As A God Read online

  It had turned out to be an old, multi-family dwelling that had been taken over by a foreign merchant. The bottom floors held storage for her goods, the middle two her living quarters—she had imported two husbands and a brood of children, fosters and blood. The unused top floor, priced high for temporary quarters, stood wholly empty.

  She nearly smiled when she saw it. Perfect. A building tall enough to give her access to the Roof and a quick path to the curtain wall. Her room had a single, large window—properly covered when she rented it. Centrally located but in an area of mostly foreigners. She would never be anonymous, but she could disappear here better than anywhere else.

  In the days that followed, as she lurked and hunted and healed, Sequa took to entering and leaving her room through the window. She paid well for the luxury and cared very little for the inherent danger of having it. Let the regulators come. Her skin remained Peasant-pale. Her armor and her swords, they presented the real problems. She considered them now from her perch on the low pallet, waiting for the God to bow his head.

  Anem had asked her once not to bare steel in the city. That had been an exquisite politeness while she remained a slave-Runner and carried the blades on her master’s sufferance. Free now, it had no weight but courtesy. She sought to lay them aside now less to respect Anem’s request and more that the blades were too obvious, too known. People had been telling stories of her swords for three Turns now, the myths growing apace.

  All she knew of them had been forcibly imparted in that instant of heart-stopping veneration and horror and longing that was the full attention of a god. They would not break until she willed it—which conveyed the thought that a time would come that she would will it. Other than that, they were her perfect weapons, thick, straight blades about the length again of her own arm, sharp along the top two thirds of cutting edge, a curving point and a wide blunted spine. A matched set with onyx-black leather handles that never seemed to wear or take sweat and edges that never needed sharpening. Slashing, stabbing, and bludgeoning all at once.

  Everyone knew the wretched things. There had been paintings of them on the cartomancer’s conceits that sold from the tinker carts. Her swords, these past few seasons, became the symbol of the Great Goddess in Her avenging mother aspect. That would change again in time, but it would never go away. Deeply uncomfortable for a woman whose whole life had been shadow and silence and anonymity to be known just by looking.

  Though from the other half of the problem, the beautiful, new, Southron armor, it appeared her life of concealment faded now into a public existence. It would not take a half Measure of the Dance before a full description of the wolf-mask, the enamel, the very shape would have winged along the roads back the Palace.

  Back to Home and the Rat.

  As if the game she had been playing until then was not dangerous enough.

  Neither the prince nor the master of Home would send anyone to Ressen for her this time, she suspected. They would both know that her path now led inescapably back to the capitol. The last time she had been hunted into Ressen it had cost both adversaries more than they could afford to spend lightly, and then she had been a slave with few resources. Anem guarded her city and its relative freedom with steel and gold and she had an abundance of both. Better not to spend more blood. Wait now, watch now, perhaps the holy city would finish her off on its own and otherwise…when the prey scampers toward you…

  Logistics decided the matter in the end. She hated to leave her panoply in the room, where anyone could take it. But she hated to wear it out in public—indeed, she couldn’t wear it save when she needed to send a message or make an impression. Ressen’s thousands of watching eyes—not over fond of her that the moment—dwindled her choices to almost nothing.

  Sequa rose and paced the few steps from the wicker lattice of her latched door to the wicker lattice covering her window. In the other direction, the room stretched a little longer with an outside wall of straw brick and inner walls of bare, plank wood. Scratches and marks indicated hangings or decorations long removed; she suspected this had once been a child’s room.

  Other than the tools of her trade, Sequa had brought very little with her. A sling pack with her traveling gear, some small clothes. Despite what she had told Anem, what remained of her Champion’s gold had been sewn into her arming vest and that she never took off.

  Motion brought mental clarity as it had so often before. Sequa shrugged into her full armor with a wince, her wound still aching, took up her Hawk-forged blades and hoisted herself out the window.

  To the Temple.

  ~ * ~

  Over the buildings—the Child’s Road, as Home mocked—from the edge of Under Roof for as long as she could without touching down on the Noble’s Way—didn’t need the trouble tonight—Sequa made good time to the inner, retaining wall of the Temple court, the center of Ressen. There she alighted via an external stair and forged her way through the people returning from the last service.

  As if to drive the point home, a wide berth opened around her almost at once, like traveling in a cloud of insects. Behind the wolf’s muzzle, Sequa could not control her mouth and its mirth.

  In the incestuous atmosphere of Home, at first she had been feared as much by association to the Rat and the Cleric as for her skills. The rank and file Children had mocked her behind her back, just loud enough to hear without being able to confront them. Princess, little Noble slave, playing the Child. She had been a loner, a misfit, even in that world made by those who had been cast out of every other circle and group yet forged as a knife blade for the skills they all prized. Small, lithe, sly, vicious. Home had come to fear her in her own right in time, but she had never been out of the Rat’s shadow.

  It felt good to see people slink back warily and know she alone caused it. Nice to have several layers of steel and leather between her shoulder blades and a knife as well.

  The Voice of the God held a casual court on the entrance steps as she approached. Most of the small crowd around him were female, young and old, flirting and fussing like mating birds. Sequa paused and circled the flock, a raptor sizing up the potential prey. He watched her in that carelessly intent way she had noted earlier. By her skill and discretion, she went unseen by rest of the group, became a smoothly prowling shadow among the statue bases and edge pillars of the great, white building. She could not enter the Temple without passing him.

  Full dark fell before his courtiers detached themselves from his shining presence. As the light of the God had failed in the west so he had dimmed a little, but never fully extinguished.

  He came to her when the last of them left, and fell into the shadows alongside her. Sequa leaned against the smooth stone of the wall and looked up at him smiling faintly in the darkness.

  “You departed abruptly the other night.” His voice, like honey pastries and dark ale and all good things, rang with sweet promise.

  “Your patron provoked me.”

  She could have drowned in his laugh, in wine the color of ripe wheat.

  “Indeed. It is not usually so marked in those new come to my presence.”

  A cut at her mendacious nature, but a gentle one.

  “And,” he continued, “you have been shearing off from my servants.”

  Three times in two days, clerics with the red and orange badges of those dedicated to the God had started toward her on some street corner. Three times she had fled them like a bird from a burning attic.

  “Di…Did I?” The pressure in her mind spasmodically increased, like trying to breathe water and swallow dirt. Her face grew hot under the cool metal and a cold breeze shivered across her neck. “I didn’t see them. I stay off the streets.” At the end it grew minutely easier to resist.

  The Voice of the God silently turned his full attention on her for the second time—but still muted, diminished by imminent Goddess-rise. The shock was less being dropped in a pool of boiling water and more a splash of overheated air on the skin. Sequa breathed out and contract
ed her awareness, reaching no further than the edge of her armor, the weight of her swords on her back.

  This moment had come before, with the scent of blood and dark-green branches. Pierced flesh and the numbing pain of a fatal head injury. The swords had saved her then, obedient as hunting hounds. Making time for miracles. But would tools of the Hawk shield her from the will of His Father?

  Night air came soft to her lips on the next breath through the metal mask and she remembered that here she stood at the center of the Goddess’ presence on the mortal earth. Silver and black beat back gold and red, just to the tips of her fingers. His attention lay still upon her, silk slipping across the skin but the shivering weight lifted.

  The Voice of the God reared back his head just a little. What she could see of his expression seemed nearly…joyous. “Not even the Shadow…” came the whisper, like a lover. Her disobedient memories called up images of Jesan pushing himself up onto his forearms in the instant before he entered her, her thoughts raging in the chaos of need.

  Sequa straightened and used the motion to move away from him, willing to put her back to open air to get away.

  “Spar some other night, Lord.” Her voice sounded peevish even to her, thick with tension. “I need a favor of the Shadow.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I look forward to it.” He swept his hand in the direction of the side entrance she had used once before. “Come, I will take you. There will be less arguing that way.”

  Together they passed within, Sequa bound up in his aura and dragged along in his wake. No one, guard or acolyte or cleric, questioned them.

  She rightly remembered the Temple to be the same kind of warren inside as the Iron Quarters. Both composed of many narrow corridors lined with myriad small rooms, pecked out of seamless white stone, they had likely been built at the same time. On the top, interior floor, the space opened up into a single, wide hall that had to end in a false wall overlooking the central altar below on one side and what looked like the entrances of perhaps three suites of rooms.

  The center door stood flanked by two guards; the Voice of the God nodded to them and led Sequa inside.

  Immediately, the space flowered open around them into a large, wide room pierced with four tall arches leading to a flat balcony. A group of chairs and couches faced the windows; a long, wide dining table made of some pearly marble sat at an angle off to one side.

  From the chairs before the arches, the Shadow rose to greet them. She went unveiled in her private chambers and wore a gentle smile. “Greetings to both of you.”

  “Do we intrude, sister?” Dried flowers and a bowl of water sat on the table where the Shadow had been seated, tools of meditation.

  “No. No, I merely contemplated the nearing Balance and my sermon for when my Lady takes the reins of the Measure from your Lord. What brings you here?”

  Balance. Sequa had forgotten the autumn Balance came in two nights. The dark hours of the Lady’s strength would grow longer now, and with it the power of those who walked best in shadows and silver light. She almost smiled. It would be good to stand in the Temple here and worship.

  They settled into the cushioned chairs in companionable silence for a moment.

  Sequa broke it by laughing aloud. “It seems strange to me to keep this company,” she said in explanation. “And to be here on this errand.”

  “Errand?” The Shadow murmured. “I had thought this merely a friendly visit.”

  “It is for me,” said the Voice. He flipped a hand at Sequa. “She comes with some purpose.”

  Sequa opened her right hand palm up. Respect, submission. “I would not presume to come to your chambers, Holiest. I need—”

  “You have my leave to see me here whenever the mood strikes you. I have advised the acolytes so, from your last visit.”

  Sequa met the older woman’s eyes through her mask, remembering sweet biscuits and wine, gentle companionship and a peaceful interlude in the chaos of the Run.

  “Thank you, Lady,” she said with humility.

  “What is it that you need?”

  “I need…I need to walk the city streets. I need to ask questions. I need to…not be known.”

  The Shadow of the Goddess studied her intently. “I have no magic to give you, Champion, that would affect such a transformation.”

  “You have room.”

  Sequa normally wore her sword rig strapped under both arms and around the waist. Today she had simply shrugged it over her shoulders, easy to shrug off again. Kneeling, she laid the paired sheathes gently on the low table without disturbing the water bowl or the flowers. With a gentle touch, she half slid one blade out into the open. The watery gleam of the steel was as mesmerizingly beautiful as always.

  The Shadow started back a little, genuine surprise flashing across her face. “You… What are you doing, Sequa?”

  “I cannot just leave these in my rooms, Holiest.”

  “They will not answer to another hand, will they?” The Voice reached out and aborted it almost in the same moment. Sequa did smile then; fighting men and women always did that, first they saw her blades.

  “Others can hold them, so they can steal them. I would think I would know and come hunting but there might be…unforeseen consequences before then.”

  “You want me to care for them?”

  “If you feel you would, yes.”

  “And the armor too?” said the Voice.

  Sequa gestured agreement. “The mask, the helmet. I think I can conceal the rest beneath a cloak and veils.”

  The Shadow fidgeted her hands slightly. “But what will you do, unarmed?”

  “Never unarmed, Shadow.”

  Whatever significant look passed between the avatars, Sequa ignored it in favor of unclipping her face plate and removing the helmet. The world seemed abruptly too loud and too bright. The sense of naked menace—no metal guarding her skull, nothing covering the flesh of her neck, her scars twinged in the open air—made her spine straighten.

  Fitting the pieces of her face together next to her blades, it struck her how much menace the smith had worked into the muzzle, the fangs, the false eyes. She traced the curves with a fingertip like the skin of a lover.

  “It is a good likeness,” said the Voice.

  Sequa blinked up at him and nodded. “Yes, though I wonder how, for they have no wolves in the Principalities. Almost no dogs at all.”

  “It is a good likeness of you.”

  From any other mouth, it would have been an insult. Looking straight into his eyes as he spoke, Sequa knew two things: he could be the victim of his own aura as much as anyone else, and he meant it as a compliment.

  “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

  “I meant…spiritually.”

  “Which is how I took it.”

  “You are very strange.”

  “Thank you.”

  They smiled together, while the Shadow shook her head in gentle derision. “Children, children. Please.”

  Sequa gestured at her most prized possessions, laid out like bare sacrifice on the table. “Will you take this on for me, Holiness? It is not simply that you keep them, but also that I may come and get them if I need to.”

  The Shadow leveled her soft grey eyes on the younger woman. “Look around you.”

  The windows. The wide, open windows that led to the open porch. One story down from the roof.

  Sequa actually felt blood rising in her face and ears, strange and unwelcome. Her glare at the Voice, preempting the words hovering on his lips, could have tempered steel. He spread his hands again.

  “I meant what I said, Sequa. You are welcome here, in my Quarters, for whatever reason, in whatever need.” The Shadow stepped away from the table, returned with a length of soft, spun cotton that she laid down next to the swords.

  Sequa gathered her blades, placed the helmet on top of them and gathered it all into a neatly knotted bundle. Together they tucked it into the bottom of the linen chest in the far corner. The layers of
cloth grew more fragrant with cedar as Sequa burrowed down; no one had been at the bottom of this pile for a long time.

  Returning to the center of the room, The Voice placed three glass goblets on the table and dug the wax stopper off of a jug of wine. Sequa gently placed her hand over the mouth of hers.

  “I have an errand to run, Lord, Lady. I thank you both for your courteous assistance.”

  She wrapped her veil over her face in the man’s style and rose to bow. Then she exited via the arches and the balcony and the open air below, leaving the avatars of the Great Gods behind her.

  ~ * ~

  The door to the woodworker’s shop was well constructed, thin wood polished to a high sheen with the hammer and chisel emblem of the craft stained darker on the surface. Inside, the common area of the shop spread out to the walls, well lit by coldlights every few paces. They illuminated several benches covered in scattered planes and files and saws, other more arcane tools that looked like torturer’s implements, small stacks of wood in raw form and a few half-finished projects. The floor, gritty with sawdust and shavings, looked worn and the air reeked of greenwood and rotting sap.

  A cloth hung down over another doorway that would lead to the private quarters; as Sequa moved farther in, a woman nearly as short as herself pushed it aside. She stood barefaced to Sequa’s man’s veil, but otherwise clad in similar clothing: a dark, well-worn leather vest, long-sleeved shirt in rough cloth, and tightly fitted breeches. Unlike Sequa, her figure was luxuriously female, wide at hip and chest. Her face, Peasant-pale and smooth, had light brows under a cropped shock of dark hair. One eye was dark brown, the other a milky pale color, blind.

  A thick scar ran up that side of her face and across the socket. Sequa had to fight back the immediate sense of kinship.

  “Yes? You picking up or dropping off?” The woodworker leaned on the nearest table, casually near a broad-headed hammer. She had blunt hands nicked and creased from her work; her wrists were thick and chorded with muscle.

  “Neither. A commission.” Sequa could easily make her voice rough enough to disguise her gender. The woodworker’s posture relaxed though, at the cultured tones still present.