Siris wasn’t in his room. Isa felt a moment of panic. Had an assassin attacked?
Don’t be an idiot, she thought at herself, entering the room. He’s immortal. Who cares about assassins?
She crossed the room, and noticed the door to the balcony cracked open. TEL joined her as she stepped outside.
“So you’re saying,” Siris said from down below, “that being ‘it’ is a mark of dishonor? But if only one person can be ‘it,’ is the position not one of distinction and exclusivity?”
A child’s voice replied. “You’ve gotta chase people when you’re it.”
“And in so doing, emulate the predator,” Siris’s voice replied. “Rather than the prey. Why doesn’t everyone want to be this ‘it’? That seems the preferred mode to me.”
“If everyone wanted to be it,” another young voice said, “then the game would be stupid!”
“But—”
“Just run, mister!” another child said.
Giggling followed. TEL moved toward the steps, but Isa stooped and grabbed him. “Wait a moment,” she ordered quietly.
Amazingly, he obeyed. Isa moved to the edge of the balcony, and found Siris—immortal, Deathless, Sacrifice, and possibly the world’s greatest living swordsman—playing a game of tag with various children of camp.
Isa leaned down, crossing her arms on the balcony railing, watching. Seeing him again had raised an entire host of emotions. Hope that this thing she had begun might actually have a chance at success. Embarrassment for the way she’d treated Siris, all those months ago.
And also hatred and betrayal, deep down. Emotions she didn’t like, but which she also couldn’t control. He was Deathless.
Watching him play tag helped change some of those feelings.
He played for a long while, though eventually the children ran at the dinner announcement. Siris watched them go, wiping his brow, then turned to climb the balcony steps. Only then did he see her.
He stopped halfway up. “Oh! Um.” He looked over his shoulder at the children. “I never—”
“‘Never got to play games as a child,’” Isa said. “I know.”
“Not that I remember, anyway,” he said, climbing the steps to join her. “TEL!” he said, noticing the small creature for the first time.
Isa cocked her eye as Siris ran up. He was more excited to see the golem than he had been to see her? It was hard not to feel a little offended by that.
“Master, you’ve been reborn too many times,” TEL said. “Oh, this is bad.”
“It is bad and good, TEL,” Siris said, sighing. He reached the top of the balcony, and turned to watch the children as they ran toward the dining hall.
“Isa,” he said. “Tell me of Siris.”
“What? Yourself?”
He nodded.
“Uh . . . you’re kind of strange? You are also Deathless, and rather tall. And . . .”
“No,” he said. “Tell me of the man they think I am. Tell me what you told them, the ‘extrapolations,’ as you put them. Tell me the person I need to be.”
She collected herself, gathering her thoughts. “You want stories of Siris, do you?” she began. “Stories of the Deathless who fought for ordinary men?”
He looked to her quizzically.
“It’s how I start,” she said. “You want to hear it as they did? The stories? Well, stories I have. Too many stories. Stories like rats in the wheat, fat and glutted upon my thoughts and memories. It’s time that you heard them.”
DEVIATION
THE SEVENTH
URIEL CRADLED his son’s limp body. Rain pelted him. Tears from far above.
Adram stood to the side, a trail of blood washing from the cut on his head and streaming down his face. He raised his hands beside his head, blabbering nonsense, eyes wide.
“Jori . . . Jori . . .” Uriel whispered, shaking.
“I didn’t see him!” Adram screamed. “The rain! I couldn’t see him!”
The too-red car rested with one tire up on the curb, the other on the mangled remains of Jori’s bicycle.
“This is your fault, Uriel!” Adram bellowed into the rain. “You . . . you should have stayed at work! You were supposed to stay late! You did this! You forced this!”
“Yes. I did.” Uriel laid down the broken body. “Cause and effect.”
“Yeah . . .” Adram said. “Cause . . . cause and effect . . .”
“No emotions,” Uriel said, rising.
Killing a man turned out to be more difficult than Uriel would have expected. Even as Uriel had Adram pinned up against the car, hands around his neck, the man fought back. Adram was wounded, dazed from the wreck, but he was still stronger than Uriel and managed to batter his way free.
As he was running away, Adram slipped on the grass, just as Uriel noticed a large wrench in the passenger seat of the man’s car. Presumably for “tweaking the engine,” as Adram always said. Uriel picked it up, hefting it, feeling its weight. It would do for fixing other problems.
As Adram scrambled to get to his feet, Uriel stepped behind him and slammed the weapon down. Heavy as the wrench felt, it still took a good five hits to break the man’s skull open.
Fortunately, the rain washed the blood away. That kept things neater. Cleaner.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RAIDRIAR FIDDLED with the machine parts of the abomination he’d slain. Behind him, the carcass slumped where it had fallen, mouth open, one tattered wing toward the air. Teeth had begun to fall out of the mouth with a sound like dropping pebbles. Lacking the machinery to sustain it, the thing was literally falling apart.
Raidriar pulled out some wires. This was why he’d always preferred independent organic minions, crafted through Q.I.P. mutation. The best of them could even breed true. Independent, capable of thought. That was true creation. This sloppy piece, this was nothing more than a monument to mediocrity.
Eves approached. The High Devoted bore a few new scratches on his face, but had otherwise survived the collapse of the tunnel. His nephew, however, was another matter.
“Your funeral service was properly morose, I presume,” Raidriar said, twisting two wires together.
“I commended his spirit to your care, great master,” Eves said softly. “Your wisdom was profound in letting him survive to see your return before taking him.”
Raidriar grunted, twisting the ring from his pouch into the center of the wires. He eyed the Devoted.
“It was for the best, Eves,” he said.
“Great master?”
“This way, the lad fell in battle,” Raidriar said. “Frankly, he was annoying, and I was probably going to execute him eventually. At least this way, he had an honorable death.”
“I suppose, master,” Eves said. “It’s just . . . I don’t know what I’ll tell my sister . . .”
“When you talk to her, give her my condolences,” Raidriar said. “And send her something from me. A basket of fruit or some such.” What was the proper gift for the death of a mortal, these days? He could never keep up with their traditions, which were nearly as fleeting as the lives of the mortals themselves.
Raidriar reattached one final wire, then stood up. He backed away from the machine.
“You will want to take shelter,” he noted to Eves.
The Devoted ran. Smart man. Raidriar stepped away more carefully, clasping his hands behind his back—though he wore his healing ring in case anything went wrong—and watching patiently. The machine sputtered and sparked, then the modified energy output spurted a column of pure darkness directly at the structure ahead.
Raidriar’s Seventh Temple of Reincarnation was marked by calm rocks and a field of green bamboo set into the tops of the hills here. It shook, the entire structure groaning, then collapsed upon itself like crumpling paper. Rocks and stones broke free, crashing to the ground as the core of the hill itself was swallowed by the Incarnate Dark.
The machine finally sputtered and died, leaving nothing behind but a gouge in the landscape where the temple had once sat. Raidriar strolled forward, still bare-chested, wearing sandals he’d stolen from a dead daeril. The machinery he’d worked on had become encrusted with a material like obsidian.
Eves stumbled up hesitantly beside him, looking from the glassy machine to the hole in the hillside.
“When the Worker sends minions to investigate,” Raidriar said, “they will find this symbol of my rage. And, of course, your vengeance upon my fallen Devoted is complete.”
“Thank you, great master. It was . . . satisfying to observe.”
Raidriar folded his arms. He had done this, in part, because he felt it was unexpected. Under most circumstances, in this position he would have secured this location and used it to start rebuilding his empire. The Worker would expect that to be his move, and would plan for it.
Hopefully, this would send a message directly to the Worker. You cannot anticipate me.
But now what?
He needed allies, resources. He needed to slay the Soulless who sat upon his throne and reclaim the Infinity Blade.
He needed to do the unexpected. The unanticipated. Something daring, something that the Worker would never consider. Fortunately, a plan had already started to blossom in Raidriar’s mind.
He smiled. “Come, Eves,” he said, turning and walking away. “We have an appointment with an old friend, and I would not wish to be late.”
SIRIS SCOOPED out the last bite of goopy violet pie and shoved it into his mouth.
He’d spent much of his youth worrying about maintaining peak physique for fighting the God King—only to discover that as a Deathless, his body would basically keep itself that way on its own. Without help. True, he had an odd body for a Deathless—he still didn’t completely understand what had been done to make him be reborn as a child, rather than an adult, all those times. But it was still hard not to feel cheated by his youth spent training all the time. He should have allowed himself to relax, now and then.
He settled back, savoring the flavor of the pie. TEL sat next to his chair, wearing a metallic shape almost doglike in appearance. The little construct seemed very happy to have Siris back.
It felt nice to be wanted. Not as the Sacrifice, or as the Deathless who would save humankind. Just as himself. As the day grew long, he’d lit an oil lamp and turned back to his research on the rebellion’s status.
He felt more . . . himself than he had in some time. Playing with children, eating pies—these were things that made his Dark Self retreat. The experiences actually felt new to him. That was surprising, for during the months since he’d realized he was Deathless, he’d started to assume that he’d done everything in his life, even if he couldn’t remember most of it.
Experiences like these, however, shocked him in their freshness. Many activities were faintly familiar to him, but playing games with the children . . . no haunting sense of recollection, no instincts speaking to him from a time before.
Could it be that he’d lived thousands of years, but never taken the time to do anything purely fun? Could he have lived as a Deathless and never eaten everberry pie, or swung on a tire swing, or gone swimming in a warm summer lake?