Lady Silver flicked her ears, amused. “I don’t believe that’s ever been tried.” She looked down at the letter before her, then folded it and handed it to him. “For your Bishop. I do not know exactly how it was done, but someone or something killed your Saint. My own meager archives—” she waved her hand at the shelves of books “—contain nothing but hints. You will require a more specialized library for that.” She nodded to the letter. “I have listed those that I believe might contain more.”
Shane tucked the letter away, and Lady Silver rose to escort him out. “It is an interrresting puzzle,” she said, and he guessed by the growling trill that she had remembered to reassume her accent. No one fears the dancing bear. He wondered if she realized that he’d noticed. Probably. I do not think Lady Silver misses many things. I wonder how old she is? He had no way of knowing. She might have been half his age or a dozen years his senior, even assuming that her race lived the same span as a human would.
“One thing…” Shane paused, one hand on the door. “The weapons that could kill a god. Has anyone ever slain a year-god that way?”
A shiver ran through Lady Silver’s great ears. “Once, long ago. The year outside a year.”
“What happened?”
“For seven months, there was no one to stand between us and the world. Floods came, and famine. Many, many died. It broke the great cycle, and the next god was declared First Enduring and began a new one.”
“Oh.” I’m sorry I asked.
The cynocephalic’s eyes were brooding. “That is why it is important to learn these things. If someone can go about killing gods, what hope is there for mortals?”
She shut the door before Shane could think of an answer for that, assuming one existed at all.
WREN WAS STILL awake when he returned. Part of him noticed this in a detached fashion— of course she stayed awake, someone should be on guard when one of us is out—but the rest of his brain was a whirl of dead gods, dead priests, and dead years. He dropped into his chair and stared blindly at the ceiling.
“You look like you just took a board to the back of the head.”
“That’s about how I feel.”
Wren considered this, then said, cautiously, “Romantic evening go badly?”
It was such a completely wrong guess that it startled a crack of laughter out of him. “Oh gods and saints! I only wish!” Haltingly, he spelled out the details about Lady Silver, Beartongue’s message, and what the scholar had said. Wren’s eyes got rounder and rounder as he talked, until she looked like a small, muscular owl.
He finally ran out of words. A minute later, Wren said, in a small voice, “Whoa.”
Shane wanted to laugh again, or weep, or both. He put his face in his hands. “What do we do if it’s true?”
Fabric rustled and he felt Wren put an arm around his shoulders in a tight hug. “Do we need to do anything? Isn’t this all…I don’t know…god stuff?”
His laugh wasn’t entirely humorless. “God stuff. I don’t know. Maybe. Wouldn’t we want revenge?”
Wren was silent for so long that he wasn’t sure that she was going to answer at all. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Are humans supposed to avenge gods? That seems like something a priest would know better than I would.”
“All our priests are dead,” said Shane wearily, dropping his hands. “Maybe they’re the ones we need to avenge.”
Since she was sitting on the arm of the chair, he couldn’t see her face, but he felt Wren go very still. He recognized the flavor of that stillness all too well. The black tide inside him tried to rise in response, and he pushed it back. “Wren.”
“I’d avenge you,” said Wren, her voice too cold and calm. “All of you who had your god torn away.”
He wanted to point out that she’d lost the god as well, but he understood too clearly what she meant. It was not in either of their natures to avenge a slight against themselves, only against others.
Besides, at the moment, that was not what was important.
“Wren,” he said again, and put some steel into it. “Wren, step back from it.”
She inhaled slowly, let it out again. The air around her was as charged and prickly as a thunderstorm.
“Wren.”
“Right,” she said. He felt the tension ease and then she drew away. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Sorry.
Didn’t mean to…well. Sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
Wren rubbed her fingertips together, looking vaguely embarrassed. “I guess maybe we should ask a priest. Maybe Beartongue.”
Shane snorted. “Beartongue’s probably got three contingency plans in place already.”
“Probably. We just swing the swords.” She stared into the fire. “Thanks.”
“Of course.”
Orange firelight licked the side of her face when she smiled ruefully. “I’m glad you’re here,” she admitted. “You specifically, I mean. Not just one of us.”
“I keep thinking someone else would do it better. Istvhan, maybe.”
Wren rolled her eyes. “Oh sure, but what if they’d sent Galen along? Can you imagine? He’d make the wrong joke to the wrong person and then pull it all down around their ears.”
Shane chuckled. “It’d be spectacular, though.”
“Oh yes. We’d all stand on the sidelines and applaud the style with which the battlements came crashing down.” Wren shook her head. “Right. I’m going to bed. Some things are above my paygrade.”
Shane banked the fire and sought his own bed. His head still felt uncomfortably full, but Wren was right. Some things were simply too large for a single paladin to deal with. I’ll put it to the priests, he told himself, and whatever they tell us to do, we’ll do. It’s just easier that way for everybody.
TWENTY-THREE
THE BALLROOM WAS full of people, which meant that Wren felt more isolated than ever. The paladin grimaced. Poets always thought they were so clever, talking about how people could be so terribly lonely in groups as if it was some special insight, when it was obvious to any fool that other people just made it worse. If you were starving, being surrounded by food you couldn’t eat didn’t help. It just reminded you how hungry you were.
This was about as much philosophy as Wren could handle on an empty stomach, so she staged a raid on the refreshments. Previous reconnaissance had indicated that anything on a cracker would turn into a shower of crumbs the moment you bit into it. Other people seemed able to eat them without looking as if they had full frontal dandruff, but Wren had no idea how they were managing that. Same problem with the little fruit tarts. The crust would disintegrate at the slightest provocation. They were simply too dry and powdery. Wren had originally thought that maybe it was a failure of that particular batch of crust, but they were all like that, which made her think that the baker just wasn’t very good.
This can’t be intentional, unless you’re supposed to put the whole thing in your mouth at once?
You’d practically have to unhinge your jaw like a snake. Surely that wasn’t considered proper courtly manners?