Someone shook me an uncountable time later, pulling me from a hazy dream dominated by a woman’s bulging belly. Naturally I thought I was still dreaming when I opened my eyes to find another belly hovering in front of me, and naturally I put out a hand to stroke it. I have always found pregnancy fascinating. When mortal women permit, I hover near them, listening for the moment when the child’s soul ignites out of nothingness and begins to resonate with mine. The creation of souls is a mystery that we gods endlessly debate. When Nahadoth was born, his soul was fully formed even though no mother ever carried him within her body. Did the Maelstrom give it to him? But only things with souls can bestow souls, or so we have come to believe over the aeons. Does this mean It has a soul? And if so, where did Its soul come from?
All irrelevant questions, because an instant after my hand touched Usein Darr’s belly, her knife touched the skin beneath my eye. I came very much awake.
“My apologies, Usein-ennu,” I said, lifting my hand very carefully. I tried to lift my eyes, too, to focus on her, but it was the knife that dominated my attention. She had been much faster than Hymn, which I supposed was not surprising. I seemed to attract women who were good with a blade.
“Just Usein,” she said in Darre. A rude thing to do to an obvious foreigner, and unnecessary, since her knife made its own silent point. “My father is in poor health, but he may live years more, despite the ill wishes of others.” Her eyes narrowed. “I imagine women in Tema are no happier to have strangers pawing them, so I see no reason to excuse your behavior.”
Swallowing, I finally forced my gaze upward to her face. “My apologies,” I said again, also in Darre. One of her eyebrows lifted. “Would you excuse me if I said I’d been dreaming about a woman like you?”
Her lips twitched, considering a smile. “Are you a father already, little boy? You should be at home knitting blankets to warm your babies, if so.”
“Not a father and never a father, actually, not that any woman would want children who took after me.” (My own smile faltered as I remembered Shahar; then I pushed her out of my mind.) “Congratulations on your conception. May your delivery be swift and your daughter strong.”
She shrugged, after a moment taking her knife from my skin. She did not sheathe it, however—a warning. “This babe will be what it is. Probably another son, given that my husband seems to produce nothing else.” With a sigh, she put her free hand on her hip. “I noticed you during our council session, pretty boy, and came over to find out more about you. Especially as Temans don’t bother coming here anymore; they’ve made their allegiance to the Arameri clear. So, are you a spy?”
Casting an uneasy glance at her still-naked blade, I considered several lies—then decided the truth was so outrageous that she might believe it more readily. “I’m a godling, sent by an organization of godlings based in Shadow. We think you might be trying to destroy the world. Could you, perhaps, stop?”
She did not react quite as I’d expected. Instead of gaping at me, or laughing, she gazed at me in solemn silence for a long, taut moment. I couldn’t read her face at all.
Then she sheathed her knife. “Come with me.”
We went to Sar-enna-nem.
Night had fallen while I napped, the moon rising high and full over the branching stone streets. I had only a few moments to glimpse this before Usein Darr and I—accompanied by two sharp-eyed women and a handsome young man who’d greeted Usein with a kiss and me with a threatening look—stepped inside the temple. One of the guardswomen was pregnant, too, though not overtly so because she was stocky and heavyset. Her child’s soul had grown, though, so I knew.
The instant I crossed the threshold, I knew why Usein had brought me here. Magic and faith danced along my skin like raindrops on a pond’s surface. I closed my eyes and reveled in it, soaking it in as I walked over the glimmering mosaic stones, letting my reawakened sense of the world steer my feet. It had been months since I’d last felt the world fully. Listening now, I heard songs that had last been sung before the Gods’ War, echoing from Sar-enna-nem’s ceiling arches. I licked my lips and tasted the spiced wine that had once been used for offerings, tinged with occasional drops of blood. I put out my hands, stroking the air of the place, and shivered as it returned the caress.
Illusions and memories; all I had left. I savored them as best I could.
There had been only a few people in the temple when we’d entered: a man in priest garb, a portly woman carrying two fretting babes, a few worshippers kneeling in a prayer area, and a few unobtrusive guards. I navigated around these and between the small marble statues that stood on plinths all about the chamber, letting resonance guide me. When I opened my eyes, the statue at which I’d stopped gazed back at me with uncharacteristic solemnity on its finely wrought features. I reached up to touch its small, cheeky face, and sighed for my lost beauty.