The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(329)

It is very, very hard to sustain a two-thousand-year-old grudge amid all that.

I shook my head and turned to go back into my room. But just before I could close the door, I heard Egan. “Sieh. Wait.”

Warily I opened the door again. She was frowning at me. “Something’s different about you. What is it?”

I shook my head again. “Nothing that should matter to you. Look…” It occurred to me suddenly that I would never have a chance to say this to her or to any of my siblings. I would die with so much unfinished business. It wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry, Egan. I know that means nothing after everything that’s happened. I wish…” So many wishes. I laughed a little. “Never mind.”

“Are you going to be working here?” She smoothed a hand over her mortal man’s back; he sighed and leaned against her, happy again.

“No.” Then I remembered Ahad’s plans. “Not… like this.” I gestured toward her with my chin. “No offense, but I’m not overly fond of mortals right now.”

“Understandable, after all you’ve been through.” I blinked in surprise, and she smiled thinly. “None of us liked what Itempas did, Sieh. But by then, imprisoning you seemed the only sane choice he’d made, after so much insanity.” She sighed. “We all had a long time to think about how wrong that decision was. And then… well, you know how he is about changing his mind.”

By which she meant he didn’t. “I know.”

Egan glanced at her mortal, thoughtful, and then at me. Then at the mortal again. “What do you think?”

The man looked surprised but pleased. He looked at me, and abruptly I realized what they were considering. I couldn’t help blushing, which made the man smile. “I think it would be nice,” he said.

“No,” I said quickly. “I—er—thank you. I can see you mean well… but no.”

Egan smiled then, surprising me, because there was more compassion in it than I’d ever expected to see. “How long since you’ve been with your own?” she asked, and it threw me. I couldn’t answer, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made love to another god. Nahadoth, but that was not the same. He’d been diminished, stuffed into mortal flesh, desperate in his loneliness. That hadn’t been lovemaking; it had been pity. Before that, I thought it might have been—

forget

Zhakka, maybe? Selforine? Elishad—no, that had been ages ago, back when he’d still liked me. Gwn?

It would be good, perhaps, to lose myself in another for a while. To let one of my kind take my soul where she would and give it comfort. Wouldn’t it?

As I had done for Shahar.

“No,” I said again, more softly. “Not now… not yet. Thank you.”

She eyed me for a long moment, perhaps seeing more than I wanted her to see. Could she tell I was becoming mortal? Another reason not to accept her offer; she would know then. But I thought maybe that wasn’t the reason for her look. I wondered if maybe, just maybe, she still cared.

“The offer stands for whenever you change your mind,” she said, and then flashed me a smile. “You might have to share, though.” Turning her smile on the mortal, she and he moved on, heading up to the next floor.

My stirrings had been noticed. When I turned from watching Egan leave, the servant man who had quietly come upstairs bowed to me. “Lord Sieh? Lord Ahad has asked that you come to his office, when you’re ready.”

I put a hand on my hip. “I know full well he didn’t ask.”

The servant paused, then looked amused. “You probably don’t want to know the word he actually used in place of your name, either.”

I followed the servant downstairs. During these evening hours, he explained quietly, only the courtesans were to be visible; this was necessary to maintain the illusion that the house contained nothing but beautiful creatures offering guiltless pleasure. The sight of servants reminded the clientele that the Arms of Night was a business. The sight of people like me—servants of a different kind, he did not say, but I could guess—reminded them that the business was one of many, whose collective owners had fingers in many pots.

So he took me into what looked like a closet, which proved to lead into a dimly lit, wide back stairwell. Other servants and the occasional mortal courtesan moved back and forth along this, all of them smiling or greeting each other amiably in passing. (So different from servants in Sky.) When we reached the ground floor, the servant led me through a short convoluted passage that reminded me a bit of my dead spaces, and then opened a door that appeared to have been cut from the bare wooden wall. “In here, Lord Sieh.” Unsurprisingly, we were back in Ahad’s office. Surprisingly, he was not alone.