I looked around the room in wonder and confusion. “What the hells kind of scrivener are you?”

Deka closed the door behind me. “My specialty is godling lore,” he said. “I wrote my concluding thesis on you.”

I turned to him. He stood against the closed doors, watching me. For an instant, in his stillneelt?he door bess, he reminded me of Nahadoth as much as Ahad. All three had that same habit of unblinking intensity, which in Ahad covered nihilism and in Nahadoth covered madness. In Deka, I had no idea what it meant. Yet.

“You don’t think I tried to kill you, then,” I said.

“No. It was obvious something went wrong with the oath.”

One knot of tension eased inside me; the rest stayed taut. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

He shrugged, ducking his eyes, and for a moment I saw a hint of the boy he’d been. “I still have friends in Sky. They keep me informed of events that matter.”

Very much still the Arameri, whatever his protestations to the contrary. “You knew I would be coming, then.”

“I guessed. Especially when I heard about your leaving, two years ago. I expected you then, actually.” He looked up, his expression suddenly unreadable. “You killed First Scrivener Shevir.”

I shifted from one foot to another, slipping my hands into my pockets. “I didn’t mean to. He was just in the way.”

“Yes. You do that a lot, I’ve realized from studying your history. Typical of a child, to act first and deal with the consequences later. You’re careful to do that — act impulsively — even though you’re experienced and wise enough to know better. This is what it means to live true to your nature.”

I stared at him, flummoxed.

“My contacts told me you were angry with Shahar,” he said. “Why?”

I set my jaw. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You didn’t kill her, I see.”

I scowled. “What do you care? You haven’t spoken to her for years.”

Deka shook his head. “I still love her. But I’ve been used as a weapon against her once already. I will not let that happen again.” He pushed away from the door abruptly and came toward me, and so flustered was I by his manner that I took a step back before I caught myself.

“I will be her weapon instead,” he said.

It took me a shamefully long time, all things considered, to realize that he had spoken to me in the First Tongue.

“What the hells are you doing?” I demanded, clenching my fists to keep from clapping a hand over his mouth. “Shut up before you kill us both!”

To my shock, he smiled and began to unfasten his overshirt. “I’ve been speaking magic for years, Sieh,” he said. “I can hear the world and the stars as gods do. I know when reality listens closest, when even the softest word will awaken its wrath or coax it into obedience. I don’t know how I know these things, but I do.”

Because you are one of us, I almost said, but how could div?edienI be sure of that? His blood hadn’t killed me. I tried to understand even as he continued undressing in front of me.

Then he got his overshirt open. I knew before he’d unlaced the white shirt underneath; the characters glowed dark through the fabric. Black markings, dozens of them, marched along most of his upper torso and shoulders, beginning to make their way down the flat planes of his abdomen. I stared, confused. Scriveners marked themselves whenever they mastered a new activation; it was the way of their art. They put our powerful words on their fragile mortal skin, using will and skill alone to keep the magic from devouring them. But they used ordinary ink to do it, and they washed the marks off once the ritual was done. Deka’s marks, I saw at once, were like Arameri blood sigils. Permanent. Deadly.

And they were not scrivening marks. The style was all wrong. These lines had none of the spidery jaggedness I was used to seeing in scrivener work: ugly, but effective. These marks were smooth and almost geometric in their cleanliness. I had never seen anything like them. Yet they had power, whatever they were; I could read that in the swirling interstices of their shapes. There was meaning in this, as multilayered as poetry and as clear as metaphor. Magic is merely communication, after all.

Communication, and conduits.

This is something we have never told mortals. Paper and ink are weak structures on which to build the framework of magic. Breath and sound aren’t much better, yet we godlings willingly confine ourselves to those methods because the mortal realm is such a fragile place. And because mortals are such dangerously fast learners.