THE SERPENT MOVED with terrible precision and terrible speed, a single arc of muscular power driving directly toward the cutter. As they spun out of control, Shuthmili saw only brief flashes: the ivory scales of the snout, the cavernous mouth opening, the red tongue flickering, and then Belthandros wrestled back the steering and swooped up out of reach. The serpent’s mouth snapped shut with a hiss like water on gravel, and she reared back. The serpent’s coils were pale in the green water, the great tail stirring up waves as it whipped back and forth.
“Pentravesse,” she said, without speaking. Her voice tore across the surface of the mind like a scalpel slicing paper.
“Really, Atharaisse?” he called. He was out of breath but otherwise sounded as if this was no more than a mildly complicated social call. “Won’t you pay me the compliment of asking questions first?”
Atharaisse regarded him through a red and gleaming eye.
“We know the reason for thy coming, ‘Belthandros Sethennai,’” she said. “Ambitious as ever. We are disappointed in thee.”
“Oh, spare me,” said Belthandros, taking the cutter up and back, out of reach of those great teeth. “How long have you known what you are, Your Highness?”
“We awoke with thee,” she said. “We are Iriskavaal’s loyal handmaid, and thou art a pretender to an incarnation that thou didst not deserve.”
Not just words now but images, scrawling themselves viciously across Shuthmili’s brain, burning as they went.
—In a room high above the city, Belthandros opened a rosewood box—in a cave far beneath the desert, Atharaisse opened her mouth to scream—in the lost and distant reaches of the worlds, after the sleep of centuries, many eyes opened in darkness, and all the scattered fragments of Iriskavaal saw the world anew—
“We know of thy dealings with the Siren, and not only with her,” said Atharaisse.
Distantly, Shuthmili heard Tal screaming. She clutched her temples, trying to defend herself from the onslaught, but it was impossible to shut them out.
—In a room lit by a single suspended lantern, Belthandros stood before an obelisk of polished stone.
—Deep beneath the glassy surface of a dead world, he searched the wreckage of a fallen monument.
—In other worlds, in sea caves and marshes and barrows, he sought, and found what he was seeking. And he raised his hand to destroy.
“The two of us are not Iriskavaal’s only inheritors, Atharaisse. There are countless other godlings, countless shattered pieces, and all of them are waking. And yes. I have destroyed as many as I could find. I do the world a service. A mercy.”
“So you did kill the Siren,” said Tal.
“Yes,” said Belthandros. “I regret it, as I regret any loss of friendship.”
“Thou needst not lie,” said Atharaisse. “There is no mercy in thee. Thou wishest to complete thy usurpation of my God-Empress’ dominion. Thou wouldst not share power with any other.”
“My dear, the God-Empress is gone. Iriskavaal is dead. You and I are the last embers of a glory that has left the world.”
“Pretender! Scavenger! Desecrator of the dead!” hissed Atharaisse, and launched herself at the cutter again. She had been hanging back deliberately, letting them drift closer, now she struck the gunwale with an impact that overturned the vessel, spinning it end over end like a flipped coin.
Shuthmili saw none of this. Her bones rattled in her sockets with the concussion and the world turned in on itself as she was flung into midair. A flash of sunlight overhead, then green-dark-green as she fell. She hit the surface of the lake and went under.
The water was shockingly cold after hours in the thick warmth of the true deeps. The impact drove the breath from her lungs in a jangling cascade of bubbles, and she took a panicked gulp of lake water before clamping her mouth shut.
She could swim, but not with confidence, and the more she struggled, the heavier her clothes seemed to become. It was too dark to find the surface. Then she felt a strong grip close around her, and she was sure it was the serpent, meaning to crush her or drown her. She kicked and flailed as best she could, but she was so cold and her boots were like weights dragging her down.
Then whatever it was lifted her above the surface, and she took a huge involuntary gasp of breath.
“Shuthmili, stop—it’s me,” said Csorwe. “Hold on—”
The world turned over again, and she had the sensation of being hauled roughly up out of the water, and the next solid thing she knew, she was on the deck of Csorwe’s cutter, coughing her lungs up.
Oranna was standing on the stern, one hand on her hips and one on her staff. “One of you get to the wheel!” she called. Shuthmili felt Csorwe press a kiss to her forehead and saw her throw herself into the cockpit.
Ah. That’s right, thought Shuthmili, spitting out a strand of waterweed. Some kind of fight going on. The others must have arrived on the scene just as Atharaisse struck. But where were Tal and Belthandros?
Cherenthisse crouched beside her, frozen behind a bench. Her eyes were very wide, the red spark in them burning vividly in the half-light.
“Another lives,” she muttered. “No—no…”
That was going to be a problem, but it would have to be a problem for later. There was Belthandros: still at the wheel of his cutter, darting around the serpent’s head as if trying to disorient her. The steering was partly blown. His cutter drifted choppily in the air, and every time it stalled, Atharaisse made another attempt to bite.
“Oh, we should let him die,” murmured Oranna, nearby. She was working up to something. Shuthmili could sense the power building around her like a cloud massing. “How deeply he would deserve it.”
“No!” said Csorwe, but Shuthmili didn’t think she meant Belthandros. Tal was there too, on the stern of the other cutter, the blade of his sword flashing silver in the twilight, as though he himself had become part of the lake. Shuthmili still didn’t know anything about sword fighting, but seeing Tal in action, you realised why he had been born so long and thin and flexible. When he had the blade in his hand, everyday gawkiness was suddenly translated to an unexpected speed and grace. Csorwe fought with brutal precision and efficiency. Tal was a calligrapher.
But even Tal could only do so much in the air, against a monster ten times his size, and Shuthmili could see he was getting desperate.
“Don’t be stupid—” hissed Csorwe. She brought her cutter round at speed, swooping in toward the fight. Cherenthisse yelped and ducked, Shuthmili gripped the bench with both hands, Oranna merely adjusted her footing. They were too late to stop him. Tal sprang from Belthandros’ cutter and landed squarely on the serpent’s head, driving the point of the blade down into her neck.
The serpent shrieked, a crackle of psychic rage that threatened to black out Shuthmili’s vision all over again. The wound didn’t seem to have harmed her—Tal clung to the hilt of his sword as she thrashed from side to side, and then he and the blade were flung wide, arcing up through the air, limbs flailing.
He fell to earth on the shore of the crescent-shaped island, driving up a white blade of spray as he skidded through the shallows and lay still on the sand. He didn’t move.
“Tal!” said Shuthmili. They could reach him in a few moments, but the serpent’s whole body roiled in the water between them.
“The loss of thy friendship I regret also, Pentravesse,” said Atharaisse, in a soft rasp that fizzed like seafoam settling, and she dived toward Belthandros’ cutter with her fangs parted. He gave up on trying to steer away and leapt free of the cutter.
Belthandros hit the surface of the water just before her jaws could close around him, narrowly dodging her bite. She reared back to strike again, raw power in the curve of her neck like a drawn bow, but at the moment of release, something stuck. Knotted coils of mud and weed closed around the serpent’s body, pulling her back and down.
Nearby, Oranna was standing upright, her eyes closed in concentration, her hand braced on her staff. She had done this, but Shuthmili couldn’t see how—
It wasn’t just mud. Swarming up from the lake, thick with silt, draped in pelts of weed, came hundreds of revenants. Intact through long ages, the devotees of the Unspoken who had died in the sacrificial basin returned to serve.
Shuthmili glanced up at Oranna. Her eyes were open now, and bright with glee, her whole expression suffused with exhilaration.
“Nothing is to be forgotten that belongs to me,” she said.
The revenants continued to rise, finding their footing on each other’s ribs and skulls, scrambling up to clutch at Atharaisse in their dozens, making chains of mud and bone to drag her down into the water.
“Such blasphemy,” muttered Cherenthisse, pale with disgust.
There was no sign of Belthandros. In the confusion of the moment, Shuthmili had no idea where he had gone—was he still in the water?
Atharaisse hissed, recoiling. Every thrash of her tail threw off a few bodies, sending them sloshing back into the lake, but there were always more to come, and they were fearless. She lunged toward Csorwe’s cutter, trying to break her focus, but Csorwe dodged easily, and with a mouthful of sludge and fragments of bone, the serpent could not bite.
“Indignity!” howled Atharaisse. “All shall suffer!”
The serpent sank back into the water, dislodging wet skeletons as she went. She darted a single red glare of hatred at Oranna before disappearing beneath the surface. The water closed over her and settled.
Oranna lowered herself carefully back onto the bench, leaning on her staff for balance. The revenants turned to face her, hundreds of them standing up out of the water like reeds.
“Go—” she murmured. “Go, rest…”
As she flopped sideways onto the bench, the revenants dispersed in the water like so much stirred mud.
As soon as it was clear that Atharaisse was gone, at least for now, Csorwe landed the cutter on the shore of the little island and leapt out. Shuthmili and Cherenthisse followed. Tal was still lying facedown on the sand.
“What the fuck was that, Talasseres?” said Csorwe, kneeling beside him and touching his shoulder. “What was the point?”
Shuthmili scrambled down out of the cutter—she would see to Oranna later—and took her place at Tal’s side, pressing a hand lightly between his shoulder blades.
“He’s alive,” she said, “still breathing. Heart beating—I think it’s just a bruised rib.”
“Yeah, no shit I’m alive,” he said, and rolled over onto his back with a groan. “You don’t hurt like this if you’re dead.”
“Nice going,” said Csorwe. “Next time just gut yourself and get it over quicker.”
“Bet I looked cool.”
You looked like a pigeon flying into a window, you dick.”
“Do you need me to look at your rib?” said Shuthmili.
“No, I’ve got loads,” said Tal. “Just let me lie on the ground for a few years, I’ll be fine.”
Shuthmili, Csorwe, and Cherenthisse between them helped Oranna out of the cutter and onto the island. She sat propped against a rock, uncharacteristically limp and silent. By now the water had settled back to stillness, lapping softly against the gravel beach. Everything was very quiet.
“Where’s, uh—what happened?” said Tal.
“Where’s Belthandros, you mean?” said Oranna. The last they had seen of him, he had dived into the lake to escape Atharaisse’s jaws. She withdrew a tin of resin lozenges from her pocket and popped several into her mouth at once. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
Tal’s ears twitched. If not for his rib, Shuthmili was sure he would have been pacing. Csorwe’s nervous tics were less obvious, but unmistakeable if you knew what you were looking for. Her elbows were drawn in tight at her sides to make herself a smaller target, her head bowed slightly as if in fear of falling rocks. Cherenthisse loped up and down behind them, her thoughts clearly turned inward.
“I guess we know who’s been trying to kill him now,” said Csorwe.
“Perhaps,” said Oranna. She shut her eyes and sat back in what was clearly meant to be an attitude of repose, belied by the taut line of her mouth.
“I think we’ve been wrong about that,” said Shuthmili. She explained what she and Tal had witnessed of the conversation between Belthandros and Atharaisse.
“Wait—” said Csorwe. “That was Atharaisse? The snake?”
“No, some other fucking snake,” muttered Tal.
Cherenthisse’s head snapped up. “Atharaisse? The Most High Atharaisse?” she said. “They were all dead—everything was gone—and yet she lives?”
“Apparently so,” said Oranna.
“You would have made a traitor of me,” said Cherenthisse, her eyes widening.
“No—” said Shuthmili. “Listen, who is she? The Most High Atharaisse? You knew her?”
“She is the chosen favourite of Iriskavaal, our princess, the blessed heir to the God-Empress—I cannot explain. You know so little. Your words are inadequate.”
Oranna nodded, a slow smile creeping across her face. “This confirms a great deal. Shuthmili, you will have seen references to the God-Empress in Echentyri literature, I do not doubt?”
Shuthmili nodded. “It’s a title of Iriskavaal.”
“Yes. But I have long suspected that God-Empress is a reference to a specific manifestation of a specific aspect of Iriskavaal. The Throne was her wellspring, but it is difficult to rule an empire as an inanimate object. I think this confirms my theory. We know that one divided part of the goddess became Pentravesse. But I think he was not the first. She also routinely chose one of her subjects as a vessel. A princess, to succeed when the former God-Empress inevitably necrotised under the strain of divinity. Cherenthisse, is that correct?”
Cherenthisse looked as though she had been casually asked to identify the corpse of a loved one. Reluctantly, she nodded.
“So!” said Oranna, delighted. “If I surmise correctly, our friend the Most High Atharaisse was hatched and raised to become a vehicle for the goddess. Perhaps became incarnate around the same time as Belthandros, since they clearly know one another. Does that sound about right?”
Cherenthisse’s lips were drawn back from her teeth in disgust. “These are sacred mysteries.”
“It’s all right, dear, I’m a priestess,” said Oranna.
“I do not have to listen to this,” said Cherenthisse. “You will have no more answers from me.”
She turned her back and strode down to the water’s edge, her shoulders high and tight, moving even more jerkily than usual. Shuthmili would have to talk to her later and smooth things over.
“Perhaps I should not be surprised to find Belthandros and Atharaisse so much at odds,” said Oranna. “My sister was ever my greatest ally—but I suppose not everyone is so lucky.”
“I knew her, too. Atharaisse, I mean,” said Csorwe. As usual, her expression didn’t give much away, but there was something in her eyes which perhaps only Shuthmili recognised, a distant, wounded expression. Csorwe had a special sympathy for those who were born for sacrifice.
“We should talk to her,” said Csorwe. “She saved my life.”
“She can get in line, we’ve all saved your life,” said Tal. “And she’s not interested in saving it anymore. Her and Sethennai were like, you know when a bird sees itself in a mirror?”
“No,” said Csorwe.
“You know what he used to be like, when he was really focused on something,” said Tal. “Like nothing else even existed.”
Csorwe grunted in what Shuthmili took to be assent.
“Like that, but two of them,” said Tal.
“I suppose that explains why she wants Belthandros dead,” said Shuthmili. “But she hasn’t been destroying the other fragments of Iriskavaal. That was him.”
“I told you he was up to something,” said Tal.
“And Atharaisse is here to try and stop him?” said Csorwe, hopefully. “We might be on the same side.”
Shuthmili suppressed the urge to gather Csorwe up in her arms. There was nobody in the world who felt the smallest kindness the way Csorwe did. This Atharaisse had been slightly nice to her ten years ago, and won a friend for all time.
“Possibly,” said Oranna. “Or else they’re both here looking for something else, and she doesn’t want him to get there first.” She popped another lozenge and chewed it thoughtfully. The smell of the resin was penetrating and surprisingly familiar. Shuthmili only now recognised it as black lotus, a hallucinogen employed by the cult of the Unspoken. “I don’t think I like that idea very much.”
“Well,” said Shuthmili. “We came here to find Belthandros. We’ve found him. What now?”
Nobody responded. Shuthmili looked from one to another, finding Csorwe startled, Tal stricken, Oranna feigning amusement. This seemed disproportionate to what she’d actually said.
“My ears are burning,” said Belthandros. She spun round to find him standing ankle deep in the shallows, looking exactly as a person might look had they walked out of a lake: soaked to the skin, trailing waterweed, and not very amused by the situation.
“You’re bleeding,” said Csorwe, sharp with alarm, as if the years had fallen away all at once. Shuthmili reached out to take her arm, but she’d taken a step toward Belthandros.
He looked down, frowning, as if she’d told him his waistcoat had come undone. His shirt was dark red, and the stain was spreading.
“Careless of you, dear,” said Oranna. Her expression was a carefully composed blank, empty and unblinking as a clean dinner plate.
“Ah. Just as well I can’t die,” he said, and fainted.