39

The tiny demons flew to the walls as Haydies advanced to tower above Zox. Yaz struggled to her feet, too busy wrestling with the idea that Theus had hidden himself away in Zox to be afraid. After she’d driven him out of Thurin had he somehow possessed the iron dog as if superseding iron and magic were no harder than commanding flesh and blood? Theus had lurked in their midst for months? Listened to their talk, watched over them as they slept? Theus had scared the holothaur away when it had tried to infest Zox. Theus had saved them from the avatar hound and won them access to the underworld. Why?

“Why?” Haydies echoed her thoughts, sounding suddenly unsure. “Why are you here?”

“You’re questioning me now?” A threat rumbled beneath Theus’s words.

“City rules must be observed by all citizens, regardless of rank.” Haydies used a different voice to his godlike boom. As if he were quoting from a memory dredged up out of the depths.

“This!” Theus swept one of Zox’s short metal legs at the assembled crowd of horrors. “This is not in any city rules that I recall.”

“Laws can be rewritten. There’s precedent.” Haydies sounded more like a sulky child now.

“The core of your instructions cannot be modified without council authorization, and the council is long gone. You may not harm a citizen or allow them to come to harm. And these”—Zox indicated Yaz and her fellows—“are necessary for my continued well-being. You’ll furnish us with the list of equipment I’m about to give you and facilitate our departure.”

Haydies paused before answering, his head tilted as if listening to something far off. Eyes the colour of bone fixed on Zox. “I see you now . . .” His voice turned sly and he stood taller, his grip tightening on his staff. “I see what you are. Prometheus departed with the rest of our masters on the appointed day. You’re not him. You’re waste product. Excreta that has escaped the containment vats.”

Somehow Theus managed to convey confidence, disdain, and arrogance, all using Zox’s expressionless face and largely inflexible body. “You think you can find my kind seeping through the black ice? I may not be all of Prometheus, but then again, neither is he! I constitute the largest part of him. I own his powers, his memories, his past. I lay claim to his citizenship, and who is there to dispute me? My kind fashioned you from rocks and clay. You are inert matter into which we breathed life. How dare you seek to judge me!”

“You . . . you are . . . outside the law,” Haydies concluded uncertainly. His distant look returned. Perhaps he was communicating with the rest of the self-styled gods, and in the next moment he rallied himself. “You are subject to my discretion.”

“Perhaps you’ve been listening to Vesta.” Theus advanced on the god despite not reaching his hip in height. “It was her broken womb we leaked from. We so-called impurities. When she knew me I was far less than I am now. I was shattered. Dissected. Scattered pieces trying to find form and purpose. But as I rebuilt myself my memories came together, jagged edges finding partners, constructing meaning and history. This child here”—he indicated Yaz—“found the largest fragment of me remaining. It took time to integrate, to reconstruct more memories, to truly understand what had been taken from me. Even on my journey here I was recovering myself.” Theus made a slow turn as if surveying the chamber. “I’ve been here before, you know. To this city. When both it and you were in better shape. They brought me here in chains. I was part of the resistance. One of the last to be ‘cleansed.’” He returned his gaze to Haydies and stared up at the avatar’s face. “I was always more bad than good in the eyes of my peers. A northern savage from a cult that rejected technology. When I was reborn my parents took me to a witch for prophecy. Did you know that? Well, I rejected that cult as vehemently as I rejected purification. My fellow citizens tore me apart but I’ve sewn the pieces back together, so don’t think I can’t unmake you, Haydies.”

Yaz felt the void star’s heartbeat thudding through her, ahead of time, as if Theus’s words had quickened its pace.

Haydies looked at Yaz, white eyes in a face as dark as Mali’s. “Why do you want these invaders?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“Seus will consider it his business.”

“Does he rule here?”

Haydies growled. “This realm is mine.”

“So make your own decision. Help me on my way or find out just why your enlightened masters felt they had to take me north in chains. Find out why they didn’t trust their gates to carry me, or any city other than Vesta to host my purification.”

“I’m older than you,” Haydies rumbled. “I cradled your kind—”

Theus shook his head. “I’m an ancient reborn into this world. I’ve seen the source, breathed its air. My kind made you then woke me up to see their work. And I wasn’t impressed!” he snarled. “Remember, we made nothing we could not also unmake. It was their kindness to leave you functioning. To give you a task so that your existence had meaning. I, on the other hand”—Theus banged his iron chest—“I have no kindness. It was stolen from me, along with my restraint. So test me if you dare. I will enjoy the chaos that follows. You . . . will not.”

Haydies’s face hardened. He lifted the heel of his staff from the rock. Yaz could tell that Theus had pushed too hard.

Taproot stepped forward, his fingers steepled before him, his tone consolatory, respectful. “Lord Haydies. This is a realm of the dead. Your command of the underworld is unquestioned—save perhaps by your two brothers on the high thrones . . . But clearly Prometheus is far from dead, and these others with him are breathing and bleeding as we speak. Even I cannot be said to be truly dead. I stand before you a mere copy, a fractured one at that. For all I know the original on which I was modelled may still be living, tucked into some fold of time untouched by the years. And so”—Taproot spread his arms to encompass Yaz and the others—“letting us go would be seen as a stamp of your authority, one that will echo across Olympus. It will also be seen as keeping faith with your absent masters, handing into their judgment a matter on which the gods cannot decide. Seus’s will has no sway here—we all know that.”

Yaz winced at the obvious play on Haydies’s vanity, but judging by the god’s expression it seemed effective. His mind might once have been responsible for the smooth running of a city complex beyond anything she could imagine, but eons had come and gone since then, and any mind left to its own devices for too long will begin to crumble in on itself.

“In this place I am the king,” Haydies intoned. He spoke next in the tongue that Theus had used, the language of the Missing whose words it seemed could unmake the world. A long stream of fluid sound that caused the air about his head to shimmer and facture. Finally he swung his staff towards them and stood with its heel inches from Mali’s chest.

“He says we can go,” Theus said. “But anyone who took sustenance from the underworld is bound to return.”

“What’s that got to do with Mali?” Yaz protested.

“The water . . .” Thurin looked suddenly guilty.

“A mouthful of water?” Yaz shook her head. “Tell him—”

“He can understand you,” Erris hissed.

“Mali’s not—”

“Agreed!” Theus spoke over Yaz. “Let’s go.”

“But—”

“It’s alright.” Mali hung the pan from her belt and reached out to touch Yaz’s arm. “It’s a small thing.”

“It is not!” Yaz growled. “I won’t—”

“I want to come back. Think what I can learn here,” Mali said. “It won’t be for always, will it, Lord Haydies? A visit.”

“One third of every year until you are old.” Haydies swept his bone-eyed stare across them, daring them to argue.

“Done.” Theus fell onto all fours and walked smartly towards the exit.