Blushweaver watched him for a second.

He looked at her, letting the lemons drop but snatching the guava out of the air. He tossed it to a servant, who began peeling it for him. “My previous life, Blushweaver. These are skills that I—Lightsong—have no right to know. Whomever I was before I died, he could juggle. He knew about sailing. And he could sketch.”

“We’re not supposed to worry about the people we were before,” Blushweaver said.

“I’m a god,” Lightsong said, taking back a plate containing the peeled and sliced guava, then offering a piece to Blushweaver. “And, by Kalad’s Phantoms, I’ll worry about whatever I please.”

She paused, then smiled and took a slice. “Just when I thought I had you figured out . . .”

“You didn’t have me figured out,” he said lightly. “And neither did I. That’s the point. Shall we go?”

She nodded, joining him as they began to cross the lawn, their servants bringing parasols to shade them. “You can’t tell me that you’ve never wondered,” Lightsong said.

“My dear,” she replied, sucking on a guava piece, “I was boring before.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I was an ordinary person! I would have been . . . Well, have you seen regular women?”

“Their proportions aren’t quite up to your standards, I know,” he said. “But many are quite attractive.”

Blushweaver shivered. “Please. Why would you want to know about your normal life? What if you were a murderer or a rapist? Worse, what if you had bad fashion sense?”

He snorted at the twinkle in her eye. “You act so shallow. But I see the curiosity. You should try some of these things, let them tell you a little of who you were. There must have been something special about you for you to have Returned.”

“Hum,” she said, smiling and siding up to him. He stopped as she ran her finger down the front of his chest. “Well, if you’re trying new things today, maybe there’s something else you ought to think about. . . .”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“I’m not,” she said. “But, how will you know who you were if you don’t try? It would be an . . . experiment.”

Lightsong laughed, pushing her hand away. “My dear, I fear you would find me less than satisfactory.”

“I think you overestimate me.”

“That’s impossible.”

She paused, flushing slightly.

“Uh . . .” Lightsong said. “Hum. I didn’t exactly mean . . .”

“Oh, bother,” she said. “Now you’ve spoiled the moment. I was about to say something very clever, I just know it.”

He smiled. “Both of us, at a loss for words in one afternoon. I do believe we’re losing our touch.”

“My touch is perfectly fine, which you’d discover if you’d just let me show you.”

He rolled his eyes and continued to walk. “You’re hopeless.”

“When all else fails, use sexual innuendo,” she said lightly, joining him. “It always brings the focus back to where it belongs. On me.”

“Hopeless,” he said again. “But, I doubt we have time for me to chastise you again. We’ve arrived.”

Indeed, Hopefinder’s palace was before them. Lavender and silver, it had a pavilion out front prepared with three tables and food. Naturally, Blushweaver and Lightsong had arranged for the meeting ahead of time.

Hopefinder the Just, god of innocence and beauty, stood up as they approached. He appeared to be about thirteen years old. By apparent physical age, he was the youngest of the gods in the court. But they weren’t supposed to acknowledge such discrepancies. After all, he’d Returned when his body had been two, which made him—in god years—Lightsong’s senior by six years. In a place where most gods didn’t last twenty years, and the average age was probably closer to ten, six years difference was very significant.

“Lightsong, Blushweaver,” Hopefinder said, stiff and formal. “Welcome.”

“Thank you, dear,” Blushweaver said, smiling at him.

Hopefinder nodded, then gestured toward the tables. The three small tables were separate, but set close enough together for the meal to remain intimate while giving each god his or her own space.

“How have you been, Hopefinder?” Lightsong asked, sitting.

“Very well,” Hopefinder said. His voice always seemed a little too mature for his body. Like a boy trying to imitate his father. “There was a particularly difficult case during petitions this morning. A mother with a child who was dying of the fevers. She’d already lost her other three, as well as her husband. All in the space of a year. Tragic.”

“My dear,” Blushweaver said with concern. “You’re not actually considering . . . passing your Breath, are you?”

Hopefinder sat. “I don’t know, Blushweaver. I am old. I feel old. Perhaps it is time for me to go. I’m fifth most aged, you know.”

“Yes, but with the times growing so exciting!”

“Exciting?” he asked. “Why, they’re calming down. The new queen is here, and my sources in the palace say that she’s pursuing her duties to produce an heir with great vigor. Stability will soon arrive.”

“Stability?” Blushweaver asked as the servants bought them each a chilled soup. “Hopefinder, I find it hard to believe that you’re so uninformed.”

“You think the Idrians plan to use the new queen in a play for the throne,” Hopefinder said. “I know what you’ve been doing, Blushweaver. I disagree.”

“And the rumors out in the city?” Blushweaver said. “The Idrian agents who are causing such a ruckus? This so-called second princess somewhere in the city?”

Lightsong paused, spoon halfway to his lips. What was that?

“The city’s Idrians are always creating one crisis or another,” Hopefinder said, waving his fingers dismissively. “What was that disturbance six months ago, the rebel on the outer dye plantations? He died in prison, I recall. Foreign workers rarely provide a stable societal underclass, but I don’t fear them.”

“They’ve never claimed to have a royal agent working with them,” Blushweaver said. “Things could get out of hand very quickly.”

“My interests in the city are quite secure,” Hopefinder said, lacing his fingers in front of him. The servants took away his soup. He’d taken only three sips. “How about yours?”

“That’s what this meeting is for,” Blushweaver said.

“Excuse me,” Lightsong said, raising a finger. “But what in the Colors are we talking about?”

“Unrest in the city, Lightsong,” Hopefinder said. “Some of the locals are unsettled by the prospect of war.”

“They could turn dangerous very easily,” Blushweaver said, stirring her soup with a lazy motion. “I think that we should be prepared.”

“I am,” Hopefinder said, watching Blushweaver with his too-young face. Like all younger Returned—the God King included—Hopefinder would continue to age until his body reached maturity. Then, he would stop aging—just over the brink into the prime adulthood—until he gave up his Breath.

He acted so much like an adult. Lightsong hadn’t interacted much with children, but some of his attendants—when training—were youths. Hopefinder was not like those. All accounts said that Hopefinder, like other young Returned, had matured very quickly during his first year of life, coming to think and speak as an adult while his body was still that of a young child.

Hopefinder and Blushweaver continued to talk about the stability of the city, mentioning various acts of vandalism that had occurred. War plans stolen, city supply stations poisoned. Lightsong let them talk. He doesn’t seem to find Blushweaver’s beauty distracting, he thought as he watched. She turned to the fruit course, acting characteristically lascivious as she sucked on pieces of pineapple. Hopefinder either didn’t care, or didn’t notice, as she leaned forward, showing an impressive amount of cleavage.

Something is different about him, Lightsong thought. He Returned when he was a child and acted like one for a very short time. Now, he’s an adult in some ways, but a child in others.

The transformation had made Hopefinder more mature. He was also taller and more physically impressive than ordinary boys his age, even if he didn’t have the chiseled, majestic features of a fully grown god.

And yet, Lightsong thought, eating a piece of pineapple, different Gods have different body styles. Blushweaver is inhumanly well endowed, particularly for how thin she is. Yet Mercystar is plump and curvaceous all around. Others, like Allmother, look physically old.

Lightsong knew he didn’t deserve his powerful physique. Like the knowledge of how to juggle, he somehow understood that a person usually had to work hard at manual labor to have such a muscular body. Lounging about, eating and drinking, should have made him plump and flabby.

But there have been gods who were fat, he thought, remembering some of the pictures he had seen of Returned who had come before him. There was a time in our culture’s history when that was seen as the ideal. . . . Did Returned looks have something to do with the way society saw them? Perhaps their opinion of ideal beauty? That would certainly explain Blushweaver.

Some things survived the transformation. Language. Skills. And, as he thought about it, social competence. Considering the fact that the gods spent their lives locked up atop a plateau, they probably should have been far less well adjusted than they were. At the very least, they should have been ignorant and naive. Yet most of them were consummate schemers, sophisticates with a surprisingly good grasp of what happened in the outside world.

Memory itself didn’t survive. Why? Why could Lightsong juggle and understand the meaning of the word “bowsprit,” yet at the same time be unable to remember who his parents had been? And who was that face he saw in his dreams? Why had storms and tempests dominated his dreams lately? What was the red panther that had appeared, yet again, in his nightmares the night before?

“Blushweaver,” Hopefinder said, holding up a hand. “Enough. Before we go any further, I must point out that your obvious attempts to seduce me will gain you nothing.”

Blushweaver glanced away, looking embarrassed.

Lightsong shook himself out of his contemplations. “My dear Hopefinder,” he said. “She was not trying to seduce you. You must understand; Blushweaver’s aura of allure is simply a part of who she is; it’s part of what makes her so charming.”

“Regardless,” he said. “I will not be swayed by it or by her paranoid arguments and fears.”

“My contacts do not think that these things are simple ‘paranoia,’” Blushweaver said as the fruit dishes were removed. A small chilled fish fillet arrived next.

“Contacts?” Hopefinder asked. “And just who are these ‘contacts’ you keep mentioning?”