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The waves below keep breaking as they have throughout this entire conversation, heedless and terrible.

I stare at him. “What?”

“The piece taken binds you not only in this life, but in the one after it. Whether you pass cleanly beyond, remain near, are called elsewhere, or are made to serve in some other fashion—that will not be mine to decide.”

Something in his tone makes my stomach tighten.

“Who decides such things, if not you?”

Hesitation flits across his face.

“The God of the Dead will judge that claim first.”

The silence after that feels almost alive. Cold slips under my collar and settles there like a hand. Even the next wave seems slow in coming.

“And you can do nothing?” I say at last.

His mouth hardens. “Not in that regard.”

“Why not?”

A humourless laugh slips from him, more bitterness than amusement. “I am powerful, but even one as powerful as me has limitations outside my domain.”

“I doubt that.”

He sighs heavily. “Politics, Robert. Even the gods are made to keep to boundaries.”

I shouldn’t smile at that, and yet I nearly do.

Instead I say, “So the land has taken a piece of my soul, some gift will begin crawling awake in me when,”—I make a small, derisive motion with two fingers—“the time comes, and when I die I may not be permitted the simple dignity of staying dead. And you delivered the worst of it as though it were a squabble at court.”

“I delivered it as plainly as I am able.”

I turn away from him. For several breaths, I say nothing. The wind stings my face. My thoughts come fast and black.

I had once thought death the most a man could be asked for.

Now it seems I may have underestimated the imagination of gods.

Behind me, Mannie says quietly, “Robert.”

I don’t look back.

“Do not mistake foreknowledge for condemnation.”

A bitter laugh catches in my throat. “Then what would you call it?”

“A burden,” he says. “But a burden is meant to be lived with, not surrendered to.”

I glance at him sidelong. “A vicious distinction.”

“An important one.”

I shut my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. “And why tell me this at all?”

“Because you have a rather stubborn habit of noticing too much,” he says, with the barest trace of a laugh, “and are not a man easily fooled.” He goes quiet for a moment before adding, gingerly, “And because I believe you strong enough to hear it without letting it unmake you. You will keep your head where others might lose theirs.”

I can’t say why exactly, but it means a great deal to hear him say it.