“Come on,” Aros murmured, his hand tightening around mine as he drew me past the others. “Let’s go back to the top of the mountain again. Cyrus didn’t give very elaborate instructions, but I assume people will have returned to the same platform that he made his announcement on. From there, we will decide on the schedule for the sun-cycle.”
Nobody argued, and we formed an awkward, single-file line through the corridor housing the sleeping quarters of the gods. When we passed out to the paths winding around the outside of the mountain, Siret moved behind me, his hand brushing along my spine. Immediately, I was shielded against the bite of the mountain air as a heavy black cloak folded about me.
I glanced back to thank him, but instead found my eyes searching for the sols. They were trailing behind, struggling to keep up with us. That made me smile.
Nine
We made our way up the winding stone steps, my cloak brushing against the frost that was forming on the surface. It was a dangerous path, slippery with ice, so I was glad that I had a hold of Aros. I wondered if the path was part of Staviti’s test of survival: if any of the sols slipped and fell from the mountain, they were unfit to be gods. Or ... he wanted them dead anyway. I shivered, pressing closer to Aros. I doubted that Staviti would care if he took down an Abcurse along with me, but it was easy to convince myself that I wouldn’t be swept from the side of the mountain if I held on to one of them tightly enough.
When we reached the top platform, we discovered that the space had drastically changed overnight. Marble trees rose from the platform itself, their shapes flattened and stretched out, so that they only appeared to be trees when you were standing in front of them or behind them. From the side, they just looked like odd, carved marble walls.
“Cyrus has been busy,” I noted.
“Not Cyrus,” Emmy muttered, brushing past me. “He got a friend to come in here and do it.” Emmy made a face when she said the word ‘friend’. “And then after she was done, he thanked her by taking her back to his room and fucking her right there in the bed with me sleeping on the floor beside him.”
I jolted to a stop, my wide eyes staring after Emmy. She wasn’t even waiting for a response—she was just charging on, through the raised marble trees, toward something I couldn’t see.
“Emmy just said a bad word,” I told the others, as I felt bodies shifting restlessly behind me. “And she’s sleeping on the floor beside Cyrus? And Cyrus is having sex with mysterious decorator-gods?”
“She said more than a single bad word,” one of the student sols muttered, her tone somehow both snide and satisfied. “She said a whole lot of bad words, and all of them about the Neutral God. That little dweller is going to die.” Now her tone had turned to glee, and I was half a click away from turning and shoving my fist into her throat, but Aros started pulling me forward again.
“You know Emmy isn’t going to die,” he whispered to me. “Just ignore her. Cyrus would never have allowed a person to stay in the room with him while he had sex—much less a dweller—unless he wanted to get a reaction from that person. If he really took someone back to his room, he did it more for dweller-Emmy than whoever was in his bed.”
I nodded, knowing the sense of what he was saying—even though Cyrus’s logic wasn’t the best. My temper stayed with me, however, as we walked toward the marble sculptures, heading toward a gap in the first line of marble trees—the same gap that Emmy had passed through. It turned out to be a hallway or passageway of some kind, and I realised that the flat-sided trees were acting as sectionals. We walked a few steps and came across another gap in the marble, forming a small doorway. I glanced inside, ignoring the current occupants of the space. The marble sectionals had formed a little alcove, just large enough to fit three plush, red couches along the back and side walls of the room. There was a crystal lamp dropping from a marble branch that was extending from the sectional in the shape of a real tree branch, reaching far above the room.
It was a marble forest of tiny rooms. The adventurous spirit inside me wanted to release the others and take off, to explore every secret hiding room that the forest could be concealing, but Aros must have heard the thought, because he chuckled, releasing my hand, his arm wrapping tightly around my shoulders.
“Let’s just find a room that will fit us all, and we can figure out how to survive the rest of this life-cycle.”
“You five will survive the rest of this life-cycle just fine. You’re all immortal,” I shot back, purposefully leaving myself out of that equation, just in case the sols were listening.
“I didn’t mean Staviti’s champion game.” Aros glanced at me, and then shot a look over his shoulder. “I meant teaching. As an occupation. I don’t know how long we’re going to survive that.”
“And by we,” I interjected, “you mean—”
“Them, yes. Obviously. Whenever I say that ‘we’ can’t survive something, you can assume I mean every other person who is in the same situation but isn’t one of us.”
“So, you really mean ‘they’ every time you say ‘we’?”
“Yes, but I try to be sensitive about it.”
I laughed, snuggling closer to him. It was a sad time when your asshole gods became endearing by way of their massive, all-consuming egos.
“Here!” Aros called over his shoulder, slipping off down another narrow passageway. He brought us into a large room with a central meeting place and several half-concealed alcoves branching off from it.
“I think this one is taken,” I whispered, my eyes riveted to one of the alcoves.
I couldn’t see anything more than a female figure plastered up against a much taller, male figure, but I could see one of the male’s hands on the female’s ass, while the other was tangled in her wild blond hair … wild blond hair that had been neatly braided only five clicks ago.
The male made a sound, somewhere between a growl and a groan, and the female stepped back from him. His hands dropped as his face was revealed, and then his eyes flicked over to us in realisation.
Cyrus.
Emmy, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed us at all. She was re-braiding her hair with cool efficiency, her hands steady. “Don’t even bother telling me you don’t want me,” she remarked. “You just gave up your game, Neutral.”
She turned on her heel, and then paused, noticing us. I raised my hand in an awkward wave, but she barely even skipped a beat.
“Oh hey, Will,” she said, smiling calmly as she moved to the centre of the room.
There was a circular table set up there, with an open stack of scrolls and two stools pushed back. A lamp was burning near the scrolls, illuminating her face just enough for me to make out the red that was creeping up her cheeks.
“Did you have an appointment with the Neutral?” she asked, checking her scrolls and then looking back up again.
“She takes this fucking job too seriously,” Cyrus growled, stalking angrily to the table.
“Uh,” I managed. The others remained silent. “We were just, uh, looking for somewhere to have a meeting. All of us. This is the biggest room in the forest.”
“In the forest?” He grinned, but his eyes were avoiding mine. “Well, it’s the biggest room because it’s mine. And you need an appointment to see me.”
I scowled, turning to Emmy. “Can I have an appointment to see the Neutral?”
She glanced down at her scroll again. “He has made it clear that the majority of the rotations in the sun-cycle are to be reserved for his silent contemplation of wine. However, I think I can shuffle a few things around.”
The darker Cyrus’s expression got, the wider my smile grew.
“Excellent.” I rocked back onto the heels of my feet. “I’ll just wait here while you shuffle.”
“Ah!” Emmy fake-exclaimed. “I spot an opening in his schedule, seeing as everyone is too afraid of him to make any appointments. How does right now sound?”
“Right now sounds perfect!” I fake-exclaimed in return. “Thank you so much for your assistance.”