This half was very different. When Adrian and Bex had first come up, the desert, chains, and tanks of sleeping princes were all they could see. Here on the other side of the wall, though, the swept-stone platform was covered in furniture. There was a golden table set with artful trays full of beautifully prepared food, a drink cart with tea, wine, and other refreshments, and what appeared to be a weapon forge made of the same black metal as Bex’s Drox.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” the king asked as he made his frozen guests sit down at the lavish table. “That forge belonged to Enki himself, you know. I salvaged it from his workshop on the banks of the River Lethe along with several other choice pieces,including that table. It used to be for etching, but as you know, I like to reuse things. I promise it’s clean.”
He beamed like he thought they actually cared about the hygiene status of the stolen table they were being forced to sit at with magic, and not for the first time, Adrian wondered if Gilgamesh might be mad.
“Go on,” the king said, waving his gold-ringed hand. “Eat! That spell only restrains threatening movements. It won’t stop you from enjoying hospitality, so please help yourselves. The food will go to waste if you don’t.”
The moment Gilgamesh said that, the magic freezing Adrian’s muscles went slack, allowing him to rest his arms on the table. Boston jumped off his shoulder a second later, shaking his fur like he’d just been dunked in water. Bex was the only one who didn’t move, probably because she’d never stopped contemplating violence. Her hands were under the table, but Adrian could see her arm moving one fraction of a millimeter at a time toward the sword on her hip. Actually reaching her blade would take a century at that rate, but Adrian decided to go ahead and stall for time, just in case.
“Thank you,” he said, reaching out to take a slice of quiche both to show that he wasn’t planning anything threatening and because the food really did look delicious. He hadn’t eaten anything since before he’d grown his tree, and he was starving. He was also reasonably certain Gilgamesh wouldn’t stoop to poisoning his guests, so Adrian went ahead and made himself a plate.
“May I ask you a question?” he said as he carefully spooned a serving of pâté onto a second golden plate for Boston.
“If you don’t mind me working while I answer,” Gilgamesh replied, walking back over to the forge, which shone with the brightness of a supernova when he opened the protective door. “I’m running slightly behind schedule.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Adrian said, which was one hundred percent true. If Gilgamesh hadn’t finished his plan yet, maybe there was still time to talk him out of it. “Earlier, you said this was a joyous day, but I don’t understand how you can call it that. You’ve lost three princes this afternoon, four if you count Leander’s defection. I know you don’t care much for the lives of your children, but—”
“Nonsense,” Gilgamesh countered. “I care deeply for all my sons. Your murderous queen there is the one who killed them, so if you’ve got complaints, take them up with her.”
“Bex had to defeat them to stop you,” Adrian told him angrily. “If you actually love your princes, why are you destroying the world they live in?”
“Destroying?” Gilgamesh repeated, closing the blinding forge before turning around to give him a puzzled look. “Adrian, just what is it exactly that you think I’m doing?”
The way he said that opened a yawning hole in Adrian’s stomach. “You’re… Aren’t you going to reset the world?”
“Reset the world?” his father repeated, his face splitting into a smile like that was the most absurd thing he’d ever heard. “No, no, no! It’s nothing like that. Honestly, Adrian, I thought you understood me better. You’ve seen my art and collections, all the beautiful things I value. I already lived through the Bronze Age once. Do you really think someone like mewould roll the world back into that wretched darkness?”
Not when he put it that way.
“So you’renotgoing to reset the world?” Adrian confirmed.
“Absolutely not,” Gilgamesh said, walking back to the table to take a sip from his wine cup. “The gods are the only ones who benefit from a fearful and ignorant humanity. My views are the complete opposite. I’m a humanist, a proud defender ofliteracy and culture. Everything I’ve ever done has been for the preservationof mankind, not its ruination.”
“Then whatareyou doing?” Adrian demanded, losing his patience at last. “You dragged me into Heaven to fix the Queen of Pride’s horns then ignored me for an entire week. You worked Bex’s demons to death producing sin iron and tried to drown the entire Hells. You’d never waste resources like that unless you were working on something apocalyptic, but I don’t understand what. Why did you lock yourself up here? Why did you send all your sorcerers to attack the Blackwood? Why did you leave Alexander to fight to the death to keep us from reaching this place?Why?”
He was shouting by the end, but his father didn’t look offended. He actually looked delighted by all the questions, which made sense in hindsight. Even back when he’d been pretending to be Malik, there was nothing Gilgamesh seemed to enjoy more than talking about himself.
“Why indeed?” he replied gleefully as he walked over to the furnace. “There are five thousand years’ worth of answers to that question, but I think the easiest way would be just to show you.”
He stuck his hand inside the forge as he finished. Given the blasting heat Adrian could feel all the way back at the table, that looked like a quick way to lose an arm, but Gilgamesh must’ve had something shielding his bare hand, because his gold rings weren’t even warped when he pulled his arm back and held up a sword.
Again, that seemed like a terrible idea. Adrian had never been much of a blacksmith, but even he knew that superheated metal needed to be treated with the utmost care, not waved around. But even though it had just come out of a blazing furnace, the sword—which was long, slender, and white as snow—already looked finished. It had a guard and a hilt made fromthe same white metal as the blade, and its dual cutting edges were already sharpened to gleaming points.
Even its flat had already been decorated with motifs of rampant lions, which was just ridiculous. Again, Adrian was no swordsmith, but who put a fully finished blade back in the forge? He also didn’t understand what the sword was supposed to explain. Its decorated blade and hilt were fancier than the ones the princes used, but otherwise the white sword looked like just another Blade of Gilgamesh. He was trying to puzzle it out when Bex suddenly spoke beside him.
“What in the Hells did you do?”
Adrian glanced at her in surprise, and not just because she’d managed to stop wanting to kill Gilgamesh long enough to move her mouth. He was alarmed because Bex sounded horrified. His first thought was that she must’ve seen something in the sword that he didn’t, but when he looked harder at where her eyes were pointed, he realized she wasn’t looking at the blade at all. She was staring into the furnace the sword had come out of. The blazing white inferno, which, now that he was squinting at it as well, Adrian realized was fueled by a pile of severed women’s hands burning like charcoal briquettes at the very back.
“Youmonster!” Bex roared, jerking against the binding magic so hard she almost managed to knock herself out of her chair. “What did you do to my sisters?”
“Nothing, for once,” Gilgamesh replied calmly. “That is Enki’s forge, not Ishtar’s. Her daughters can’t affect it at all. Their swords, however...” He chuckled. “That’s another matter.”
He slid his white sword back into the glowing oven and tapped its point against a pile of dark objects sitting at the center. They were so small, and the light was so bright, Adrian didn’t realize what he was looking at until Gilgamesh actually pulled one out to show them a smoking black ring. The same sort of black ring Bex was currently wearing on her finger, except theone Gilgamesh had removed was cracked and burned like an old piece of scorched wood.
“Enki’s forges are powerful but finicky,” the king explained as he tossed the burned ring back inside the oven. “The only way to make them run properly is to fuel them with sparks of his own creation, which these days can only be found inside the rings of Ishtar’s daughters. Obviously, that makes forging anything using this setup a one-time affair, which is why I waited so long. I knew I’d only get one chance, so I had to make sure that it was perfect.”
“Perfect for what?” Adrian demanded. “Whose sword is that?”
