Shane’s brain was a whirl of gods and beasts. He shook his head to clear it. “Do you have paladins of your gods? Or priests?”
“Priests, yes,” Silver said. “And warriors dedicated to the year-god, which I think are the closest we come to your paladins. Some simply dedicate themselves to the next god, year after year, but there are many who find that they are called at the beginning of a year to serve that god only, and not Their successor. But this is all neither here nor there.” She leaned forward, tapping her claws on the desk again, her eyes bright and interested. And I notice that she is no longer growling her words, and her
speech is flowing much more eloquently. Is the growling part of her act to seem more dog-like, and thus more harmless, in this palace full of knives?
“Our gods die in their appointed times. Not like you, my paladin friend, and your Saint of Steel.”
Shane knew he didn’t quite conceal his surprise. “Did the note tell you?” he asked.
“No.” She flattened her ears apologetically. “I guessed. You bear a sword and a note asking for information about gods dying. You ask specifically about paladins. And I have read of a human god dying an untimely death, and what became of His champions.”
“Yes, of course,” Shane said. One hand rose involuntarily to his sternum, rubbing absently at the spot that had once held a god’s fire. “I suppose it was obvious.”
“Not so obvious,” Lady Silver assured him. “Not unless one had reason to suspect.” She made a wavering gesture with one hand that he could not quite interpret. “Still, I would be wary of talking about paladins, if you wish to keep it secret.”
“It’s not exactly a secret,” he said, “so much as just easier.” After the Saint had died, the place just under Shane’s heart had felt as if it were full of broken glass, slicing him whenever he breathed.
Time did not heal all wounds, no matter what the proverb said, but it had scarred over at last. Now it was simply a numb place in his chest that ached occasionally, and a memory of glory—until the black tide rose and swept him away.
The black tide was the reason that the surviving paladins were treated like barely tame animals, as if they might turn and bite at any moment. In Shane’s case, that was unlikely, but still, it was easier if people did not know. “It grows wearisome,” he said, half to himself, “to always be treated like a wild animal.”
Lady Silver laughed. It took him a moment to recognize it as laughter and not as a sneezing fit, but something about the position of her ears gave it away. “Oh yes,” she said, “it grows wearisome indeed!”
The tips of his own ears grew hot with embarrassment. “Forgive me,” he said, “that was very rude of me. I did not mean to imply—”
“Bah.” She cut him off with a waved hand. “You had the right of it. And it is not so hard these days. I am like a tame bear to many of your people, a beast that walks upright and dances and does clever tricks. No one fears the dancing bear. In the early days, when I was not such a fixture here, there was much fear, as if I might suddenly drop to all fours and devour the servants without sauce.”
Shane nodded. “The paladins—my brothers and sisters who survived the Saint’s death—so many people watched us as if we might run mad and kill everything that moved.” Honesty compelled him to add, “Though they had reason, unlike with you. Many of us did, when the Saint died.” Shane himself, with his brother Stephen, had attacked the paladins of the Dreaming God that they had been escorting, and only the fact that they had been half-blind with pain and confusion had allowed the others to survive. And if Istvhan had not simply passed out, I suspect that tale would have a very different ending.
“That was a hard year,” said Lady Silver gently.
“Perhaps the god of that year was cruel.”
He was half joking, but she took him seriously. “No, no. The year-god did not do that, friend Shane. The world did it, and Second Waking put herself between us and the world.” She studied him intently, her great golden eyes unblinking as a cat’s. “There were many hard things that year, and she turned aside as many as she could, and blunted the rest. Our gods are a little like you paladins, I think.
The ones who fight for us.”
Shane bowed his head, feeling oddly humbled.
Lady Silver took up a pen and began to write. Shane waited, listening to the scratch of pen on parchment. “I do not know how your god was killed,” she said, when she had finished and sat waiting for the ink to dry. “Or what did so, or why.”
“Killed?” Shane asked, startled. “What do you mean, killed?”
Lady Silver’s nostrils flared. “But of course, killed. Your god did not simply die, paladin, or none of you would be as you are. I have been the servant of a year, and when She died, She slipped out of my soul as kindly as She had come. She did not tear a bloody wound as your god did to you.”
“Perhaps your god was less cruel,” said Shane, and stopped, shocked by the bitterness in his voice.
“There are many gods that seem cruel to us, who cannot know what They know, and no doubt a few who truly are. But I cannot believe that a god who loved His followers as your Saint must have loved you would have chosen to leave you as He did. No, this was as shocking to Him as it was to you, I expect. And since gods do not fall down the stairs or choke on fishbones…” She spread her hands.
Shane hardly knew what to say in response. Could this be true? In the first days, I know we lashed out because we thought that our god was taken from us, but that was just the pain, wasn’t it? And I know the Temple did their best, but they couldn’t turn up anything. We were so busy surviving afterwards that we didn’t think about it until Piper laid hands on the altar and felt…
something.
“You seem surprised,” said Lady Silver gently.
“I think we’d somehow all agreed that we’d probably never know what happened,” Shane admitted. “It was too big and it didn’t seem to involve mortals at all. If another god had killed the Saint, we couldn’t do anything about it.”
But Lady Silver was already shaking her head. “For a god to kill another god is a natural death, of sorts. At least, if one is a god. There are many legends of such things. This was something else. There are stories of heroes with weapons that could slay a god, but that sends a shockwave around the earth, and this did not.”
The shockwave it sent through us was quite enough, I suppose. And what would I do if I found out that it was another god? Take up one of these god-slaying weapons in revenge?
He was very afraid that the answer was yes. Not for the Saint of Steel, precisely, but for His chosen, who had suffered and died alongside their god.
“How could a mortal kill a god, without a god-slaying weapon?” he asked.
Lady Silver’s eyebrows—or the patches of fur that served as eyebrows—went up. “You think like a warrior,” she said. “Think like a courtier instead. How would you kill someone, if you had no blade? If you were weak and they were strong?”
Shane frowned. “Poison,” he said finally. “Accident. You say that gods don’t fall down the stairs, but can you push a god off a cliff?”