Ruza looked suddenly steely. “Do you know, Strange, that to ask a Tizerkane if he fears you is to challenge him to single combat?”
“Well then,” said Lazlo, who knew better than to believe anything Ruza said. “I’m glad I only said it to you and not one of the fearsome warriors like Azareen or Tzara.”
“Unkind,” said Ruza, wounded. His face crumpled. He pretended to weep. “I am fearsome,” he insisted. “I am.”
“There, there,” Lazlo consoled. “You’re a very fierce warrior. Don’t cry. You’re terrifying.”
“Really?” asked Ruza in a pitiful little hopeful voice. “You’re not just saying that?”
“You two idiots,” said Azareen, and Lazlo felt a curious twinge of pride, to be called an idiot by her, with what might have been the tiniest edge of fondness. He exchanged a chastened glance with Ruza as Azareen passed them on the trail and took the lead.
A short time ago, Lazlo had seen her arguing with Eril-Fane, and had heard just enough to understand that she’d wanted to stay with him at Fort Misrach. “Why must you face everything alone?” she had demanded before turning away and leaving him there. And when Lazlo last looked back to wave, the caravan starting down the trail and the Godslayer staying behind, he had seemed not only diminished, but haunted.
If it was safe in the city, as he promised, then why did he look like that, and why did he not come with them?
What happened here? Lazlo wondered. He didn’t ask any more questions. In silence, they rode the rest of the way down to Weep.
Eril-Fane stood on the ridge and watched the caravan make its way to the city. It took them an hour to reach it, weaving in and out of view among stands of trees, and by the time they left the forest for good, they were too distant for him to make out who was who. He could tell spectral from camel, and that was all. It was getting dark, which didn’t help.
Azareen would be leading. She would be straight-backed, face forward, and no one behind her would suspect the look on her face. The loneliness. The raw, bewildered mourning.
He did that to her. Over and over.
If she would only give up on him, he could stop destroying her. He could never be what she hoped for—what he had once been. Before he was a hero. Before he was even a man.
Before he was the lover of the goddess of despair.
Eril-Fane shuddered. Even after all these years, the thought of Isagol the Terrible stirred such a storm in him—of rancor and longing, desire and disgust, violence and even affection—all of it seething and bleeding and writhing, like a pit of rats eating one another alive. That was what his feelings were now, what Isagol had made of them. Nothing good or pure could survive in him. All was corruption and gore, suffocating in his self-loathing. How weak he was, how pitiful. He might have killed the goddess in the end, but he wasn’t free of her, and he never would be.
If only Azareen would let him go. Every day that she waited for him to become who he had been, he bore the burden of her loneliness in addition to his own.
His mother’s, too. At least he could send her Lazlo to take care of, and that would help. But he couldn’t very well send someone home with Azareen to take his place as… as her husband.
Only she could make that choice, and she wouldn’t.
Eril-Fane had told Lazlo he didn’t sleep well in Weep. Well, that rather downplayed the matter. It turned his blood cold to even think of closing his eyes in the city. Even from up here, where distance made a toy of it—a pretty glimmer of far-off glaves and old gold—he felt its atmosphere like tentacles waiting to drag him back in, and he couldn’t stop shaking. Better that no one should see him like this. If the Godslayer couldn’t keep his countenance, how could anyone else?
Feeling like the world’s greatest coward, he turned away from his city, and his guests, and his wife, whom he could not love because he could not love, and he rode the short track back to Fort Misrach.
Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow he would face Weep, and his duty, and the nightmares that stalked him. Somehow, he would find the courage to finish what he had started fifteen years ago, and free his people from this last vestige of their long torment.
Even if he could never free himself.
24
OBSCENITY. CALAMITY. GODSPAWN.
“I told you we’d die before we ran out of dresses,” said Ruby, and all of her saucy bravado was gone. She might have been blithe about dying when it was abstraction, but she wasn’t now.
“No one’s dying,” said Feral. “Nothing’s changed.”
They all looked at him. “Nothing except the Godslayer’s back,” Ruby pointed out.
“With clever men and women from the outside world,” Sparrow added.
“Intent on destroying us,” Minya concluded.
“Not destroying us,” argued Feral. “They don’t know we’re here.”
“And what do you think they’ll do when they find us?” asked Minya. “Express polite surprise and apologize for barging into our home?”
“It won’t come to that,” he said. “How would they get anywhere near us? It’s not as though they can fly. We’re safe up here.”
He was dismissive, but Sarai could tell that he was worried, too. It was the outsiders. What did the five of them know of the rest of the world and the capabilities of its people? Nothing at all.
They were on the garden terrace, which was at the top of the great seraph’s breast, stretching from shoulder to shoulder, and overlooked the city all the way to the Cusp. Helplessly, they watched the procession of specks move down the slope and disappear inside the city. Sarai was between plum trees, her hands trembling, resting on the balustrade. Over the edge was nothing but empty air—a straight drop far, far down to the rooftops. She was uneasy, standing so close. She made the descent every night through her moths’ senses, but that was different. The moths had wings. She did not. She took a careful step back and wrapped her hand around a strong branch.
Ruby was reckless, though, leaning too far out. “Where do you suppose they are now?” she asked. She picked a plum and threw it out as hard as she could. Sparrow gasped. They watched the fruit arc out into air.
“Ruby! What are you doing?” Sparrow demanded.
“Maybe I’ll hit one of them.”
“The Rule—”
“The Rule,” Ruby repeated, rolling her eyes. “You think they don’t fall off the trees by themselves? Oh look, a plum!” She mimicked picking something up, examining it, then tilting back her head to gaze up. “Must be someone living up there! Let’s go kill them!”
“I hardly think a plum would survive the fall,” Feral pointed out.