“I live with my mother,” she replied in a curt tone.
Zeb withdrew a small flask from his jacket and poured a few drops of liquor into his tea. “I’ll think about giving you another assignment, although that’s not how I usually do things around here. Now, I want those obituaries on my desk by three this afternoon.”
She left without another word.
* * *
Iris set the finished obituaries on his desk an hour early, but she didn’t leave the office. She remained at her cubicle and began to think of an essay to write, just in case Zeb did give her a chance to counter Roman’s assignment.
But the words felt frozen inside of her. She decided to walk to the sideboard to pour herself a fresh cup of tea when she saw Roman Conceited Kitt walk into the office.
He had been gone all day, to her relief, but he now had that annoying bounce in his stride, as if he were teeming with words he needed to spill across the page. His face was flushed from the chill of early spring, his coat speckled with rain as he sat at his desk, rummaging through his messenger bag for his notepad.
Iris watched as he fed a page to his typewriter and began to furiously type. He was lost to the world, lost to his words, and so she didn’t take the long way back to her desk, as she often did, to avoid passing him directly. He didn’t notice her walking by, and she sipped her overly sweetened tea and stared at her blank page.
Soon everyone began to leave for the day, save for her and Roman. Desk lamps were being turned off, one by one, and yet Iris remained, typing slowly and arduously, as if every word had to be pulled from her marrow, while Roman two cubicles away was pounding into the keys.
Her thoughts drifted to the gods’ war.
It was inevitable; the war always seemed to simmer at the back of her mind, even if it was raging six hundred kilometers west of Oath.
How will it end? she wondered. With one god destroyed, or both of them?
Endings were often found in beginnings, and she began to type what she knew. Snippets of news that had drifted across the land, reaching Oath weeks after they had happened.
It began in a small, sleepy town surrounded by gold. Seven months ago, the wheat fields were ready for harvest, nearly swallowing a place called Sparrow, where sheep outnumber people four to one, and it rains only twice a year due to an old charm cast by an angry—and now slain—god, centuries ago.
This idyllic town in Western Borough is where Dacre, a defeated Underling god, was laid to sleep in a grave. And there he slept for two hundred and thirty-four years until one day, at harvest time, he unexpectedly woke and rose, sifting through the soil and burning with fury.
He came upon a farmer in the field, and his first words were a cold, ragged whisper.
“Where is Enva?”
Enva, a Skyward goddess and Dacre’s sworn enemy. Enva, who had also been defeated two centuries ago, when the five remaining gods fell captive beneath mortal power.
The farmer was afraid, cowering in Dacre’s shadow. “She is buried in the Eastern Borough,” he eventually replied. “In a grave not unlike your own.”
“No,” Dacre said. “She is awake. And if she refuses to greet me … if she chooses to be a coward, I will draw her to me.”
“How, my lord?” the farmer asked.
Dacre stared down at the man. How does one god draw another? He began to
“What’s this?”
Iris jumped at Zeb’s voice, turning to see him standing nearby with a scowl, trying to read what she had typed.
“Just an idea,” she replied, a bit defensive.
“It’s not about how the gods’ war began, is it? That’s old news, Winnow, and people here in Oath are sick of reading about it. Unless you have a fresh take on Enva.”
Iris thought about all the headlines Zeb had published about the war. They screamed things like THE DANGERS OF ENVA’S MUSIC: THE SKYWARD GODDESS HAS RETURNED AND SINGS OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS TO WAR or RESIST THE SIREN’S CALL TO WAR: ENVA IS OUR MOST DANGEROUS THREAT. ALL STRINGED INSTRUMENTS ARE OUTLAWED IN OATH.
All his articles blamed Enva for the war, while few mentioned Dacre’s involvement at all. Sometimes Iris wondered if it was because Zeb was afraid of the goddess and how easily she recruited soldiers, or if he had been instructed to publish only certain things—if the chancellor of Oath was controlling what the newspaper could share, quietly spreading propaganda.
“I … yes, I know, sir, but I thought—”
“You thought what, Winnow?”
She hesitated. “Has the chancellor given you restrictions?”
“Restrictions?” Zeb laughed as if she were being ridiculous. “On what?”
“On what you can and cannot feature in the paper.”
A frown creased Zeb’s ruddy face. His eyes flashed—Iris couldn’t tell if it was fear or irritation—but he chose to say, “Don’t waste my paper and ink ribbons on a war that is never going to reach us here in Oath. It’s a western problem and we should carry on as normal. Find something good to write about, and I might consider publishing it in the column next week.” With that, he rapped his knuckles on the wood and left, grabbing his coat and hat on the way out.
Iris sighed. She could hear Roman’s steady typing, like a heartbeat in the vast room. Fingertips striking keys, keys striking paper. A prodding for her to do better than him. To claim the position before he did.
Her mind was mush, and she yanked her essay from the typewriter. She folded it and tucked it away in her small tapestry bag, knotting the drawstrings before she scooped up her broken shoe. She turned her lamp off and stood, rubbing a crick in her neck. It was dark beyond the windows; night had settled over the city, and the lights beyond bled like fallen stars.
This time when she walked by Roman’s desk, he noticed her.
He was still wearing his trench coat, and a tendril of black hair cut across his furrowed brow. His fingers slowed on the keys, but he didn’t speak.
Iris wondered if he wanted to, and if so, what he would say to her in a moment when they had the office to themselves, and no one else watching them. She thought of an old proverb that Forest used to invoke: Turn a foe into a friend, and you’ll have one less enemy.
A tedious task, indeed. But Iris paused, backtracking to stand at Roman’s cubicle.
“Do you want to grab a sandwich?” she asked, hardly aware of the words spilling from her mouth. All she knew was she hadn’t eaten that day, and she was hungry for food and a stirring conversation with someone. Even if it was him. “There’s a delicatessen two doors down that stays open this late. They have the best pickles.”
Roman didn’t even slow his typing. “I can’t. Sorry.”
Iris nodded and hurried on her way. She was ridiculous for even thinking he’d want to share dinner with her.
She left with bright eyes, hurling her broken heel into the dustbin on her way out.
{2}
Words for Forest
It was a good thing Roman had turned her down for a sandwich.
Iris stopped by a corner grocer, feeling how light her handbag was. She didn’t realize she had stepped into one of Oath’s enchanted buildings until the food on the shelves began to shift. Only items she could afford worked their way to the edge, vying for her attention.
Iris stood in the aisle, face burning. She gritted her teeth as she noticed how much she couldn’t afford and then hastily grabbed a loaf of bread and a half carton of boiled eggs, hoping the shop would now leave her alone and cease weighing the coins in her purse.