The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(167)

I had seen Mad’s eyes when he’d asked me to stay. “I do know,” I whispered, and then had to take a deep breath. “I’ll see you later, ah…” I paused. All this time, I had never asked his name. My cheeks grew warm with shame.

He looked amused. “Paitya. My partner—the woman?—is Kitr. But don’t tell her I told you.”

I nodded, resisting the urge to glance at the older-looking godling. Some godlings were like Paitya and Madding and Lil, not caring whether mortals accorded them any particular reverence. Others, I had learned, regarded us as very much inferior beings. Either way, the older one already looked annoyed that I’d interrupted their relaxation. Best to leave him be.

“You’ll have company,” Paitya said as I moved past him. I almost stopped there, realizing who he meant.

But that was fitting, I decided, considering the churn of misery inside myself. I had been raised as a devout Itempan, though I’d lapsed in the years since, and my heart had never really been in it, anyhow. Yet I still prayed to Him when I felt the need. I was definitely feeling the need now, so I proceeded up the steps, wrestled the heavy metal lever open, and stepped out onto the roof.

As the metallic echoes of the door faded, I heard breathing to one side, low to the ground. He was sitting down somewhere, probably against one of the wide struts of the cistern that dominated the rooftop space. I could not feel his gaze, but he must have heard me come onto the roof. Silence fell.

Standing there, knowing who he was, I expected to feel different. I should have been reverent, nervous, awed maybe. Yet my mind could not reconcile the two concepts: the Bright Lord of Order and the man I’d found in a muckbin. Itempas and Shiny; Him and him; they did not feel at all the same, in my heart.

And I could think of only one question, out of the thousands that I should have asked.

“All that time you lived with me and never spoke,” I said. “Why?”

At first I thought he wouldn’t answer. But at last I heard a faint shift in the gravel that covered the rooftop and felt the solidity of his gaze settle on me.

“You were irrelevant,” he said. “Just another mortal.”

I was growing used to him, I realized bitterly. That had hurt far less than I’d expected.

Shaking my head, I went over to another of the cistern’s struts, felt about to make sure there were no puddles or debris in the way, and sat down. There was no true silence up on the roof; the midnight air was thick with the sounds of the city. Yet I found myself at peace, anyhow. Shiny’s presence, my anger at him, at least kept me from thinking about Madding or dead Order-Keepers or the end of the life I’d built for myself in Shadow. So in his own obnoxious way, my god comforted me.

“What the hells are you doing up here, anyhow?” I asked. I could not muster the wherewithal to show him any greater respect. “Praying to yourself?”

“There’s a new moon tonight.”

“So?”

He did not reply, and I did not care. I turned my face toward the distant, barely there shimmers of the World Tree’s canopy and pretended they were the stars I’d heard others talk about all my life. Sometimes, amid the ripples and eddies of the leafy sea, I would see a brighter flash now and again. Probably an early bloom; the Tree would be flowering soon. There were people in the city who made a year’s living from the dangerous work of climbing the Tree’s lower branches and snipping off its silvery, hand-wide blossoms for sale to the wealthy.

“All that happens in darkness, he sees and hears,” Shiny said abruptly. I wished he would stop talking again. “On a moonless night, he will hear me, even if he chooses not to answer.”

“Who?”

“Nahadoth.”

I forgot my anger at Shiny, and my sorrow over Madding, and my guilt about the Order-Keepers. I forgot everything but that name.

Nahadoth.


We have never forgotten his name.

These days, our world has two great continents, but once there were three: High North, Senm, and the Maroland. Maro was the smallest of the three but was also the most magnificent, with trees that stretched a thousand feet into the air, flowers and birds found nowhere else, and waterfalls so huge that it was said you could feel their spray on the other side of the world.

The hundred clans of my people—called just “Maro” then, not “Maroneh”—were plentiful and powerful. In the aftermath of the Gods’ War, those who had honored Bright Itempas above other gods were shown favor. That included the Amn, a now-extinct people called the Ginij, and us. The Amn were ruled by the Arameri family. Their homeland was Senm, but they built their stronghold in our land, at our invitation. We were smarter than the Ginij. But we paid a price for our savvy politicking.