webcrawl/APGTE/Book-5/tex/Ch-090.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-60-melancholy}{%
\section{Chapter 60: Melancholy}\label{chapter-60-melancholy}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``And after Okoro was taken its King Berengar Rohanon was dragged
before the people in the place of Faded Jackals, where his hands were
cut for having reached beyond his grasp and his head scalped for having
dared to claim kingship over Praesi. His Dread Majesty ordered him
driven into the Wasteland, bearing his hands around his neck and his
scalp scribed with for all crusaders this warning: `There is only one
crown east of the river Wasaliti, and once more will you be taught to
dread it.'\,''}

-- Extract from `Commentaries on the Campaigns of Dread Emperor
Terribilis the Second'
\end{quote}

The Sisters were in the tent. Their presence was like a whisper on the
edge of my mind, and though they'd not hidden their presence by Masego's
bedside neither had they drawn my attention to it. It had my fingers
clenching, and my growing ill-temper was noticeable enough my legionary
escort gave me a wider berth as I quickened my limping. I'd had a
reputation for having a foul temper even before my anger began frosting
over tables, and trading Winter for Night had not put away that repute.
Sve Noc knew what lines they could and could not cross without our
bargain fraying, and they would not be so foolish as to try to force the
Night onto an unwilling Hierophant. But they were not above making that
offer when he was freshly awake and grieving, still in shock from the
loss of his magic.

Crows were carrion birds, and just like carrion the Sisters were preying
on the vulnerable to attempt patronage of another powerful figure -- for
Masego was that still, even bedridden and stripped of sorcery. My anger
was less from the crafty offer I suspected was being made and more from
the way that I had no solid grounds for wroth or recourse if I wanted to
denounce what they were doing. It was a sharp reminder that the Sisters
were my patrons and allies, not my followers, and they had schemes of
their own. And Masego, though one of the Woe, was not my sworn man or a
subject of the crown of Callow: any claim I could make over his
loyalties was one he'd given out by his own hand, and by the same could
withdraw.

The crows were never far from my thoughts and often pointed address
within those was enough to earn their attention, but they did not deign
answer my insistence this time. The same tent where I'd slept was shaded
in subtle ways when I found it, the shadows it cast and kept within its
folds too deep and cool even with the falling dusk. There was power at
work, the attention of sister-goddesses manifest. I dismissed my escort
abruptly and strode past the folds, catching sight of Sve Noc perched
atop the armchair I'd slumbered in while a half-naked and sitting Masego
looked at them from his sickbed. Feathered in darkness and ink-eyed, the
crows seemed almost too large for the chair and even the tent -- not
that it seemed to cow my friend.

The dark-skinned sorcerer, eye cloth fastened loosely over his
glittering glass eyes, was still painfully thin from his time in the
Dead King's thrall but his face was calm and his hands steady. His long
braids were still matted from their lack of washing, the silver trinkets
woven in them shining dully in the lamplight, but even abed looking at
him was like looking at an open flame. The burn was feverish, perhaps,
but grief and tragedy had not seen its intensity wane. All this I took
within a heartbeat, as I arrived to what must have been the tail-end of
the offer tendered.

``Faith kept will be kept in kind,'' Andronike said. ``And in the end,
all will be Night.''

Masego's eyes pivoted under the cloth to glance at me, and the Sisters
needed no sight to know of my presence, so when I cleared my throat
there was no hint of surprise on any's face.

``Faith can wait until another evening,'' I said. ``There will be-''

``That won't be necessary, Catherine,'' Hierophant quietly interrupted.

Wings spread and with a few lazy beats Komena was on my shoulder, as
displeased by my meddling as I was by hers. Andronike, though, perched
herself on the side of Masego's bed. Peering at him curiously with dark
eyes more god than bird no matter the shape of them.

``You have been hollowed,'' Andronike cawed. ``Miracle can yet mend
this.''

The urge came, quicksilver and fleeting, to intervene once more. If the
Sisters alone had requested the stilling of my tongue I would not have
held it, but Masego had as well and so let the urge pass.

``There is only one side of apotheosis of interest to me,'' Hierophant
said, ``and it is not the one that involves kneeling.''

``You are yet young,'' Komena said from my shoulder. ``We can wait,
though the bargain will not twice be so sweet.''

``It will eat away at you,'' Andronike told him. ``From the inside, it
will-''

Sudden as it was, it caught me by surprise like few things in my life
before it: Masego's nimble fingers, mage-deft and long, snapped up and
seized the crow addressing him by the throat. They \emph{squeezed}, and
as Komena cawed in protest and beat her wings against my shoulder the
Warlock's son let out a scornful hiss.

``Do not ever attempt to peer into my mind, covetous vermin,'' the
Hierophant harshly rebuked.

Night flooded the room as the behest of livid lesser gods, thick and
oppressive current like veils of shadow, but his Name burned like a
clear and unyielding flame.

``I knew Winter well, before you fed on it,'' Masego said, eyes burning
with Summer flame, ``shall I rip it out through the stitches of your
belly? Ruin will run down the course of you into the heart of your
entire people, little spiders. Did you believe you could make yourself
the life of your kind without also being its death?''

He barked out a laugh.

``Lucky you, that it was Akua Sahelian and not I who accompanied her
below,'' he said. ``Else I would have cut out your ravenous eyes long
ago and made a banner of your butchered remains.''

``Masego,'' I said. ``Enough.''

Summer-bright eyes flicked to me, then returned to Komena on my
shoulder. My fingers clenched.

``Masego,'' I repeated sharply. ``\emph{Enough}.''

Scoffing, he released his grip on Andronike. She flew away in wroth, and
I saw that the flesh of Hierophant's hand looked as if it'd been
frostbitten where it'd been touching the divine crow.

``And that's why,'' I calmly said, ``you speak to me before trying to
bargain with one of the Woe.''

``Offence was given,'' Komena cried out, the sound cacophonous and
somehow blinding.

``Your tried to look into the head of a man whose Name is practically
made of the death of gods, you fucking fools,'' I barked. ``What did you
\emph{think} was going to happen?''

Before they could answer I pressed on.

``You didn't think,'' I said. ``You got greedy, you got hasty, and then
you got spanked. Take it as a reminder that there are things up here on
the surface that are nastier than you. And be thankful all it cost you
was a few moments of indignity.''

The fury pouring out of them and into the Night was like the burn of
sudden ice, but I refused to be bowled over by it. They'd made a
mistake, believing that dangling power in front of a grieving man was
all it'd take to induce another Named to bargain. They'd taken him for
one of the Firstborn and for that blindness very nearly ended up losing
more than a few feathers.

``I carried your banner from victory to victory,'' I said, ``because
I've been careful. Because I've been patient and cautious and I've
picked my battles. If you begin to sidle up to every Named on a ragged
edge and offer power for rites, you're not goddesses: you're cut-rate
devils. And one of those days, sure as dusk, you'll end up stepping
blind into a story that'll end you.''

The fury did not wane in the slightest, but I met it unbowed. I felt the
slight touch of their thoughts against mine, a feather's brush looking
for the taste of honesty and finding it. Still, few gods were in the
habit of apologizing. The Sisters flew out with malcontent cawing,
blowing out of the tent and leaving it lighter for their absence. I
breathed out in their wake, still feeling where Komena's talons had dug
into my shoulder even if no blood had been drawn and no mark would be
left behind. Though Masego's face and torso were facing me, I caught
through the cloth that his eyes had followed the crows out before
finally returning to me. The radiance of his Name, not visible but like
a taste hanging in the air, finally dimmed into nothingness. It left him
panting and visibly tired. Leaning against my staff, I limped up to his
bed and swallowed a wince when he tensed up at my approach. Very slowly,
I sat on the side near his legs.

``I see you still get cranky when woken up early,'' I said.

He didn't blink, for the lack of eyelid, but the way he angled his head
good as implied it.

``I was expecting anger,'' Masego admitted. ``For this, and\ldots{} the
rest.''

``Stealing a city, cutting up Arcadia and nearly wiping an entire
principality off the face of Creation,'' I elaborated. ``Including most
of the people you care about in any significant manner.''

He winced.

``Yes,'' he said. ``That.''

I sighed.

``I \emph{am} angry,'' I told him. ``But for large parts of that you
weren't in your right mind. And now that you are, I expect all those
things you were trying to deny -- and the scope of what you nearly did
-- are about to start sinking in. We will, one day, have an unpleasant
discussion about this. But it won't be today, and when we have it you
won't be\ldots{}''

I hesitated, looking for the right words, but Masego smiled bitterly.

``My fathers will be no less dead in a few days, Catherine,'' he said.
``Nor will\ldots{}''

His lips thinned.

``Nor will my sorcery have returned,'' he said, as if forcing himself.
``The severing should have killed me. Would have, had it not been so
improbably precise. I still wonder what stayed his hand, for it would
have been child's play to snuff me out at the end. Much easier than
this.''

It was my turn to hesitate, though the moment I did I knew I'd have to
speak. His glass eyes missed nothing and Masego had known me long enough
he could discern the expressions of my face much more accurately than
most people's.

``I bargained for your life,'' I said, ``when I had a shard of his soul
in my grasp.''

He tiredly leaned back against pillows that'd not been there when I left
in the morning. Archer's work, I thought. Which meant they were probably
stolen, but I could ask her about that later.

``Thank you,'' Masego solemnly said. ``For that. For coming, too.''

``We all came, Zeze,'' I quietly said. ``And we will again, if we need
to. Don't doubt that.''

There was a long moment of silence, and finally he nodded. His breath
rasped out along with words barely more than a murmur.

``He killed Indrani. Using me.''

I reached out a hand towards his own, and after the moment he accepted
the implicit offer. We threaded fingers and I nodded.

``The Grey Pilgrim brought her back,'' I said.

``As Trismegistus said he would,'' Masego quietly replied. ``And yet the
last thing she will remember before dying is my hand raised and my lips
speaking an incantation.''

I let silence pass, sensing there was more he wanted to say.

``That is unkind,'' the braided man finally said. ``Isn't it? To her
even more than I.''

He looked to me as if asking confirmation, unsure and tone hesitant.

``It would be unkind with any of us,'' I told him. ``But to her more
than the rest of us.''

``I don't know how to mend that,'' Masego whispered. ``Catherine, I
don't know how to mend any of it.''

This was, I thought, the first time he'd even obliquely acknowledged
that Indrani might have feelings for him. I was not certain whether his
careful handling of her came out of a gentle nature -- which he had,
somehow, not lost in our years of war and hatred -- or because he
considered himself to have a distinctive relationship with Archer, and
it was not my place to ask. But the acknowledgement alone was more than
I'd sometimes thought this entire affair would earn of him unless
Indrani pressed the matter.

``She won't blame you, Zeze,'' I quietly said. ``You have to know that.
It might have been your hand but it was not your will, and that's the
part that matters.''

``Is it?'' he asked. ``Since I was a child, always I've been told these
sweeping\ldots{} truths. Eulogies of the perception of my fellows, the
triumphant veracity of ties. And near always they proved false, for
though my own fathers were as much reason as they were blood that is a
\emph{rare} thing. A memory, a pain, these are things that linger.
Principles are beautiful -- they are the bones of Creation and what we
make of it -- but they do not course in veins. They are\ldots{}
distant.''

Archer was a creature of blood and not reason, he did not say. Or needed
to. It was true, I wouldn't deny, that in some ways more than any of us
Indrani followed her instincts. How much would principle matter, he was
asking, when she still remembered the raised hand and the death that
followed?

``You're looking at it like the depth can only mean it'll hurt more,'' I
gently said. ``That's only half the coin, Masego. It also means you want
to see the best in them, to get past the roughness, because what you
love about them weighs heavier than what hurt you.''

I had, in my attempt to soothe the fear, somehow worsened this I
realized. The way his face clenched made that plain. He did not speak
immediately, and I did not dare to further talk lest I once more stumble
over something blindly.

``It didn't,'' Masego hoarsely said. ``I was so \emph{angry} with them,
Cat. They said sorry, about hiding what they knew from me, but they
weren't. Not really. Not the way you showed me, where it \emph{stings}
that you did the wrong thing and its stays with you. They were just
sorry I knew they'd hidden things from me, and that doesn't count. And
they tried, you know. After. To say things or give me things or act ways
that would make me less angry, makes us good again. But I couldn't trust
it, because I knew they'd just make the same choice again if they had
to, so I stayed angry. Even\ldots{}''

He swallowed.

``Even on the day they died,'' he said. ``I knew they were planning to
bind me. I am not a \emph{fool}, Catherine. They were going to put me in
a cage so I'd be out of the way when the Empress went after you, when
Callow was hurt until it knelt. And it rankled, that they would. It
surprised me, though, when it rankled they just\ldots{} didn't care
about the rest. I know you want me to care about the people, Cat, but
it's hard. They're not very interesting, as a rule. And they're so
\emph{ignorant}.''

He hesitated.

``But I don't want them to be hurt, either,'' Masego said. ``If things
can be made better for everyone, shouldn't they? It just seemed so
obvious, but my fathers didn't care. Or they couldn't see it, and isn't
that worse? So I was even angrier with them. And I told them to be
careful, when I left, but it was almost a lie because after the battle I
was going to disappear. And the last thing I said to them was\ldots{}
tainted, Cat. I couldn't be not angry, even if I loved them.''

``It's all right to hate something they did,'' I told him quietly,
thinking of hungry deaths still being reaped. ``It doesn't mean you
hated \emph{them}.''

Gods, but how fragile he looked in that moment. How could this be the
same man who'd seized a goddess by the throat not an hour ago,
threatened the ruin of an entire people for their patrons having crossed
him? Exposed like a raw nerve and heartfelt until he bled, yet even
stripped of the sorcery he'd spent his entire life embracing he could
still daunt a lesser god. I understood, now, why to someone like Indrani
the mixture might be intoxicating. Strength and vulnerability all at
once, someone she could respect without feeling threatened. Masego was,
in her eyes, a peer without being a rival.

``I thought Papa I could bring back, at least,'' the dark-skinned man
admitted. ``I cannot account for a soul, and Father had already passed
beyond my reach. There was naught to be done there. But Papa was a
devil. Sufficient precision should have been enough.''

``But it wasn't,'' I said.

I had seen only part of the string of failures that made a wasteland of
the Arcadian shard, but they must have gone on for months before that
and there'd be no indication that success had been looming.

``No,'' Masego said. ``Always something was missing. I'd believed it a
question of accuracy, and perhaps if Trismegistus had not stolen the use
of my aspect the gap could have been bridged. But the more I think of
it, of what I had begun to glimpse, the more I doubt it. Papa was
unique. He did not have a soul, Catherine, but he \emph{was} unique.''

Of the incubus that'd been one of Masego's father, the ancient devil
known as Tikoloshe, I knew precious little and so I did not dare venture
an opinion. What did I know of these matters, anyway, that I could
disagree with my own Hierophant? If he believed his father had been
singular, an exception that surpassed the stuff he'd been made of, I
would believe him. And though I could not say I had been fond of the
incubus I'd never met or Warlock who I had known and scorned, I could at
least share in the grief of this man who was family to me.

``Some things stay lost,'' I murmured. ``You have to learn to make your
peace with that.''

I winced, after, realizing it could easily be taken as my speaking of
his magic instead of his fathers.

``How carefully you tread,'' he gently mocked me. ``As if speaking it
out loud would break me: I have lost the Gift, in every meaningful
way.''

Which, I silently noted, did not mean \emph{every} way. Given Masego's
lasting obsession with being exact in all things, I did not take that as
a coincidence -- though it hardly seemed the time to pursue the matter.
I thought of Vivienne, in that moment, of the way she's seemed to
terribly convinced that making a mistake or losing her Name meant she
was no longer one of us. Like she'd be discarded the moment she faltered
or changed. I would not, I decided, let Zeze fall into that same pit.

``Losing your sorcery doesn't meant you're not one of us anymore,'' I
told him. ``Being one of the Woe -- us loving you -- it's not
\emph{conditional}. It's not the Hierophant I came for, and it wasn't
the Apprentice that became part of my family. It's you, and that's not
something you can lose.''

He squeezed my fingers, though looking at his face I realized with a
degree of strange amusement that in that moment \emph{he} was the one
trying to comfort me.

``I did not believe that,'' he assured me. ``I won't leave you to stand
alone like Uncle Amadeus did, so don't worry about me leaving.''

I mastered myself just in time not to breathe in sharply. Sometimes, I
thought, Masego saw things more clearly than any of us. I saw him
hesitate once more, after, and made myself squeeze his fingers back in
reassurance.

``I could have,'' he said.

My brow rose.

``Could have what?''

``I could have begun apotheosis,'' Masego whispered. ``I had the souls.
The weight. The bones. But I wanted to bring my father back, instead.
But I still remember, Cat.''

My eyes narrowed.

``Remember what?'' I asked.

``How gods are made,'' he whispered. ``And so how they are unmade.''

I matched his gaze, hidden as it was by the eye cloth.

``The Dead King?'' I murmured.

``Oh yes,'' Hierophant murmured. ``Even him. And Catherine, I think I
\emph{want} to kill him.''

He leaned forward, as if confiding a great secret.

``I believe,'' Masego solemnly told me, ``I might have become nettled by
this affair.''

``Well,'' I smiled, thin and bladelike, ``we've certainly started picked
fights with lesser gods over less.''

And so we spoke, just the two of us, of the last king of Sephirah's end.