Arbalests, Taran. Defensive earthworks. A couple of acolytes of Skyfather, ready with the lightning bolts. That is how we greet Death, not smiles and small talk.
It was still easy for me to speak to the Taran who existed only in my head, the one who would have helped me barricade the doors, and not the one who looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow, wordlessly instructing me to begin the night’s entertainment.
Death paid me no notice when I started to play on the kithara, but I doubted he could hear over Smenos’s wailing. It was rapidly apparent that the crafter god was just as unbalanced as Marit had been. He rose from his chair without warning, his empty hands clasping for nothing. When Marit put a glass of wine in his hand, he clutched it to his chest like a toy and pointed to the vacant hall, begging his guests to explain the grimy copper bas-reliefs of his past accomplishments.
“That marble bridge! I must have taught the mortals how to laythe keystone. And do you see, do you see the dome in the ceiling—there! Only my priests ever learned the formula for the arch. And now I’ve forgotten. I can’t even think of it. I don’t know it!”
As he ranted, bits of the ceiling began to rain down on us. Chunks of plaster, half a brick. When a flake of plaster landed in her glass, Wirrea dumped her wine on the floor and refilled it, and Taran brushed dust out of his dark hair.
I looked anxiously at the ceiling beams, which flexed with each of Smenos’s shouts about his lost art. I’d already survived one building collapse, and it was an experience I wasn’t eager to repeat, but Taran and Death seemed locked in a silent competition for who could pay the least attention to the crumbling hall around us or the growing puddle under Marit’s chair as the sea god white-knuckled his chair arms.
I mentally begged him to turn around, so that I could indicate that I’d changed my mind.
Time to go, Taran. Make that excuse and get us out of here.
But he sat back and dangled his silver goblet from the tips of his fingers, smiling at the god of the Underworld and picking at the first course of quail livers on toast. Wirrea solicitously asked Taran for news from the City as the dead crafter-priest returned to heap live coals on the grill built into the center of the table for the meat course. The dusk-soul handled the coals and the raw steaks with his bare hands, and both sizzled from the contact, as did his tears when they hit the vibrating flagstones. Smenos nearly walked into the dusk-soul as he wove around his dining hall, only to recoil with a shriek as his wrist brushed the luminescent shoulder of his dead priest.
The other Stoneborn studiously ignored the noise, and Death complimented the wine.
“You always liked this one. It was served at your wedding,” Wirrea replied.
When I saw a crack begin to snake through one of the pillars in the corner of the room, I decided I wasn’t willing to die in defense of good manners.
There was a sappy, popular ballad written with the same time signature and key progressions as the blessing of Wesha that we used for light sedation—for tooth extractions and minor procedures. The coincidence was an in-joke among maiden-priests. When we were little children, the other acolytes of Wesha and I used to giggle about what love did to people, dramatically swooning and drooling through pretend declarations of devotion.
Did I dare? Would anyone at the table recognize either melody?
Feigning nonchalance but sweating into the waistband of my dress, I plucked out the notes of Wesha’s blessing on my instrument and began to sing. I firmed my diaphragm and trilled the opening lines of the overwrought ballad about star-crossed lovers.
For just a moment, Taran’s attention broke from the blue-white stare of the god he’d killed for me, but I didn’t dare acknowledge that he’d caught on. I wasn’t even sure I would be able to call Wesha’s power without singing the words, no matter how precise I was with the melody, but seconds later, it answered.
I hoped to invoke only a drop of it, enough to settle Smenos and avoid a second roof collapsing over my head, but once I felt it begin to resonate with my voice and course through the room, I had to pour my entire concentration into the song or risk being found out.
Wesha was imprisoned on the other side of the Mountain, but her power was here, swirling around that of four other Stoneborn like the first rivulets of rain down a dry streambed. Stronger than I would have expected, when all her priests were dead.
I didn’t dare stop after it took hold, or it would be obvious what I’d done, so I searched my memory for the other songs I would have performed at a concert for the brokenhearted and moved seamlessly into the next piece, hoping that any gods affected wouldchalk up their stupor to the force of the music. Slowly, over the next three songs, I released Wesha’s blessing.
“You’re a wonderful singer, Iona,” Marit said dreamily. “I think I’m very fond of music.”
Taran’s reaction to my little experiment hadn’t been a given either, but when the other gods broke into applause and Smenos absentmindedly took his chair again, still clapping, I saw him let out a long breath before shooting me a chiding look.
Thank you, nightingale, that was a close one, I imagined my love saying, because he would never have expected me to sit like a painted figurine while the ceiling came down.
“Breathtaking,” Death agreed, tipping a goblet toward me in appreciation. “Where did you get her, son of Genna?”
Taran held out a hand and shifted to make room in his seat, so I was obliged, in my part as the dutiful priestess, to put down my instrument and slide in next to him, nearly propped over his knee. This put me mere feet away from Death, closer than I’d ever been. Candle-blue eyes dissected my face and figure without recognition.
I was palpably aware of the stone knives hidden in my waistband.
“Don’t eat anything,” Taran whispered under his breath before nipping my earlobe to cover his words. He straightened and gave a belated response to Death.
“A souvenir of my time in the mortal world.” The caution in his voice was so strong that I forgot to be angry that I was being discussed like an imported wine.
“Another reminder of what Wesha keeps from us,” Wirrea said from Death’s lap. Her husband did not seem to notice that he’d misplaced his wife, and Taran was focused on the god behind her, but I very much wished she’d worn more underclothes.
At Wesha’s name, Smenos scowled into his goblet.
“Did the Allmother tell you what happened at the Painted Tower?” Taran asked him.
