ORANNA WAS—AND THIS was really a testament to what Tal’s life had become—not an ordinary skeleton. He tried not to pay close attention to whatever was going on under her robe. From unavoidable glimpses he got the sense that there were certainly a lot of bones under it. They often took on the form of five-fingered hands, but the exact number of hands was variable, and the presence of a solid spine and rib cage seemed to be optional.
In case he needed proof that it was really Oranna, though, she ignored him almost completely. She and Tsereg were sitting on the floor in a side chamber, talking in their own language, too fast for Tal to really follow. He stalked around the heart of the Shrine with one of the candles, pacing and waiting, and trying to get to grips with what he should have known from the start, which was that Tsereg had their own family and he wasn’t a permanent part of it.
He had known it at the start, in fact, before he’d lost all self-respect. He’d started out meaning to palm Tsereg off on someone else and get back to his real life. He should have tried harder to keep that in mind. It would have been a lot easier now if he could look back and think, Well, I knew they weren’t sticking around, I knew it all along.
People did not stay in his life. And that was how it was, and it was fine. He’d kept Tsereg alive for as long as he could, like he’d said he would, and now they weren’t his responsibility.
The walls of the Shrine were painted, though the pigment had faded until it was close to stone-grey, only visible if you held the candle close. The frescos depicted Oshaaru gods and saints whom Tal did not recognise, often dying in unpleasant ways, pierced with swords or spontaneously bleeding from the eyes. Many of them had their lips sewn shut.
He found the entrance to the side chamber where Oranna and Tsereg were talking, and leant against the door.
“Just like old times,” he muttered. He’d spent such endless days waiting, guarding Sethennai’s door through some important meeting, and usually Csorwe had been glaring at him from three feet away then too. Then she’d met Shuthmili, and Tal, obviously, had not been on the inside of that. Now Shuthmili was gone, and Tsereg was going to stay with their mother, and Csorwe was, presumably, dead.
The minutes slipped by, and Tal’s mood bounced from restless misery to restless boredom. He could feel his ears starting to twitch. At last, Oranna spoke up from inside.
“You can come in, you know.”
Tal wished he hadn’t got so self-pitying. He sidled in and sat on the floor opposite the others. Tsereg beamed with excitement and satisfaction, although in this mood Tal didn’t feel lightened by it, and couldn’t help noticing how much it made them look like Sethennai.
“So you’re alive,” said Tal. “Congratulations.”
Oranna stretched and composed herself back into a sitting form. “No,” she said. “This is not life. I died before Tsereg’s first birthday. There was no intercession for me but that which I made myself.”
It was at this point that Tal realised Oranna was going to explain exactly how she’d done it, and how little he wanted to know.
“As you may know, I was promised from birth to the Unspoken One, a bargain which I renegotiated at the age of fourteen,” said Oranna. “Upon my death, that bargain came good. What you see here is my image, my shadow.”
“The life of a man is a ripple upon the water,” said Tsereg helpfully.
“Yes, dear. In short, I exist within the being of the Unspoken One,” said Oranna. “I am its emissary. Its mouthpiece. In this form I have advised Tsereg as best I could for the past fourteen years.” One of Oranna’s skeleton hands reached out from under the robe and briefly touched Tsereg’s arm, as if to verify they were real, then haltingly drew back. Tal felt he had not been meant to notice this.
“Is that what you wanted?” said Tal. “I thought—”
Oranna could not smile—more accurately, she was always smiling—but her posture was all languid amusement.
“I sought the incarnation of the Unspoken,” she said. “I naturally considered myself the worthiest candidate to serve as its vessel. I was wrong.”
“Oh shit, no you don’t,” said Tal, seeing exactly where she was going with this. Tsereg was sitting and listening to all this, perfectly happy, and Tal could imagine exactly what they’d been talking about: how great and exciting it would be for Tsereg to fulfil their important destiny and permanently turn into bones. “No. Fuck off.”
Oranna’s unchanging grin turned on him. “I’m so glad you haven’t changed. What do you think is the matter?”
He ignored her. “Tsereg, don’t tell me you’re keen for this, come on. And anyway, you can’t—” he said, glancing from one of them to the other. Oranna looked impatient, Tsereg noncommittal. “Tsereg’s already a god, or something—why do you think Sethennai is after them?—they’re another fragment, part of the snake goddess—”
“Excuse me?” said Oranna. It seemed unaccountable that Tsereg hadn’t explained this to her.
“Yeah,” said Tal. “It’s the same old shit. He wants all the others dead so he can be the best.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Oranna. She sounded guarded, making an effort to control what Tal assumed must be fury. “Belthandros thinks Tsereg is a fragment of Iriskavaal.”
Tal nodded. He didn’t like remembering the last night at the Citadel, the absolute chill of sweat drying on his bare skin as he realised that he was at close quarters with something that had killed whole worlds and could not die. “He said—he knew something wasn’t right, that it wasn’t over.” This seemed to be beside the point. Tal brought it round with a willed effort. “I don’t give a shit about him. The point is, you can’t do whatever you want to do to Tsereg, because I’m pretty sure a person can’t be two gods at once.”
Tsereg bit their lip, and at the same time Oranna burst into laughter, quite literally. Under her robe, the bones rippled and shook. Her laugh was exactly the same as it had always been: as though everything on this wretched earth had been constructed for her delight.
“Correctly surmised,” she said, and then dissolved in laughter again. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, apparently to herself. “Of course—he would think so—”
Tal tried to catch Tsereg’s eye, but they were biting their lip, clearly trying not to join in laughing.
“Yeah,” said Tal, “I can see this is all very fucking funny, but how about, as a favour to me, the absolute cretin you’ve dragged into this for no reason, you maybe consider explaining what the double shit you’re talking about?”
Oranna gave a long sigh of laughter, as if she hadn’t laughed for a very long time and meant to enjoy it to the dregs.
“Consider,” Oranna said, “that children have two parents.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “I’ve just about grasped that, when a man and a woman fall in love, or in your case, I guess, just found it massively exciting to be in a tent in some disgusting forest—”
Oranna started laughing again. “Oh, by the twelve thousand unspeakable names, no wonder he leapt to conclusions.”
Tsereg looked remarkably unbothered to be learning this much about their conception. They kept darting anticipatory little smiles at Tal, as if there was something wonderful for him to know. Too bad for them that Tal had given up on learning anything good ever again.
“Oh, my apologies,” said Oranna, pulling herself together again. “It’s just very characteristic of him to assume that his contribution was significant. For the record, it would probably have worked just as well with you, Talasseres. I just assumed you would be much harder to convince—oh, don’t look like that, it was what’s known as a joke—but the point stands.
“I had planned to surrender to Cweren and bear my child in peace, here in the place I grew up. Unfortunately, the God-Empress shared Iriskavaal’s suspicion of the Unspoken One and its devotees, and I reached the House with only enough time to give Tsereg into Cweren’s care before the Thousand Eyes burnt the place and arrested all its occupants.”
Tsereg nodded, giving Tal an encouraging smile, as if expecting him to get it any minute now. He stared blankly back at them.
“So, uh,” said Tal, reaching for any kind of certainty. “You’re not the God-Empress come again, or anything.”
Tsereg grinned and rose to their feet, holding out their hands to each side like one of the martyrs painted on the walls. Tal winced.
“D’you know what my name means?” they said. “Tsereg. Eternity.”
“Only I am without end,” said Oranna.
“For desolation is my watchword,” said Tsereg. They grinned, as if this were very meaningful. The points of the candle flames danced in their eyes, and for a second Tal thought perhaps he had it the wrong way round, perhaps the light came from Tsereg, and existed here only by their sufferance.
“Once I saw it, it was simple,” said Oranna, although Tal paid her no attention. “There is precedent. At least one of the Qarsazhi divinities was born to a mortal parent, for instance.”
“Tal,” said Tsereg. They dropped the pose and approached, and put their hand on his shoulder. They looked worried. For an inexplicable moment, he wanted to flinch back, and then realised that almost the whole of Tsereg’s worry was about how he might react to this, and forced himself to stay still. “Tal,” they said again. “I understand now. It’s me. I am the Unspoken One.”
There was a silence in which Tal thought he could hear the fizz of the candle flame, the little bones shifting under Oranna’s robe, and the sound of his brain running up against something completely incomprehensible.
“But,” said Tal. He’d just about got his head around the idea that Tsereg might be a discarded fragment of the snake goddess—that was basically the same thing as being Sethennai’s kid—but this was something else. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What does that mean?”
Tal’s heart leapt into his throat as Tsereg disintegrated, apparently on purpose. For a split second where they had stood was nothing but a stout column of floating dust, shreds of hair and shards of bone—and then they came back together, and shrugged.
“Means I can do that, for one thing,” they said. “Also, all this is me.” They waved vaguely at Oranna and the rest of the shrine. In the other chambers, the crowds of revenants had quietly formed up into rows, as if awaiting instruction. “This is—shit, I guess this is my earthly mansion? I could change it, if I wanted—” They raised their hands and gestured as if pushing against the sides of a box, and—Tal felt seasick—the room was larger, as if it had been larger all the time. “It’s just like opening a door, and you know I can do that.”
“Don’t,” said Tal, reeling. He didn’t want to disappoint them, but he was so far out of his depth now that dry land was a fading memory. And yet Tsereg seemed elated, lifted somehow by the discovery.
“Everything makes sense,” they said. “Everything I can do—everything I am—should’ve been obvious.” They grinned at him and executed a grotesque wink.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, my darling, you’re a very baby god,” said Oranna, but she sounded fond, and Tal felt a spike of ludicrous, unreasonable jealousy over “my darling.”
When Tsereg was excited, they simmered visibly, bouncing back and forth on the balls of their feet. “Tal, I’m never going to die, I knew I wasn’t an ordinary person, but I’m not an old bit of snake or anything, I’m going to be fine—”
“I never thought you were ordinary either,” said Tal, somewhat at random. “Of course you’re going to be fine, but—” He wasn’t going to say it—it wasn’t a good idea to say your fears out loud in case somebody else heard them and decided to make a wish come true—and then he said it anyway: “Do you have to stay here forever?”
“God, no, of course not,” said Tsereg. They gave him a sunny grin, almost completely sincere, with just a flash of falseness to cover an uncertainty he didn’t completely understand.
“What happens now, then?” said Tal. He could feel relief pushing at him, like floodwater against a dam, but he was reluctant to give in to it. “I guess you’re going with your mother.”
Oranna shook her head with a faint clicking of vertebrae. “I cannot leave this place,” she said. “In many ways I am this place.”
“What, then—” said Tal.
“Tal!” said Tsereg. “Don’t be stupid. I know you can’t survive on your own.”
He hadn’t realised how tense he’d been, every muscle drawn up tight. Relief arrived in the form of a dumb, tired grin, a huge sigh that doubled him over on himself. He looked like an idiot and did not care.
“You’re all right,” he said. “You’re never going to die. And you’re happy with it.”
“Yes,” said Tsereg.
“Then it’s fine,” said Tal. He raked the fingertips of both his hands back through his hair and sighed again, hours of accumulated tension and terror leaving his body in a great rush, leaving him strangely weightless. “It’s fine.”
Tsereg napped in a corner of the Shrine, curled up on their coat, looking as contented as a cat sleeping on a sunny roof. Tal couldn’t bring himself to lower his guard that much, not in this place, even if it was really Tsereg’s own domain. He sat beside them, against the wall with his knees drawn up to his chest, thinking.
After the initial relief, there was a lot to think about. What now? What would Tsereg want? What did he want? Was there any safe place left? Anywhere the Thousand Eyes couldn’t track them? Everyone he knew was dead. The world as he had known it was gone. Tsereg was apparently a god, which seemed to him to cause more problems than it resolved. Once they left the enclosing darkness of the Shrine, they would be alone again, without money, friends, or resources.
Once, lying on a beach, Tal had been glad of that. Nothing to tie him down, nobody to hold him back. He had been so young.
Oranna sat opposite him, or rather drifted vaguely downward and let her cloak settle into a sitting position. “Tired?” she said. “I do not miss getting tired.”
“It’s really true?” said Tal. “What Tsereg is?”
“Yes,” said Oranna. “I think they will do very well.”
“And you’re part of it too. The Unspoken One, I mean. Swallowed up by it.”
“Submerged. Dispersed. I suppose so,” said Oranna. “What you see now is a memory, of sorts, of the person I was.”
“I thought you wanted to live,” said Tal.
“Oh, yes,” said Oranna. “I loved my life. But there are things beyond mortal knowledge, which cannot be known without passing beyond death. There are greater ends, there are worlds beyond the worlds we know, there are better things to love than one’s own life. You really did do very well, you know,” she added. Just in case Tal was about to feel pleased about that, she added, “Far better than I had any reason to expect.”
“If I’m so useless, why did you tell Tsereg to find me?” said Tal. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I didn’t have many options,” said Oranna. “Besides … Belthandros was always the greatest threat to them, and you know what he is. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.”
“Hope so,” said Tal. He didn’t mention how long it had taken for the forewarning to take.
“I pity him,” said Oranna. “Belthandros, I mean. I doubt he knows it himself, but he is desperately afraid.”
“What?” said Tal. Of all the adjectives you could possibly apply to Belthandros Sethennai, this would not have been the first he’d choose.
“You don’t see it? Once, I think, he was a greathearted man. No doubt utterly without conscience, but brave and generous to his friends. By now he has been afraid for thousands of years, clinging to his little ledge. No doubt you’ve heard him on the theme of his isolation, the lonesome tragedy of his eternal life—if not, you’ve missed a treat—but he deceives himself in this as in all else. Loneliness is his air and water. Alone, changeless, with his fingers fastened round the throat of life, in terror of letting go.” She sighed, and laughed. “What a pity he’s so handsome.”
“Yeah, I’ll say,” said Tal, staring fixedly at his feet.
“I hope you don’t have any lingering tenderness,” said Oranna, briskly, as if asking Tal about an embarrassing symptom. “No? Good. That man is a disease one only catches once. And he really did treat you exceptionally badly, even for him.”
“Do we really have to talk about this?” said Tal.
“Yes,” said Oranna. “In his way of seeing the world, an equal is a threat. If Tsereg could rival him, they could one day work to destroy him. And, even worse, if he came to care for them, they would die, sooner or later. He left me, long ago, for the same reason. To meet his match would have been to welcome death: mine, or his own. If he catches Tsereg, he will kill them. And he will catch them, sooner or later.”
“I won’t let that happen,” said Tal.
Everything came clear at once. He’d been looking at the problem from the wrong angle. There was nowhere safe to hide, probably nowhere Tsereg could grow up in peace. They could run, but they’d never be able to stop running.
It wasn’t just Tsereg. Sethennai had all of Tlaanthothe under his thumb. Anything that was left of Tal’s family, his childhood, his home. His awful family, poor little Keleiros Lenarai, everyone he’d ever known … Sethennai would just go on doing what he did, hollowing people out and discarding them.
“Can you stop it?” said Oranna.
“Yeah,” said Tal. “Sure. I just have to kill him first.”
Oranna’s exposed teeth glittered, and he thought there was a kind of triumphant pleasure in the set of her shoulders.
“Is that what you were getting at?” he said. He toyed with the idea of being annoyed that she’d manipulated him, but what was the point? Everything she had said was true. He knew he was right. “I thought you liked him.”
Oranna shrugged, a sinuous ripple of bone. “I loved him,” she said. “And I loved fighting with him. And I do not regret it. But Iriskavaal is a bloated tumour of a goddess, and Belthandros has become the worst kind of monster, which is to say, one who feels sorry for himself. You would do the world a service.”
“I don’t know how to do it,” said Tal. “Never killed a god before.”
“No,” said Oranna. “That’s rather the problem. Neither do I.”
“Maybe Tsereg—” he said, thinking vaguely that perhaps it would take one god to kill another, and then stopped sharply. “No. He’s not their problem. I’ll deal with it.”
“If I were you, I would not discount any weapon you have at your disposal,” said Oranna.
“Good thing you’re not me,” said Tal. “Tsereg is a kid.”
“They are without beginning and without end.”
“They’re fourteen,” said Tal. “And I’m not asking them to kill their dad.” They would do it if he asked, that was the worst thing.
“When I was fourteen, I killed my sister,” said Oranna. “Or at the very least, she died so I might live. And I can’t say I regretted it very much.”
“Exactly my fucking point,” said Tal. “Tsereg should get a chance to be better than us.”
“Then I suppose you’ll have to find a way to defeat Belthandros yourself,” said Oranna.
“Got an idea,” said Tal with some reluctance, convinced that Oranna would laugh at him. “Before Midsummer, Keleiros—uh, Sethennai—gave me a poisoned knife. Maybe Tsereg told you.”
“Ah, yes,” said Oranna. “Dipped in the kindly bane of Saar-in-Tachthyr.”
“Sure, right,” said Tal. “I thought … He said himself it might kill a god. Maybe it could take him down too.”
To Tal’s surprise, Oranna gave him a slow nod. “You’re smarter than he gave you credit for,” she said. “It might. The difficulty would be getting close to him with a weapon. Although … as to that, there is one other suggestion I might offer. It is very difficult to defeat a god, but remarkably easy to defeat a man.”
“All right,” said Tal. “Go on, then, tell me. How?”
Shadows danced in the sockets of Oranna’s eyes. “With what he wants.”
“I called you here so that you might learn what you are,” said Oranna. “And now you know. That is a weapon in itself: to know who you are, and what you are capable of accomplishing.”
Tsereg’s face was very still with the effort it took not to crumple.
“You said no dominion lasts forever,” they said.
“Nor does it,” said Oranna. “You are the end of the Unspoken and its resurrection. The new world is yours to shape.”
At this, Tsereg raised their hand to their lips as if giving a military salute, and Tal felt something twist up in his chest.
Tal shook Oranna’s skeletal hand. Tsereg embraced her, which looked to be an even odder experience than the handshake.
“Until we meet again,” said Oranna, settling herself on the throne in the grand chamber. “Tsereg,” she added, as they turned to leave, “you know I am with you always.”
Tsereg didn’t have a quick answer for this. After a moment they said, “I know,” gave Oranna an acknowledging sort of nod, and slipped a hand through Tal’s elbow as they left.