To her credit, she kept her voice even. “I kept my promise. I’ve done you no harm.”
I shook my head. “Shahar was my friend, and you have taken her from me.”
“A minor harm,” she said, and then she surprised me with a small smile. “But you are a trickster, and I know better than to try and argue with you.”
“Yes,” I agreed. And then I stepped forward, plucking the first of the needles from my palm and rolling it between my fingers in anticipation, because I am a bully, too, when all is said and done.
I heard Shahar’s cry before she ran in, though I ignored it. She gasped as she reached the chamber and saw blood and bodies everywhere, but then she ran forward—slipping once in someone’s viscera—and grabbed my arm. This did nothing to slow my advance, since for the moment I was much stronger than any mortal, and after being dragged forward a step or two, she abandoned that effort. But then she ran around me and put herself in my path, just as I put my foot on the first step of the dais that held Remath’s throne. “Sieh, don’t do this.”
I sighed and pushed her aside as gently as I could. This made her stumble off the steps, and she fell into the blood of some cousin or another of hers. I could smell the Arameri in him. Or not in him, not anymore; I laughed at my own joke.
As I stopped in front of Remath—who remained where she was, calm as death loomed—Shahar appeared again, this time flinging herself directly in front of her mother’s throne. Her gold satin robe was drenched with blood down one side of her body, and somehow she’d gotten it on the side of her face as well. Half her hair hung limp and dripping with it. I laughed again and tried to think up a rhyme that would properly make fun of her. But what rhymed with horror? I would ponder it later.
I stopped, however, because Shahar was in the way. “Move,” I said.
“No.”
“You wanted her dead, anyway.”
“Not like this, damn you!”
“Poor Shahar.” I made a singsong of it. “Poor little princess, how is she to see? With her fingers and her toes, once her eyes are with me.” I held the needle forward so that she could see it. “You have betrayed me, sweet Shahar. It is nothing to me to kill you, too.”
Her jaw tightened. “I thought you loved me.”
“I thought you loved me.”
“You swore not to harm me!”
She was right. Her failure to keep her word did not mean I should stoop to the same level. “Very well. I won’t kill you—just her.”
“She’s my mother,” she snapped. “How much do you think it will harm me if you kill her right before my eyes?”
As much as she’d harmed me by betraying my trust. Maybe a bit more. “I’m not interested in bargains right now, Shahar. Move, or I’ll move you. I won’t be gentle this time.”
“Please,” she said, which ordinarily would only have goaded me further—bully—but this time it did not. This time, to my own great surprise, the churning vortex of my rage slowed, then went still. In the sudden storm-calm, I gazed at her and realized another truth that she had hidden from me all this time. And perhaps not just from me. I glanced at Remath, who was staring at Shahar, surprised into an expression of astonishment at last. Yes.
“You love her,” I said.
And because Shahar was Arameri, she flinched as if struck and looked away in shame. But she did not move out of my way.
I let out a long, heavy sigh, and with it my power began to fade. I couldn’t have kept it up much longer anyhow; I was too old for tantrums.
Shaking my head, I let the needles drop to the floor. They scattered over the steps with tinny metal sounds, loud in the chamber’s silence. Listening to the nearby world, I could hear shouts and running feet—Captain Wrath and his men racing to save Remath and die in the trying because they were not sensible like Darre. Even the scriveners were marshaling, bringing their most powerful scripts, though they were disorganized because Shevir was here, his corpse cooling among the others I’d killed. I turned and looked at him, his face frozen in a look of surprise beneath the gaping hole in his forehead, and felt regret. He hadn’t been a bad man as First Scriveners went. And I had been a very bad boy.
On the strength of that, I took myself away from Sky, not really caring where I went instead, just wanting comfort and silence and a place to be miserable in peace.
I would not see Shahar again for two years.
BOOK TWO
Two Legs at Noon
I AM A FLY ON THE WALL, or a spider in a bush. Same difference, except that the spider is a predator and suits my nature better.