident only. A wild dancer, untutored, no one had ever shown her so much as a heel turn.

  For a moment, Sequa knelt and touched her head to the ground before the Living Shadow of the Great Goddess. It would have looked like veneration to the assembled crowd.

  And so it was…but not of the Shadow. Those of the Circle would know who it honored. The fourth God, the begotten and reviled Empty attended here today.

  The older woman’s eyes flashed amusement and respect when Sequa met them again. She rose in a smooth motion and raised her hands above her head, gazing up into the sky where the Lady rose to beam down upon Her children.