Book 2 The Gods of Light and Liars

Chapter 35: Continuance

The dawnless morning came too quickly. Hawk did not remember returning to her hummock, but she did wake there. Someone had built a very small fire and was roasting what looked like rabbit over it. There was also a small, metal pot for boiling water.

"Where did we get this?" Hawk said, peering into the happily bubbling pot.

"A mutual friend brought them," the Archon said. "I suspect the same friend you were talking to while you believed the rest of us were sleeping." A long pause. "He likes you."

"I guessed." Hawk said.

More silence, broken only by small bodies rushing through underbrush, and the occasional mote of birdsong.

"Why are you lying about your name?"

Hawk couldn't think of anything to say. Somewhere in the dark came a call of surprising beauty, the sort of bird that should have peacock plumage and an iridescent shimmer. The sort of thing that would blind you with its beauty. Hawk knew that in a darkened world, the odds of anything having beautiful plumage were vanishingly small; it did no good to make your feathers beautiful if no one were ever going to see them.

"Hawk-of-the-West. Alex West. Are you going to make me say it out loud?"

"That the husband I'm looking for is him?" she said it softly, but harsh enough to make up for a lack of volume. "Is that what you want me to say?"

"I mean no offense." Silence. "Besides. He'd say he's only one fifth your husband. Poor, Gods-eaten thing he may be. I'd back that fifth against the rest of the Gods."

"Aren't you doing that already?" She said. And it was his turn for awkward, bleeding silence. "No offence but...what are you going to do?"

A shrug. "I could make my way back to the pavilions and throw myself on the Gods' own mercy. Not that they have any. In fact, that may be all that's left to do—"

"You can come with us," she said it hastily, before she could second guess herself. "We'd find a place for you. Probably as an advisor to someone important. Your Gods are going to be our headache for a while yet." She could already feel it in her imagination, that first little kernel of a migraine, right before it explodes.

"And what would I do with myself there? What gods would I serve?" He leaned forward, musing. "No temple to keep, unless I should bow and become penitent again. That's how religious service begins, you know. They make you beg for it. As if you didn't have to struggle your way up to religious life on your own."

"Probably a control thing," Hawk said, unguarded. "Alex would—" And she stopped. That was a mistake. Made in front of someone she could trust, but she couldn't be that careless.

"Would what?" he said, in the silence of frozen fear and molten grief.

"He'd know why religions make you beg to join them. He'd know why it's about control. He'd be able to tell the difference between a good church and a predatory one. Though he kind of insisted there wasn't much difference." She let her words fall like petals to the darkened forest floor. Then she said, "If someone put a gun to my head, what would he do?"

"Right now? I don't know. Something spectacular and guaranteed to cement his reputation as the most wicked and evil thing to ever exist. If and when he finds out about your connection?" He thought for a minute, turning his mask up towards his own coldlight. "I would be afraid. I know him better, these days, than I think I know my own kin. After all, I've outlived most of them. If someone he truly loved were put at risk because of him...I would be afraid to be anywhere near him." A longer pause. "I think your choice to keep it hidden is wise. But why are you trying to hide it from Willheim?"