The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(53)

“Shahar Arameri,” I said.

The bed moved slightly with his nod. Zhakkarn was a silent, watching presence. I drew Zhakkarn’s face with my mind, matching it against the face I’d seen in the library. Zhakkarn’s face was framed like Enefa’s, with the same sharp jaw and high cheekbones. It was in all three of them, I realized, though they didn’t look like siblings or even members of the same race. All of Enefa’s children had kept some feature, some tribute, to their mother’s looks. Kurue had the same frank, dissecting gaze. Sieh’s eyes were the same jade color.

Like mine.

“Shahar Arameri.” Sieh sighed. “As a mortal, she could wield only a fraction of the Stone’s true power. Yet she was the one who struck the deciding blow. Nahadoth would have avenged Enefa that day, if not for her.”

“Nahadoth says you want my life.”

Zhakkarn’s voice, with a hint of irritation: “He told you that?”

Sieh’s voice, equally irritated, though at Zhakkarn: “He can only defy his own nature for so long.”

“Is it true?” I asked.

Sieh was silent for so long that I opened my eyes. He winced at the look on my face; I did not care. I was through with evasions and riddles. I was not Enefa. I did not have to love him.

Zhakkarn unfolded her arms, a subtle threat. “You haven’t agreed to ally with us. You could give this information to Dekarta.”

I gave her the same look that I had Sieh. “Why,” I said, enunciating each word carefully, “would I possibly betray you to him?”

Zhakkarn’s eyes flicked over to Sieh. Sieh smiled, though there was little humor in it. “I told her you’d say that. You do have one advocate among us, Yeine, however little you might believe it.”

I said nothing. Zhakkarn was still glaring at me, and I knew better than to look away from a challenge. It was a pointless challenge on both sides—she would have no choice but to tell me if I commanded her, and I would never earn her trust merely by my words. But my whole world had just been shattered, and I knew of no other way to learn what I needed to know.

“My mother sold me to you,” I said, mostly to Zhakkarn. “She was desperate, and perhaps I would even make the same choice in her position, but she still did it and at the moment I am not feeling well-inclined towards any Arameri. You and your kind are gods; it doesn’t surprise me that you would play with mortal lives like pieces in a game of nikkim. But I expect better of human beings.”

“You were made in our image,” she said coldly.

An unpleasantly astute point.

There were times to fight, and times to retreat. Enefa’s soul inside me changed everything. It made the Arameri my enemies in a far more fundamental way, because Enefa had been Itempas’s enemy and they were his servants. Yet it did not automatically make the Enefadeh my allies. I was not actually Enefa, after all.

Sieh sighed to break the silence. “You need to eat,” he said, and got up. He left my bedroom; I heard the apartment door open and close.

I had slept nearly three days. My angry declaration that I would leave had been a bluff; my hands were shaking, and I did not trust my ability to walk far if I tried. I looked down at my unsteady hand and thought sourly that if the Enefadeh had infected me with a goddess’s soul, the least they could have done was give me a stronger body in the process.

“Sieh loves you,” said Zhakkarn.

I put my hand on the bed so it would no longer shake. “I know.”

“No, you don’t.” The sharpness in Zhakkarn’s voice made me look up. She was still angry, and I realized now that it had nothing to do with the alliance. She was angry about how I’d treated Sieh.

“What would you do, if you were me?” I asked. “Surrounded by secrets, with your life dependent on the answers?”

“I would do as you have done.” That surprised me. “I would use every possible advantage I had to gain as much information as I could, and I would not apologize for doing so. But I am not the mother Sieh has missed for so long.”

I could tell already that I was going to become very, very sick of being compared to a goddess.

“Neither am I,” I snapped.

“Sieh knows that. And yet he loves you.” Zhakkarn sighed. “He is a child.”

“He’s older than you, isn’t he?”

“Age means nothing to us. What matters is staying true to one’s nature. Sieh has devoted himself fully to the path of childhood. It is a difficult one.”

I could imagine, though it made no sense to me. Enefa’s soul seemed to bring me no special insight into the tribulations of godhood.