"Against us?"
"No. Against humans. There was an overwhelming force. One brute got lucky."
"Her son fell fighting humans," he said. "He must have been a lousy fighter."
Areana cast him another angry look, but she didn't say anything. She let the cruelty of the comment and her silence speak for her.
He was angry too, but for different reasons.
He was angry that Areana was idolizing her sister and, by contrast, demonizing him.
"It nearly destroyed her," Areana said after a long moment. "Annani. It happened over a thousand years ago, and she still does not speak of him often."
"A thousand years is a long time to mourn."
"It's not when the one you grieve is your child. Time doesn't heal that wound."
He nodded because he knew it to be true. He'd mourned both his sons even though they weren't really dead. Their betrayal meant that they were dead to him.
"I am envious of Annani," Areana said quietly.
"Why?"
He knew why, but he wanted to hear her say it.
"She mothered an entire clan. She has children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. She is the heart of her clan. You and I have only two sons and one grandson. I want a big family as well."
He smiled. "You have one."
She grimaced. "I don't count the Brotherhood as my family. It's more like your pet project. And I certainly don't count your adopted sons as mine even though some of them were born to the harem ladies who I think of as sisters."
He'd never told her that some of the boys he'd claimed as his own hadn't been born in the harem. He'd figured early on that his system allowed him to take any boy from the breeding enclosure and claim him as his own. No one outside the enclosure knew who the mothers were, and since the boys from the harem had been raised in the enclosure by Dormants, thesoldiers themselves couldn't know whether their mothers had given birth to them or had only raised them.
Still, she wasn't supposed to know that he'd claimed children born in the enclosure as his. But then figuring that the math didn't add up wasn't difficult, and Areana was smart. He'd claimed many more sons than those born in the harem, and he'd told her about enough of them for her to figure that out.
Navuh took another sip of the cooling coffee.
"Annani was quite generous with her affections," he said, aware he was provoking Areana but unable to resist. "She must have bedded countless humans to have five children—it's a record for a goddess."
"The Fates bestowed their blessing on her," Areana said with perfect composure. "They took away from her the one person who was everything to her, and they compensated by giving her more children than any other goddess before her had, so she could continue the gods' mission elevating humans from barbarism to civilization. She couldn't do it alone, so she created more of her, the only way she could. She had children to carry that work forward."
He knew she was right, but he couldn't concede. It just wasn't in him. "That's a convenient excuse to share the beds of countless humans. I'm sure it wasn't a hardship for her. I'm sure she enjoyed every moment."
"Perhaps." Areana put her coffee cup down. "The results speak for themselves. She built a community on trust, respect, mutual protection, and love. Her clan will endure because it's in everyone's interest to make sure it does. Everyone benefits. You built an army of thousands of immortal soldiers on hateand fear, either of you or the hateful god they worship. Your compulsion was what has kept them in line. Without it, they would just kill each other in a bloody battle for dominance. We got a taste of that during the rebellion of the enhanced. So, tell me whose math is better."
"Mine, of course. If not for your plot to get Tula off the island and everything that followed, I would still be there, running an army no one on Earth could overpower with conventional weapons. I would have had the upper hand."
"Perhaps." She lifted her cup and took a sip.
"Humans are savages," he said. "Annani will have as much luck civilizing them as she would have with chimpanzees if they were the dominant species on this planet. The gods' mission was a vision of utopia that doesn't exist anywhere in the universe. It didn't even exist where they came from, but they were delusional and believed they could create on Earth what they'd failed to do on their home planet."
"How do you know that? Did your father tell you?"
He shrugged. "He told me bits and pieces, and I connected the dots. It wasn't difficult to deduce."
She didn't respond, and her face was composed into the pleasant mask he'd been seeing for over five thousand years. He'd always loved that angelic face of hers and the effect it had on him. Areana had been the only one who could calm the storm raging inside of him. But now that he knew this expression for the lie it was, it did the opposite.
"You call my warriors barbarians, but that's because they are more human than god, and they have the same violent tendencies as humans, and the same lack of self-control. Onlythey are stronger and faster and harder to kill. If Annani still believes in the fairy tale of the gods being benevolent shepherds who descended from the heavens to elevate humanity, she's a fool."
