The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(213)

The Gray Lady, then. She had been mortal and still showed some concern for mortalkind. Yet how could I reach her? I wasn’t a pilgrim, though I had exploited them for years. To pray to a god—to get a god’s attention—one had to thoroughly understand that god’s nature. I didn’t even know the Lady’s real name. The same went for nearly all of the godlings I could think of, including Lady Nemmer. I didn’t know enough about any of them.

Then an idea came to me. I swallowed, my hands suddenly clammy. There was one godling whose nature was simple enough, terrible enough, that any mortal could summon her. Though the Maelstrom knew I didn’t want to.

“Move,” I said to the girl. Muttering, she slipped out, and I crawled one-handed out into the open. The girl started to crawl back in, but I caught her bony leg. “Wait. Is there anything around here like a stick? Something at least this long.” I started to lift both arms, then gasped as the muscles of my bad arm cramped agonizingly. I finally approximated the gesture with my good arm. If I had to flee, I would need some means of finding my way.

The girl said nothing, probably glaring at me for a second or two; then she slipped out. I waited, tense, hearing the sounds of battle in the distance—adult shouts, children’s screams, debris crashing and splintering. Disturbingly close. That the fight had lasted this long with a godling involved meant there were either a lot of Lights, or Dateh had already gotten him.

The girl came back, pressing something into my hand. I felt it and smiled: a broomstick. Broken off and jagged at one end, but otherwise perfect.

Now came the hard part. I knelt and bowed my head, taking a deep breath to settle my thoughts. Then I reached inside myself, trying to find one feeling amid the morass. One singular, driving need. One hunger.

“Lil,” I whispered. “Lady Lil, please hear me.”

Silence. I fixed my thoughts upon her, framed her in my mind: not her appearance, but the feel of her presence, that looming sense of so many things held in precarious containment. The scent of her, spoiling meat and bad breath. The sound of her whirring, unstoppable teeth. What did it feel like to want as she did, constantly? How did it feel to crave something so powerfully that you could taste it?

Perhaps a little like the way I felt, knowing Madding was lost to me forever.

I clenched my hand around the broomstick as my heart flooded with emotion. I planted the jagged end of it in the dirt and fought the urge to weep, to scream. I wanted him back. I wanted his killers dead. I could not have the former—but the latter was within my grasp, if I could only find someone to help me. Justice was so close I could taste it.

“Come to me, Lil!” I cried, no longer caring if any Lights roving the junkyard heard me. “Come, darkness damn you! I have a feast even you should like the taste of!”

And she appeared, crouching in front of me with her gold hair tangled around her shoulders, her madness-flecked eyes sharp and wary.

“Where?” Lil asked. “What feast?”

I smiled fiercely, flashing my own sharp teeth. “In my soul, Lil. Can you taste it?”

She regarded me for a long moment, her expression shifting from dubious to gradual amazement. “Yes,” she said at last. “Oh, yes. Lovely.” Her eyes fluttered shut, and she lifted her head, opening her mouth slightly to taste the air. “Such longing in you, for so many things. Delicious.” She opened her eyes and frowned in puzzlement. “You were not so tasty before. What has happened?”

“Many things, Lady Lil. Terrible things, which is why I called you. Will you help me?”

She smiled. “No one has prayed to me for centuries. Will you do it again, mortal girl?”

She was like a bauble-beetle, scuttling after any shiny thing. “Will you help me, if I do?”

“Hey,” said the girl behind me. “Who’s that?”

Lil’s gaze settled on her, suddenly avid. “I’ll help you,” she said to me, “if you give me something.”

My lip curled, but I fought back disgust. “I’ll give you anything that is mine to give, Lady. But that child is Lord Dump’s.”

Lil sighed. “Never liked him. No one wants his junk, but he doesn’t share.” Sulky, she flicked a fingertip at something I couldn’t see on the ground.

I reached out and gripped her hand, making her focus on me again. “I’ve learned who’s been killing your siblings, Lady Lil. They’re hunting me now, and they may catch me soon.”

She stared at my hand on hers in surprise, then at me. “I don’t care about any of that,” she said.

Damnation! Why did I have to be plagued by crazy godlings? Were the sane ones avoiding me? “There are others who do,” I said. “Nemmer—”