There had been an undercurrent of tension behind his frivolous attitude in the City, but here his happiness seemed genuine, if tempered by equally genuine concern for me. He’d never understand why this scene of beauty filled me with regret.
If this was what he’d wanted, he could have asked for it. If he’d only appeared to us as Genna’s son and insisted that we continue to worship the gods through the war, we would have done it. We thought the gods had abandoned us; we would have welcomed a little divine intervention. If the price for freedom from Death’s rule had been an eternity of service, well, I would have given much more than this. This wasn’t even hard. I would have poured his wine and sung for his guests and even pressed his damn clothes if that was what he’d wanted.
I wouldn’t have broken my heart expecting a god to love me back.
Priests moved the tables and chairs, rearranging the furniture to face the stage. When the plates were all cleared, musicians gathered at one end of the room and began to play popular dances.Despite my efforts to covertly swap his wine for juice during dinner, Marit was by now happily drunk, and he lifted his head at the change in music.
Lixnea stood and clapped her hands in a shower of silver sparks to mark the next stage of the evening, but as she passed Marit, she ran tender fingers across his forehead and his eyes half closed in response. He put his head back down on his forearms, looking abruptly sleepy.
Taran and I watched Lixnea withdraw from the main hall toward a balcony over the water.
“Did she say anything to you about the other Stoneborn?” I asked.
“No. She keeps her secrets close, that one. But if you want to ask her about Death, now’s your chance. Her chariot flies over the mortal world and the Summerlands both—she’d know if anyone does.”
“You want me to ask her? What about you?”
“Oh, I promised several people I’d dance. I don’t remember their names, but that didn’t seem to matter,” he said, straightening his tunic and smiling at a group of moon-priests who’d raised graceful arms into the air when the drummers began to hit a quick three-count.
Taran looked at me as though waiting for an objection, but when I didn’t voice one, he backed away until his arms were seized by members of the growing crowd of revelers, and he was pulled away into the lines of the dance.
My stomach ached, because I remembered dancing with Taran on more than one night. Hiwa playing reed pipes, Drutalos slapping his lap desk like a drum. Stepping on Taran’s feet before he wrapped my legs around his waist and spun me till I was dizzy. Kissing him until he was breathless too.
For three years I had thought that Death would probably killme someday. But that didn’t mean that there hadn’t been moments full of complete and pristine joy.
“Doyouwant to dance?” Marit asked, startling me out of my memories. “I’ll dance with you.”
He was surprisingly coherent for his flushed cheeks and glassy eyes.
“Thank you, but I can’t dance anymore,” I said, touched by the offer despite my caution. “I hurt my foot.”
“You can’t dance ever again?” When his eyes widened in dismay and began to well up with dangerous tears, I hurried to reassure him before the floods could begin.
“But I could play some music later if you want to dance.”
“I’d like that,” he mumbled, face softening. He put his head down on his arms. “I think I like music. I’d like to hear you play sometime.”
I patted him on the shoulder, then followed the Moon outside.
So close to the Mountain, the air was a cool touch on my skin and sweet from the lake below us. Lixnea stood by the rail, looking into the water. Her white face was reflected back like the heavenly body we saw in the mortal world, and I had a sudden pang of homesickness for my own sky, of all things.
I’d picked up a discarded kithara as I went, thinking that I could pretend to be offering that performance if she was offended at my approach, but she turned around when she heard the door.
“What, Taran is going to fob off Genna’s dirty work on his priestess?” she said by way of greeting, face creasing in wry amusement. “Not very much like one of the Stoneborn, after all.”
“I’m not here for Genna,” I said cautiously, hearing several things in that statement I wanted to know more about.
Lixnea smiled without teeth, like she’d expected that response.
“No, I didn’t think you were, Iona terWesha. The Maiden and the Peace-Queen never did get on well.”
I froze, only just realizing what the Moon might have seen during her flights over the mortal world in the last three years.
She beckoned me closer.
“Don’t fear, child. I never speak of what I see during my voyages across the night sea, and I dearly miss my lost little dawn star. We might have a few words later about the state of my temples, but I’m not about to harm Wesha’s last priest.”
“Thank you,” I breathed. “Though I’m not one, not really.”
