The divine light dimmed, which Tara chose to read as embarrassment. “Here.” The goddess held out one hand, and a spark took shape. “Repayment with interest. I wish I could offer you more, but I’m close to the wire as it is.”
“What about Justice? Not to mention that fat chunk of soulstuff Kos gave you last year?”
“You know the difference between an asset and an income stream. As for Justice—she’s strong. Since I joined with her, it’s been a challenge to remain myself. I hear her in the back of my mind, like a heresy. Some nights I really do believe all that punishment-fit-the-crime stuff. Her jackboots march through my dreams.” She shivered. “You know what that’s like, not being sole master of your mind, always afraid this thing you hate will rear back up inside you and make you dance.”
Tara grabbed the spark from the goddess’s hand. Soulstuff sang through her blood, and the world bloomed with missing colors. “I want your word you won’t steal from me again, or borrow without my permission. Your binding pledge.”
“Fine,” the goddess said. “My word: I will not take from you again unless you will it. Okay?”
“Deal.” The promise settled as a lock between them. “I didn’t think you could do that in the first place.”
“The rules are looser between a Lady and Her priestess.”
“Oh, no.”
“Not that you’re a good priestess: you don’t sacrifice or pray, and you ward your dreams so thick I’m surprised you haven’t gone insane. Humans need to dream, you know. It’s how the mind breathes. But you have fought on my behalf. You let me live inside your heart. I must admit, this is a new one on me: I’ve never had a Craftswoman priestess before.”
“I’m not a priestess.”
“You just don’t like the sound of the word. Priestess.” She savored the sibilants. “How else could I talk to you like this?”
“You’re smaller than most gods. Makes it easier for you to assume human forms and speak human speech.”
“I couldn’t talk this way with most priests, back in the day—I’ve been inside your skull. That, plus being, as you say, smaller, spread among fewer minds, it does help. It’s like we have a bond.”
“That’s deeply creepy,” Tara said. “And you’ve changed the subject. You’ve exposed us.”
“What’s the alternative? I can’t lean on Kos forever. I need my own operation. I spent most of his gift sending dreams, answering prayers. When the Criers’ story hit the streets, my new followers began to doubt: maybe it’s just the gargoyles, maybe there’s no goddess after all. I had to show myself. It was a calculated risk, and it paid dividends. I have power to share now. People are remembering. I’m sorry I had to take from you to make it happen.”
Tara ate another carrot.
“Have you ever loved someone?” the goddess asked.
She set down the bowl.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be down here when he’s up there. With so few faithful left, I live at your speed. I think the way you think. Even”—she gestured at her body, Tara’s body—“reduced like this, my mind’s wider than those meat brains of yours, but I should be deeper, bigger, the way he is. Thinking in this register feels like talking after a helium hit. I sound ridiculous to myself. Imagine being so close to your other half, and still so far below. Can you blame me for wanting more?”
“If it hurts the city? Yes.”
The moon-Tara crossed her arms and waited.
“Fine,” Tara said. “You want to be public, we can do that. You have an interview with a Crier tomorrow night.”
“What?”
“A woman named Gavriel Jones.” She felt very tired. She took that feeling, crushed it in a vise made of will, and tossed it into the corner of her mental attic with all her other weaknesses. “We jump the news cycle, come clean. Tell the people of Dresediel Lex you’re here for them. You’re back, to heal forty years of wounds.”
“You want me to preach through the news.”
“Maybe that’s not how things worked back when you were starting out.”
“When I was starting out,” she said, “there were still—what’s the Kathic name for those big furry things with the tusks?”
“Mammoths,” Tara said. “The Crier wants a story. Give her yours. After what you did tonight, our only option is to go public as fast as possible.”
“Thank you,” the goddess said.
“It’s nothing.”
“It isn’t, though. Craftswomen don’t believe in gifts.”
“Some of us do.”
Seril could look awfully patient when she wanted. In the pits of those shining eyes, Tara saw herself as her mother might have seen her, complete in all her flaws.
“I do need help,” Tara admitted at last.
The goddess, to her credit, did not laugh.
“I need your archive. Your old records.”
“I don’t have anything like that.”
“Impossible.”
Seril shrugged. “I was never the bookish type. I lived in shadow and claw and moonlight. My children were poets and mystics and warriors, not accountants.”
“You must have left some scripture, some trail.”
“Why would I need scripture? My children are living sermons.”