I nodded. So lucky I was to have such devoted, determined parents. Two out of three of them, anyhow.
“I will see you again when I know more,” she said. She leaned forward to pull me into an embrace. I was still sitting on my knees; I did not rise as she did this. If I had, I would have been taller than her, and that did not feel at all right.
Then she vanished, and I sat alone in the empty orrery for a long time.
Judging by the angle of the sun, it was well into the afternoon when I returned to Dekarta’s room. I didn’t care about that for long, however, because as I stepped through the hole in the wall, I found that I had visitors. They rose to greet me as I stopped in surprise.
Shahar, more demure than I had ever seen her, stood near the door to her own room. She was dressed in what passed for daily wear among fullbloods: a long gown of honey-lattice, bright blue satin slippers, and a cloak, with her hair tucked and looped into an elaborate chignon. Beside Shahar stood a woman whose demeanor immediately cried steward to me. She stood the tallest of the three women in the room, broad-shouldered and handsome and marvelously direct in her gaze, with a churning avalanche of thick, coily black hair falling about her shoulders and back. Yet despite her commanding presence, she was not as well dressed as the other two, and her mark was only that of a quarterblood. She kept silent and looked through me with her hands behind her back, in the posture of detached attention that all her successful predecessors had mastered.
Between these two stood a third woman: the most high Lady Arameri herself, head of the family and ruler of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, resplendent in a deep red shawl-collared gown. Then to my further shock, all three women dropped to one knee—the steward smoothly, the lady and her heir somewhat less so. At the sight of their bowed heads, I couldn’t help laughing.
“Well!” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “Now this is a welcome. I had no idea I was so important. Have you actually been waiting here all day for me to come back?”
“It’s no less a welcome than we would offer to any god,” said the lady. Her voice was low, surprisingly like Yeine’s. She looked older awake, with a ruler’s troubles and her own personality influencing the lines of her face, but she was still beautiful in a chilly, powerful way. And she was not afraid of me at all.
“Yes, yes, I know,” I said, going to stand before her. I had not bothered to conjure or steal clothing for myself, which put certain parts of me right at the lady’s eye level, should she choose to look up. Could I needle her into doing so? “Very diplomatic, Lady Arameri, given that half my family wants to kill you and the other half couldn’t care less if the first half did. I assume Shahar told you everything?”
She didn’t take the bait, damn her, keeping her gaze downcast. “Yes. My condolences on your loss of immortality, Lord Sieh.”
Bitch. I scowled and folded my arms. “It’s not lost; it’s just mislaid for a while, and I am still a god whether I live forever or die tomorrow.” But now I sounded petulant. She was manipulating me, and I was a fool for letting her do it. I went to the windows, turning my back on them to hide my annoyance. “Oh, get up. I hate pointless formality, or false humility, whichever this is. What’s your name, and what do you want?”
There was a whisper of cloth as they rose. “I am Remath Arameri,” the lady said, “and I want only to welcome you back to Sky—as an honored guest, of course. We will extend you every courtesy, and I have already set the scrivener corps to the task of researching your… condition. There may be little we mortals can do that the gods haven’t already attempted, but if we learn anything, we will share it with you, naturally.”
“Naturally,” I said, “since if you can figure out how it happened to me, you might be able to do it to any god who threatens you.”
I was pleased that she did not attempt to deny it. “I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t try, Lord Sieh.”
“Yes, yes.” I frowned as something she’d mentioned caught my attention. “Scrivener corps? You mean the First Scrivener and his assistants?”
“The mortal world has changed since you last spent time among us, Lord Sieh,” she said. A nice touch, that, making my centuries of slavery sound like a vacation. “As you might imagine, the loss of the Enefadeh—of your magic—was a great blow to our efforts to maintain order and prosperity in the world. It became necessary that we assume greater control over all the scriveners that the Litaria produces.”
“So you have an army of scriveners, in other words. To go with your more conventional army?” I hadn’t paid attention to the mortal realm since T’vril’s death, but I knew he’d been working on that.