CHAPTER XLIII

All that way, to have found—whatever it was he had found. If Kaeo were only a passing pleasure for the youngest of the queens of Darru and Lathi, even that was enough, though he would rather it were more. Kaeo thought it might be more. But all that way, to die at the hands of imperial soldiers at last, when he had found his god . . .

That was the shape of a poem, but it was not truth. He had found the god, the heir of Nabban, and the god had not, in the end, been his. He had come to understand that on the road north. His heart, his soul, had known it, even on the night he sang with Rat against the typhoon.

“Thank you,” the god had said. For what? For acting as the devil’s messenger and carrying the yellow-haired man’s weapons back to him.

Thank you. Like a dismissal. Releasing him. Not for fetching that sword along, but for all that went before. Not for what the dying gods had done to him, witting or unwitting. For what he had tried to do, for the Traditionalists, for Prince Dan. For trying, even if he had failed. Kaeo felt that. He understood it. Thank you, for being willing to die. Not for godhead, but for what mattered. For what was right.

He was not Nabban’s. He was given to himself, to give himself where he would.

You’re mine, Rat had said, more than once, and whispered it with something like surprise the first time they lay together. He hoped there was not some man back in Darru and Lathi who thought he had an understanding with the youngest queen, and that her sisters did not decide his skull would look better on a royal doorpost.

Except . . .

Little Sister, Nabban named her.

He was not a fool. She had said she was not a wizard.

He leaned against her back, and she looked over her shoulder.

“Mine,” he said. “Even if you grow up to be a tigress.”

She snorted laughter. No denial.

“Someday,” she said. “Maybe. When I am old, I will go to the river. Until then, I am only your queen and a priestess of a goddess who was and may yet be.” Her Anlau voice, he called it in his mind. An accent of the south, a formality. Rat’s grin. “And whatever else you think I might happen to be. The queens live celibate, you know, but I am—not counted quite in the traditional pattern.”

A kiss, awkward, she twisting far to meet him.

Not a fool, and wise enough to know he was a danger to her, clinging to her belt, spy, queen, goddess that might be . . . wife? He was liable to fall off this tall horse and take Rat with him.

“Let me down,” he said. “I’ll only be a danger to you and fall off and get trampled. I’ll stand by the priest.”

And what that old unarmed man was doing here, rather than left with the reserve at the river commanded by Prince Dan, he did not understand. Rat hesitated. Then she nodded, seized his arm to steady him as he slithered down. The old priest clapped him on the shoulder.

He looked up at her and found Rat still looking down, her eyes gone . . . remote, and wide, and glistening. Seeing . . . What he saw, reflected in her eyes. He swallowed, and blinked, their hands still caught together.

Thank you, the god had said.

He let her go.