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“HELLS NO. THREATEN all you want, but I'm not hunting down a killer. You are out of your fucking mind.” Scowling, I smacked my cane down on the temple’s marble floor for emphasis. Morno was not impressed.
“You forget who it is you're speaking to, Lhiewyn.”
“Oh, sorry. You're out of your fucking mind, Lord Governor. I'm so old that having a proper piss is the greatest accomplishment of my week, and you want me to catch a murderer? No, no, hells no, and fuck your horse for bringing you here to suggest it no. Don't you have hundreds of uniformed idiots for this sort of thing? Or did you finally disband the city watch for gross incompetence?”
Morno stared at me for what seemed forever, face impassive. Shifted in the creaky old petitioner’s chair. Finally, he spoke.
“Gods, you must have been a deadly swordsman when you were younger.”
“Come again?”
“It's the only possible explanation for how you made it to a ripe old age. With a mouth such as yours, surely people have been trying to kill you since you were old enough to duel. And yet you're still here.”
“I was fair with a blade. I was better with my brain.”
“Which is why I am here, you cantankerous pustule. I don't expect you to hunt down the murderer yourself. Just look at what evidence has been gathered. See if you can pick out anything the watch might have missed. Then, when you're finished, apologize to my horse.”
“Your horse can lick my scrawny ass, Hartreid. I keep doing all these favors for you, and they keep almost killing me. Now you want me to catch a gods-damned murderer!”
“They aren’t favors. They’re your civic duty. Whether you like it or not – hells, whether I like it or not – you are the high priest of one of the recognized religions in the kingdom. The position comes with certain responsibilities, including offering advice and assistance to your king and his duly authorized representatives when requested. It just so happens that I am duly authorized. Lord governors usually are, you know.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You just pulled that out of your ass.”
“Do you think so? I wager you didn’t read the fine print in the last grant of renewal for the temple’s tax exemption, then.” He smiled that small ‘fuck you’ smile he has when he’s got you by the balls, and I knew he wasn’t bluffing.
“My ‘advice’ is to go and bugger yourself, Hartreid. Sadly, that would preclude me ‘assisting’ you.”
“Lhiewyn, I know you’ve got a long, long lifetime’s experience in people hating you, but that’s been a face-to-face affair. I, on the other hand, am hated by most of the largest city on the Dragonsea, and have been for decades. And do you know why?”
“I don’t give a runny shit.”
“Because I make people do what’s best for the greater good, and I don’t accept excuses. You’re old enough to remember what Lucernis was like before I came.”
“As a matter of fact, I do remember those halcyon days. Not a single person asking me to fight shit demons, get kidnapped by Chagans, or hunt down murderers. Good times, those.”
He stood up from the battered petitioner’s table and pulled his riding gloves out from where he’d tucked them in his belt. “I’ll send Kluge to see you about the situation. And Lhiewyn, if you don’t start reading and responding to my letters, I’m going to invent new ordinances, taxes and fines that mysteriously, in practice, apply only to Lagna’s temple until you do. I’m not coming here every time I have something to discuss.”
“Dead gods, what an asshole you are, Hartreid.”
He smiled. “Indeed. It’s worth keeping in mind.” The bastard was actually whistling as he walked out into what passes for a Lucernan winter’s morning.
“Master Lhiewyn?” Jessep called from the stacks.
“What do you want, youngling?”
“Is it really wise to talk to the lord governor the way you do?”
“Start as you mean to continue, and continue as you mean to finish. That’s my advice, lad.”
“You know he has people hanged. It’s a weekly occurrence.”
“Yes, well, I’ve been told more than once that hanging is too good for me, so I’ll take my chances.”
~ ~ ~
“INSPECTOR KLUGE. I’D say it’s nice to see you, but I’m too old to bother with transparent lies.” Less than an hour had passed since Morno’d darkened the temple’s door. Kluge really must be desperate, I thought.
“Revered, unpleasant to see you as always. But I haven’t been an inspector for almost two years.”
“Finally got that demotion you’ve been bucking for, eh?”
Kluge has quite deep-set eyes. He got damn-near his whole thumb into the orbit of his right eye, trying to rub away the headache that is me. He probably would have used his left hand too, but that was taken up with holding a sheaf of papers bound in a black ribbon.
Of course I knew he was watch commander now. But I was intent on making him tell me, for no other reason than he seemed to expect me to know and acknowledge it. It really was a no-win situation for him. If he insisted on the correct title, he looked petty. If he didn’t, well, he got what he was getting now.
After a few seconds of trying to gouge his own eye out, he dropped the sheaf of papers on the nearest petitioner’s table and undid the ribbon. We both sat. As he started spreading papers out, it became painfully obvious that whoever had written them had only a passing familiarity with penmanship. Or spelling.
“Before I subject my aged eyes to that scrawl, why don’t you just sum up what it is that has the watch coming to me for assistance?”
“Not that it was my idea to see you, but as you wish. First, there’s a killer loose, as you already know. Second, the victims at each crime scene had nothing to do with the victims at the other locations. Third, they were all found posed, clasping a night lily in their hands.”
“Night lilies aren’t exactly common,” I observed.
“You don’t say,” he drawled. “Perhaps that might even be a clue?”
“Don’t be pissy, Kluge. It wasn’t my idea to get involved in this any more than it was yours.”
He let out a small sigh. “As you say, revered. Fourth, we’ve managed to put together a timeline of sorts. The first killing was on the night of the new moon, almost five months ago. A cobbler, murdered in bed. The second event was a double murder, two washerwomen right in the wash-yard they worked in, also on a new moon. The next was four stumbling-drunk dockmen in a back alley. Again, new moon. The latest was, you will not be surprised to hear, also on a new moon, the last one. Eight theater-goers, in a carriage, leaving the Clarion. Young dandies all packed in to the hack, boisterous and gay by all accounts. They were all minor nobility or sons of merchant houses.”
“And it wasn’t the driver that did it.”
“Impossible. He’s almost as old as you, and crabbed up with arthritis. They got in the carriage at the Clarion, giving directions to the Promenade, and somewhere between thither and hence they were all murdered without the driver hearing a thing. He’s half-deaf, though.” He gave a small shrug.
“I imagine those eight deaths were what set the investigation rolling.”
“Now what makes you say that?”
“The death of cobblers, washerwomen and dockmen don’t excite the same level of attention as scions of the wealthy and powerful, now do they?”
He gave me a hard look. “You can think what you like, Lhiewyn, but the fact is, sadly, the murder of a single cobbler is not such an unusual thing, nor that of a pair of washerwomen, nor even a double-brace of dockmen. That’s just the sort of world we live in. Beyond the night-lilies, there was nothing terribly unusual about their deaths. Eight people murdered in a carriage without attracting any attention is unusual.”
“And the fact that their powerful, well-connected families must be baying for blood hasn’t motivated you in the slightest, I’m sure.”
“Again, believe what you like. I’m here to see if you have anything useful to offer the investigation, not defend myself or the watch. The next new moon is in three days, and that’ll be sixteen deaths if the killer keeps doubling his kill-count. But by all means, keep being a prick instead of lending a hand.”
Dead gods, but I hated to admit, even to myself, that he was right. But he was. “Fine, fine. Tell me how they died.”
“They were all heart-stabbed. Going by the wound, the killer uses a stiletto or something very similar. Narrow, double-edged blade, eight or nine inches long. A single thrust in every case. His aim is unerring.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. Well, as best I could. Age had not been kind to my fingers.
“You’re a mage. Any sign of the art? There had to be magic at work in that carriage, at least.”
“No-one thought to look for it in the first three instances. By the time someone did, any trace had already dissipated. As for the carriage, yes, it stank of magic, but no the art.”
“Blood magic?”
“No.”
“Daemon-taint, then.”
“No.”
I looked him in the eye. His face was impassive.
“Go on and say it, then.”
“I have never before sensed any such magical residue as was present in the carriage.”
“Kluge, there’s only one other kind of magic.”
“That we know of.”
“Piss on that. If what you sensed wasn’t the power of a mage, a blood witch or a daemonist, that leaves only one thing.”
The power of a god.
Kluge blinked, and was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was low and tight. “I choose to believe there is another explanation, revered, because I do not know how to hold a deity to account for crimes committed.”
And just like that, all the fun went out of baiting him. Kluge never admitted he might be out of his depth. His admission of inadequacy to the task in front of him made me feel like an ass. I’m well aware that I am one, mind you, but I rarely feel bad about it. That day I did.
“Well, I suppose we’d better start by seeing what sort of connotations night lilies have with murder and death,” I told him. “And if it leads to some god, you’ll just have to accept the fact.” I worked my way out of the chair and he stood as well.
“I assume these are for me to keep?” I asked him, motioning towards the papers he’d brought.
He nodded. “When will I hear from you?”
“Come back in the morning if I haven’t sent a message.” He started to speak, and I held up a hand. “I know, time is short, three days to the next new moon. Jessep and I won’t dawdle.”
“My thanks, revered.”
I grunted. I didn’t want his thanks. I wanted him to go back to being a self-satisfied, smug bastard so that I could go back to pricking holes in his inflated sense of self-worth.
Some days you don’t get what you want.
“Jessep!”
“Master?”
“Come transcribe this chicken scratch into something legible for me. And feel free to summarize. I’ve no desire to subject myself to the watch’s idea of formal language.”
“I live to serve,” the boy replied, making his way forward from the stacks.
I snorted. “If only that were true. If you need me I’ll be in the stacks, looking up night lilies and the connection between the new moon and murder.” Neither Jessep nor I bothered to pretend he hadn’t been eavesdropping.
Jessep arrived at the petitioner’s table and picked up the first page of Kluge’s report. A look of horror flitted across his face as he scanned it.
“That awful, is it?”
“Dead gods! Who taught this monster how to spell?”
“No one, obviously. Have fun with that.”
~ ~ ~
I CHASED LEADS AND references until nightfall. By then I’d amassed dozens of scrolls and manuscripts at the reference desk, making notes as I went. Jessep had finished his unpleasant task while there was still light in the sky, but he knew better than to break my concentration. He made himself silently available to collect anything too heavy or too high for me to get at, and as night fell, he set about lighting the lamps and preparing a cold meal. It wasn’t often that he and I had such a paper-chase, but when it did happen, he really was a faultless acolyte. Not that I’d ever give him the satisfaction of telling him, virtue being its own reward.
Finally, I exhausted every reference and source. I doubted there was anything else to glean from the reports, Kluge being not a complete blithering idiot, but I’d see what I would see. There might be a second round of research. After a meal and some wine.
I tossed the last scroll on the desk and stretched my aching shoulders as well as I could. My leg was on fire, but no amount of stretching was going to alleviate that. I sat down heavily on the reference desk chair and let out a sigh.
“Food, master?”
“And wine. There’s a good lad.”
He brought a plate of cold roast beef and half a loaf of brown bread, along with a bottle, and then perched himself on one of the rack-ladders that were attached to the shelves. Normally I’d’ve scolded him for that, but piss on it.
“So,” I said around a mouth of bread and meat, “anything worth reading in the reports?”
“You’ll read it for yourself, of course, master, but the only thing that jumped out at me in that abominable misuse of ink and paper had to do with the first death. The cobbler.”
“Go on, Jessep. I’m really not getting any younger.”
“Did Commander Kluge tell you where they found the body?”
“In bed.”
“Did he say where that bed was?”
“Spit it out. I can see you think you’ve found something interesting.”
“The Crack’d Tower,” Jessep said, eyes alight.
I forgot to chew for a moment.
“How the hells did he forget to mention that? I take back all the times I took back all the bad things I said about Kluge,” I said. “He really is a moron.”
“Actually, you’ve never taken back anything you said about him,” Jessep informed me.
“Well that just goes to show how good a judge of character I am.”
The Crack’d Tower. Eight stories of black basalt right in the heart of the Spindles. More than three centuries before, it had been the sanctum of a powerful mage named Feklin. Of course he’d been an evil fuck; with a name like that, how could he be otherwise? The neighborhood had grown weary of children going missing, so the story went, and had pooled their resources to hire another mage to make Feklin dead. One assumes the watch was just as useless then as it was now. The ensuing duel had killed both mages, and cracked the tower in the process. The Tower still stood, riven though it was, and its reputation had not softened over the centuries. Mams still threatened to lock misbehaving kids in it, at any rate.
It seemed like something Kluge should have mentioned.
“All right,” I told Jessep, “that’s something worth noting. What else?”
“The watch has been very busy trying to find where the night lilies came from, to no avail. Nobody sells them, either in the market or on the black market. Reading between the lines, the watch has made itself really unwelcome with flower sellers, herbalists and apothecaries across the city these last couple of weeks. The search continues.”
“And there’s really no connection between the victims?”
“Not from one murder scene to the next, no. Nothing they’ve been able to uncover, at least.” He shifted on the ladder, which wasn’t exactly built for comfort. “And you, master? What have you discovered?”
“Nothing pleasant.” I looked at the mass of primary and secondary sources piled on the desk in front of me. “Fifty-three references to night lilies. When I cross-reference them in connection to death, it becomes forty-seven. With murder, we’re down to eighteen. And every single one of those eighteen, directly or indirectly, has to do with Nematos.”
“Nematos? Who’s that?”
“The god of murder.”
“That’s, uh, not good.”
“Well, he’s supposed to be chained up until the end of the world.”
“Maybe he escaped?”
“He certainly wasn’t let out for good behavior. Apparently one of the few things all the gods agreed upon was how much they hated Nematos’s guts.”
Jessep scratched at the stubble on his scalp. “You don’t think it’s really a murder god murdering people, do you?”
“I sure as fuck hope not, lad. Every time he murders, he gets stronger, more powerful. Every time he murders he doubles his body-count. You do the math. If Nematos was left to his own devices, everyone in the world would be dead in a few years. That’s why they locked him up and destroyed the key. Pray it’s some mad imposter doing all the murdering and not the real thing.”
Jessep’s face had lost some color, contemplating my words. He gave a small shudder. “That’s me not sleeping tonight,” he muttered.
“How fortuitous, since I need you to write out a report for Kluge detailing everything we just discussed. With proper citations, mind you. Show those barely literate bastards how it’s done, lad.”
Jessep gave me a stare that was less than adoring. “I suppose you’re off to bed, though, master.”
“Actually, no. I need to pay a call at Bath’s temple.”
I waited for him to ask why, but he didn’t oblige. So I filled in the rest for him.
“I’d tell you why, but it’s a secret. Heh.”
Stone-faced silence. He didn’t even groan.
“Because Bath is the god of secrets? Do you not have a sense of humor, whelp?”
“That joke is older than you, master.”
“That joke is evergreen, boy!”
He just looked at me with a sort of mild expression of pity on his face, but I chose to take his silence as agreement. I harrumphed and worked my way out of the chair.
“Oh, master?”
“What?”
“The murder god. Every time he kills, he leaves a night lily on the corpse. And every time he kills, he kills twice as many as the previous time.”
“That’s the size of it.”
“So assuming he’s left unchecked for a long time, where would he go about getting millions of night lilies?”
I stopped to consider. “That may or may not be a good question, but it’s definitely one I have no answer to. Try and think of some more like that while I’m gone. Who knows what might help. And when you’re done writing out my research notes, write a message to Kluge telling him to take us round to the Crack’d Tower in the morning. Then take the whole mess to the local watch station and tell them to make sure it gets to Kluge tonight.”
“I live to serve,” he said once more, in a tone that suggested he was trying to convince himself of the fact.
~ ~ ~
BATH’S TEMPLE WAS JUST a few dozen yards down the Street of the Gods, but it was almost like entering another world. Power throbbed from the stones of the building, for those with the ability to sense it. Unlike Lagna’s temple, no speck of grime or graffiti besmirched Bath’s unassuming edifice, and no beggars had to be chased away from the front steps – which in Lucernis could only be attributed to magic. Such was the difference between the temple of a living god and a dead one.
I made my painful way up Bath’s steps, cursing my dead leg and general decrepitude. When I got to the top of the stairs, one of his sewn-lipped, shaven-headed priests was waiting. She bowed respectfully and opened the massive but unadorned temple door, letting a heavy, musky incense drift out into the night. I nodded and hobbled inside.
The interior of Bath’s temple was never the same twice. Bath always knew why you’d come. Where you ended up, how you got there, and who you saw – if anyone – was all determined by the purpose of your visit, and how Bath felt about it. Most temple-goers went straight to the Chapel of Secrets to unburden themselves.
I was not most temple-goers, so I followed a lamp-lit corridor that terminated in a snug little room inhabited by two comfy chairs and a fragile scrap of a table with a teapot on it. There was only one cup.
I worked my way down into one of the chairs by degrees. When the creaking and cursing had subsided another door – which had not been there a moment before – opened and Bath’s high priest entered. Like all Bath’s priests, his name was a secret. Like all Bath’s priests, his mouth was sewn shut. Unlike all of Bath’s other priests, his robes were sable instead of gray, which was the only way you knew he was the high priest.
He nodded, sat in the other chair, and poured tea for me. Then proceeded to stare at me with keen, intelligent eyes while I sipped.
It’s a delicate thing, dealing with an organization whose whole reason for being is the keeping of secrets. Professional courtesy gets you only so far. If I just came straight out and asked whether Nematos was loose and murdering folks, I’d most likely only get a bland, if somewhat disgusting smile as a reply. There was a certain quid pro quo expected if I wanted information from Bath and his minions. To get, I had to give, and that wasn’t particularly easy considering these secret-mongers knew a hell of a lot. Giving them something trade-worthy was a challenge. On the other hand, sometimes what they’d accept in trade was, to any normal person, ridiculously unimportant.
I finished the cup, set it down, and said “Shall we begin, then?”
Bath’s high priest made a little open-handed gesture inviting me to start.
“I need to know if Nematos is really free and murdering folks.”
He made a sort of ‘all right, then’ gesture.
“Well, let’s see. Did you know that King Orvo II only had one testicle?”
His eyebrows scrunched up in a put-upon expression, as if I’d offered him a rotting fish in exchange for a pearl.
“Fine, fine. How about this, then: the Kharthrd folio is no longer able to banish demons.”
He mimed a yawn, the bastard. Then he pulled a thin strip of paper from his sleeve and passed it to me. My master requires something of a more personal nature, it read.
That raised my hackles.
“Oh, Bath wants personal information, does he? Well how about this: I happen to know that your master has a sibling. That’s quite personal, and not at all common knowledge, is it? I wonder why. Maybe I should start asking around, so I can figure out why Bath doesn’t want anyone to know that—”
The high priest raised his hand to cut me off. He was stone-faced. He pulled another strip of paper from his cuff.
Tsk. Threats are unbecoming of a high priest.
“And what exactly would lead you to believe I give a pox-ridden fuck about what’s becoming of a high priest? That’s a serious question, but the way.”
One last slip of paper appeared from his sleeve.
You make a good point. The answer to your question is yes, Nematos has escaped His captivity.
When I looked up from the note, Bath’s priest had vanished.
~ ~ ~
KLUGE CAME ROUND AT an abysmally early hour to collect us, banging on the temple’s door before first light. I would have complained about the lost sleep, but he had obviously not slept at all. He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and the flesh around his deep-set eyes was dark and unhealthy. The powers that be must really have been holding his feet to the fire.
“If you’d mentioned one of the murders took place in the Crack’d Tower yesterday, we wouldn’t have to be up at this gods-forsaken hour,” I told him.
“If I’d thought it important, I would have,” he replied. “That tower has a nasty reputation, but it hasn’t stopped vagrants from dossing down there for decades, at least. There’s nothing of magic left there, revered.”
“Dark places attract dark things, Kluge. It would not surprise me if Nematos started there because of its history.”
“If it is Nematos.”
“Bath says it is.”
He blanched at that. “When did you speak to Bath?” he asked.
“I popped round to his temple last night. And I talked to his high priest, not the god himself. But the information came from Bath.”
“What exactly did Bath say?”
“He said Nematos has escaped his confinement.”
“That’s not the same as saying Nematos is doing the killings,” Kluge said, but it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it.
“You hold on to that fine distinction, Kluge, if it gives you comfort. Now let’s go have a look at the Tower, and then get some food. Jessep gets cranky as all hells when he skips breakfast.”
The ride out to the Spindles was quick, if brutally jolting. Kluge sat in the carriage with us, while two watchmen sat up front, one handling the team and the other ringing a clanging hand-bell to clear what traffic there was that early.
“You read the report I sent?” I asked Kluge.
“I did. It was... thorough.”
“Damned right it was,” Jessep muttered.
“Anything useful?” I asked.
“Did it include information on how to find or capture a god of murder?” Kluge asked.
“You know it didn’t.”
“Then its usefulness was not immediately apparent.”
“Kluge, what do you know about gods?”
“What everyone does, I suppose.”
“Which means not fucking much. So let me give you a little information pertinent to your investigation. First, gods have no fixed address. They’re not even required to stay on this plane of existence. They may feel a particular affinity towards a specific place, or person, or group, but they do not have homes, not even those with temples.
“Second, they have no need for food or sleep. You’re not going to be able to stake out a god’s favorite chop house or flophouse in case he turns up of an evening.
“Third, there are only four things that will even inconvenience a god, should you manage to track one down. The first is another god. The second is an artifact created by another god. The third is a demon lord. The fourth is an artifact created by one of the Archmages who lived before the Cataclysm. That’s the situation we find ourselves in. The sooner you stop beating the bushes for some crazed but mortal killer, the sooner you’ll have a chance, however small, to deal with the real threat.”
Kluge raked his fingers through his short hair, then stared out the window at gray streets for a time. The stress was etching its way into his long, horse-like face with amazing speed. I almost felt sorry for him.
“You need to inform Morno,” I told him. “He needs to appeal to the Crown. Somewhere in Coroune, I’m sure, there’s a vault. In that vault there’ll be a strongbox, and in that strongbox, there’ll be an artifact whose existence is known only to a select few because its power is so devastating.”
“You know that for a fact, do you?”
“Call it an educated guess, leavened with fervent hope. The gods created lots of weapons with which to kill each other during their wars, and not a few were left lying on this battlefield or that. Somehow such things always find their way to the high and mighty.”
“Even if you’re right, and assuming I’m not dismissed from my command on suspicion of insanity, and even if we found a way to force the killer into the open, no help would arrive before the next round of murders. Or perhaps even the one after that,” Kluge said.
The carriage pulled up at the Crack’d Tower just then, sparing me the necessity of a dismal reply.
Jessep helped me out of the carriage, and I took a gander at the surroundings. I’d seen more pleasant rubbish heaps.
The structure itself was a good forty feet in diameter and eight stories high, an oblong of black stone that did not blend in the slightest with its surroundings. The crack it was named for was visible on the southern face of the tower, running from the foundations to perhaps halfway up the length of the tower. At its base, the crack was wide enough to stick a fist in, though it narrowed as it climbed.
The Crack’d Tower stood in the center of a weed- and refuse-choked lot that was easily an acre. It was a testament to the place’s dark history that no one had tried to claim the land; the Spindles was the heart of industry in Lucernis, and every square inch of it was devoted to the making of goods. And money, of course. For this place to stand, unencroached-upon, for three centuries was extraordinary. From what I could tell, even the businesses that bordered the cursed lot were of the less savory neighbor sort – tanneries, dyers and at least one pitch maker, if the stench of urine, chemicals and tar was anything to go by.
“This way, revered,” Kluge prodded me, motioning to the tower.
“I know which damned way the tower is, Kluge. It’s nearly as big as your sense of self-importance, and equally hard to miss.” I hate being interrupted when I’m wool-gathering.
“Don’t mind him, commander,” Jessep said. “He’s just cranky because he rushed off and didn’t get his morning tipple.” He took hold of my arm and started me towards the tower.
“Gods know I need something to make you bearable of a morning, boy. If there’s anything more repulsive than a morning person, I haven’t come across it yet.”
The doorway was missing its door. We paused inside for a moment, to let our eyes adjust to the gloom, and our noses adjust to the stench. Urine, shit, vomit, pissed-on cookfires, stale beer and wine, rotting food – the interior of the tower was an odious assault.
“The reason I saw no need to highlight the first murder’s location is that vagrants have inhabited the tower, off and on, for decades. The discovery of corpses here isn’t a shocking occurrence.”
“Where was the body found?” I asked.
“At the top level.”
“Fucking hells. Of course it was. Lead on, Kluge.”
A set of basalt steps was built into the wall on the left. There was no hand rail. Kluge called forth a mage light and led the way, and Jessep kept close behind me, ready to haul me back if I looked to be in danger of going over the side.
Each floor above ground level boasted one room, with an opening at the center of the floor and ceiling forming a shaft from the bottom to the top. For ventilation, I supposed, but then who could know with certainty what the hells a mage really does anything for? He certainly hadn’t provided any safety features to keep people from falling to their deaths, either on the stairs or around the shaft.
Eventually we made it to the top floor, at a considerable cost to my energy, comfort and mood. Kluge brightened his mage light to augment the natural light that filtered in from the hole in the center of the roof, and Jessep dragged over a chair whose back was in splinters for me to have a rest on. I scanned the room while my lungs slowly stopped thinking they were dying by torture. It was a dismal little room, windowless and airless, with a darkly stained mattress in one corner and a cracked chamber pot in another, and fuck-all else.
Kluge was considerate enough to wait for my wheezing to subside before he said what was on his mind.
“I’ve been over this room, thoroughly, both with my mundane senses and with magesight. What is it you think I might have missed, revered?”
“I honestly don’t know, Kluge. Anything, everything, nothing. When you looked before, it was with the assumption that the killer was mortal, if unnatural. Now that you have to at least consider it was Nematos, look again. Why would he choose this place to start up his monthly death count once more?”
“The original occupant was a murderer, wasn’t he?” Jessep asked.
“Yes,” Kluge replied. “Feklin the Mad murdered children by the score here.”
“Why? Was he a daemonist?”
“No,” Kluge told him. “I’ve never heard it said he did it for any reason other than that he liked doing it. He was just a monster.”
Jessep’s question made a tiny little bell go off deep in the recesses of my mind.
“Kluge, was Feklin a Lucernan by birth?”
“I’m not his biographer, revered, but I don’t believe so. He was a foreigner, as I recall.”
“He wouldn’t happen to have come from Imria, would he?”
“I can’t say for sure. It’s possible.”
“Is there a way to the roof?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because it used to be Imrian practice to dedicate temples by inscribing the name of the god it was dedicated to at the highest point of the structure.”
Kluge frowned. “I’ll need your chair, revered.”
I stood, with Jessep’s help. “You’ll need Jessep as well,” I said to Kluge.
“What for?”
“Can you read Old Imrian? Because he can. Also, he just loves climbing about on rooftops. I can barely keep him off the temple’s roof most days, I tell you. He’s like a mountain goat.”
Kluge looked at me dubiously. Jessep looked at me murderously.
“Well go on.”
Kluge dragged the chair over to a corner of the room and stood on it. He muttered some magely cant, arms raised, and one of the slabs in the ceiling gave a groan. He made a waving gesture, and the stone slid away, revealing more gray winter sky.
Kluge sprang up and got hold of the edge, then levered himself through the hole with difficulty. Then he turned around and put a hand down to help Jessep through as well.
Just as Jessep’s sandaled feet disappeared, I heard something from the lower levels of the tower. I took a cautious step towards the shaft to look down.
I didn’t see who pushed me. It was just a hand in the dark, slammed right between my shoulder blades. One moment I was standing on the edge of the shaft at the core of the Crack’d Tower, and the next I was falling to my death. I didn’t even have time to curse.
And then suddenly I wasn’t falling. No more death breeze ruffling the wisps of hair I had left. In fact, judging from the strangely frozen look of my robes, and the frozen state of my body, time itself had suddenly stopped. My cane, suspended in midair near my head, was another clue. Experimentally, I tried to clear my throat. It worked. Naturally, cursing came next.
“Gorm on a stick. All right, who’s there?”
The gloom of the shaft coalesced, part shadow and part ink in water, and not really either of those things. A face emerged, dusky bronze with eyes like bright stars. A sharpish nose. A mouth sewn shut.
“Oh, it’s you,” I sniffed. “What the fuck do you want, secret-monger?”
“Aren’t you surprised it isn’t the murder god?” he asked.
“No. He gets his jollies with a knife, not a shove from behind. What do you want?”
“You seem to be in a predicament. I thought you might appreciate a little help.”
“What’d be really helpful is if you hid that mouth of yours. It’s just a brutal offense to my eyeballs.”
Some advice when dealing with gods who want to do you a favor: Never give the bastards an inch. Never admit you owe them anything, or they will own you.
“Is it a custom of yours to insult someone who offers aid?” Bath asked. “It seems rather self-defeating.”
“I’m an old man. It’s my privilege to be insulting to anyone, any time.”
“Old as you are, you are still an infant in terms of the elevated,” he said.
“Well, all you gods are eternal children. Emotionally, you’re toddlers who don’t mind stooping to war, plague, famine or worse when you don’t get what you want. Which is my polite way of telling you to go fuck yourself, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I don’t actually care.”
“I know.”
“You realize you’re perilously close to making my point for me, don’t you?”
“Am I?”
“Fucking hells. What do you want, Bath?”
“At the moment, I want to make sure you don’t break all those fragile bones of yours. It’s rather a long fall, and the landing is... unyielding.”
“Oh, thanks for that astute observation. Just get to the offer.”
“Offer?”
“You’re about to make me an offer I can’t refuse. You know it and I know it. So make it already.”
“All right. I save you from being shattered, and you keep certain information regarding the identity of the killer to yourself.”
“Yeah, fuck you.”
“It was worth a try.”
“It was a piss-poor try.”
“All right then, save yourself. But then how are you going to explain your lack of being dead? It seems to me it’s getting increasingly hard for you to keep your secret.”
“Meh. I’ll just say you saved me.”
“Now that’s just needlessly convoluted.”
“No, convoluted is you pushing me from a great height in order to save me, in order to blackmail me into not telling anyone that your bug-fuck crazy sibling has broken his chains and is intent on gaining his powers back so he can reassume the mantle of the god of murder. At which point he’ll literally have murdered every living soul, by the by. How am I doing on my wild-sounding yet eerily accurate assumptions?”
He smiled that sickening smile of his. “Pretty well. Not perfect, but not bad.”
“What did I get wrong, then?”
“Why would I care if you told anyone? It isn’t as if there’s a mortal in this city who could stop him, even if you make them aware of the situation. Even if they believe you.”
“You just said you wanted me to keep the killer’s identity a secret.”
“Not exactly.”
“You’re giving me a headache, Bath. Do you care if people know the murder god is loose on the streets of Lucernis or not?”
“I do not. I prefer that no-one knows he is my brother, however.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s a matter of public record.”
“And you are the record-keeper. No-one in these latter days remembers my connection to him except you.”
“Gorm on a stick. I think you’re embarrassed of him, not that you shouldn’t be. On the other hand, you’re the fucking god of secrets. It’s in every particle of your being to keep things in the dark. So who knows what your motive really is.”
He stopped smiling. Those starlight eyes of his got a little brighter. “Lhiewyn det Sardeth, I am the god of secrets, and I know you far better than you will ever know me.”
“Well then you know I’m getting a little sick of floating here, with my robes practically up around my waist. Maybe you get your jollies seeing my hairy old balls exposed, but it’s not really what I consider fun. And fine, I won’t tell anyone who the killer’s big brother is.”
“Have a nice landing, then,” he said, and disappeared. Time unfroze. I plummeted.
“Asshooooo-”
Bath had arranged for two especially thick mattresses to appear at the bottom of the shaft, stained and smelling convincingly of cat piss, vomit, and other, less savory fluids. I was quite sure they hadn’t been there when we entered.
I landed on my back, at just about the only possible angle that kept me from breaking any limbs. The landing still hurt like hells, but all I suffered was a few bruised ribs, and a cracked tooth and a mouth full of blood when my jaw snapped shut on the impact. Kluge and Jessep agreed, when they reached me, that it was a miracle I hadn’t ended up in worse shape. Jessep was uncharacteristically solicitous, helping me into the carriage with special gentleness, and fetching clean water for me to rinse my mouth out. Kluge, on the other hand, fixed me with those deep-set eyes of his, and his entire expression seemed to say he knew there was more to the story than me tripping, and falling, and fortuitously landing on a pair of mattresses. He probably knew that they hadn’t been there when we’d entered as well as I did.
Kluge wasn’t stupid. He was just well out of his depth.
“Did you find an inscription?” I wheezed as we rolled and clattered back to the Street of the Gods. My battered ribs made it painful to breathe, but it wasn’t like there was an alternative.
“We did,” Kluge answered.
“Well? What did it say?”
Kluge kept his mouth stubbornly shut, so after a moment Jessep answered for him.
“It said ‘Dedicated to Nematos, Heart-Piercer, Life Ender, He-Who-Is-Chained. May His Dark Glory Envelop the World.’ And yes, it was in Old Imrian.”
I sighed. “It’s always a pleasure to be proven right.”
“Even when it means you’ll eventually be murdered in your bed by a mad god?”
“I said always and I meant always, whelp.”
“You do have an iron grip on your priorities, master. Speaking of which, do you still want to stop for breakfast?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to have a lie-down. The fall didn’t kill me, but it did kill my appetite.”
~ ~ ~
BACK AT THE TEMPLE I went straight to my mat. As much as I hated to admit it, I was just too damned old to be running around the city, climbing hells-high staircases, or being pushed from great heights. Stubbornness could get you remarkably far, and overcome a long list of infirmities, but not indefinitely. And there was always a reckoning.
I slept the rest of the day away, awakening only as night fell. It took me a long time to reach a vaguely vertical position, much longer than normal. Everything hurt. Bath hadn’t liked being blackmailed; that was the subtext of our whole encounter, I now realized. He wanted me to keep my mouth shut about his little brother, and he wasn’t above extracting a little petty revenge while he was at it.
I grunted. The gods were like that.
I hobbled my way to the kitchen, where Jessep had already prepared a nice chop for himself and a bowl of gruel for me.
“Who’s the high priest around here, and who’s the acolyte?” I huffed.
“If you want to eat a pork chop with a cracked tooth, I can cut it small for you, master.”
I growled in his general direction and sat down at my accustomed place at the kitchen table. And started spooning up gruel.
We ate as we usually did – quickly and in silence, and without much in the way of table manners. When we were finished, he cleared the table and I poured out two glasses of port. Neither of us liked it much, but it was cheap, and had become an evening ritual. It was cold enough for once that the kitchen fire was welcome warmth rather than oppressive necessity, and so we sat there for a time.
“Do you really think there’s some god-killing weapon in Coroune?” he eventually asked me.
“I give it even odds,” I replied. “But I don’t think they’ll even consider using whatever they have until the death toll edges into the thousands, and panic sets in.”
“Even then, they would still have to find Nematos.”
“True.”
“I kept the temple closed today while you rested, and searched for everything I could find on him.”
I gave a grunt. There’d have been little enough. Nematos had been imprisoned quite early during the Age of the Gods.
“There’s no rite of summoning, or supplication, or anything like that for him. No record of formal worship at all.”
“Well, stupid as people are, I suppose that’s an encouraging sign.”
“It occurred to me that the Crack’d Tower might even be the only place in the world that could be considered a temple to Nematos. Which could be why he came here when he got free of wherever he was imprisoned.”
“You might well be right. There’s no way to prove it, but it makes sense.”
“So maybe he would notice if someone were to, um, do something to it. And take offense. And show up.”
I gave Jessep a sidewise glance. “You have a nasty, sneaky, reckless turn of mind, lad. I find myself forced to approve of it.” I held out my glass and he clinked the rim of his against mine. He was obviously pleased with himself.
“Of course, if your theory about the tower being his temple holds true, then we almost certainly violated it today, and have already drawn the murder god’s attention. I guess we’ll find out in two more nights.” I held out my glass to toast again. All I got was a glare in return.
“Did you find out any more about those damned lilies?” I asked him.
“Just a scrap from a poem that doesn’t translate at all well, or mean much that I could tell. It compares a new corpse to a freshly cut flower, and goes on about how both are beautiful in Nematos’s eyes.”
“Anything else?”
“The scansion was atrocious, even in the original.”
“We’ll call that a dead end, then. Heh. There’s probably a joke in there, but I’m just to worn out to see it.”
Jessep muttered something that sounded like ‘small mercies’ which I chose to ignore.
I finished my port and sighed. “I’m back to bed, lad.”
“Do you need to see a physicker?”
“So he can charge me money to tell me not to fall from high places? No, thank you. Rest is all I need.”
Sleep was a long time coming, though, and when it finally did, dreams of the Eye robbed my sleep of any rest.
~ ~ ~
THE ELDERLY JUST DON’T heal as quickly. This truth, however unpleasant, was one I could not choose to ignore the next day. It hurt to breathe, and I began to suspect I had ribs that were cracked rather than bruised. Just getting up to use the chamber pot was an exercise in determination. The cracked tooth was having its own fun as well; my jaw had started to swell, and I definitely felt a fever coming on.
Jessep became worried enough that he summoned a physicker despite my dire threats. The old goat poked and prodded, then slathered a poultice on my back and bound my torso in wide strips of linen. That little bastard Jessep tricked me by putting milk of the poppy in a glass of wine. Within a few minutes I became a smiling, blithering idiot. I distinctly remember the physicker telling me he was going to pull my tooth, and me replying ‘pull my finger while you’re at it.’ Everything after that is just a pink-tinged, hazy blur.
Between the fever and the milk of the poppy, I spent a long time in that hazy place. I remember Jessep feeding me broth at one point, and changing my sweat-sodden shift at another, and him holding me up to give me water several times. But I also distinctly remember my grandam hobbling in to the room to scream at me about unwashed carrots, so in hindsight I have decided to view everything that happened during that period with extreme skepticism.
~ ~ ~
WHEN THE FEVER FINALLY broke, I had no idea what hour or even what day it was. My little cell is windowless, lit by two oil lamps that Jessep attends to daily. They were both turned low, which usually would have meant it was night. With me being sick, the lad likely kept them low unless he was tending me.
I tried to call for him, but my throat was too dry. All that came out was a weak croak.
“There is water in the vessel next to your head,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. It came from the far corner of the room. With difficulty, I lifted my head enough to look.
His appearance was savage. His curly hair was matted and thick, hanging in clumps nearly to the floor. His beard wasn’t much better. He had a powerful, muscular frame, unadorned by any clothing or markings of any sort, except for a thick iron collar around his neck that wept rust. Even in the low lamplight, his bronze skin glowed. And of course, like all the gods, the pupils of his eyes were two bright stars.
“Nematos,” I croaked.
“When you violated my temple, I thought you just a mortal priest. I was going to dispatch you, as I did your slave outside. But you are more than that, are you not? More than human. And yet you are less than a god.”
I struggled to sit up, but gave up once I had my weight supported by one elbow. It was enough to be able to get to the water, and my thirst was terrible. Most of it spilled down my front, but enough got to my mouth to make a difference. I let the jug fall and turned back to him, panting a little.
“Sorry, I’ve had a nasty bastard of a fever. Are you real, or another figment of my imagination? Because if you’re a figment, you can tell my grandam that those fucking carrots can go scrub themselves.”
He tilted his head and stared at me intently, the way a wild animal will regard something when they can’t decide if it’s a danger, or an opportunity.
“And if I am real?” he asked.
“Well then it sounds an awful lot as though you’ve just murdered my acolyte. In which case, when I get done with you, there won’t be much left besides a damp stain.”
In a fraction of a moment he was crouched over me, the tip of an obsidian, stiletto-like blade pressed against the wattles of my neck. He poked just hard enough to draw a drop of blood, which he then licked from the blade. After a moment, he spat it out with a look of disgust.
“Eye-touched, but not remade. Even those the Eye rejected had the strength to take what they could, and become lords of the eleven hells. You are no pure thing, not even purely mortal, and are unworthy of my blade.” He stood abruptly, and turned to go.
“Nematos.”
He paused, but did not turn.
“I’m going to take that blade of yours and cut your heart out with it.”
A low chuckle was his reply, and it echoed in my ears even after he had disappeared.
Weak as I was, it was easier for me to crawl out of my cell than try to stand. Not that there was anything about it that I would call easy.
I found the lad just in front of the main door. Heart-stabbed. Clutching a night lily. A look of surprise still on his face. I wondered if there were fifteen other newly-made corpses in the city that night. I wondered if Kluge was one of them. Or Bath, since he’d also made an appearance at the tower.
I put my head down on the cold marble floor and let out a sigh.
~ ~ ~
THERE HAD BEEN FIFTEEN of us that set out to explore Godhead. Three died in the desert. Four succumbed to Godhead’s traps. Eight had been in the chamber when the Eye suddenly woke.
Seven of them were still there, or at least the dusty bones of them.
I don’t know what all the Eye conjured up to test us. They all appeared simultaneously. I know that Brugun had his head ripped off almost instantaneously by a thing that seemed all blue-black tentacles, but the rest, I didn’t see. I was too busy being speared by my own nemesis.
I’d killed the ur-ghrol that had suddenly appeared before me when the Eye opened. It was equal parts rage and horror at what it had done to me with its spear that gave me the strength to do it, to take the long knife I carried at my hip, almost as an afterthought, and shove it into its leering, open mouth and out the back of its head.
Oh, it had killed me as well, sure as shit. There was no recovering from the wound it had dealt me, not in the heart of the Deadlands, three day’s walk from the ship even if I’d had two functioning legs.
I did not have two functioning legs. I had a shattered hip and life-blood spurting out of me in time with the beating of my heart.
So I lay there in a spreading pool of my own blood, writhing in agony, and the Eye speared the marrow of my soul with its intent, and an echo of the sound of creation itself swelled around me. And at that moment I stood on a metaphysical precipice: Go back, and die just like all the others. Go forward, and become a god. The god of forgetting, to be precise.
And because I was a stubborn fucker even in my youth, I’d chosen to do neither.
~ ~ ~
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG it took me to get to the restricted section and unlock the gate. It wasn’t swift. My hands shook enough to make opening the secret compartment that held the Hymns a chore.
Being a god, or an almost-god, came with strange restrictions. As the god of forgetting, I could make anyone and anything forget. I could make you forget what you had for lunch, or the color of your mother’s eyes. I could make your mother forget you were born. I could make steel forget it had been forged, and fall to pieces. I could probably make the sun forget to rise, if I tried.
But I could not make myself forget anything, not permanently. Not without making a record of remembrance, at least.
They Hymns were a record of what it was to be a god. Every page was a power I had stripped from myself and deposited into the book. Every line was a rejection of what the Eye had tried to force upon me.
I sat down there in the restricted section, and opened the Hymns to the first page, and began to read.
By the time I got to the end, there was only the barest fragment of old man Lhiewyn left.
~ ~ ~
IT WOULD DO NO GOOD to try to explain godhood. No language is truly equipped for such an undertaking. I rose up from Lagna’s temple and scanned the planes for my quarry – and found that Nematos hadn’t yet even left the Street of the Gods. I could see something had snared him there, but I could not, even in my elevated state, see what. It didn’t matter. With something less than a thought, I appeared before him.
“You,” he grunted.
“Me,” I agreed.
“Is this maze of your making? I have had enough of cages.”
“It isn’t my work, but speaking of cages, who let you out of yours, dog?” I asked him in my most pleasant voice. “Or did you gnaw your way out by yourself?”
“I broke my own chains, and those set to watch had already fled.”
I gave a tsk. “Gods. Irresponsible fucks, each and all.”
“I was chained, and now I am free. The old gods are all but gone, and I will be the last, presiding over a world made into a grave. You new-made, half-formed thing, with the stench of mortality still clinging to you – how could you hope to stop me?”
“Like this.” And I told his muscles to forget how to move and his eyes to forget how to see. Then I plucked the knife from his hand and shoved it into his chest.
“I am the last god,” I told him. “I am the god of forgetting, and no one will remember you except me. And to be honest, I'll forget you soon enough. Then it will be as if you never were at all.”
He tried to say something, but the blood pouring out of his mouth got in the way. When the light in his eyes had faded completely, I let him go. He flopped back onto the cobbles with a muted thud.
“Every damned murder I’ve ever met has been a stupid son of a bitch,” I told his corpse. “Why should their god be any different?”
With the beating of his heart stilled, all those sounds that only gods could hear clearly came to claim my attention once more; whisperings of new life from the secret recesses of the earth, and the plaintive wail of dying, distant stars. Birthings and dyings great and small. A bat’s flight and a cat’s stalking footfall. Somewhere, not far off, a promise being broken. A thousand thousand more, the symphony of existence.
Slowly I damped out the music of the universe. Slowly not because of any regret at losing it once more, but because there was no way to do it quickly. You cannot stuff the infinite into a box. You have to fold it carefully.
I turned away from it all, and that dread horn that I first heard in Godhead faded from my soul. I was, finally, just Lhiewyn. Old, dead-legged, and very tired. And once I refilled the Hymns, I could be easy with it.
“We are more alike than we are different,” Bath said.
He was sitting on the steps of his temple, hands between his knees. He'd probably been there the whole time. Sneaky little shit. His shaved head shone coppery in the starlight, and his robes were blacker than coal, and they flowed around him like ink in a slow, unseen current. He was smiling slightly, which pulled at the stitches that sewed his mouth shut. Not the most pleasant thing to behold.
I grunted. “Well, not to rub it in, god of secrets, but while I might have a diminishing number of teeth, I can still open my mouth to clean them. It's the little differences that make all the difference, I find. Why the hells are you here?”
“You manifested your true form right on the Street of the Gods. I came to watch the show.”
I curled my lip. “That's not my true form. This shambles in front of you is. That's the problem with all you lot; you forgot where you came from.”
“Some, perhaps. For myself, I chose to accept a different set of consequences in exchange for a different, better situation.”
“You mean the Eye took you, and you let it work its will on you.”
“And what did fighting the Eye gain you, Lhiewyn det Sardeth?”
“A shattered body and free will.”
“Was it worth it?”
I looked down at the cooling meat of his brother. Had the Eye not taken him five thousand years ago and more, would he still have been a homicidal maniac? No way of telling. But once he’d become a god, he had been locked into the role the Eye had chosen for him. I looked back up at Bath.
“Was it worth it? Yes. If being a god is such a treat, why have almost all of them fled, here at the end of the age?”
Bath only shook his head.
“I’ll leave this one here. He’s your kin, you decide what to do with the remains. And thanks so much for your help, by the way.”
“It's not my place to interfere in the disagreements of the elevated.”
“Now I know why you keep your mouth sewn shut. You're a horrible liar.”
“I said it wasn't my place. I did not say I always know my place. And anyway, I did trap him here for you. And I discouraged onlookers and passersby.”
“Out of concern for their welfare, or a reflexive desire for secrecy?”
He squinted one eye as he thought about it, two cold stars briefly dimming to one. “A little of both,” he finally admitted. “But I was serious when I said that you and I are not so different.”
“You hoard secrets. I'm the caretaker for the single greatest body of knowledge in the world, open to all. Not that the happily ignorant little shits avail themselves of it much. Anyway, I can't say I see the resemblance.”
“I am the god of secrets. You are, whether you like it or not, the god of forgetting, and we follow many of the same tracks and pathways. Most importantly, Sage Lhiewyn, I know your greatest secret.”
“If Jessep gave out my beef stew recipe I'll have his balls in a vice.”
Bath gestured to the cooling meat in the middle of the road. “You lied to him. Your greatest secret is that you alone, among all creatures, will always remember everything. I do not envy you.”
“Yes, well. That's what wine is for, isn't it.” That, and the Hymns.
“The age is ending. Most of us are gone. You said so yourself. Why do you remain?”
“You’re the god of secrets. You tell me.”
He grinned, which looked as horrible as you might imagine, and disappeared. In his place was a bottle of wine. I hobbled over to it. Gol-Shen ’47, from the label. There was a scrap of paper tied to the neck with a piece of twine. In spidery letters was his reply:
Because someone must make sure the door stays shut.
I grunted, picked the bottle up, and hobbled my way home.
~ ~ ~
I WASN’T QUITE DONE with being an almost-god. Not yet. With difficulty, I knelt by the boy and ripped the night lily from his hands, casting it into the forgetting. Then I placed a palm on the awful wound, and let an echo of the Eye rumble its way back into my aged flesh.
The little bastard was a thorn in my side, but he was my acolyte, and probably the only person in the city that’d put up with me on a daily basis. He was the closest thing I’d ever have to a son, and I’d be damned if I was going to let some shit-stain of a god end his life.
And so I told the wound that had pierced his heart to forget that it had been made. I told his violated flesh to forget it had been violated, and I told his stopped heart to forget it had ever stopped beating. Finally, and most taxingly, I chased down his fleeing spirit, dragged it back to the mortal plane, and told it to forget it had ever left his flesh.
It was not an easy task, and my body paid the price, as it did every time I’d used the power of the Eye without accepting the transformation to godhood. Eyes a little weaker, joints that much more stiff. So be it.
After a moment, Jessep gave out a huge gasp and sat bolt-upright, eyes wild.
“Easy, lad. You’re all right.”
“He was- I was-”
“He’s finished. It’s over.”
“How?”
“You’ll have to ask Bath about that one, lad. Apparently those two had a history. Who knew?”
He was in no condition to question me. I helped him to bed for once, as best I could. And then I spent the rest of the night drinking Bath’s wine and refilling the Hymns once again.
By daybreak I was drunk, and empty, and decrepit.
And human.
FROM THE AUTHOR
I hope you have enjoyed The Last God. Lhiewyn and Jessep are incredibly fun to write about, and there will definitely be further adventures.
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Thanks so much for reading!
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